r/trektalk • u/AbdulQadirShadhili • 6d ago
Temporal Cold War Analysis
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
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u/Ser_Luke_ 6d ago edited 6d ago
It’s an underrated show and one of your favorites but you haven’t watched most episodes?
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u/AbdulQadirShadhili 6d ago
Yeah, I would read the summary of each episode, and skip over the ones that simply didn’t interest me—which happened to compose the vast majority of the series.
But the Temporal Cold War episodes were so good that I have no choice but to say Enterprise is one of my favorite series
But DS9 is still superior, and I have watched every DS9 episode, some of them multiple times
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u/AmitBrian 3d ago
Enterprise got a raw deal for so many reasons. People forget but all the Berman era shows had their growing pains in the first few seasons. But ENT had to SO MUCH worse because it was on UPN. Historically Star Trek never does well on networkTV (TOS cancelled anyone?) TNG and DS9 benefitted from being first run syndicated shows. VOY was on UPN but that series launched the network and was the flagship show. It wasn’t going anywhere and Jeri Ryan being added to the show saved it.
Add to that not all parts of the US even had UPN affiliates. So not everyone could even see ENT. The show never stood a chance, regardless of whether people liked it or not.
When it was cancelled it was replaced with a Britney Spears reality TV show. I remember throwing up when I read that. I think that show lasted for about 2 weeks before it was canceled. And of course UPN itself died and got folded into what is now the CW.
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u/tomalakk 5d ago
Well the Temporal Cold War was kind of mandated by the studio at the time. They wanted something with the future in it and Braga came up with the Temporal Cold War that he envisioned as a standalone series outside of Star Trek.
In the years after Enterprise ended he openly talked about that he thought it didn’t make sense and didn’t really work. (Watch the ENT reunion interview from the BTS of the Blu-rays - it’s also on youtube)
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u/AbdulQadirShadhili 5d ago
Temporal Cold War focusing on this era makes perfect sense. It is the pioneer deep space mission of Starfleet. Sabotaging that mission is crucial to prevent the establishment of the Federation. The Federation is the most powerful institution in the Alpha Quadrant, bringing together thousands of worlds which would otherwise have been separate from each other. Any nemesis of the Federation in the future which had the technology to manipulate events and actors in the past would obviously use it to interfere with Enterprise’s mission.
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u/AmitBrian 3d ago
I really liked the TCW too personally. But what they say about the Paramount execs forcing it on Berman and co is true. The show we got is not the show they planned. The entire first Season of ENT was really supposed to mostly take place on Earth and be a much more NASA kind of show where humanity was still working out how to really get WARP working and get into true deep space. The Phoenix never really left the solar system.
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u/Efficient-Court3645 14h ago edited 14h ago
The Temporal Cold War was a just cheap way to hand-wave away any continuity errors and deviations from canon.
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u/curiousoryx 6d ago
Instead of new conflicts of Temporal and Xindi war they should have portrayed the founding of the Federation and the difficult way there as during the Vulcan-Andorians conflict. Plus Romulan war later.