It's the principle.
Dec. 6th, 2005 05:46 pmOkay, I lied when I said I don't know what I like about Star Trek: Enterprise. But it's true that I can't point at anything specific about it that's what I like.
Phil Khan observes, in a roundtable in the current Webcomics Examiner, of a particular artist that he's not interested in what the guy does but loves that he does it. scarfwoman didn't like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, because that day she'd been in the mood for something familiar, whereas I liked it, being a student of the way a fiction evolves from one medium and era to the next.
Trekfans railed against Enterprise from the start - at least till season four when Coto, Brennert and the Reeves-Stevens signed on - because it kept poor continuity with the original series. (The reason the year four stories were better wasn't that they kept continuity. They may have been inspired by continuity but the bottom line is that they were better written.) Fans complained that Berman was trying to make Star Trek over his way. But that's what I liked about it. I said so from the start: I said it was the closest he'd gotten to remaking the first series (and in saying so I persuaded scarfmom to keep watching when she hadn't been persuaded by the first episode or two). I say that if Berman ran the franchise for fifteen years and then tried to make it over his way, he did need to be sacked, for someone who works faster. Yeah, I already confessed that Berman's execution left me lukewarm, but giving in to the fans didn't rescue the series either (except for those of us still watching who appreciated the better stories).
However ... the next person who tries to make Star Trek over will have an easier time of it if only because s/he won't be the first. Maybe s/he'll go whole hog and do an out-and-out remake instead of a sequel (or a prequel). You know it'll happen eventually.