You're hired to improve ENT

[Sionnach Glic]

Similar to my VOY thread. Season one has been aired, and it sucks hard. B&B are fired, and you're brought in instead. The show will end when it reaches the end of season 4, so you have three seasons in which to turn ENT from Star Trek's greatest mistake to a show that can be loved by the fans.

So, what do you do?

[Mikey]

I think this has been gone over in various other threads, but here's my short answer:

1) Respect previously-established canon. If the Borg/Ferengi/whoever had been stated to have never been encountered by TNG, then they don't appear in ENT. Period. If TOS said that before their time phasers weren't used, then no phasers - by another name. Likewise with renamed shields, et. al.

2) Get your calendar straight. Kronos isn't four days away. This should be the era of long-duration travel, and the ships should reflect this - conusmables may become an issue, as does shore leave/R&R, etc.

3) Following from that, stop with the one-and-done episodes. The highest points of ENT were far and away the multi-ep arcs, and that's what should have been the standard. They are simply not fast enough to resolve any issues requiring travel within the space of a single ep. This could easily have led into some rather epic arcs, such as the Earth-Romulan War; a more detailed look at things like the Babel conference/the preliminary framework of the founding of the UFP, etc.

4) Keep up the parts that were working. The more detailed exploration of the Andorians was great. A similar look at the Tellarites would have been nice also. The willingness to portray the Vulcans as other than the Roddenberry "I love Spock" ideal was great, but it was exaggerrated too far. Given the limited radius of exploration as set up by the travel time issues, far more of the show should have been spent exploring relationships with the species which would become the core of the UFP. No need to make up a species (Denobulans) as a race with seemingly close ties to humanity, only to find that by TOS, they seem to have completely disappeared.

[SomosFuga]

I think this has been gone over in various other threads, but here's my short answer:
...

The problem is we have already seen the first season so it is canon. Things like reach Kronos in 4 days, transporters, phase pistols, phase cannons, D7 like class, temporal cold war, klingon disruptors and photon torpedoes, romulan cloaking devices, denobulans, ferengis have already hapened.

[Mikey]

Season one of ENT aired well after TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY. No matter what happened in the first season of ENT, canon from TNG et. al. was already established - and was subsequently crapped on by ENT.

[Tyyr]

Voyager with its first season in the books wasn't so bad, many of the show's themes needed to play out in the long term anyways. With Ent you've got a lot more of a problem. So, so, so much of the stupidest shit Enterprise did was codified in the first season.

Broken Bow - 4 Days to Quronos, Asshole Vulcans, Humans proving the Vulcans right.
Strange New World - Archer and Company acting like a bunch of tourist dumbasses. Archer being an irrational prick to T'pol.
Unexpected - Holodecks, Charles "Catfish" Tucker being an idiot, Date rape/impregnation with no concerns
The Andorian Incident - Archer gets his ass kicked, acts like a total shithead and reveals important military secrets about their biggest ally to their ally's enemy for no damn reason.
Cold Front - The Temporal Cold War
Dear Doctor - Genocide on shaky science in the name of a Prime Directive that doesn't fucking exist!
Shadows of P'Jem - Archer was right in the Andorian Incident and is unrepentant.
Acquisition - The damn Ferengi. Archer is completely incompetent, again.
Two Days and Two Nights - Just one of the worst episodes of Trek ever.

Season one of Voyager was bad, no doubt, but with some good long term work it could come around. Season one of Enterprise made Archer look like an insane, incompetent, asshole. The crew a bunch of tourists, the Vulcans pricks but right about humanity, and then all the other various bits of continuity sodomy they threw in there. Unless you're willing to give Archer and much of the crew total personality transplants from season 1 to season 2 I dunno how much of it you can salvage.

[Sionnach Glic]

The problem is we have already seen the first season so it is canon. Things like reach Kronos in 4 days, transporters, phase pistols, phase cannons, denobulans, D7 like class, temporal cold war, klingon disruptors and photon torpedoes, ferengis have already hapend.

Exactly. This thread isn't so much "how would you make a better show", but "how do you salvage this train wreck".

[Tyyr]

Ugh, where to even begin.

1) Bring the Temporal Cold War to a screeching halt. Maybe have the Enterprise beat the ever loving shit out of the Suliban. Even better, maybe have the Suliban's meddling help to forge a close tie between Earth and Andoria and a joint task force of humans and Andorians kick the shit out of the Suliban. With their agents KO'd the temporal factions bail on the 22nd century. Have Daniels say something like, "They're done with this century. You ruined their plans completely. Good bye, you will NEVER see me again."
2) Massively overhaul the crew. Immediately. We're going to pretend like Season 1 didn't happen.
-Archer stops being a prick. He doesn't care for Vulcans but he's no longer looking for a reason to lynch T'pol. He becomes competant. He acts like he's Earth's first interstellar ambassador. The mission comes before his dog.
-Trip becomes an actual engineer. He acts like he's the kind of guy who can fix your cutting edge warp 5 engine instead of the kind of guy you go to to trick out your IROC. Fewer confused idiot looks.
-Hoshi grows a pair, figuratively. Instead of freaking out over every little thing she sucks it up. She also looses her magical ability to decipher languages in a few syllables. Her language skills are critical to the mission but it takes her a while to get things done.
-Mayweather, no more "I've been in space" bullshit. Let him grow a personality.
-Reed, he's the only one with a clue. Leave him as is. He'll probably relax once he's no longer surrounded by idiots.
-T'pol, the stick comes out of her ass, the catsuits go away, she grows out her hair. I'm tempted to shove her in a mirror universe uniform but I doubt I could get away with it. She becomes the day to day personifications of the Vulcan's change. She's a bitch, but slowly becomes less so. I enjoyed her fighting with her emotions later on in the show, that stays. Her and Tucker stays as well, but less juvenile and more consistant.
3) We kick off Manny Coto's Vulcan fixer arc about mid season. After that the Vulcans are still pricks, but progressively get better as things go on.
4) MACOs now. Bring the MACO's on for the Suliban ass kicking. Keep them on.
5) Have Enterprise become the catalyst for smoothing over Andorian and Vulcan relations.
6) Bring in the Tellerites and let them get the same good treatment the Andorians and Vulcans are getting. Flesh out the Denobulans. I know, we never see them again. We don't see Andorians or Tellerites again after the TOS now do we?
7) Go to realistic travel times. "We're getting out of the real close stuff..." Move to the mini-arc concept. Visits at planets last two or three episodes. Trips between them take just as long. Planets are times of action, trips are times for character building.
8) More of the B list crew. People like Cutler. They don't need to be around all the time but have them be recurring characters. Let the B list do things. Like weather reports, flying shuttles, security, etc.
9) Bring on the Terra Prime arc early too. Enterprise is moving out, show the people opposing that.
10) Make the founding of the Federation a priority. It doesn't show up every episode but one of the show's themes is the way the Humans go out and start to diplomatically bring people together. Vulcans and Andorians, Andorians and Tellerites, etc.
11) More ships. The Columbia launches early in Season 2. Other ships follow quickly.

[Lt. Staplic]

"how do you salvage this train wreck".

Stop the show, and tell paramount to decanonify everthing from season 1

[stitch626]

Good bye, you will NEVER see me again."

If I heard Danials say that, I'd cheer.

[Mikey]

I'm tempted to shove her in a mirror universe uniform

Funny - I was tempted to take her out of it.

[Tyyr]

What I do on the holodeck and what I do for a prime time TV show are vastly different things.

Oh, and I'd keep the Ho in Hoshi, she's kind of an endearing tramp.

[Mikey]

I'd keep somethign else in Hoshi.















Dear Lord, I apologize for that one there.

[Tyyr]

I'm trying to be serious, don't make me roll up a newspaper and start smacking you with it.

[Mikey]

I apologized.

[Tyyr]

Anyways...

...yeah I'd bring over Mirror T'pol and Hoshi as is and it'd be an improvement on their canon selves.