I watched the first season of Enterprise when it first aired a few years back and never really got into it. I held on for a little while because TNG and DS9 both got off to a pretty slow start but improved vastly. Then, the station that aired it moved it to an early morning timeslot for its second season and I just wasn't interested enough in following it there. Thus, I've only ever really watched the first season of this show.

Flashforward a few years and here I am digging out an VHS tape that I'd recorded the pilot and first few episodes on to give this show another try. I've read glowing reviews from others and I was only 18 the first time I saw this show. I figure maybe I've changed enough to appreciate the show now, or maybe I simply judged it unfairly the first time around. Well, I am sorry to say that upon repeat viewing, the pilot ("Broken Bow") impressed me no more now than it did a few years ago. This show premiered shortly after Voyager had ended. Voyager's ratings hadn't been what they could have been and a lot of fans had been disenchanted with aspects of that series. So the idea behind Enterprise was to fix what was broken in the Star Trek franchise. I specifically remember reading something about how audiences felt the Federation crews of the 24th century all got along too well, and the shows needed more inner-conflict to be interesting. People also complained about the use of techno-babble at the expense of action.

I'm not sure what all fans disliked about Voyager (and possibly Deep Space Nine), as I mostly enjoyed that show. What I do know is that the creators of Enterprise must have had different ideas about what was wrong with Voyager than I did. I know this because Star Trek: Enterprise fails to fix the problems I did see in Voyager and had a good deal more problems of its own. And these problems are as evident here in the pilot as they would be in the rest of the season.

I guess the Trek crew thought they could make a better show simply by A) Setting it in a different period B) Giving it a different type of theme song C) Presenting it in widescreen D) Throwing in the occasional curse word and E) More blatant sexuality. These are some of the most obvious "improvements" made to Enterprise. Much of the rest of it seems to be along the same lines as other recent Star Trek series. There's still techno-babble. And maybe the crew resents the one Vulcan onboard, but by and large they still seem like standard-issue Star Trek characters (though possibly lamer) with big ideals and little conflict. In fact, the characters on Deep Space Nine seemed much MORE three dimensional and full of conflict. And I had to laugh at the scene where T'Pol and Trip had to rub each other's body's down. Was that supposed to be humorous? It certainly wasn't pivotal to the plot.

Scott Bakula was good on Quantum Leap, but he really doesn't bring much life to his character in Enterprise. He just doesn't seem like he believes in the material the show is offering us. Maybe that changes later on, but not in season one of Enterprise and certainly not here in the pilot. The only two other characters that get much attention here are engineer Trip Tucker and Vulcan T'Pol. Trip is the closest thing to a good character this show has, and the alien Doctor seems competent during his little screentime. I don't know what to say about T'Pol though. It just seems like the producers were trying to make her Enterprise's answer to Seven of Nine and failing miserably. She's by far the weakest Vulcan character in any of the shows (I'm only including series regulars though, so I guess it's just her, Spock and Tuvok). She wears a tight outfit like Seven, obviously for male viewers though this (Straight!) male viewer wasn't won over. For me, she was too lifeless to be cute. And lifeless is a good word to describe a good portion of this show's cast. You know how Harry Kim was kind of like the weakest link throughout most of Voyager? Well, half of this shows cast make Kim look like a dynamic Superman of sorts. The characters of Mayweather and Reed literally bring almost nothing to the table. They are mere props to push buttons on the Enterprise bridge more than realistic characters you can love. Hoshi fares only slightly better. I realize these characters might have been given more depth over time, but one sign of a good pilot is introducing you to the characters and Enterprise doesn't do a great job with that. Like them or not, you had a basic idea of who the characters were on DS9 after "Emissary", and the same goes for Voyager and "Caretaker." After a two parter, I felt like I really only knew Trip, and T'Pol. Even Captain Archer seems like the writers and actor have no idea who this guy really is at heart. As far as the pacing of this episode, I enjoyed the beginning through the middle but overall, it failed to maintain its momentum through both parts. I was more than ready for it to be over by the time it reached its climax. And I'm type of person who can watch LOST for hours on end. There simply wasn't enough going on in this episode to make it interesting all the way through. I'm still going to rewatch the few other episodes I have on tape at some point, but so far I'm standing my opinion that Enterprise was a stinker.

This episode continued where we last left off. It has alot of great action and Specail effect in this episode. I like the fight scene between Captain Archer and Silik. In this episode everyone has to learn to rely on T'Pol to get Klaang back. I think the 2 part episode of broken Bow is really great to watch and I like how it's 150 years from now and 100 years before Captain Kirk times, I look forward to reveiwing more of the Star Trek series. I like Trip sense of Humor in this episode. I give this a 10 for a great cast and action.

Finishing the story from the previous episode. Captain Archer gets his crew into trouble when they get entangled in between the Suliban and the Klingons. The first away mission from Earth gets locked into a conflict right away. It's really amazing. The producers of the show came out with a very good idea for a show. That really shines with the spectacular story, great characters and the effects used for this show is eye popping. This 2 parter episode looks really exciting, it takes you back to the trek days, but this one looks really new. It's a great episode, I can't wait for the next episode.

The Future of Star Trek lasted four years. A lot of fans of Star Trek disliked this series. I wasn’t one of them. True, I did not faithfully follow it from the beginning, in part because Paramount was not taking scripts from the general public. However the third season really drew me in. I am not saying it was the greatest Sci-Fi ever. It certainly falls short of a series like Farscape. But I did like the cast, and honestly it was probably the cast that allowed it to stay on for those four years.

Star Trek has one main problem, Roddenbery especially in the Next Generation made his “world” a utopia. The problem with utopias is that they are generally boring. If people live in a perfect world, then there is no conflict. But to make great characters you must have conflict. That is why I have liked Deep Space Nine over say, Next Generation. I know this will piss off a lot of you out there. The core to any good drama is conflict and out of conflict the growth of characters.

Unfortunately, Enterprise suffered from lack of character growth. The three main characters, Archer, Trip and T’pol, do have character growth, but the rest of the cast was sorely underused. I remember one thing from the end of the fourth season that the Doctor is using a phaser against someone and the Doctor character did seem to be against the use of force, and that bothered me.

However having said that, I like the relationships between Archer, Trip and T’pol. It reminds me of the original series with Kirk, Bones and Spock. Decision, Emotions and Logic. I loved this in the original series. You have the platonic concept of the chest (the decision maker, ) the heart (seat of emotions,) and the head (the foundation of logic.) I am sure this return to the old formula of the original series was done intentionally. As a kid I remembered the banter between Kirk, Bones and Spock, and I saw this slowly develop with the Archer, Trip and T’pol.

As far as pilots go, this is probably the best pilot since the original series, and I don’t really count the original series because it was the starting point for everything that follows. The whole point of this episode is sending the first starship Enterprise on its very first mission. As the notes point out, this series was a prequel but also a sequel because it takes place after the events in Star Trek: First Contact. We have the villain introduced in the cornfield along with a Klingon that no one on earth has ever seen before. Yes, we know who they are, but the characters are taking there first steps into this great unknown. The Vulcans, not like the peaceful Vulcans of previous shows, tend to look down on humans as they are little children. The reason for this is explored in the fourth season, but in this series the Vulcans are more a hindrance than a help in the new series.

The main character change in this story is that he has to learn to trust his Vulcan science officer. If you watch this in syndication, this episode ends with Archer remembering the time with his father flying model starship and T’pol is there. That is one of the strong relationships in Enterprise. I know I chide the series for character development but I mean among the secondary characters, also Star Trek has always had a tendency to have an “easy button” for its characters. As if what happened in the last episode had nothing to do with the present episode. Personally, I like the way Ronald Moore took Battlestar Galactica and made it a complete world. When something happens on Battlestar Galactica it has ramifications for the series. I believe that Moore knows where things are going on the show, but unfortunately the producers of Enterprise did not work this out ahead of time. They should have known from the beginning who Future Guy is. For those who do not know, he is the guy behind the evolved Suliban attacks. But according to the DVD release of the series, they did not know where this was going. To do any epic TV you have to know where you are going before you set out, but the producers failed here. The whole major plot of the Temporal Cold War was scratch off because people did not understand it. I think this in part was because the producers did not do their collective homework.