my thoughts on enterprise

i got tired of doing individual episode reviews a long time ago but i want to talk about the show that is *still* rotating in my mind. it's been more than a year since i started watching and i still haven't finished it. have to let it marinate, i guess. the last episode i watched was observer effect, which i loved. season 4 has been so good, i really think this is the show at its best. which makes it even sadder that they cancelled it here. seasons 1 and 2 were fun, and i liked them a lot, but they were often held back by flaws of premise or execution. season 3 had its moments, but i didn't like it as much. the entire xindi war arc was shallow and most of the time i was thinking about how the dominion war arc in ds9 was so much better. my primary observation about the show at this point was that it just wasn't very intelligent. by this i mean that it didn't investigate its stories and their implications very far, if it all. a lot of the time it was either charming or easy enough to ignore. it got to be grating when the tone became serious and the stakes significant.

season 4 hasn't had this problem. it's been straight bangers so far. i loved the kir'shara arc. i cried at daedalus. i've really liked seeing the progession of trip and t'pol's relationship (by god i am insane about these characters). it's brought back some of the themes from the first two seasons, but with a more mature lens. this means the endearing goofiness is lost, but also that there's more complexity to it. it's events and emotions seem more real and thus hit harder.

i bought one of the nx-01 hats after, like, five episodes. i've been really invested in the show from the beginning, and i've been sad that it has to end the whole time. i don't remember if i felt this way for ds9, but i certainly didn't for voyager. i've been mad about a cancellation that happened almost 20 years ago. i really love this show and see so much merit in it and it seems like only a couple other people share that sentiment. paramount didn't, obviously. enterprise deserved a full run. it had so much to offer.

and now they've done the same thing with discovery. i haven't watched season 5, i'll start it when i'm done with enterprise. one obsession at a time, you know. but the show was just starting to turn around. for two seasons it suffocated under the weight of the franchise's old heroes, a desperate attempt to bring back old viewers, most of whom would never watch it. (on account of the "politics", you know, the exact thing they said about ds9). season three was great and season four almost as good. the show finally got to breate, its actual original premise finally got to shine. and then they killed it.

anyhow. i love enterprise and i'm excited to see the rest of it, even if i'm sad it has to go.