A Brand New "Enterprise"

This was their daily work. For these seven, it's a pretty spooky occasion. It's always something that's filled with awe and excitement and a little bit of trepidation and fear because they're really more like any one of us, if we were to find ourselves in a situation where we're about to run into an alien species. It would be a pretty scary thing and certainly not just a day-by-day occurrence the way it would be for a Picard or for a Janeway."

So it seems that what we'll see on Enterprise are people whose reactions to space exploration we can associate with. As fascinated with space as I am-and with as much reading and thinking about the stars as I do-I must admit that I would be pretty startled if I came face to face with an alien. Kirk loved them (in many senses of the word). He met them all the time. Picard, Sisko, and Janeway could make first contact between tea-time and the six-o'clock news and think nothing of it. But Captain Archer and his crew will seem a lot more like our contemporaries. Bakula says they even wear jeans and baseball caps sometimes. (And their uniforms have pockets!)

THE FINAL WORD (FOR NOW)
This isn't really my final word on Enterprise. I look forward to writing more about the series in the months to come. But for the moment, I'll wrap up with some final thoughts.

At first glance it may seem that this throwback to the "past" is just an attempt to recapture the magic the original series and the "something different each week" approach that was characteristic of that show. But the reality of the matter is that Voyager was more of an attempt to do this than Enterprise is. Enterprise writes an early chapter in the Star Trek saga that fills in missing details that all fans want to know about. Voyager took a ship and flung it across the galaxy simply to get it away from the crowded Alpha Quadrant, thus allowing a return to weekly encounters with new species. The problem with the Voyager approach is that it was forced. It had its moments, but overall it seemed to lack focus. In contrast, the new series finds an entire fan-base

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