After more than a decade of television supremacy, Star Trek: Enterprise would prove to be the final frontier for Gene Roddenberry's space opera, at least where television was concerned, accidentally killing the franchise until J.J. Abrams hit the movie reboot button in 2009. Because of that, it's gained a reputation for being a pretty crappy Star Trek all things considered, and while it's certainly not up there with the highlights of Trek's 49-year history, it's also not as bad as many people think.
A prequel to the original Star Trek, Enterprise let producers reset the franchise from the increasingly safe era of The Next Generation and Voyager, where technology could be relied upon to save the day and humanity had evolved past petty hatred and things that could provide easy drama. By showing the origins of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, the logic went, the series could delight long-time fans while also drawing in new viewers... except that the reality proved to be almost entirely the opposite.
A decade since the show's cancelation, it's time to revisit Enterprise, and see how it stands up to the test of time (and space).
Number of Seasons: 4 (98 episodes)
Time Requirements: If you push it, you could manage to get through the entire series in just under two months. (Two episodes a night during the week, three per day on the weekends.) There are times when it'll seem difficult to push through, but we have faith in you.
Where to Get Your Fix: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, CBS.com
Best Character to Follow: Although there are certainly more likable characters in the show—step forward, Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) and Hoshi Sato (Linda Park)—the best characters to follow are probably Scott Bakula's Captain Jonathan Archer and Connor Trineer's engineer, the resident fake McCoy, Trip Tucker. They are, after all, characters who get something resembling development throughout the entire series, as opposed to just an episode of spotlight every now and again. (Jolene Blalock's T'Pol also falls into that category, but also unfortunately alternated between "generic Vulcan" and "hot lady" in terms of her treatment across the show's run, making her a frustrating character to focus on at times.)
Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip:
There's no real way of avoiding it: The first two seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise—officially titled just Enterprise, the Star Trek didn't show up in the title until the third season—are uneven at best, and the third is... well, it depends how you feel about what was intended to be a new direction for the show, shall we say. This leaves the series feeling pretty skippable in large part until the show's fourth and final year, where things got a lot better very quickly. But if you're looking for specific episodes to avoid, here are some you can definitely do without.
Season 1: Episode 18, "Rogue Planet" What if Captain Archer fell in love with a mysterious woman on an alien planet, only to discover that she's actually a giant snail? Oh, sorry: We've spoiled the twist in the tale of this suitably sluggish, slow episode that might just make you want to climb into a shell and never come out.
Season 1: Episode 23, "Two Days and Two Nights" Every single time any Star Trek series broached the idea of their crews grabbing some rest and relaxation, things threatened to get unwatchable, and never more so than this episode, which sees the Enterprise crew hit pleasure planet Risa only to be seduced by "exotic" aliens in such a manner that makes you wonder if the cast were as embarrassed speaking the dialogue as we are listening to it.
Season 2: Episode 26, "The Expanse" A controversial suggestion for some fans, "The Expanse" was obviously the Enterprise writers' response to the political fallout of 9/11 (the episode aired May 2003), and temporarily retooled the series as something more aggressive, with the Enterprise given bigger weapons and a new group of soldiers as they respond to a massive alien attack that killed millions by setting out to stop war at any cost possible. There are some interesting ideas in the season that follows—not least of which is the idea of a cold war between time travelers, which involves different factions playing with history for their own ends—but in many important ways, it doesn't feel true to the ideals of Star Trek. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
Season 4: Episode 22, "These Are the Voyages..." In general, Star Trek series nail their final episodes, but *Enterprise'*s final hour is so off-base that it's gained a reputation amongst fans for being one of the franchise's worst episodes overall, with later spin-off novels not only undoing one of the more dramatic plot twists of the story, but also making fun of the nonsensical nature of the episode overall. An embarrassing, ignoble end for a show that, while not perfect, deserved better.
Seasons/Episodes You Can't Skip:
The shorthand version of what Enterprise to watch if you're pressed for time is, "Season 4." Sure, it starts with a surreal resolution of the previous season's storyline (hello, space Nazis!), but everything that follows all the way up until the terrible final episode is golden. If you're looking to take a more leisurely stroll through the series, however, watch out for these episodes.
Season 1: Episodes 1 and 2, "Broken Bow" The pilot for the show is as messy as the series' first couple of years, but there remains something charming about the uncertainty with which the crew of the first Enterprise reacts to their looming mission, before events—and the episode's plot—overwhelm them. Plus, finally we get translation problems with aliens. It'd only taken us 30-something years!
Season 1: Episode 7, "The Andorian Incident" Talking about showing things that fans had long wanted to see: This is the episode that finally put subtext into text—yes, Vulcans really are dicks. In fact, they're hateful, xenophobic dicks, although their hatred for the Andorians isn't entirely off-base, as the audience quickly learns. But nonetheless, "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" Vulcans, these are not, and they're all the more fun for it.
Season 2: Episode 2, "Carbon Creek" The idea of taking a regular cast member and placing them in more-or-less contemporary Earth had become a Star Trek tradition by the time this episode rolled around, but Jolene Blalock acquits herself admirably, playing an ancestor of T'Pol in 1950s America. Sure, there's a plot explaining why they're there, but that's not what anyone is watching for. We just want the culture clash hijinks.
Season 3: Episode 10, "Similitude" The ethics of cloning are explored in a surprisingly subtle way in this episode in which a second Trip is "grown" to act as, essentially, an organ farm for the original version. Sounds a little creepy? Well, you're not alone in thinking so, which is where the episode's heart comes from. OK, that and the fact that the clone has all of Trip's memories and emotions, but not necessarily the social knowledge in how to deal with them.
Season 3: Episode 21, "E2" Thanks to the "temporal cold war," the crew encounters a version of the ship that had been sent back in time more than a century, and is now populated by their own descendants. Can this other Enterprise help prevent the time traveling that created them in the first place? If Back to the Future made your head hurt, this episode could be fatal, and we mean that as a compliment.
Season 4: Episode 3, "Home" What happens after Earth, humanity, the universe, and the timeline as we know it has been saved? If you're the crew of the Enterprise, you get to go home and find out how everyone else has been doing in your absence. After the previous year's high drama, this episode of downtime and after-effects is wonderfully fulfilling, humanistic, and feels very much like a course correction from where the show had been heading up to this point. Just great stuff.
Season 4: Episodes 4, 5, and 6, "Borderland," "Cold Station 12," and "The Augments" Tying together various threads in Star Trek mythology, including Khan (as in The Wrath of) and *The Next Generation'*s Data, with Brent Spiner reappearing to play the ancestor of Data's creator, who also happens to be a fan of genetic experimentation and the closest thing Star Trek ever got to a mad scientist. You can tell that he's loving the role, and the result is something pulpy, fun, and filled with Trek Easter eggs for the fanbase.
Season 4: Episodes 18 and 19, "In A Mirror, Darkly" Parts 1 and 2 And here's another Easter egg for the faithful: a two-parter set in the "mirror universe" of the original series' "Mirror, Mirror," and relishing the campy drama that comes along with the setting. For the continuity-minded, there are excerpts from Star Trek: First Contact to explain where the mirror universe branched off from the regular Star Trek timeline, while the rest of us can enjoy the 1960s costumes and the suitably different opening titles.
Season 4: Episodes 20 and 21, "Demons" and "Terra Prime" Forget about the horrible final episode of the series (no, really, forget about it): This two-parter that immediately preceded it offers a far better conclusion to everything that came before, as discussions about the formation of what will eventually become the United Federation of Planets are disrupted by a xenophobic faction that wants to rid Earth of all aliens. What's that, you say, unsubtle political commentary? You betcha, and it's wonderful.
Why You Should Binge:
Because, thanks to the 2009 movie, Star Trek: Enterprise is now the only television series that is still canon. (No, really; Archer even gets referenced in the dialogue of the first one, as does his dog. Watch the Scotty scenes again.) Also, as rough as the series can be at times, there is something occasionally thrilling about seeing everyone involved try and retro-engineer the Star Trek that the audience knows and loves—and watching Enterprise in binge-mode is probably the best way to do it, as you see the show work its way backwards in terms of influence; it starts off in the mode of Star Trek: Voyager, but by the final (and best) season, there's a lot more of the original series in there. A forgotten classic? That might be going a little too far, but Enterprise is certainly not as bad as common wisdom remembers it to be.
Best Scene—"Let's Go"
There are many fine moments throughout the 98 episodes of Enterprise, but nothing quite manages the moment in the pilot where the ship leaves the security of space dock for the first time. It's a moment filled with anticipation for what's to follow, which only feels fitting.
And, hey, it could be worse:
Much, much worse.
The Takeaway:
In a way, Enterprise mirrors the earliest years of Earth's interplanetary exercise: an awkward start, some false moves in there, but things get closer to plain sailing as time goes on. Admittedly, the cancellation of the show four years in kind of ruins that metaphor a little bit, but work with us here. (And the less said about the coda in the finale, the better.)
If You Liked Star Trek: Enterprise You'll Love:
If nothing else, most of the Trek canon. Probably some Battlestar Galactica, too.