Via Trek Today: Producers, Star Disagree On What Killed ‘Enterprise’. The story quotes the producers, who note that Trek competes with itself in reruns and therefore “franchise fatigue” is to blame for Enterprise’s demise. While there is something to that notion, I think that failure ofEnterprise is closer to what Jolene Blalock (T’Pol) noted:

But Blalock, who identifies herself as a lifelong Star Trek fan, disagreed. “The stories lacked intriguing content. They were boring,” she said. She felt that the early scripts violated facts already established in other franchise shows and complained that the show substituted revealing costumes for character development. “The audience isn’t stupid,” she protested.

I will grant that there is something to “franchise fatigue” as I got tried and drifted away from Voyager and still haven’t seen all of DS9 (owing to an inconvenient airtime as a result of syndication in the days before TiVo). Still, once Enterprise became compelling this season, it became must-see TV–so it ain’t impossible to grab a fan and capture his imagination with a program, even if there are four others to watch in re-runs.

The show never felt like a prequel until the fourth season, and that is one of the fundamental flaws of the show. Indeed, Berman and Braga tried to de-Trek the show by removing “Star Trek” from the show title the first two seasons, and doing the pop intro and a variety of other things. It was as if they figured they “had” the Trekkies and could build from there. But like many a losing politician, they forgot that you have to have your base secured first before you can effectively attract the independents need for victory.

I was never sold on the prequel idea to start with, but if it was going to be done it had to be about the building of the Federation and an exploration of an already existing, already fascinating, already beloved universe and back-story. On balance, they failed to do that.

They started out by creating a ship called Enterprise that was not know to have existed, creating weird continuity problems (amongst a fan base that can get a bit, rabid, shall we say about “continuity”) and then screwing up the Vulcans under season four–which was not a good way to start.

Then, with the exception of the Andorians, they didn’t do a very good job exploring the pre-Kirk Trek universe the way the Trekkers in the audience wanted. As such, they didn’t grab the attention of their core and had little chance to attract the casual viewer (and being on UPN didn’t help much, no doubt).

One remarkable story opportunity that was totally lost was the pre-Federation stuff. While a few stories in season four start to explore the concept, there were a plethora of potentially very interesting stories that could have been done over the course of the series that were utterly lost. Indeed, the best scifi shows of recent vintage (Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica) have been shows with big ideas behind them that were compelling and that drove their shows forward. The producers of Enterprise had that big idea at their disposal, the founding of the Federation, but they blew it. There are numerous most fascinating possibilities there: politics, race, culture religion, conflict, etc—all the basics of drama at their disposal, yet they ignored it.

Missing such an obvious opportunity simply underscores that it is time for Brannon and Braga to hand over the reigns of Trek to someone else. If I had a vote, it would be to JMS with Manny Coto being a close second.