Thoughts before entering "The Expanse" (and the third season)

My journey through all four seasons of Enterprise has reached its midway point: two seasons lie behind me while two seasons, like the Delphic Expanse itself, lie ahead.

I think I have a pretty good idea why the show failed to attract and retain the core group of Star Trek fans but I am now interested to see what the show runners chose to do in Season Three to try to build an audience after the first two, less than successful seasons.

In summary, I believe Enterprise failed to appeal to Star Trek's loyal fan base simply because it failed to show them sufficient respect, as exemplified by the following four facts:

1. Enterprise failed to respect Star Trek in its greater sense. It tampered with, undermined or ignored many of Star Trek's long-established truths, starting with the social and cultural fabric of the Vulcans and moving on from there;
2. Enterprise failed to respect the intelligence of the Star Trek loyalist. Episodes that took on important social, intellectual, philosophical or political themes (a hallmark of the best of Trek) were few and far between and, when they came, they were usually marred by other significant flaws. Instead of intelligent, thoughtful, thought-provoking shows, we were offered laser-gun action, childish humour and the hyper-sexualization of the female crew;
3. Enterprise failed to respect the maturity of the Star Trek fanbase. It appears that the target audience for the show was the masturbatory teen male, who the show runners assumed would rather see a respected female character stripped naked for no apparent purpose than a thoughtful, well-designed, well-thought-out story that challenged his perceptions. It failed to respect the fact that Star Trek fandom is a magnificently diverse, must-faceted, intelligent group that found, in Star Trek, an escape from the kind of male-dominated,  white-dominated, heterocentric, misogynstic society Enterprise chose to depict and a hope that the human race would soon leave that kind of society completely behind. In many episodes, the society shown on screen was decades behind the society of the people watching.
4. Enterprise failed to respect the discernment of the Star Trek fans. We know what separates a well-written episode from a poorly-written one. We see holes in the plot; we understand when characters are made to say and do things that contradict their basic character as created by earlier shows, simply to get past a plot problem. The people who created the Enterprise episode apparently felt they could slide things by us on a regular basis: that we would say, "Ah, who cares that this plot makes no sense and this character is ridiculously inconsistent; they're all wearing Star Fleet uniforms so I love it!"

Brannon Braga said some very interesting, telling things in the DVD Extra documentary on Jolene Blalock that, I think, give us a glimpse into why things went so wrong on his watch.

First, he says that he felt it was the mission of the creators of Enterprise to "make the Vulcans interesting again". Unpack that for a moment. The statement suggests 1) that Braga felt no responsibility to respect that which came before, with regard to the Vulcan society and with regard to Star Trek as a whole and 2) that Braga considers a race that no longer permits itself to be governed by its emotions but embraces logic in all things, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, and respect for all life and ways of living as "boring" and "needing improvement".

In his mind, it would appear that white men shouting at each other, threatening and bullying others, sexualizing everyone, choosing violence over any other approach on a regular basis, fearing and disrespecting anything even remotely different, is "interesting" and worthy of depiction.

I ask you Brannon Braga, who ever told you the Vulcans of TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager needed improvement? And who ever said you, of all people, were the appropriate person to "improve" them?

Second, he admits that he tried to write a particular script for TNG but was not permitted to, so he saved it for Enterprise. This statement confirms for me that Gene Roddenberry and others controlled Braga's less-worthy impulses in earlier series and, further, that Braga refused to learn from them. I can imagine B&B, working away under the Roddenberry yoke, dreaming of the day that they would have full control and could make Star Trek their own. I can imagine them cringing when the powers that then were refused to allow them to sex-up the story lines for nor reason, required them to respect Trek lore and challenged them to ensure that the episode plots made sense and did not contain massive holes.

They got that chance during the later seasons of Voyager and with Enterprise and, in my opinion, Star Trek, as a television franchise, was doomed.