Enter the first episode. We start out with young Johnathan Archer painting a model of...something...and and awkward conversation about Vulcans withholding technology that would have helped them reach warm 5 flight....and then an immediate cut to a chase scene between a Klingon and two aliens...who are apparently without...bones in a farmland field on earth. The Klingon leads them into a silo and blows them up escaping them but is shot by the farmer who owned the land...
And then we cut to the first problem with the series...the opening. Back in the early 2000's, a good much of television was trying to be trendy with the music the opened with...and apparently it was decided that Enterprise should be no different...It wasn't well received and I would say rightly so. Don't get me wrong, "Faith of the Heart"is a great song, powerful and uplifting. Russel Brand is a great singer, but a pop song in a show about the start of Starfleet and the Federation just didn't fit the feel and tone of the series.
Cutting to the Starfleet command of the day, where the injured Klingon is being treated. Archer learning that the Klingons want their man back offers to take the newly commissioned Enterprise, first starship of the Federation, to bring back the Klingon back to his homeworld of Kronos. Here's where I end up having a second problem.
The Vulcans: they seem far too emotional to actually be Vulcans. Vulcans have had centuries by this time to suppress their emotions and the only time one really showed any was Spock because of his half human blood and Spocks half brother Sybock because he abandoned the Vulcan teaching and opened himself to emotion. So seeing a Vulcan actively showing emotion was...anything but refreshing. Unless a Vulcan is seriously ill with something that effects their control, there should be no reason that a true Vulcan should show that much emotion. But here we are... Vulcans that seem to be just as much an infant to controlling their emotions as the human race is to faster than light space travel. It was very...illogical if you can excuse the pun.
So on their way to the Klingon home world, they run into the Sulaban, a race just about as evolved humans are, but augmented by what is apparently species from the future, the 27th century, fighting a temporal war. The Klingon is kidnapped off the Enterprise, and is tracked back down by the crew with the at first reluctant help of Sub commander Tpal, the temporal war plot of the episode is established and with the ending on the Sulaban cluster ship, it seems its going to be the tone of the entire series.
Archer retrieves the Klingon successfully, returns him to Kronos to the Klingon High Council...and then is sent out on their first exploratory mission.
Watching the first episode I felt like they were trying to some extent copy the success of Star Trek Voyager. It certainly had the same feel for me, the character set up was very much the same. Captain Archer is a new captain, as was Captain Janeway. You had the logical Vulcan Tpal who, although not security, is very much a Tuvok character. You have Mayweather who is very much a Tom Paris. Commander Tucker reminded me of the temperamental Belanna Torres. Hoshi Sato, our resident Linguist was your basic Harry Kim character. You have Doctor Plox, which even though not holographic, is very reminiscent of the Doctor from Voyager. In short, it felt like the creators was trying to recreate the Voyager crew without the Voyager crew.
Now mind you I never really watched Enterprise when it originally aired, so I'm really hoping that the cast grows beyond the Voyager stereotypes and really makes the series their own with their own distinct and fleshed out archetypes.
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