Twenty-five years ago tonight, I settled down to watch something I was looking forward to for months: the premiere of a new Star Trek series, “Enterprise.” I was working 18-hour days after Sept. 11 and I was exhausted. I really needed this show.
Watched the teaser … and then shut it off after hearing the (spoken word) theme song. As much as I wanted to see “Enterprise,” I couldn’t even.
Took about 20 years for me to watch the premiere, and more (but not at all) of the rest of the run, after catching the Connor Trineer/Dominic Keating podcast.
And, the premiere, tonight.
It’s … OK. It’s surely not my favorite Trek. But some of the episodes have been good. I don’t watch them as much as I do the other series. But I should have given “Enterprise” a chance. My rankings until the new wave that started with “Discovery” were:
1. “Deep Space Nine.”
2. “Star Trek: The Original Series” (OK, like a third of it)
3. “Star Trek: The Next Generation”
4. “Star Trek Voyager”
I didn’t even rank “Enterprise” because of that theme song.
Now, 25 years later, we’ve had a lot more Trek: “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” just finished its fourth and penultimate season. “Star Trek: Discovery” ran five seasons. I enjoyed both, as I also did the animated “Lower Decks.” I haven’t seen the “StarFleet Academy” season.
“Discovery” was a lot stronger than it gets credit for, although I think it jumped the shark in the last season. “Lower Decks” was pretty fun. “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is probably the most fully formed of all the series, right off the bat, taking over what really was the first pilot of Star Trek back 60 years ago.
Stellar acting. Definitely the best group of actors right off the bat of any of the series. Not just Anson Mount, Rebecca Romjin and Ethan Peck — who played Pike, No. 1 and Spock in “Discovery” — but also the other ledes. And I’ll tell you straight out that the guy who plays James T. Kirk is pretty darn good. He’s not doing a Shatner impersonation and you shouldn’t think he should.
(Well, he did a Shatner impersonation in one of the episodes and it was fantastic.) They’ve put him in so many places in this series that he’s had the toughest job of all, and Paul Wesley has performed well in all of it. He gets too much hate among the fanbase, for no reason. Ditto for Uhura, Scotty, M’Benga, Chapel … as well as the newer crew members.
Great writing overall. Most of the episodes were at least good, a number are classic. I do feel they wasted a lot of time on genre shows — a soap opera, a horror episode, fairy tale, a “Hangover” episode, puppet show — but then I remember that the original Star Trek wasn’t straight up science fiction either.
Wow have they made me angry, too, in some of it.
But after seeing the last episode and knowing there are only eight episodes left, I’m glad they did “Strange New Worlds” and feel sad they probably aren’t getting a “Year One” series under Kirk.
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