Star Trek: Enterprise: 5 years later.

[MSgtGlennSmith]

The Temporal Cold War was a terrible idea.

[FredtheRedShirt]

The Temporal Cold War was a terrible idea.

I liked it.  But there is no accounting for taste.

It was something new and unique to Enterprise.  Time travel
episodes are in general, fraught with peril as we have seen in Heroes,
Lost and a recent movie.  In Enterprise, they avoided major
confusion up to the time the series went off the air.

[MSgtGlennSmith]

The Temporal Cold War was a terrible idea.

I liked it.  But there is no accounting for taste.

It was something new and unique to Enterprise.  Time travel
episodes are in general, fraught with peril as we have seen in Heroes,
Lost and a recent movie.  In Enterprise, they avoided major
confusion up to the time the series went off the air.

I like a good time travel story. My Solfleet story includes time travel. My problem with the Temporal Cold War is that in my opinion, it introduced time travel to the Star Trek universe too early. If you recall, at the end of "The Naked Time", Kirk was amazed when he realized the Enterprise was moving backwards in time. It was as if such a thing had never happened before. I think ST:Enterprise would have been a much better show had it left time travel alone and concentrated on the early days of interstellar exploration leading up to and including the Romulan War.

[FredtheRedShirt]

...
 Kirk was amazed when he realized the Enterprise was moving backwards in time. It was as if such a thing had never happened before.
...

It hadn't happened before. 

It happened later.

[Dennis]

...
 Kirk was amazed when he realized the Enterprise was moving backwards in time. It was as if such a thing had never happened before.
...

It hadn't happened before. 

It happened later.

  True enough.

[G-man]

The Temporal Cold War was a terrible idea.

I liked it.  But there is no accounting for taste.

It was something new and unique to Enterprise.  Time travel
episodes are in general, fraught with peril as we have seen in Heroes,
Lost and a recent movie.  In Enterprise, they avoided major
confusion up to the time the series went off the air.

I like a good time travel story. My Solfleet story includes time travel. My problem with the Temporal Cold War is that in my opinion, it introduced time travel to the Star Trek universe too early. If you recall, at the end of "The Naked Time", Kirk was amazed when he realized the Enterprise was moving backwards in time. It was as if such a thing had never happened before. I think ST:Enterprise would have been a much better show had it left time travel alone and concentrated on the early days of interstellar exploration leading up to and including the Romulan War.

Part of the problem was that they wanted to introduce the familiar elements too early.  The Klingons, the Ferenghi, the Tholians, Transporters, Star Fleet, etc., etc., etc.  And then, of course, that whole debacle of a "temporal cold war" ... yes, time travel is a staple of SF; but, the thing is, unless the phenomena is isolated, it really tends to screw everything up.

And then, of course, I don't think B&B wanted to universe-build and do early exploration and colonization/empire building ... they just wanted to continue to produce what they had been producing.

As I said earlier, this was a squandered concept.

/s/

Gloriosus
the G-man Himself

[Lab Mouse]

I said it before and I say it again:
We should have seen the Romulan War

[Thrull]

Enterprise season one was rocky at best. The worst thing about it was how malevolent the Vulcans were. (Though, as mentioned above the reasoning came out in season four). It was largely hit and miss. However, it was still better than the first season of TNG or Voyager. Trek has a rough time with first seasons it seems. Even ToS and DS9 weren't all that great for the first season.

Season two and season three are what really killed Enterprise. They completely lost their core fan base with the shinanigans they tried to pass as episodes. I quite watching by the third episode in season three. (Though, I have no seen them all.)

Season four was possibly the best trek ever produced. The only other season that comes close would be the last season of DS9. Season 4 was Trek. Season 4 was Trek the way it should have been Trek. After seeing season four (which I saw just last year), I was truly saddened that they didn't get another season. Season four fixed a LOT of the canon issues and ushered us nicely into what would become the ToS era. (Though, I do have to say that the final episode was terribly done. Pity, but sometimes that happens when you try something new.)

[chunkysoup85]

I really think part of Enterprise's problem, outside of Berman & Braga, was a total lack of network support.  The show had God awful lead-ins and the network unabashedly sought a completely different demographic than what Trek could provide.  Had we been given a season 5 run by Manny Coto, I truly think that even Enterprise's critics would be swayed.  This show was never as consistently mediocre as Voyager, but after 10 straight years of Trek and tanking numbers across the board, UPN just didn't care.

[S'kai]

I said it before and I say it again:
We should have seen the Romulan War

IIRC, wasn't it stated in TOS that the Romulans had never been seen face-to-face before? This would make for some difficult, to say the least, writing for television. Unless we want to wipe the minds of all the Feds at the end of the war, or go back in time, or . . . .zzzzzzzz.

[G-man]

Enterprise season one was rocky at best. The worst thing about it was how malevolent the Vulcans were. (Though, as mentioned above the reasoning came out in season four). It was largely hit and miss. However, it was still better than the first season of TNG or Voyager. Trek has a rough time with first seasons it seems. Even ToS and DS9 weren't all that great for the first season.

Ermmm ... Season One of TOS is traditionally regarded as its strongest -- even if it did have some weak episodes in it.

As for the rest, I think Paramount was following the TNG model where the audience would wait around for the show to improve with their DS9, VOY and ENT programs.  The problem is that, it is harder to win back an audience that you lost than it is to try to capture new viewers.

Season two and season three are what really killed Enterprise. They completely lost their core fan base with the shinanigans they tried to pass as episodes. I quite watching by the third episode in season three. (Though, I have no seen them all.)

Season four was possibly the best trek ever produced. The only other season that comes close would be the last season of DS9. Season 4 was Trek. Season 4 was Trek the way it should have been Trek. After seeing season four (which I saw just last year), I was truly saddened that they didn't get another season. Season four fixed a LOT of the canon issues and ushered us nicely into what would become the ToS era. (Though, I do have to say that the final episode was terribly done. Pity, but sometimes that happens when you try something new.)

True.  The last episode was "supposed" to be a celebration of the franchise; unfortunately, how B&B chose to do this was to torpedo ENT, while harkening back to Berman's heyday on TNG.

That whole framing sequence to unfold the episode so that Riker could make up his mind  Puh-lease. 

/s/

Gloriosus
the G-man Himself

[G-man]

I said it before and I say it again:
We should have seen the Romulan War

IIRC, wasn't it stated in TOS that the Romulans had never been seen face-to-face before? This would make for some difficult, to say the least, writing for television. Unless we want to wipe the minds of all the Feds at the end of the war, or go back in time, or . . . .zzzzzzzz.

Well, it wouldn't have been a problem had they simply done away with visual communications (save between Earth Vessels) and stuck with audio only.

And then, you'd have a couple of ways of doing this ...

Going by the calendar (as I recall it) the last (7th) year of Enterprise would've been the opening rounds of the Romulan War, so there wouldn't be much face to face interaction anyway. 

So, present them as a mysterious unseen enemy -- one whose depredations must be countered even before the good guys know who they are.  And like any good mystery, you keep their identity secret until the final reveal of a Romulan War Bird.

The other way is to present both sides of the conflict (a la Tora! Tora! Tora!) as the incidents begin to escalate through out the final season.

But then again, this is the problem with Prequels.  All too often, people want to hurry to introduce and link to the familiar, rather than let events and the story unfold at its own pace.

/s/

Gloriosus
the G-man Himself

[Carwyn]

I don't think it would have been a problem for them to have seen each other any how. when in Tos they say that one side had not seen the other. Take it that not everyone on board the Enterprise is a Historian don't just take what they say as fact include that sometimes people get their fact wrong on occasion. They might have met several times but theres no historical documents to prove that (maybe they were destroyed by the end of the war).   

[MSgtGlennSmith]

I don't think it would have been a problem for them to have seen each other any how. when in Tos they say that one side had not seen the other. Take it that not everyone on board the Enterprise is a Historian don't just take what they say as fact include that sometimes people get their fact wrong on occasion. They might have met several times but theres no historical documents to prove that (maybe they were destroyed by the end of the war).   

I must disagree. I think that if any humans had seen a Romulan during the war (and survived to tell about it), the fact that they look(ed) like Vulcans (before B&B ruined them) would not have come as such a surprice in "Balance of Terror".

[Carwyn]

It would if the people that saw the Romulans were killed before they could tell anyone what they looked like.