A Roddenberry For My Own Back

There is Star Trek controversy and arguments about modern Star Trek online! This can only mean it’s a day of the week with a Y in it. Normally these things, like anything on the internet except cats, are best ignored. But it’s a little hard to ignore when the comments complaining about modern Star Trek come from William Shatner himself.

Shatner was asked what he thought about modern Star Trek during a convention and his response was less than supportive of his fellow Trek-casts. He said

“I got to know Gene Roddenberry in three years fairly well ... he’d be turning in his grave at some of this stuff.”

Now, to be fair to Shatner, I watched the whole comic-con panel (because I didn’t know this quote was only right at the end) and he is in great form, roasting and insulting everyone. He has a smile on his face and has a lot of fun at a lot of people’s expense and the room loves it. Right after that sentence someone booed him and he shouted at them – tongue in cheek – “what do you know, I know it all!” kinda poking fun at his own ego a bit there. But I think that’s important to say because, as is often the case, we’re presented with the most controversial sentence without the context of how it was said or the understanding of the room it was said to which makes it sounds worse. It’s how Jimmy Carr sells out theatres when every joke of his you read in the papers sounds awful. Writing things down is not always great. Context is king.

But it’s still a little disappointing to hear Shatner say that. Because it’s one of the internet's top trolling lines when it comes to modern Star Trek. And it’s kind of a weird one. Not “I don’t like it,” which is a perfectly valid opinion but “Gene Roddenberry wouldn’t like it.” As if somehow speculating on Gene Roddenberry’s opinion is more important than your own. And while Shatner’s not necessarily aligning himself with the internet trolls, to find the video of him talking I already had to scroll through tons of 30 somethings in their bedrooms – just like I am now – in front of shelves of outdated home media and toys – just like I am now – ranting that Shatner “DESTROYS” Modern Star Trek and rejoicing in having their views confirmed. He’s not necessarily a troll himself but he’s certainly feeding the trolls. These same men incidentally hate Doctor Who since 2018 by the way, but aren’t sexist they just don’t like how it once mentioned global warming which it never did before if you forget all the times Jon Pertwee’s Doctor mentioned it.

But “it’s not true to Gene Roddenberry’s vision” is a common criticism of modern Star Trek. I read this in some forum at least once a day. Youtube recommends me videos about it. So let’s look at that.

Before I break it down any further, I want to say: I of course love and respect William Shatner and his contribution to Star Trek.

I of course love and respect Gene Roddenberry and his creation of Star Trek.

I of course love and respect Alex Kurtzman and all of the new teams contributions to Star Trek.

I have seen the JJ Abrams movies.

Joking! That’s not fair. Respect to everyone who makes Star Trek and I want to stay a bit Spock about this and look at things as logically and emotionlessly as I can while looking at Trek opinion. This isn't a question of which shows are my favourites and which aren't. It's more to do with looking at this common criticism and getting to the bottom of why does it come up and is it fair?

Because “It’s not true to Gene Roddenberry’s vision” has been the opinion on Star Trek for a while now. It’s not new. It dates back as far as DS9, which is now widely regarded as one of the best.

Gene Roddenberry’s vision was for a future where humanity had put aside petty squabbles, eliminated war and poverty and hunger and worked to improve ourselves as a species and move beyond the problems he saw around himself in present day Earth. Star Trek was a show about these humans, who had solved much of their planet's problems, exploring the galaxy and spreading that wisdom.

TOS and TNG were both directly created by Gene Roddenberry and are therefore pretty faithful to that vision – although sometimes TNG didn’t go as far as he would like, as we’ll come to later.

DS9 was the first Star Trek show to be made after Gene Roddenberry’s death. It introduced more flawed characters and explored internal conflicts between the show’s primary characters – something that Gene Roddenberry had been against in TNG. But I believe it was still informed by Gene Roddenberry’s vision and ideals. It simply took a crew of people – Sisko, Dax, O’Brien and Bashir – who had grown up in that ideal future that TOS and TNG are set in and moved them to a “less developed” part of the galaxy. A part of space that had recently known oppression and devastation and was still besotted by poverty, inequality and neglect. The show would explore a crew taken from Gene Roddenberry’s utopia trying to help those people build their way towards achieving that themselves. And ultimately when it became a show about war, it became about the fight for those ideals. Humanity might have moved beyond war but what happens when a threat comes along that hasn’t? Even In The Pale Moonlight, the best ever episode of Star Trek, that sees Sisko trick the Romulans into joining the war, only works because Sisko is a man of such high moral calibre. DS9 is like John Hurt’s Doctor Who. “You were the Doctor [/Star Trek] more than anyone else because you were the Doctor [/Star Trek] on the day it wasn’t possible to get it right.” It’s Gene Roddenberry’s vision tested. The show has a different relationship to Gene Roddenberry’s vision but it's still crucial to the show. And that’s kind of the way for all subsequent Trek TV shows.

Voyager is about a ship of those utopian ideals stranded away from the help of their powerful empire. It’s easy to be idealistic when you have a fleet of ships behind you and likeminded people control half the quadrant. Voyager is often a story of a Captain forced to choose between Gene’s ideals and the practicalities of keeping her crew alive. Again Gene Roddenberry’s vision is at the heart of it.

Enterprise is set in a world that has only recently achieved that utopia facing the first real threats to it. Because humanity wouldn’t be humanity if they didn’t stumble on their way to greatness. At the very least it wouldn’t make for great telly if they didn’t.

So onto the new modern Trek. Discovery these days is accused of being anti-Gene Roddenberry’s vision. But – aside from some dodgy decisions Michael Burnham made in the pilot – Michael, Saru and the ship’s crew seem to be fighting for those Roddenberry ideals the whole time. They seem to believe in them pretty strongly. And each season throws at them a disaster that threatens those ideals on a fundamental level and sees how they cope with it. The perfect future takes a bit of a beating but the fight to hold it together is what the show is about. It offers perhaps a more rounded take on how hard it might be to achieve that perfect future when faced with terrible fears. Which feels like a timely story for the 21^st century. We still have to take our shoes off to go through airports. It seems our imagined great western lives are always being torn apart by fear. What will people do if something threatens their ability to feed their family? How do we react to perceived threats to our way of life? Discovery deals with these questions in it’s fight for Gene’s vision.

Picard is probably the series furthest from Gene Roddenberry’s vision, but again that vision is still important to the series. Picard deals with the Federation having apparently turned it’s back on parts of the utopian ideals in the wake of a terrorist attack and become more insular and less idealistic – feels relevant to 2022, but that is arguably something Gene definitely wouldn’t have approved of. Again though, the first season is the story of Picard, possibly the most principled of all of Star Trek’s characters, fighting to bring back Gene’s ideals that the Federation has turned away from. It might not be that the Federation still holds his principles but the series does.

Lower Decks is a slightly different one to quantify. It’s a comedy series that is often taking the piss out of Star Trek from within, so it’s a different beast really. That said, across the two seasons released so far, and despite lots of piss taking of all of Star Trek, there’s been no jokes at the expense of Gene Roddenberry’s beliefs.

Prodigy, the children’s show, is set outside of the Federation utopia, and so arguably Gene Roddenberry’s views shouldn’t count so much because there’s no Federation characters, but in it’s messages and in how the characters act and what it’s teaching your kids, it’s Gene’s messages they are trying to teach kids.

And Strange New Worlds, well that’s as close to the Original Series as it’s ever likely to get in the 21^st century so that one is really true to the ideals in the Original. While also allowing a few character flaws to add richness and interest.

To be honest, the Kelvin Timeline films are the only ones that don’t really seem to have any relationship with Gene Roddenberry’s vision. It’s not that they dismiss it or don’t respect it. It’s more that they’re just focussed on being action films and don’t care about much else. How much that’s a good thing is up for debate. A lot of debate.

So its my belief that Gene Roddenberry’s vision is present, to varying extents, throughout all of Star Trek and inspires every series in the Prime Time Line. So you’ve got to ask yourself: Would Gene Roddenberry really be turning in his grave? Would he really? Coz it seems this huge franchise is all about his vision and his creation? So would he really be upset? And I can’t help escaping that the only obvious answer, with all respect to Mr Shatner who knew him better than me obviously, is: yes. Yes Gene Roddenberry would definitely be spinning in his grave.

Because it’s worth considering some other things Gene Roddenberry didn’t like. In TNG there’s an episode called Family, it’s the second episode of Season 4 right after The Best of Both Worlds. I think it’s one of the most underrated Star Trek episodes. In it Picard returns home to his family’s chateau and vineyard in France – all those things you’ve heard about Star Trek being the most middle class show ever are definitely true – to rest after his trauma in the previous episode. Throughout the episode he clashes with his brother who lives a simple life on the vineyards, shuns technology, makes food from scratch rather than uses replicators, has never left the solar system and sees Picard’s arrival – which encourages his own sons excitement about space travel – as a danger. While Picard’s body has recently been invaded by technology which took away his humanity and individuality and ultimately led him to be used to kill thousands of people against his will. Eventually the two brothers have a fight in the mud and Picard has a bit of an emotional breakdown, it all comes out, the two reconcile and Picard returns to his job having addressed the trauma and acknowledged that it’s something he will now always have to live with. Sounds like a good episode right? Not according to Gene Roddenberry. Ronald D Moore who wrote this one, and many other great episodes recalls:

"Gene goes through this whole thing about how much he hates this script. 'It says terrible things about Picard’s parents; these brothers don’t exist in the twenty-fourth century; they have such profound personal animosities; this would never happen. I don’t buy any of this, this is not a Star Trek episode. There’s no action in this; there’s no jeopardy. We can’t do this show.'" After the meeting, Executive Producers Michael Piller and Rick Berman advised Moore to finish the script anyway, and that they would deal with Roddenberry. Moore concluded, "I went off and wrote it, and never heard another word. Somehow, they were then dealing with Gene in a different way and that script just went through after that point. He just stopped kind of throwing out scripts and changing things from that point forward, and just started slowly to change.”

See now it kind of feels like Gene Roddenberry vision might be getting in the way of good stories and a new team of executives had to step in. Does that make them wrong and Gene right?

Even more surprisingly what Gene Roddenberry hated: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. That’s right. Almost universally regarded as the best Star Trek film ever made. Oh sure you’ll find some people like me who think First Contact is better – indeed any film where Patrick Stewart wears a tuxedo and machine guns down a bunch of zombie robots is better than any in which that doesn’t happen. Casablanca is great but Patrick Stewart doesn’t machine gun down a bunch of zombie robots while wearing a tuxedo so it’s not perfect. But anyway The Wrath of Khan is basically considered by most to be the best ever Star Trek movie. Gene Roddenberry complained mainly about the militarism in the movie. But more interesting than that in terms of sticking to what Gene Roddenberry believed, he was basically not allowed to write this movie. Apparently he’d been such a nightmare on The Motion Picture, which is an interesting movie that goes to some deep places but has also been dubbed The Motionless Picture and been described as slow and boring, that he was basically made an Executive Consultant on the subsequent Star Trek movies. Essentially that means he was paid a lot of money to stay out of things, he could read and offer advice on scripts but the writers and producers were under no obligation to pay any attention to him. Now for the record he made some good suggestions that the team went with and some that they ignored. But the fact remains that arguably the best Star Trek film ever was made by pushing Gene Roddenberry out of the writers room and almost out of production entirely.

And for the record Mr Shatner, he also was not a big fan of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier which Shatner wrote and directed, though that’s less of a bombshell because it’s not so well liked. Though if Patrick Stewart shooting Robot Zombies elevates any great movie to perfection, William Shatner innocently asking “Excuse me but, What does God need with a star ship?” might be able to save even the worst film from being truly awful. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t have made The Human Centipede or A Serbian Film at least a little bit more enjoyable.

So all that being said, the question now is: does it matter that Gene Roddenberry would be turning in his grave? And honestly, I think not.

There’s something in what William Shatner said that I think hasn’t been properly addressed. When he said “Gene Roddenberry would be spinning in his grave.” One thing that nobody seems to have noticed in what Shatner said. Gene Roddenberry is in his grave. He dead! Sorry to break it to you.

I’m from a place called Welwyn Garden City, it was founded by Ebenezer Howard in 1920 to be the perfect utopian town. Now there is an empty building long since abandoned by whatever it used to be opposite a beautiful looking fountain and with great views of the grassy nature filled town centre – I am going somewhere with this I promise – that building has been purchased by a pub company who tried to get permission to open a pub in it. But have been met with opposition from local groups in part because opening a pub there was not in keeping with the original intentions of Ebenezer Howard. So I live there now but I can’t have cheap beer because a man who died in 1928 wouldn’t approve? Does that seem right. Things have moved on Ebby!

The same is kinda true here. Gene’s dead. We can’t just keep copying what he was making in the 1960s, we have to move on.

Gene Roddenberry’s legacy isn’t that he wrote a TV show. A lot of people can do that. And we’re not here discussing whether the twelfth spin-off is true to the original spirit of Z-Cars. Gene Roddenberry’s legacy is that he inspired a lot of other writers and creatives to share their take on his vision. The show doesn’t – and never has – belonged to one person.

We also need to stop talking about Gene Roddenberry like he was some kind of God-like infallible being. You know what was in Gene Roddenberry’s vision? Denna Troi should have three boobs. And it was only after every woman around him told him what an awful idea that was that it was dropped. The point is Gene Roddenberry’s vision is mostly great. But what’s made Star Trek one of the best shows on TV has been collaboration and listening to new ideas when it needed to.

Claiming that Gene Roddenberry doesn’t like Star Trek now has been a common criticism on the internet. I guess people think that you might argue with someone in their bedroom who doesn’t like the series led by a black woman but would anyone write 3000 words disagreeing with Gene Roddenberry – probably not.

If you don’t like new Star Trek that’s fine. There are fair criticisms of it – infinite lifts! – but I think it’s time we moved passed what one man thinks. Tell me your opinion. Don't hide behind pretending you know what Gene Roddenberry thinks. That's not relevant to what you think.

Star Trek: Enterprise: Less is More?

I’ve used lockdown to rewatch season 3 of Star Trek: Enterprise, and it occurred to me how good this season could have been if it was a 13 part story. Unfortunately for Enterprise it came out at a time when 24 part seasons were the norm for American network television, but it was trying to do the season long story-arcs that modern TV has got so good at. As a result there’s a great story here if you look for it. Enterprise was on the edge of cancellation and were surprised to get a third series. It’s remembered as being ok, better than the first two, a sensible change of direction, but there’s also some padding, a handful of forgettable episodes, a handful of irrelevant episodes all diluting the impact of Season 3. I believe if it was a 13 or 15 episode season, as is common now, it could have been brilliant. That in mind, here’s my cut of the series. I’ve used a traffic light system: Green episodes stay. Red episodes go. Yellow episodes are good but not essential (pick 1 or 2 of your favourite yellow episodes). If you’ve not seen season 3 of Enterprise there’s spoilers ahead.

Of course you must also include The Expanse which is the finale to Season 2 and gets a lot of the set-up out of the way.

The Xindi
KEEPER: It’s a pretty solid season opening. Some typical Star Trek fayre. Reminds us what Star Trek is all about, but sets up how this series will be a little different. At it’s heart this is a classic adventure story. But also we meet a Xindi for the first time, we see the council for the first time, albeit briefly, but it sets up a lot for future episodes plus the twist at the end is interesting.

Anomaly
KEPPER: This one sets up the Expanse and the spheres. It also develops things for the characters with Archer being told he will need to bend his morals to survive in the Expanse, and we see the first glimpses of that.

Extinction
LOSE IT: It’s a pretty rubbish mid-season episode. It would be weak in any season but it adds nothing to the overall plot of The Xindi/Expanse story line. It’s definitely a filler episode. The alien city isn't fleshed out or interesting enough to justify it's inclusion, the threat isn't strong enough to sell this episode in a season that's dominated by the Xindi who are a proper threat. It's all just a bit 'meh.'

Rajiin
LOSE IT: Archer picks up a prostitute with special abilities. It’s basically a Star Trek porn parody but without the porn or the parody. It’s a shame to lose the last 10 minutes which are the first time Enterprise has a battle with the Xindi and it’s a real step up for the series’ action scenes. But it’s fairly pointless in plot terms.

Impulse
LOSE IT: I almost kept this one. It’s a good Halloween watch. Zombie Vulcans! It’s overall importance relates to how Trellium D, the substance the crew needs to help them through the anomalies, will send T’Pol mad. You could lose all references to Trellium D and not affect the plot of the season too much. Aside from the fact that later in the series T’Pol gets addicted to using Trellium as a drug, which wasn’t all that exciting as a plot twist anyway.

Exile
KEEPER: This is the one I chose to keep at the expense of Impulse. Mainly because it’s a Hoshi story and Travis and Hoshi are criminally underused in Enterprise. I think they may be the most interesting characters if they were ever given something to do. The main plot is basically Beauty and the Beast but it leads us to some information that gets us to The Shipment and gives us some more details about the spheres.

The Shipment
KEEPER: Wait? Not all of the Xindi are bastards! This episode is crucial in setting up the Xindi relationships between the five species. It forces Archer to confront his prejudice and forces us to think outside the heroes/monsters dynamic it’s too easy to fall into. Also crucially it gives them a lead on where the weapon is being built.

Twilight
MAYBE: This episode sure has an exciting opening sequence with the Earth being destroyed. I am a sucker for an alternative future story. I think there’s great drama in Archer’s inability to remember anything after his injury. There’s a nice dementia parallel here. But really alternative future is why I kept this story yellow instead of condemning it to the red pile.

North Star
LOSE IT: Every other episode of this series keeps telling us how Earth is going to be destroyed and we’re in a race against time to save the world. So let’s stop for a week to dick around in a cowboy western planet. Nope. Any other series this episode would be ok (Basically the exact same plot happens in the original Star Trek anyway) but here it’s just a boring story at the wrong time.

Similitude
KEEPER: This is a very good story. It’s kinda irrelevant in terms of the Xindi/Expanse story, but the point is that Archer is once again forced to make an unethical decision, a decision that would outright be unacceptable and dismissed in a series where Earth wasn’t at stake so if you want to tell this story it has to be part of series 3.

Carpenter Street
LOSE IT: Daniels sends Archer and T’Pol back in time to 2004 where the Xindi are making a biological weapon to attack humanity. It’s kind of a spare weapon I guess, in case the one that blows up the whole planet doesn’t work. The bio-weapon plot is a bit pointless and just padding, and the time travel element is not interesting enough. Also Daniels’s excuse for not going back in time himself is “it would take too much time to do the paperwork” which is bollocks on every level.

Chosen Realm

KEEPER: On the surface this episode might seem a bit tangential to the main plot. A group of religious zealots who worship the spheres take over Enterprise. But it’s worth including because this whole Weapons-Of-Mass-Destruction thing was Star Trek’s way of addressing 9/11. The religious dogma and suicide bombings in this episode are the most on-the-nose this series got to the issues and its worth including for that alone.

Proving Ground
MAYBE: We see a trial run of the Xindi weapon. Which is kinda exciting. This episode is not hugely necessary, but Shran is in it, and therefore I can’t justify getting rid of it. Shran! Despite only appearing in a handful of episodes Shran was one of the best characters in Enterprise, rumour is if they had got a fifth season they would have given him a bigger role.

Stratagem
KEEPER: Well this is the one where we find out the location of the Xindi weapon so it’s kind of essential. It also builds a relationship between Archer and Degra, the designer of the weapon, that will be important later. It’s a pretty good episode.

Harbinger
LOSE IT: I feel bad losing this one. It’s a Malcolm story and he’s almost as wasted as Travis and Hoshi. The conflict between Malcolm and the MACOs is interesting. It’s also the first time we meet one of the Sphere-makers and learn that they are creating the Expanse to make it habitable for their species. BUT that basically just confirms the beliefs of the guys from Chosen Realm and we learn this again from Daniels in Azati Prime, so get rid. It’s slowing things down.

Doctor’s Orders
LOSE IT: This is just a remake of the Voyager episode ‘One’ with the names changed. They probably just got that script and did a ‘Find and Replace’ function. The plot twists are the same and even if you haven’t seen the Voyager episode, the plot twists are blatantly obvious.

Hatchery
LOSE IT: Lose it fast. This one is a mess. The crew find a Hatchery full of Xindi eggs. Captain Archer gets sprayed with some Xindi goop. Captain Archer wants to protect the eggs putting the crew and ship at risk. He claims that the Xindi eggs are unborn innocents and need protecting. The crew all discuss whether he’s making the right decision. “How long are we going to be here?” “Wasting our time.” “I doubt the Xindi would care for human babies if the situation was reversed.” The crew even mutiny and it turns out the goop affected the captain’s brain and that’s fine. Problem is Captain Archer is right and the crew are wrong. The episode doesn’t act like that. But the crew are basically being racist (Archer even asks if the crew would be so happy to let the Xindi die if they looked like humans). The Xindi attacked Earth because they were told humans were savages, saving their children might have been the best way to save Earth. Archer does get a bit psychotic as the episode goes on, but it’s just all wrong. It’s annoying because it’s Star Trek using alien goop to dodge a big issue that caused interesting conflict between the main characters*
*Side note: Gene Roddenberry was always against conflict between the main characters, I understand that, but meh, I still like it, and we aint in TNG anymore. I'll take character development over alien goop any day.

Azati Prime
KEEPER: It all kicks off! Enterprise finds the Xindi weapon and Archer pilots a mission to go get it. Daniels reveals that the Xindi are being played by the Sphere Builders and that ultimately humanity and the Xindi would work together in the future to destroy the Sphere Builders. Crucial information for the plot. And lets talk about that battle scene at the end of the episode. One of Star Trek’s most impressive. Explosions left right and centre. The ship torn up. Loads of crewmembers killed. It is actually epic.

Damage
KEEPER: And the aftermath of Azati Prime. Damaged Enterprise in tatters with lots of deaths. The Captain comes back with a message, they must get to a meeting with Degra with their proof that the Sphere-Builders are behind all this. With morale at an all time low and Enterprise broken with no engines, Archer is forced to break his moral code again to raid an innocent ship and steal the warp technology he needs to make his meeting on time.

The Forgotten
MAYBE: This one is worth keeping for Trip’s dealing with grief, but that stuff is neatly addressed in ‘Home’ from Season 4 which is like the debrief after the mission, and can be fitted in elsewhere. In terms of the Xindi it’s the admin episode: Archer convinces Degra and the Arboreals to help him, but since he still has to convince the council, I would argue that you could combine the plot of this episode and The Council into one tighter, more action packed episode.

E²
LOSE IT: This might be controversial. Before I started my Enterprise rewatch I checked out a few lists of the best episodes and this was on a lot of people’s top 10, but…it’s ok…but it’s basically a remake of the Deep Space Nine episode “Children of Time” which did the same story better. Again, you won’t be missing out any plot points by skipping this episode. All it adds to the story is the Enterprise’s journey through a corridor. If you’re a deep person you’re meant to say “The journey is more important than the destination” but it isn’t really here.

The Council
KEEPER: This is the episode where Archer must convince the council to stop the weapon launch. It’s also an episode where we get some more details of the spheres. As I say we have already seen a lot of this evidence in The Forgotten (and it’s been gathered over the previous season's episodes) so I think they could have combined The Forgotten and The Council to make one bigger, better episode. But this has a nice little moment of Malcolm’s reaction to the rising body count of the series, and the launch of the Xindi weapon. So you need to keep one of The Forgotten or The Council and unless they go back and remake it with my notes, this one is more important, because it ends on a cliffhanger that runs into a tight final couple of episodes.

Countdown
KEEPER: This is the tension builder. As the name implies there’s a ticking clock element to this one. With the Reptilians taking the weapon and Hoshi, Archer must convince the aquatics to join the fight before it’s too late. In return T’Pol and Trip must promise to destroy the spheres. This one brings the sphere builders into play properly. There’s lots of action. And it moves all the pieces into position ready for a finale.

Zero Hour
KEEPER: Well you want to see how the story ends right? And this is a pretty good series finale. Action packed. High stakes. A couple of returning characters make cameos. There’s two big battles on two fronts going on simultaneously, as Captain Archer takes a team to destroy the weapon (even if at one point it does look a little bit like it could be a scene on The Crystal Maze) which is now in Earth orbit and ready to attack. Meanwhile Enterprise must honour their promise to destroy the spheres and the Expanse. There’s big explosions, high stakes, phaser fights, fist fights, a slow-mo hero run as everything explodes behind him. It’s a pretty strong finale.

If you’ve never watched it but want to, here’s the 13 episode run I think would work in a nut shell, enjoy:

0. The Expanse (Season 2 finale)

1. The Xindi

2. Anomaly

3. Exile

4. The Shipment

5. Similitude

6. Chosen Realm

7. Proving Ground

8. Stratagem

9. Azati Prime

10. Damage

11. The Council

12. Countdown

13. Zero Hour

Obviously the series doesn’t quite work with all these omissions, I think it’s better because it’s slicker, tighter and maintains an overall higher quality, but there are things in those other episodes that come up again. However in an ideal world if they had been commissioned for a 13 part series the elements of the other episodes that you need would all have fitted into the ones I kept. But in case they don’t:

Dan’s Bonus Episode Idea: Falling between Stratagem and Azati Prime. Since there’s a couple of time travel episodes I cut from this series, what might have been fun would be to make a whole episode out of Daniels taking Archer to the future where the Federation and Xindi are working together. Archer, Trip and Malcolm could be taken to the future, working as observers on the Enterprise-J and forced to work in collaboration with a future crew and also work with their enemies. They confront their prejudices and gather the evidence they need to show the council. Any gaps in the narrative caused by missing out episodes could be squeezed in here. Also what if you relocated the story time-wise to the 24^th Century and put Archer and co. on the USS Titan, Riker’s ship? Now you have a mid-season fun crossover episode, a trailer that will bring back fans whose viewership may have slipped in the first 2 seasons of Enterprise, all the design elements associated with Star Trek that Enterprise changed, and a much better use of Riker and Troi than that fucking awful season 4 episode.

What do you think? Would these cuts make it better? Would they make it worse? Would you change anything? Do you like it as a series in the first place? Will you watch it this way next time? To be honest, as long as I don’t need to watch North Star ever again, I will be happy.