I can't seem to muster any amount of contempt for Enterprise. Yeah, poor ideas, poor execution, some great actors wholly misused, it's just bad telly. Period.
But I just find it all so unbearably sad. I love so much Trek. There's so much to love. The entire ending of Search for Spock where Kirk finds out his son is dead, and destroys the original fucking Enterprise to save his best friend... the moment in Yesterdays Enterprise where Riker has just been killed and Picard jumps over the main bridge console to fire the ships last remaining shots as the Birds of Prey swoop closer... the iconic split second shot in The Search Part I where the Defiant opens fire for the first time and you see the predatory little starship you'd always dreamed of...
I've tracked back and located the exact moment when Star Trek started going downhill. It's Tacking into the Wind, in which a single episode manages to cram in the culmination of over a decade's worth of Worf's storyline (finally killing Gowron after Ezri's painfully accurate psychoanalysis of the Klingon Empire), one of the most gripping Mexican standoffs I've ever seen (four brilliantly realised characters - Kira, Odo, Garak and Damar - almost losing the plot after the theft of the enemy's secret weapon goes tits-up) and the revelation that Star Fleet conspired to commit genocide.
It delivered a quality of characterisation, acting, storytelling, special effects, drama and relationships that I've never seen equalled on telly, before or since. I've never seen any other show that can handle a cast of around twenty major characters in three-quarters of an hour and not short-change any of them. It's the finest forty-five minutes of television I've ever seen. That DS9 managed this in one of its final episodes of a seven year run speaks volumes about the shows achievements.
Trek has been downhill ever since. And I find the squandered potential something to be terribly, terribly sad about. One of the most finally realised, quirky, infuriating and fun fictional universes has been run into the ground by a bunch of money-men who seem to be utterly clueless morons. They had one of the best platforms to work with and they pissed it away. The fuckers should be ashamed of themselves. |
