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DVD TV Show Reviews

Star Trek is one of the most successful franchises ever.  The first series was good, by sixties standards, but it failed to find its audience until later, in reruns.  The second series (Next Generation) was a huge success, but subsequent series (and movies) have been less and less so.  There is a lot of speculation as to why this is so: Rodenberry's death, and/or Rick Berman's taking over the franchise; Star Trek fans growing up; fans getting pickier; more science fiction shows for it to compete with; poorer quality in the writing, etc.  Whatever the reason, Enterprise is the most recent (and possibly the last) Star Trek series in TV history, and also the least successful.

The show's premise is interesting: the voyages of the first starship Enterprise, long before Captain Kirk's Enterprise, not long after our current time.  The captain, Captain Archer, is played by former Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula.  The producers may have figured that Bakula's fans from that other scifi show would jump to see him in this.  I loved QL and Bakula, but I don't think he ever fit right for playing the captain.  I don't know if it's his fault, or the writers' fault.  As Sam on QL, he was cute, kinda laid-back, and a really nice guy.  As Archer he is very uptight and mostly humorless.  Also, they never should have cut his hair because, well, he has kind of a big nose and so, while he looked cut on QL with the hair to balance out the length, it didn't work in Enterprise.  This is from a woman's point of view, of course!

The other characters were fine, but I don't think the writers ever really developed any of them well enough to make them as interesting as the characters on Next Gen (or even Deep Space Nine).  Many Star Trek fans took issue with some of the storylines, feeling like they made too many changes in the Star Trek timeline (remember, they can't really mess with major issues because Star Trek fans know what will happen in the future, in Kirk's time or beyond).  This may have also hampered them a bit in finding stories.  The stories in Enterprise are solid, but nothing special.  Later, they tried to make it more interesting by putting in more "action" (meaning, violence, shoot 'em up, bang bang), but that's not what viewers wanted, either.  Then they put in more romance, perhaps to bring in female viewers.  Clearly the writers never really had a clear vision that worked.

In this first season, we get to know the characters a little bit.  If you haven't watched the show before, give it a try because it's not bad at all (and the first season may have the best, although in the last season they did get better again).

The extras have all the usual stuff: cast profile, interviews, audio commentary, plus some interesting things like outtakes and deleted scenes.  It has a very cool cover, as well.  Any Star Trek fan should love the extras.

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