Star Trek: Enterprise: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|"On this site, a powerful engine will be built. An engine that will someday help us to travel a hundred times faster than we can today. Imagine it -- thousands of [[Planet of Hats|inhabited planets]] at our fingertips... and we'll be able to explore those strange new worlds, and seek out new life and new civilizations. This engine will let us go boldly... [[Mythology Gag|where no man has gone before]]."|'''Zefram Cochrane''', from a [[The Cameo|video recording]] shown in the pilot}}

It's been a long road, getting from [[Star Trek: The Original Series|TOS]] to here...

The fourth [[Spin-Off]] of the long-running ''[[Star Trek]]'' franchise, and the first of the spinoffs not to go seven seasons. It ran from 2001-2005.

A prequel series set in the 22nd century, about 100 years before ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]''. [[The Captain|Captain Jonathan Archer]] commands a new warp-5 starship, ''Enterprise'' (NX-01), seeking out new life and new civilizations. The key selling point of this series was that space travel was not as casual as it became later in the chronology. Most humans have never even left Earth and those who have rarely made it out of Earth's solar system. Unlike the other modern ''Trek'' series, these characters were prone to swear and [[Fan Service|walk around in their underwear]]. The series only lasted four seasons, making it the shortest lived ''[[Star Trek]]'' series since the [[Star Trek: The Animated Series|animated series]], and the shortest-lived live-action series in the franchise other than [[Star Trek: The Original Series|the original]].

The first and second seasons dealt with exploration. The Enterprise was the first human ship to reach warp 5, and was therefore the first ship to visit many of the worlds explored in these seasons. Some episodes featured the crew encountering phenomena that [[Star Trek]] fans would be familiar with, but the characters wouldn't. The temporal cold war arc was also introduced during this time. Factions in the future were using time travel technology to manipulate the time stream in their favour. This plot was forced on the writers through [[Executive Meddling]], so it unfortunately just pops up from time to time before finally being terminated the second the executives let them in season four. During season two, there was a sharp decline in viewer-ship which led to a retool for season three.

To lead into the third season, an alien race called the Xindi attacked Earth because of an unknown element of the Temporal Cold War arc. ''Enterprise'' was refitted into a more efficient battleship and sent to a chaotic region of space called the Expanse to either stop further attacks against Earth or enter negotiations. The entire season dealt with the imminent war and moral compromises the crew had to make, while ignoring the original arc featuring the Suliban.

At the start of Season 4 most of the writing staff was replaced and a new head writer, Manny Coto, was put in charge. This resulted in significant changes. Instead of a season-long [[Arc]], most stories were spread over 2 or 3 episodes at a time. Sometimes these mini-arcs would carry over to a later mini-arc. First and foremost, the season dealt with the ramifications of the Xindi attack, with many humans becoming violently xenophobic. But likely the most popular arc was one dealing with social reform on Vulcan, which was a piercing look into their culture that hadn't been done since the original series.

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* [[Communications Officer]]: Hoshi's job. Her linguistics expertise also came into play because the Universal Translator was still a work-in-progress, it appeared to be operated manually, and given that we rarely see anyone using it, it's possible that Hoshi was either the only one able to operate it, or that it only partially worked, and Hoshi had to 'fill in the blanks' on her own.

** Unfortunately, the writers often couldn't find anything to do with her, and so she ended up doing random errands for several episodes. This was not helped as the show had an all but non-existent B-Cast for the first two seasons.

* [[Conqueror From the Future]]: The Sphere-Builders. A [[Planet of Hats|whole race of them]].

* [[Contest Winner Cameo]]: Radio Celebrity [[Bob Rivers]] appears as an extra in 2 different episodes.

** [[The Other Wiki]] also says that a radio station contest winner also appeared in one of these episodes.

* [[Cosmetically Advanced Prequel]]: Especially when compared to TOS.

* [[Crazy Cultural Comparison]]: The crew of the ''Enterprise'' causes a faux pas with an alien representative, who leaves in a huff, apparently disgusted by something. Eventually, Mayweather finds out that they find ''eating'' offensive. When asked how they do it, the alien explains that it's the same, but eating in the presence of others is a disgusting act for them.

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* [[Crossover]]: Will Riker and Deanna Troi from ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' in the final episode.

* [[Culture Clash]]

* [[Dead Guy, Junior]]: Trip and T'Pol's temporary baby, Elizabeth, after Trip's recently murdered sister.

* [[Decontamination Chamber]]: Transporters with bio-filters hadn't been invented yet and are viewed with suspicion anyway as brand new technology, so these get used.

** Really, given the 'bio-gel' used as a disinfectant, the real reason for this was for fanservice. The decon scenes all features the characters down to slightly more than their underwear rubbing each other.

* [[Delayed Ripple Effect]]

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* [[Failsafe Failure]]

* [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]]: ''Cogenitor'' and ''Dear Doctor'' both have these.

* [[Fan Service]]:

** The decon room is used for several of these moments.

** The [[Marshmallow Hell|'struggling-to-escape-our-bonds' moment]] in "Shadows of P'Jem."

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* [[Fix Fic]]: The [[Expanded Universe]] novel ''The Good That Men Do'' fixes a lot of the problems with the series finale.

* [[Forgotten Phlebotinum]]: Mostly justified. Time agent Daniels leaves a holographic database in cabin E-14 that only is accessed when Daniels gives permission. Archer is probably inclined to not attempt to access it by force simply because it's probably well protected by extremely advanced technology. Not to mention, screwing around with time travel, even simply in the form of an information database from the future, is probably not a good idea. It's still odd that breaking in is never mentioned in season three, however, where the crew is often in extremely bad circumstances, where failure means the destruction of the Earth.

* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]]: The bridge crew follows this formula pretty much to the letter, with the extra two coming into play as well:

** [[The Captain|Archer]] is Choleric

** Tucker is Sanguine

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** Mayweather is Phlegmatic II

* [[Genetic Memory]]

* [[Good Looking Privates]]: [[Shirtless Scene|Something]] [[Ms. Fanservice|for]] [[Stupid Sexy Flanders|everyone]].

* [[Good-Looking Privates]]: [[Shirtless Scene|Something]] [[Ms. Fanservice|for]] [[Stupid Sexy Flanders|everyone]].

* [[Green-Skinned Space Babe]]: In proud tradition...Orion slave girls return in the fourth season.

** The Orion ''males'' we shall not speak of.

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* [[The One With...]]: "Regeneration". Known fondly as the "The One With The Borg".

* [[The Only One]]: Fully justified for once. When Captain Archer says that NX-01 Enterprise is being sent to a crisis in the Borderland because they're the "fastest ship with the most experienced crew" he's right - Enterprise is the first human vessel capable of Warp 5 (most others are around Warp 2). The NX-02 Columbia isn't available till mid-way through the fourth season, and its most experienced crewmember is an officer who transfers over from Enterprise.

* [[Piggybacking on Hitler]]: In "Storm Front", the Na'kuhl find themselves back in time on 20th-century Earth, during World War II. They side with the Nazis, offering to build advanced weapons in exchange for the resources they need to build a time machine. When the Nazis complain that the Aliens aren't helping them enough, the alien leader lampshades the trope by bluntly stating that the Nazis conquer countries; they conquer ''planets''.

* [[Planet of Hats]]: Generally averted with the writers trying to give some depth to each. Most notably, the Klingon lawyer, who laments how the warrior caste so dominates his society.

* [[Precious Puppies]]

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*** Well, in that episode, Silik is released from captivity, so one ship's absence could be explainable. The other one, though...

* [[Worst Aid]]

* [[You Are Not Ready]]: Archer holds a grudge against the Vulcans for withholding information on warp technology, so his father (an FTL engineer) never got to see his work in practice. Even though Archer learns that it's all a bit more complicated than that, resentment on this issue is maintained by other humans (one Terra Prime operative mentions the Vulcans' failure to stop [[World War III]] as the reason he joined the xenophobic organization).

** In the episode "Dear Doctor" a pre-warp civilization is trying to (very slowly) scout out other civilizations that might have access to technology that could cure their race of impending extinction. Archer takes one look at the guys and realizes, much to his chagrin, that they simply don't have the technological infrastructure to build warp engines, so just handing them the schematics would be worthless. Archer has just become everything he hated about the Vulcans.

* [[You Fail Biology Forever]]: "Dear Doctor." ''[[SF Debris]]'' has some things to say on this ([http://sfdebris.com/enterprise/e113.asp here] and [http://sfdebris.com/everything/deardoctor.asp here]). One thing to add is that if a species evolved something fatal, that is an ''accident''. It's not something deliberate to make room for another species in that niche.