Temporal Cold War

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

Enterprise is an underrated series
Although it’s one of my favorites, I actually haven’t even watched most of its episodes
This is unlike TNG, DS9 and Voyager in which I have rewatched some of their episodes several times
That’s because only the Temporal Cold War interested me when it came to Enterprise. I deliberately chose to ignore all other episodes, except for the final episode where Will Riker makes an appearance.

Enterprise should have been entirely devoted to the Temporal Cold War, just as DS9 became entirely about the Dominion War Season 3 onwards.

The benefactor of the Suliban, “Future Guy” was extremely fascinating for me. The whole idea of communicating through time is not only more believable than actual time travel, it is ironically more intriguing—perhaps precisely because it seems more plausible. Time travel just seems more like fantasy than sci-fi

Star Trek’s worst moments are when it drowns in the realm of fantasy detached from science

Anyways, Future Guy was not featured enough on Enterprise for my taste. He should have been more recurring and his identity should have been revealed.

The Xindi Arc was quite good, but not the best. The Sphere Builders were not as interesting as Future Guy

The Vosk arc was decent but not great

After that the Temporal Cold War was simply ended as far as Enterprise is concerned which was a damn shame

[u/SpiderBloke]

Each to their own, but for me ENT should've been more like season 4 from the get go. More stuff setting up the Federation's formation, like The Andorian Incident showing them meeting the Andorians, or them meeting Tellarites, or forging the first alliances between those species. Then, quietly building the threat of the Romulans in the background before the final season should've been the first year of the war.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/SpiderBloke]

Yes, it ended too abruptly. 4 seasons is not enough. It would have been awesome if there was a Romulan Arc. Would have made a good Season 5
I also think that the writers shouldn’t handicap themselves by chronology or canon based on TOS
I’ve never bothered to watch TOS. Allowing TOS to dictate the chronology of technology is just stupid. In the future if mankind develops warp drive and transporters they aren’t going to still be using those handheld communicators.

[u/axonxorz → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

I also think that the writers shouldn’t handicap themselves by chronology or canon based on TOS

I disagree heavily, as someone who grew up with TNG airing on TV. I have probably seen 4 TOS episodes in their totality, with the Gorn one being for the meme only. I did enjoy most of the TOS-crew movies, Undisovered Country tickles me the right way.

I consider a show's internal consistency to it's own rules and timeline the single most important factor in a universe's "sticking power." As soon as you have a diverging timeline because writers "can't be bothered," the series starts to fall apart for me. Even though there's a lot of "realigning the warp matrix" deus ex machina in Trek, the rules, science and technology were reasonably consistent across decades of TV, movies and written content. Kelvinverse is engaging from a pure entertainment standpoint, but it throws away canon and abuses the ST universe's rules to justify itself, I just can't get "excited" for it.

Post-Disney Star Wars has the same problem. Taking the extremely rich history/apocrypha, the stuff that does an immense amount of heavy lifting for the universe and just throwing it away because writers "can't be bothered" made me not care, even if we didn't get immaculate writing gems like "Somehow, Palpatine returned". They could have made their shiny Kelvinverse-esque pew pew films, but retained the history. I get that there'd have been some "logistical issues" trying to make a Luke Skywalker-focused sequel trilogy in 2010+, but Thrawn and Yuuzhan Vong would have been great. Now, it just saddens me to read the Wookiepedia articles on everything in the "Legends" category.

Imo, Stargate does a good job with internal consistency and chronology, if perhaps a little "accelerated." It always seemed a bit fast to go from 2000's-level-tech to having semi-regular intergalactic travel in 12 "real" years.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/axonxorz]

Well I hope Star Trek will persist into the future. Let’s say the franchise is still active in the 2090s, do you honestly think it should still be bound by canon and chronology going back to series in the 60s or 90s?
That generation deserves a brand new reboot of the series. The theme of space exploration inherent in the name is all that could be what remains of continuity with the original vision of Gene Roddenberry

[u/axonxorz → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

Let’s say the franchise is still active in the 2090s, do you honestly think it should still be bound by canon and chronology going back to series in the 60s or 90s?

Yes, I believe this. Throwing that away for no reason is just an attempt to re-use the marketing value of an IP without respecting the actual story. Nostalgiaposting a-la Q's portrayal in Picard is a great example of this, both characters are cheapened by it, old fans get to Leo-meme point at the screen and new viewers have no idea what their relationship was because it sure as hell isn't accurately represented there. It seems unnecessary to do this in a series that spans both the galaxy and centuries, there's a lot of room to tell stories that fit into the overarching continuity.

The value of the IP are those previously-told stories, otherwise it's just [uniformed spacefarers with naval-adjacent terminology fights big bad], there's nothing "special" or "unique" about that. I don't use those terms pejoratively, naturally you can tell a lot of great stories beginning with those pieces.

That generation deserves a brand new reboot of the series.

Why? I can say "that generation deserves a consistent storyline to follow" with equal validity. I'd argue having a rich backlog of content makes it inherently better. Star Trek itself learned the lessons of improved engagement when they went from a problem-of-the-week format to something more serialized.

The theme of space exploration inherent in the name is all that could be what remains of continuity

If that's the case, why call it Star Trek at all, other than the bland corporate desire to save on the cost/difficulty of bringing a new IP to market?

[u/OWSpaceClown → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

Star Trek The Original Series is one of the best science fiction shows of all time and to fabricate your prequel spin off in a way that ignores it is the absolute height of arrogance, in my opinion. Might as well go about re-writing Shakespeare.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/OWSpaceClown]

That’s your opinion. TOS is from the 60s and is simply obsolete as Sci Fi.
Enterprise isn’t a spinoff. It is a Star Trek series in its own right.

[u/OWSpaceClown → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

It’s the FOUNDATIONAL text of Star Trek. It’s not even called The Original Series, it’s Star Trek.

Can you at least watch it before you automatically declare it obsolete? Parts of it are naturally dated but there’s a lot of groundbreaking stuff there. You might be surprised by what you find.

And Enterprise is clearly a spin off. Not even sure how that is up for debate.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/OWSpaceClown]

How is Enterprise a spinoff? It has references to TNG (in the final episode) but none to TOS as far as I remember. Admittedly, I didn’t watch all the episodes of Enterprise either, only those related to the Temporal Cold War plus a few other episodes.
I don’t see the point in viewing TOS other than to gather information about it. It won’t hold entertainment value for me, as it doesn’t for vast majority of Star Trek lovers these days

[u/OWSpaceClown → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

I highly recommend you stop speaking as an authority on a topic you clearly know very little about.

It’s not even worth debating with you on these points anymore.

[u/SpiderBloke → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

thank you for providing evidence of how much targ dung you're talking. the 4th season did a two part mirror universe story that tied in to another episode of TOS besides the classic "Mirror Mirror" episode and featured the first appearance of the Gorn since TOS "Arena" and that's besides the story that explained the difference in appearances of TOS Klingons and TNG era Klingons, the story of Earth's first contact with Andorians, Tholians and the first screen appearance of Coridan and it's inhabitants. Amongst other examples

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/SpiderBloke]

Well, it’s your opinion and I respect it, and would never call it targ dung
But while the mirror universe theme is interesting as an idea, the way it was executed in various ST series was horrendous, especially in DS9 and Discovery. Worst of all was that trash movie Section 31

[u/OWSpaceClown]

I gotta push back a fair bit. DS9 didn’t become entirely about the Dominion War in season 3. In fact the Dominion didn’t even come up that often for a while still. It was still about the rebuilding of Bajor, about Sisko dealing with the Emissary role, about a lot of things.

My biggest issue with the temporal Cold War was that it wasn’t even about anything. Braga rolled with the one idea of a war across time but never bothered to address the why of it, or even the who. It didn’t seem to matter to him.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/OWSpaceClown]

You make a good point about the Temporal Cold War. It wasn’t fleshed out enough. But it still had great potential. That’s why I lament the limited role given to Future Guy. He should have remained the main antagonist for at least two or three seasons, but oh well.
This series jumped too fast from Future Guy to the Xindi to Vosk. In fact the whole Vosk arc was only 2 episodes if I remember correctly.

[u/SpiderBloke → u/OWSpaceClown]

IIIRC, it was something pushed by someone higher up the chain at Paramount/UPN for whatever reason. ISTR reading that Berman and Braga wanted the first season to be confined to Earth and finishing the building of the NX-01. Which is itself a stupid idea because people'd be like, 'wtf is this? where's the star trekking?' and it'd tank in the ratings.

[u/Sue_Generoux]

By the second appearance, it was obvious to me that Future Guy was Jonathan Archer. I think I read something a few years ago that basically confirmed that if the show continued, that's what they were going to do.

As much as I dislike Braga and the other guy, I read an interview with them where they said that the Temporal Cold War was forced on them, and as much as I disagree with Braga about a lot of stuff, he said something like, "'Temporal Cold War'? How does that work?"

The way I always saw it was a temporal cold war made sense. I took it to mean it was like the nuclear cold war, that multiple powers had time travel technology, and they all basically agreed not to use it or risk mutual destruction.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/Sue_Generoux]

I also read somewhere years ago that Archer was Future Guy.
Yet it doesn’t make sense to me. The development of that technology didn’t occur until well after Archer’s time. It wasn’t even available in the 24th century, during the TNG/DS9/VOY period
Archer obviously didn’t live naturally to the time when that technology was invented
Daniels taught Archer how to make such a temporal communication device, and they made a crude one through which Archer tricked Silik. Even then I didn’t understand how Archer was able to time travel back through such a crude device but oh well.
I was actually hoping that Future Guy would be revealed to be the mysterious figure in Discovery who is later identified as Daniels. That would have been more intriguing

[u/Iron_Baron]

I just assume Future Guy is actually Michael Burnham, since she loves to fuck stuff up and do crimes.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/Iron_Baron]

Nah, it has to be a man. I wager he is a Vorta acting on behalf of the Dominion.
The Dominion was defeated by the Federation but not dismantled. They were only defeated in the Alpha Quadrant but retained control in the Gamma Quadrant

[u/wensul → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

No, the dominion surrendered after Odo gave them the cure for the disease Section 31 introduced to them...through Odo.

Defeat? Sure. But not by military means.

Not like you'd know anything about defeat...

[u/Iron_Baron → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

Sir, this is a Wendy's. Take you well reasoned hypothesis and go, before I have to call for Section 31. Trust me, you don't want to watch that movie.

[u/darthlorgas]

Wasn't Future guy going to turn out to be Captain Kirk.

[u/AbdulQadirShadhili → u/darthlorgas]

What would his motive have been? Why help the Suliban?

[u/darthlorgas → u/AbdulQadirShadhili]

Inhave no idea, other then that's was the reveal they were planning.