I recently had a conversation with fellow Prairie Nerd Jason Powers about canon and how important integrity of plot truly is in regards to franchises.
I started thinking about the controversy around Enterprise, and how it was handled with the fans. Enterprise carried its weight as a show, with the same teams that made TNG, DS9 and Voyager. The visual effects were superb and the series was filmed in HD, so it showed more detail than any other trek series before it.
However, to this day many Trek fans ignore it or even spew vile hatred towards it. Why is this?
Canon InconsistenciesIf you're a fan of any franchise, you know that consistency is not only important, it's imperative in keeping up with new content and events. It adds gravitas to new stories and ideas, and gives you the warm, fuzzy feeling when you see your favorite character cross the screen.
Admit it, we all get those fuzzy feelings.
So when Enterprise aired, the producers of the series said they were going with 'prequels' to all of the Trek series. That was a surprise, but fans were eager to see how Starfleet officers handled problems without their 24th century technology. Were we going to see bad warp drives, lasers, and missles?
However by the first episode, fans became all too aware of what was happening. The Enterprise looked like an Akira class ship that had debuted not 5 years before as an advanced class of starship, and was only seen in a movie. It's not a short amount of time, but with a franchise spanning 40+ years, it's too new to be ignored.
On top of that, we saw fully functioning warp drives that were only half of their descendants ability. However in the story, Earth had just come out of planet wide devastation. Such technological feats didn't make sense with the rest of established Trek.
Then you had the Vulcans who were not only written as emotional, but vicious. They were only a few steps away from being Romulans, when Spock stated that it had been a VERY long time since they suppressed emotions. Then there are all of the odd little bits of inconsistencies that just don't jive with how Rodenberry described the beginning of the Federation took place.
That said, the series by itself was fairly solid, but needed a lot of character development that we finally saw in Season 4 when Manny Coto took over.
So can we reconcile the massive failures of canon in Enterprise with the fans and still keep a decent show in the Trek family? Yes.
Alternate realityEnterprise producer and writer Brannon Braga stated informally, in a commentary of the Episode "Regeneration" that the Enterprise timeline existed because of Star Trek: First Contact. He tried to recant, but I don't think he should have. It makes perfect sense. The events of First Contact expose the Zephram Cochrane to technology 400 years more advanced than his own, so instead of a natural evolution of technology, the new reality speeds up the process.
This would explain nearly everything in Enterprise. Phasers, photon torpedos, warp 5 drives, akira-class designs, etc. This would also keep Enterprise as a Trek series, and most fans are not against alternate reality shows. This way everyone is happy, except for the message board trolls who insist all is canon no matter what.
Perhaps had the show branded itself as an alternate reality, we could have seen more seasons. Manny Coto stated that he wanted the crew to visit the Cloud City and other fan favorites. Production designer Doug Drexler recently released images of what were his plans to gradually transform the Enterprise with refits over the course of the show. Now that is something I would have liked to see.
