It's ironic that the last Star Trek television show should be about the first journey of the Starship Enterprise. And that it should be a complete failure. I woke up this morning wondering why that was, and the answer came to me that there were two main problems: one was the premise of the show. The other, the casting.
Do those who watch Star Trek really care how it all began? Do we want to watch people who are like us using technology that's really not that advanced? Of course not: Star Trek is not about us as we are. It's about the far future because it's on the future that we base our hopes and dreams. We want to believe that there is a future in which human nature will triumph over itself and do the right thing. Consistently. Where everyone we know (and come to love) is a hero at one time or another, and the enemies all come from outside. Yes, each of the characters at one time or another may face situations where they grow and become more heroic, but the struggle with themselves is always in finding a greater truth than the one for which they began their struggle.
Star Trek Enterprise just couldn't cut it. The characters were not heroic and never became heroic. The future looked a lot like our world. The technology we so admire in the Star Trek series hadn't been invented yet. And then there was the casting.
I firmly believe that if you'd put the original crew of Star Trek, or that of Star Trek Next Generation or Voyager on the bridge of this early day Enterprise, the show would have flourished. There were many flaws in the casting of Enterprise but three stand out: the Vulcan, the captain, and casting in general.
First there was the Vulcan. We've seen Vulcans before, and we know that they're completely logical. But does that mean they have the personality of a fruitfly? Spock had charm and charisma, a wink in his eye that we never saw but knew was there. Another purely logical character, Data, was a computer, but he won us over with his boyish charm and desire to be human. The only charms Tapol every displayed in her wooden portrayal of a Vulcan, were caught up inside her skin-tight body suit. And they looked fake too.
Captain Archer was a better actor than Tapol, but he never had the looks or the passion of Captain Kirk, could not make us believe with the authority of Captain Picard, nor rouse our sympathies with the compassion of Janeway. Archer just didn't have the power or skill to claim the bridge of the Enterprise and make us believe it was real.
Finally, the casting director chose two characters in the crew who looked so much alike onscreen, it was difficult to tell them apart.
All in all, casting was a disaster, the premise of the show missed the boat (at least we should have seen the first inklings of the dream) and Star Trek Enterprise went down in flames, the first Star Trek failure in forty years. We can only hope this outcome will not make Hollywood producers think that Star Trek can no longer provide monetary rewards. Because there's still an audience dreaming of technology that will save us from ourselves and build us ships that will take us to the stars, where we will behave like heros and always be the good guys.
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