Star Trek: Enterprise has always had an unsteady place in the Star Trek franchise, and one new viewer called the harsh judgment the show receives into question with a querying post on social media addressing other fans.

Star Trek: Enterprise broke the franchise's mold by going back in time instead of ahead and telling the story of humanity’s earliest exploits in space after attaining the technology required for effective space travel. While Enterprise was unique and added many things to the franchise’s canon, including the story behind the name of Star Trek's Enterprise, which served as the primary location for Star Trek: The Original Series, opinions on the show have been mixed despite starting strong.

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Part of Star Trek: Enterprise's mixed reception consists of fans defending the show and maintaining that several underrated Star Trek: Enterprise episodes don’t get a fair shake from other enjoyers of the franchise. One new defender of the show is Reddit user Vague-emu, who took to r/startrek to pose the question, “Why does ENT get such a bad rap?” Expressing their surprise at how much they enjoyed the show despite apprehension going into it due to the mixed reviews, the user clarified that they’re aware that the last few episodes are controversial. However, they feel that the writing is solid and the newly fleshed-out portrayal of the Vulcans was enjoyable, making them question the show’s poor reputation.

Several other denizens of the subreddit would proceed to weigh in on the issue, with many of the commenters agreeing on the same points of note, including the OP’s already-stated problems with how the series ended. Some of these widely held gripes include the sudden change in story focus brought on by the Temporal Cold War arc, the effort put into setting up the Original Series retroactively, and a host of issues with how the show treated established canon. However, most longtime fans in the replies echo the same conclusion: franchise fatigue. While modern Star Trek fans are worried about too many projects being released as Star Wars does, Star Trek committed this sin first around the '90s and early 2000s with multiple long-running series running into one another and movies of varying quality. This seems to be the broad consensus on why the show got such a poor reception despite its initial critical success.

These weren’t the only problems, as the writing also had issues, and even Star Trek: Enterprise star Jolene Blalock has slammed how her character T'Pol was written. Other commenters also mentioned some individual pet peeves like distaste for the original showrunner’s philosophy on the franchise, the Star Trek epitaph missing from the show’s original title for the first two seasons, the opening theme, and much more–but the core issues do seem to be the ones everyone agrees on. Coming in after years of night endless Star Trek content to capitalize on its previously unexpected success, Enterprise was quick to wear its welcome due to overexposure suffered by fans, making all the legitimate faults the show had all the more glaring and turning minor mishaps and inconsistencies into capital sins. With time to cleanse the pallet, many fans admit to enjoying the show more on rewatching.

While a fan-requested Star Trek: Picard spinoff project might’ve been canceled by Paramount, there’s still tons of Star Trek content to come, as the IP is one of Paramount's strongest and still quite rife with opportunities to expand and draw in new fans with more shows and movies in a similar vein to Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. Hopefully, the creatives learn from past mistakes and pace the new content accordingly.

Star Trek: Enterprise is currently available for streaming on Paramount Plus.

Star Trek: Enterprise

Sci-Fi

A century before Captain Kirk's five-year mission, Jonathan Archer captains the United Earth ship Enterprise during the early years of Starfleet, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War and the formation of the Federation.

Release Date

September 26, 2001

Creator

Rick Berman, Brannon Braga

Seasons

4

Number of Episodes

98

Network

UPN

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Source: Vague-emu/Reddit