ur on thin fucking ice buddy
Tag: enterprise
This was my second time watching Enterprise and my gut reaction was “hm no still not something that sticks with me” (same reaction I had after the TOS rewatch), but now after a shower and some time I think I’m upset? Like I feel like these characters were wronged and deserved better. Which is a very broad reaction that many people have when something that they liked watching has come to a close but obviously this show’s final finale really seems designed to engender that in a viewer.
And feeling upset means something about watching the show again got to me. Perhaps how flawed it is, both the intentional flaws of these pre-Federation characters who are trying to join a complex galactic community and the behind-the-scenes upheavals of each season as its creators tried to adjust its heading based on continually falling viewer numbers. Some of my fellow Star Trek fans bemoan that the newest stories have gotten away from the episodic nature of the earlier shows, but Enterprise’s first two seasons are all about that and don’t quite click. Then season 3 stretches a premise out for a little too long but is still the most memorable chunk of the show. And of course season 4 seemed to find a sweet spot with a series of short multi-part stories. It makes for some compelling ups and downs at least.
The outtakes are the finale in my heart.
Archer’s all “ugh I don’t wanna be some dumb hero of destiny I just wanna fly my cool spaceship and make friends” and Daniels and the Vulcans keep smackin him down.
Archer don’t look back.
Shran was really hot for keeping Archer in debt huh.
I’d forgotten and appreciate how horned up they got with Enterprise. They better get their documentary after Voyager so they can discuss.
personally, i think one of the reasons i enjoyed enterprise so much, despite the minutiae of how they went about it, is that it’s ending was rather… definitive. it wrapped itself up completely. (in many ways i think it ran a course parallel to voyager where there was really this grasp of a long, winding mission being at the heart of the show–and then the goal of that changing due to some unforeseen circumstance and challenging the crew/ship/their resources and leaving them alone, at the forefront of this new territory that was unfamiliar to them, but the ending of enterprise just felt so much more… hard set. it was believable. maybe part of that impression is that i always thought it would be a better story if voyager didn’t quite make it home, and they didn’t contact the people from their previous lives again, and i held that against the conclusion of the series, but i digress). i think the reason ent ended so well/conclusively was that it, unlike voyager, kind of.. had to. by nature. there would be no more adventures, because they had to be left for kirk’s enterprise. what was left for jonathan archer was admiralty. the crew takes different assignments, falls away from each other. the end of their mission–and the commencement ceremony they attend in tatv sets the stage for the rest of their lives. from here on it’s calmer. teaching at the academy. maybe joining another crew, but not one like before. you get the impression they’re never going to do anything again which approaches the years they had on enterprise. and how could anything? what else could so much as attempt to touch that newness? the fear? the togetherness? … enterprise ends and so too do the best, and hardest days of the crews lives: shut behind them like a closed book. part of the beauty of the series is that–though its abrupt, the ending is suited to the tone and purpose of the show.