Why was Enterprise such a big failure?

Why was Enterprise such a big failure? by Pope Torak

It depends on what you mean by failure.

If you're talking about popularity among fans, there are a lot of Star Trek fans, myself included, who are ready to argue that in some ways it was the best series. It was not a failure objectively from the standpoint of it not being good Trek. Certainly the show was not without it's problems, but the commitment to do a full season arc for season 3 after realizing that episodic television was evolving marked a turning point for the series. It's now generally agreed among fans that the fourth season of Enterprise was between good and truly great, and showed how Trek was going to naturally move into longer arcs like other popular shows of the time. Like TNG and DS9 before it, there were a few good episodes in the first few seasons and season 3 marked a turning point, with a strong fourth season and the promise of an even stronger fifth. Not only were the stories better, not only were the writers appealing to Trek fans, but even characters that had previously been stale started to show a glimmer of growth.

If you're talking about the show being cancelled, that's the result of a few things:

1) Trek Fatigue. TNG was a massive gamble, but it's success allowed DS9 to hit at just the right time and keep momentum going after TNG moved to the silver screen. By the time Voyager was coming to an end, though, Trek had been on the air from September of 1987 through May of 2001, and while many saw DS9 as a great evolution from TNG, Voyager, for all its promise, let a lot of fans down. It wasn't terrible, mind you (well, save for a few episodes), but not only was it not an evolutionary step forward from DS9, it was largely a step back. Despite Enterprise's promise of a new Trek, going back before TOS, I think a lot of people were tired.

2) UPN. A problem that started with Voyager but got a lot worse with Enterprise was that the network was having a lot of trouble advertising for the show. After advertising the premier season, UPN got scared and fell back on pushing America's Next Top Model and wrestling. To a degree, this makes business sense. Top Model and wrestling were bringing in a lot of money and any genre show is a big gamble, but the result is that there was a drop of 1/3 the ratings between season 1 and 2, and UPN stopped advertising on other stations altogether, and seriously cut back advertising even on their own station. They also made really poor programming decisions like running Enterprise against popular shows on other networks, most famously running "The Expanse" at the same time as the season finale of the second season of American Idol (spoiler: Ruben won). Additionally, the network took a different role with Enterprise than it had with Voyager, constantly sending notes. Some notes were insane, like having boy bands perform on the show every week. Rumor has it T'Pol's sexual exploitation was largely due to network pressure.

3) The battlefront between episodic and arc scripted television. As I referenced above, Enterprise found itself being made in a time when scripted television was changing. The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, 24, The West Wing, and others were experimenting with stepping away from episodic television and allowing stories to move from episode to episode, even a few having large chunks of a season dealing with issues (like Bartlett's decision to illegally assassinate a terrorist on The West Wing). This terrified executives, who worried that it would seriously impact repeat viewing and syndication, which is why Enterprise didn't become serialized until the third season. Braga, for all his shortcomings, was serious about making Enterprise serialized from the pilot, allowing Trek to evolve into something more akin to what would later be on Battlestar Galactica. The first two seasons, save for a few two-parters like the pilot and first season cliffhanger, was all episodic, which had become a creative limitation on the writers.

4) The characters. This one stings to say, but gone were the Picards, Datas, Rikers, Odos, Kiras, Siskos, and Worfs of the Star Trek universe when it came to Enterprise. I love Scott Bakula, and I appreciate Connor Trinneer and the rest of the cast of Enterprise, but their characters generally were quite boring and unengaging. As far as I'm concerned, the most interesting character on the show was Shran, who lit up the screen every time he was on and made it even more painfully obvious how bland Archer, Trip, T'Pol, Hoshi, Reed, and Mayweather were. If it wasn't for Phlox, the show's entire main cast would have been like a loaf of white bread. As an aside, this was why I was so excited for the fifth season, as Shran was set to join the crew of the NX-01. The show was like an episode of Voyager about Harry Kim every week.

All that having been said, I will defend Enterprise overall as a great series, especially the fourth season. Like TNG and DS9 before it, it really hit stride after a few less than thrilling first seasons, and was cut short before it could really explore its potential. While we're lucky we got the Augments, the Kir'Shara, the Daedalus, the Coalition, the Klingons, and the Mirror universe, that seemed to only be a taste of what was to come. The Romulan War, Shran becoming a member of the crew, T'Pol's Romulan father, the engineering section refit, the cloud city of Stratos, more Mirror universe, and, best of all, way more social commentary were all part of the plans for the next season. Had Enterprise endured to a seventh season, I suspect we'd be having a far different conversation.

I do not own or even wrote this great article but I was granted permission by the author to post this to my blog for my wonderful readers :) Thanks my friend for allowing me to share your great work c: