I know it's not the most popular take, but I love Enterprise. It's the only Star Trek series that I have watched in its entirety, much of it when it first aired from 2001-2005. I love the raw, 'low-tech' ship with the submarine interior, the function-before-form bridge, the cramped quarters where everyone has to duck to avoid banging their heads... yeah, that's the era of Star Trek I would want to live in.
I've been rewatching the series with my son, who has a unique perspective on the show: It's the only Star Trek he's ever seen. I just asked him if he knows who Mr. Spock is, and I got a blank look. So, it's really fun to watch this show with him, as everything is fresh and new to him, while for me I'm always picking out the callbacks to previous series. It's going to be interesting as we go through the series to see how he reacts to some of the more jarring callbacks (the Ferengi episode and the Borg in particular). He likely won't even notice them. Much like his first run-through of the Star Wars movies, which he watched in chronological order (so the big reveal of Empire wasn't so big to him), seeing Star Trek from this fresh perspective should be an interesting experience.
The only episodes I don't plan to watch with him on this run-through are the Mirror Universe episodes (In a Mirror Darkly) and the series finale (which, let's face it, totally sucks as an Enterprise episode). I'm going to save the Mirror episodes until we watch the two pertinent TOS episodes (Mirror, Mirror and the Tholian Web), so he has the necessary context to understand them. I might watch 'These are the Voyages' when we get to TNG season 5. Otherwise, we're going to watch the whole series in chronological order.
So far, we're most of the way through the first season. We've seen some great episodes (Andorian Incident, Dear Doctor) and some not-so-great episodes (Unexpected, Terra Nova). I think the first-season quality is higher than a lot of people give it credit for. Especially for someone new to the Trek universe. I'm considering asking Tanner to give his thoughts on the episodes as we go through the series. Even just a capsule review of each episode would be nice. For now, though, I'm going to give my thoughts on the best Star Trek pilot episode ever, Broken Bow.
Broken Bow establishes the embryonic Star Trek universe very well. Ninety years after First Contact, the Vulcans are the elder statesmen and 'big brother' of the humans, keeping them mostly confined to their own neighborhood of space because of all the big nasty dangers out there (and because humans are impulsive and dangerous themselves). When a chance encounter with a Klingon courier threatens to delay the launch of the first Warp 5 starship, Enterprise, new captain Jonathan Archer takes on the mission of returning the Klingon to his people alive, giving humanity its first taste of real deep space adventure.
The crew are well-established from the beginning, and there are some callbacks to the original series; this time around, the helmsman is black and the comm officer is Asian, a switch from the Sulu-Uhura situation. There's a full-blooded Vulcan science officer, but she isn't good friends with the crew; she's basically a chaperone who thinks the humans are wasting their time and incapable of handling any real dangers in deep space. The armory officer (tactical and security, so he's Worf) is a stiff-upper-lip Englishman, and the Chief Engineer is a good-ol' boy from the south, much like a certain doctor. The Denobulan doctor Phlox rounds out our main crew.
There are a few moments in the pilot where the humans are clearly out of their depth; their trip to Rigel is a good example of this, as T'Pol, the Vulcan, has to give them basic etiquette instructions on how to deal with the myriad cultures there. The new enemy, the Suliban, seriously outmatch the Enterprise in their tech, with cloaking devices on their little ships and genetic engineering that makes them into supervillains. But human perseverance pays off, and the crew not only disrupt the Suliban plot to destabilize the Klingon empire, but also convince Starfleet to let them continue on their mission of exploration.
After years of watching 24th-century Trek, with holodecks, luxury-liner ships, technobabble galore, and all kinds of aliens, watching Enterprise felt like a breath of fresh air. It's human-centric; the Federation doesn't exist yet, and humans haven't even met two of the other founding races yet (Andorians and Tellarites). There's tension, even conflict, between the human crew and the Vulcans, particularly the ones back on Earth whispering into Starfleet admirals' ears about how much of a screwup Archer is. The tech is laughably weak compared to what we saw over twenty-one seasons of TNG, DS9 and Voyager; no deflector shields, no phasers, lame little torpedoes, and a transporter that nobody trusts. The crew member with the most space experience is the helmsman, who grew up on a cargo transport that spent years between ports. The comm officer is jumpy and uncomfortable, the doctor uses animals and slugs as homeopathic medicine, and there's a definite sense of wonder to go along with the trepidation. This feels like a show about exploring the unknown, at least in this first season.
So, maybe Tanner will give his thoughts on the series. If so, I'll definitely share them here; otherwise, I've still got some thoughts to write up. And yes, I even like the theme song.
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