Voyager to Enterprise - a mistake?

[Brian G Turner]

After "Voyager" I imagined a new show called "Ambassador" - a figure like Jean Luc Picard travelling a D-class Enterprise, whose mission was to help restore order and confidence in the Trek universe, especially after all the DS9 upset. Basically, I was thinking that the Trek producers would try and pull everything back into a more settled state, bring the franchise under a sense of completion, and reach a point of moving on into new territory based on favourite old concepts.

But what did they do instead? Create a complete new and unreferenced history with Enterprise, effectively destroying the credibility of a Star Trek time line and any sense of continuity, gave the show a soft rock anthem, and has effectively left the entire Trek Universe in an extended state of incompletion.

However, is it just my being grumpy, or did the producers move along the right path? Was it really necessary and desirable to bring Trek forward to our own time, and make it more accessible? Or is there still a need to wrap up Trek and kill the loose ends?

 

[Princess Ivy]

They should just kill enterprise. The mistakes and problems in the continum of the ST universe that have been caused by the show are appaling, and impossible to ignore!
The show was a flop from the begining, as in trying to cater to the viewing majority, they lost the essence which made the original and subsequent series so successfull. Because it was such a disaster, they tried to bring it forward in time, to the more popular time references of TOS, TNG, Voyager. But that hasn't worked either.
I don't know where Trek can go from here, but they should scupper the series and pretend the mistake never happend, for a start.

 

[Seth God Of Chaos]

You never know they could be setting it up to bring the new enterprise into the future its true though that there are by far too many loose ends and plot flaws like the meeting with the fehrengi

 

[Capt.Janeway]

I agree, they should kill Enterprise. I always imagined they would bring out a new Voyager A, that would officially explore the Delta Quardant! They still, however, could do this, I hope they do. Does anyone agree?

Janeway Out!

 

[Trey Greyjoy]

Personally I never understood why Enterprise was so hated. I thought it was excellent.
Although moments of Voyager were excellent, I always found it to be rather inconsistent.

 

[steve12553]

Enterprise somewhat rewrote the connection to the Original Series from which all things Star Trek flow. Enterprise was the weekest of the series' mainly because if you were a fan of the others you always were thinking about inconsistencies.

 

[Trey Greyjoy]

Thats funny because I never worried about it. I just enjoyed the stories. Oh well, to each his own.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

I just found Enterprise a bit weak because it relied so heavily on introducing 'known' races such as Klingons (and not the Imperial ones either!) so early on.
I'm glad that they gave the Vulcan and Andorian races a bit more meat however.

 

[Supersith]

I saw some of it before I became a big trek fan when enterprise was just coming out, since then I'd become a huge fan of all of the other trek series and upon rewatching enterprise, I still enjoy it alot, I just take it for what it is, accept the mistake, and hope, if they make another trek series, they avoid those mistakes. All in all I'm still able to enjoy the show.

 

[ray gower]

Okay, Enterprise had a lot of faults: Badly realised and repetitive stories, poorly defined and anonymous main characters and possibly irritates a few rivet counters with their dreamed up history. But it was a far better homily to Trek than Voyager ever was.

If it had had a real chance i.e. a couple of years break between Voyager finishing and it starting, then there would have been no problem.

I would suggest it was Voyager that was the real mistake and the rot set in there. Make no mistake- I think Voyager was a major advance in concept for the franchise, but it needed the coherent sequential story and drama that only pre-planning can provide.

Only the introduction of 7o9 to add a focus for half a season did it ever disguise the fact that stories and scripts were being grabbed from the writing committee before the ink dried. Compare that to say Doctor Who, where all the stories, scripts and majority of planning for a season have been completed before a camera is set up

 

[Brian G Turner]

Well, I guess at least they tried to move forward again with Picard.

 

[BAYLOR]

Okay, Enterprise had a lot of faults: Badly realised and repetitive stories, poorly defined and anonymous main characters and possibly irritates a few rivet counters with their dreamed up history. But it was a far better homily to Trek than Voyager ever was.

If it had had a real chance i.e. a couple of years break between Voyager finishing and it starting, then there would have been no problem.

I would suggest it was Voyager that was the real mistake and the rot set in there. Make no mistake- I think Voyager was a major advance in concept for the franchise, but it needed the coherent sequential story and drama that only pre-planning can provide.

Only the introduction of 7o9 to add a focus for half a season did it ever disguise the fact that stories and scripts were being grabbed from the writing committee before the ink dried. Compare that to say Doctor Who, where all the stories, scripts and majority of planning for a season have been completed before a camera is set up

Voyager didn't get interesting till Seven of Nine came on board.

 

[Dave]

Voyager didn't get interesting till Seven of Nine came on board.

I partly disagree. Voyager had the best (two-part) pilot episode of any of the series. I thought it was film script quality. They then squandered everything that had been set up by it, most especially the Federation-Maquis crew conflict, for some very pedestrian stories, which I agree only improved when they introduced the Borg and Seven of Nine (which was always going to happen, so why not sooner?)

As for Enterprise, doing prequels is always challenging. In their defence, they attempted to do something different from what had been done already. However, Enterprise was not done well initially, with too many canon mistakes made. Prequels CAN be done well, I'd give you Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad prequel) as an example. My personal gripe with Enterprise is that just as it was eventually beginning to get better it was cancelled. Just like Voyager meeting the Borg, Enterprise was always going to reach the point of the Formation of the Federation, except that it never did!

Enterprise was a better idea than Discovery was, just not executed well

 

[BAYLOR]

I partly disagree. Voyager had the best (two-part) pilot episode of any of the series. I thought it was film script quality. They then squandered everything that had been set up by it, most especially the Federation-Maquis crew conflict, for some very pedestrian stories, which I agree only improved when they introduced the Borg and Seven of Nine (which was always going to happen, so why not sooner?)

As for Enterprise, doing prequels is always challenging. In their defence, they attempted to do something different from what had been done already. However, Enterprise was not done well initially, with too many canon mistakes made. Prequels CAN be done well, I'd give you Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad prequel) as an example. My personal gripe with Enterprise is that just as it was eventually beginning to get better it was cancelled. Just like Voyager meeting the Borg, Enterprise was always going to reach the point of the Formation of the Federation, except that it never did!

Enterprise was a better idea than Discovery was, just not executed well

Year in Hell one the best Star Trek two parter of all time and then, at the end of it, they hit the reset button.

 

[BAYLOR]

In Enterprise , they should scraped the whole Zinsa and Temprap War Crap on gone straight t to the Earth Romanian War and the founding of the Federation.

 

[tinkerdan]

There might be the problem of trying to look at visual media as novel and expecting a specific paradigm to appear.
In a world where visual media has had some limited success in reworking MacGyver, Magnum and Quantum Leap. And has brought us how many versions of Superman, Batman, and Spiderman--I think it's fair to say they are not much interested in bringing the old stories to tidy conclusions.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

The original Star Trek from the 60s was a lot of fun and meant to be just that. With TNG we were promised a bit more seriousness and continuity. For example, there was a lot of buzz about "star dates" actually making sense starting with TNG.

So the abuse of continuity was a disappointment. Starting with Voyager the producers simply stopped caring about creating continuous interrelated stories. For example, how many shuttles did Voyager have?

Ex Astris Scientia - Voyager Inconsistencies

www.ex-astris-scientia.org

With Enterprise in particular and Voyager and Picard and onward the Star Trek producers simply told their fans that they (the producers) simply did not care. And while the Films starring Chris Pine were definitely a reboot like tinkerdan mentions, Picard was billed as a continuation of the TNG characters in the same universe as TNG.

There is no need for a "tidy conclusion" so much as a desire for a continued story. And I am arguing now that the Producers of TNG promised at least the most basic effort toward providing a coherent story line and Subsequent Producers aggressively broke that promise.

Just 2 cents.