Mission accomplished. I have now watched the entire run of Enterprise twice and I have drafted and posted on this site blog entries containing my own plot synopsis and analysis of each episode.
It is pretty clear to me, at least, why Enterprise put an end to almost 20 years of Star Trek on television. And it concerns me that the "reboot" movies helmed by J.J. Abrams seem to be making the exact same mistakes as the Enterprise creative team made: attempting to appeal to the masturbatory teen audience by foregrounding immature hyper-sexualisation and laser-gun violence rather than featuring intelligent, challenging science fiction stories that celebrate the bright future of an inclusive and diverse universe in a way that would appeal to Star Trek's core fan following.
I'm not saying Star Trek (the original series) was perfect. It had its share of scantily clad female characters, of cheap special effects and laser-gun battles, but we have to remember that it was filmed in the 1960s. Despite its many flaws, when it was at its best, Star Trek strived to be inclusive, to portray women as intelligent, contributing members of the ship's crew and of Star Fleet in general; it included members of racialised communities on the bridge crew, performing valuable, important and responsible work at a time when African Americans and Asians rarely appeared on television, except in stereotypical roles.
And Star Trek broke ground on an almost weekly basis, using the science fiction format as a platform to discuss important social issues that could not be approached head-on in other genres of television shows. In addition to episodes that focused on gender equality and racial diversity, Star Trek at its best considered the wisdom of American foreign policy in relation to the Viet Nam war, colonialism and the exploitation of races less advanced on the technological scale, emotion and rationality, loyalty, love and obsession.
Later ST series would at least attempt to follow that pattern, to incorporate those aspects of Star Trek that created and nurtured the most loyal fan base in television history and they prospered as a result. People like to point at the falling ratings Voyager experienced in the later years of its seven-year arc as evidence that the ST formula I describe above was no longer working and that a new, fresh approach was needed to re-build the franchise.
But I think we have to recognize that Brannon Braga and Rick Berman, the creators behind the series that failed, were starting to take over Voyager at the time when its ratings began to fall.
I know, throughout my reviews of the Enterprise episodes, I may have seemed quite harsh in my criticism of B&B and the role I believe they played in the failure of the series. I want to make it clear that I don't believe B&B consciously attempted to undermine their own show, nor that they are bad people or even bad writers and producers. It is my honest opinion, however, that they were the wrong people to be given creative control over a ST series. They don't seem to have understood what made ST great, nor what earned the loyalty of the legions of ST fans around the world.
Star Trek at its worst featured sexism, the objectification of women, and the foregrounding of laser battles over intelligent plots. But if there is one thing that original series did not do, refused to do, it is to paint the future Human as still being beset by the very worst traits we see today: misogyny, racism and xenophobia.
Enterprise seemed to revel in those base characteristics. And that's, in my opinion, why it failed.
It's a pity the Star Trek reboot movies seem to be moving in the same direction.
