Each series has had its “in” with an alien race. With TOS, Spock gave us most of the Vulcan mythology, on TNG it was Worf for the Klingons, with DS9 we had Quark for the Ferengi/Dax for the Trill/Kira for Bajorans/Odo for the Changelings. Hell even Dukat or Garak for the Cardassians on that one.
Voyager gave us some Maquis members, but they were mostly overlooked, especially after Seven of Nine joined up, and we began to learn more about the Borg. I guess you could sort of count Kes and Neelix for Ocampa and Talaxian...but you barely learned anything about them.
So Enterprise comes along and all these races have been explored…where do you go? Backwards of course. I actually mean that, the writers just misinterpreted the idea. In the back catalogue of races that have been virtually unexplored in the universe, that WOULD NOT cause any continuity issues with TOS we have Andorians, Tellarites, Orions, and early conflict with both Romulans and Klingons. That is five potential alien races we could either meet or battle with…not to mention that there is more than two arcs, easily, in each of those races. But no…we spend most of the time dealing with prickish-out-of-character Vulcans before finally trying to do anything resembling this.
They could have had first contact with ALL of these races. Not to mention the formation of enemies in both Romulans and Klingons, maybe even a potential alliances between those two races, and the forming of the Federation arc.
That’s still ripe with possibilities. Troubled relationships between the Andorians, Tellarites, Vulcans and Humans…and shaky relationships that slowly grow and strengthen due to the strong enemy threat looming in Klingons and Romulans.
See how FUCKING EASY THIS SHOW WAS TOO WRITE? I mean GOD. It is so annoying when I can easily spout off 5 or 6 (sometimes I’ve gotten it up to 10) potential storylines this show could have taken to be both unique, interesting, and totally fanwanky at the same time…and yet the writers for this show just rehashed old Voyager scripts for two years, and then farted around with the half thought-out and mostly going nowhere Xindi arc before FINALLY starting to even fathom the shit I just pulled out of my ass in 20 seconds.
Berman and Braga were NOT the guys to head this show. They stuck around because it was easy, not because they loved Trek or still cared a lot about the franchise, but because UPN would pay them for one more show. Their interest was clearly NOT in the mind of Trek, or they could have easily made this show great…but they just sat around pissing about and half writing episodes, and then throwing in generic plot devices until the 45 minute quota was met.
Enterprise could have killed the franchise, and when it ended I thought Trek was over. It may be over for a good long time on television still. It was amazing that it was able to bounce back after 11 shitty years (that’s Voyager and Enterprise I am pointing out, DS9 is exempt) of television and the mediocre TNG films.
NEXT TIME: Reboot