Enterprise Temporal Cold War

1. Suliban Enterprise
2. Temporal Agent Daniels

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That seeemed to be thinking from the writers too. It got ditched at the first opportunity, though that opportunity came too late to save Enterprise. On the other hand, major shows often have guidelines, TNG started with a lot of Gene's conditions and we got seven seasons, you could argue ENT had less restrictions. Not only that there's no excuse to execute those conditions poorly, and it's not as if every episode of ENT even focused on the temporal cold war, in fact some of the episodes that did weren't even that bad. The mind-numbing 'this week Archer wants to bone T'pol' episode A Night In Sickbay wasn't a temporal cold war focused episode at all, but it was so bad the audience that tuned in, they didn't come back.It would be easy to blame the temporal cold war, but is it even that bad of an idea?

I don't think so, could have been down right watchable if the writing and production staff, particularly Berman had put some effort in and laid out some kind of plan and framework, in fact I'd argue studio should have actually asked to see a plan. The temporal cold war is like Section 31, it's a good writers tool to make some quick, 'anything can happen, cloak and dagger' drama, but like any tool it's more about the talent of the one using it, and like any tool it can get dull with use.One of the ideas the writers had was to not launch the ship until the end of Season 1, personally I think that would have sucked. Your Voyager argument sounds good, but DS9 and Voyager's viewership collapsed at the same rate, and DS9 had a very different format than Voyager's. If Voyager never existed, and DS9 continued through to May 2001, it would have ended up in much the same place Voyager did, if it continued its series-long trend.

The only 90s-Trek show which didn't have a collapsed viewership was TNG, and DS9's ratings collapsed despite TNG being on at the same time still. This:other Trek series have had weak seasons or weak episodes and pulled themselves back up, but Voyager was consistently pulling less viewers than TNGApplies to every Trek show that wasn't TNG. DS9 and Voyager both had viewership jumps during season premieres and mid-season event episodes. Both saw steady downward viewership numbers. DS9 saw downward viewership numbers in its two years it overlapped with TNG, but TNG did not experience a similar collapse.I don't think it was Voyager that killed Enterprise. I don't know what it was, but the ratings data we have doesn't really bear out the theory. Looking at the ratings figures here:And here:You're correct.

Suliban Enterprise

The Temporal Cold War is an ongoing conflict being fought between several time-traveling factions in different periods, each trying to manipulate history for its own benefit, in violation of the Temporal Accords. The origins, locations, and battlegrounds of the war are highly complex and rapidly shifting, with new incursions and alterations made by temporal agents making it almost impossible to keep track. The Temporal Cold War is an ongoing conflict being fought between several time-traveling factions in different periods, each trying to manipulate history for its own benefit, in violation of the Temporal Accords. The origins, locations, and battlegrounds of the war are highly complex and rapidly.

But I think DS9 was able to hold a core audience from Season 5 onward better than Voyager. Keeping those 4's and 5's all the way up to the end, with the occasional blip. I'm not a huge fan of DS9 either, I don't really defend it blindly since I think it did have problems of its own. If you look at Voyager though, there's a continual loss after Season 4 a long downward trend after Season 3, it never really levels out. 4's and 5's for Season 3, then you see 3's and 4's Season 4, Season 5 sees more 2's and even a 1.7 (nielsen ratings of course). Season 6 and 7 are generally poor, some 4's but mostly 3's and 4's.

It showed a more steady decline than Deep Space Nine. Even then, better writing could have got those figures back up, even to TNG levels.Then again, if you're right and DS9 and Voyager were declining in the same way, couple that with poor reception of Nemesis, people weren't going to tune into Enterprise for more boredom.I'm not being altogether serious that Voyager was solely responsible for Enterprise failing, and we can benefit from hindsight now on the franchise.

Deep Space Nine struggles to get new viewers because it's so story arc focused, it's a good show but some of it is a little too far into the edge-dark 'question the Roddenberry's future cuz we're cleaver' shtick, probably not keeping that TNG audience happy. Voyager was altogether bland, with too many reset buttons and couldn't fall back on established 'lore', further alienating the both TNG and DS9 audiences.

Enterprise had many of its own contributing problems, lacklustre secondary characters, the similar bland 'threat of the week' stories of Voyager, smug and or irritating main characters. And TNG still played its part with a few bad movies, Generations was probably what started this trend towards mediocrity, it did OK, but overall Berman, Moore and Braga really screwed the whole thing up and were doing too many shows at the time (TNG, DS9, VOY and Generations were all in some point of development at the time). Insurrection is forgettable, Nemesis is depressing schlock (and some blame must be placed on Stewart and Spiner for that one too). And TV was starting to move on from Trek at the time, Doctor Who came back, shows like Lost started, the spreading influence of The Internet an alternative to TV, gaming.It all contributed, there isn't one thing that 'killed Trek', and it's back now in any case, let's just hope lessons are learned from what ended it the first time. I agree totally on your point about Enterprise getting it's act together in season 3, and even more so on those mentioned episodes. I think Damage was one of the best episodes in the entire franchise in my humble opinion, but I'm one of those that drifts towards DS9 and slightly darker Trek.It's really just that the show had shot itself in the foot so thoroughly earlier on, coupled with some franchise fatigue, that doomed Enterprise.

I rewatched the series maybe a year ago though and I think it can still stand along the other series. The problem with much of the analyses I see of ENT's failure, as well as the impact of DS9 and VOY is that they concentrate on ratings.

I get why: It's low ratings that eventually killed Star Trek. Absolutely.​But excuse me for possibly coming across as a little spoiled by the era of Netflix, Prime and HBO, but, to me, I don't really care about the ratings as much as I do the end product. And that's where I think a comparison of ENT to TNG, DS9 and even VOY really falls down. ENT started off as a poor premise, with poor casting for flat, 2 dimensional characters and was pushed out into a changing television landscape, supported only by a poor movie (Nemesis). I feel like the writers realised this fairly quickly and tried to sort it out, but a poor start on TV, especially back then, is a death sentence. ENT survived as long as it did because it was Star Trek. It was lucky it managed to eke out four seasons.

The writing, characterisation and plot got better but, eh, who cared by that point?​DS9 was an objectively good TV show, though. Voyager is more difficult for me to really be objective about: I grew up watching TNG, but missed most of DS9 after the first season as life got in the way, but continued to watch Voyager as it happened to be broadcast at the perfect time for me to watch it; every weekday just as I got home from college/work. And I loved it, mostly. It had weak moments. But the characters were great, the situation compelling, and in later seasons had some fantastic episodes. It absolutely did not hang together half as well as DS9 or TNG, but when Voyager was good, it was really good.​I never got that from ENT. Nothing about it ever really caught my attention.

And I imagine that that was the case for most casual viewers. Because it really wasn't a very good show. And the casual viewers are really key in this. We're Star Trek nerds, we'll pretty much watch anything Trek, within reason, but we make up a pretty tiny fraction of the viewers any show would need to sustain itself on TV (well, back in the late 90s/early 2000s). And ENT just didn't appeal. ENT was a pretty bad miss, and that was clear pretty quickly, both critically and in terms of ratings. Voyager, as far as I remember (I'm actually rewatching it currently, for the first time since it aired, and I'm just up to season 2) started strong, then dipped, then had a bit of a revival.

Obviously, the inclusion of Seven of Nine, viewed from a cynical perspective, helped this BUT, crucially for me, they also had a bit of a renaissance in terms of the writing and characterisation: Jeri Ryan played that character blindingly well, and some of the two-parters and sub-plots throughout the next few seasons were a marked improvement. Don't get me wrong: Voyager was a massive missed opportunity in terms of what they could have done with it; it tried to walk a middle ground between shaking 'Trek up a little but all too often fell back into its comfort zone. In fact, one of the things that stands out to me from my current rewatch is how likeable Janeway, Chakotay and Kim are to start with. And I find it difficult to square this with how much of a cliche Chakotay becomes, how underutilised Harry Kim ends up being (effectively ending up as the butt of jokes IN THE SHOW ITSELF) and how weirdly psychopathic Janeway ends up in her decision-making (which, to be fair, WAS mildly compelling in some episodes when you're wondering whether she's going to just photon torpedo some underdeveloped civilisation out of existence because they they looked at her wrong). And, yeah, eventually those early characters are completely overshadowed by Seven of Nine and the Doctor, who were obviously the writers' favourites (understandably).

But ENT never even had such likeable characters to ignore in the first place. And that's an issue that's pretty difficult to fix, no matter what plot or situation you throw them into.​Again, being 'good' isn't always related too closely with how many people will tune in to watch. And nowadays ratings aren't the sole determining factor they were back then; My current favourite show, Mr Robot, has some of the lowest viewing figures of any current major television show. But it's one of the most cleverly written pieces of television I've seen and, crucially, keeps winning awards, which is pretty much the only thing that has kept it on air for three seasons (the upcoming fourth, however, will be its last).​So I accept that the ratings bleed that affected DS9 and VOY will have passed over to ENT, but I really don't think you can hold those shows, specifically, to blame. ENT's problems were its own.​Look at it this way: DS9 and VOY were continuations of previous Star Trek canon. You couldn't reasonably expect them to stand on their own.

Temporal Agent Daniels

Nobody, in the harsh reality of 1998, was going to get a major Television channel to throw millions at a generic science fiction TV show in which a starship gets lost trillions of light years away without the Star Trek name attached. But they managed to scrape it together and maintain it for a full seven seasons thanks to that legacy, as well as some initially good characters and episodes.​ENT, on the other hand, didn't have that continuity. Archer was forever going to be 'that guy out of Quantum Leap'. Jolene Blalock was so obviously a repackaged 7of9 that it was almost painful (and the marketing that backed that up was distasteful in a way that made 7of9's introduction in VOY look almost naive).

And the rest of the cast. I haven't actually watched the show since maybe one or two episodes from the last two seasons when they originally aired, so. Forgive me, but: Some southern US guy, the engineer?

A cowardly English guy? An Asian woman? Oh, and the alien doctor. I can tell you what they looked like but not who they really were. And that's a problem. You make all fair points, I don't think we'll ever get why Trek was cancelled down to '1' true reason.I would say though you should give Enterprise another try, it gets pretty good on its own merits. The Southern US Engineer is called Trip and he becomes one of the most well rounded members of the cast.

Hoshi becomes almost badass later on, The English guy is Malcolm and he's far from being a coward, he's even amusingly obsessed with blowing shit up. Even T'Pol get's a final story where her acting skill points seemed to get a massive boost. Honestly it's worth a watch as a show on its own merits.

I'm sure someone else knows more than I or has explained it better, but the Temporal Cold War plot, if memory serves, was an idea that Braga had for another tv series. He pitched it, but the network wanted to do another Star Trek Series instead of developing a new property. As a result, it Braga's Idea got integrated into Enterprise.So what we got was a show that the show runners kinda didn't want to do and nods to other older time travel plots and shows are sprinkled all over enterprise's run. Quantum Leap, The Time Tunnel, Doctor Who, Galaxy Quest etc. And due to it being a tradition Pilot, Series Pickup format (instead of shows today that plot out 10-20 episodes of story and spread it out) everything the show runners wanted to do had to be setup in the pilot.Enterprise could've been really great if it embraced being Star Trek's Prequel and focused on exploring deep space for the first time and the temporal cold war arc wasn't bad either.It's just Enterprise suffered because the show runners didn't really have their heart in it like the show runner in season 3 did. Silik and the Suliban were great villains, and would have been perfect for a solid B-plot through the whole series.

The Temporal Cold War was also a solid concept, the concern being that there's no tension in a prequel since the audience knows what will happen. However, there was so little dedicated to the founding of the Federation in the first three seasons, which weakened the show overall and the development of what should have been the show's main A-plot was too slow as a result.There's only one Romulan episode in the first three seasons, and not nearly enough episodes with Shran or Soval. Most of the show was good, solid alien-of-the-week material, as it should have been. It was an interesting concept, but it was not executed well at all.

Some of the pieces were interesting: A very minor alien race is getting genetically upgraded by a mysterious future person in order to carry out his mysterious agenda. The big problem is that the writers didn't know who Future Guy was right away. That should have been nailed down right away. And he needed some definite goals as well.Here's what I would have done:Daniels claims that Future Guy is trying to stop the formation of the Federation via small incursions that will affect the overall timeline as little as possible. The Suliban of the Prime timeline are wiped out by the Klingons by the 23rd Century, which is why Future Guy is using them now.

The genetic upgrades he is giving them have an expiration date and the Suliban will die off because of it. Slowly, Archer begins to realize that Daniels isn't being completely honest with him.

Is Daniels trying to militarize Starfleet in preparation for some 29th Century issue that had originally gone horribly wrong?​How it all turns out depends on who Future Guy is.Is he Archer? If so, then Enterprise is in an alternate timeline already affected by the TCW where the Romulans with the Earth/Romulan War and is trying to course correct everything with the limited information he has. Daniels then is either a Romulan from the non-Federation timeline trying to ensure things work in favor of them or is a human from a 29th Century timeline where the Federation forms after an Earth/Vulcan/Tellarite revolution.Is Future Guy a Romulan? Then it's pretty straight forward. He wants to stop the forming of the Federation and Daniels wants to stop Future Guy.​​. It wasn’t necessarily a bad concept, it was just executed poorly. Lets spend half of a temporal cold war episode droning on about the “great plume of agosoria”.They had the same problem as voyager in early Enterprise.

They had a great concept, but they decided to invest their storytelling time in boring things like playing desert sports shirtless with Clancy Brown or making snowmen on asteroids. There’s so much they could have done in that era. Instead they just fly around trying to recreate TNG. It wasn’t necessarily a bad concept, it was just executed poorly. Lets spend half of a temporal cold war episode droning on about the “great plume of agosoria”.Hindsight is 20/20 and I don't know if this is a newer concept but I think most people nowadays consider time travel concepts something that's pretty hard to do correctly. So if you don't have a solid idea and a reasonable guarantee on sticking the landing it probably isn't a good idea.I've also said it before but I'll say it again probably until the end of time: literal time traveling Nazi aliens.

That was like a two part episode and everything. It's not like they casually went into it either, they really committed themselves to that idea.