Star Trek: Enterprise - Season One [Blu-ray]

Star Trek Enterprise: The Complete First Season(Released: 2005 by Paramount Home Entertainment)Another Looong DVD Review by Joe TorciviaIn the beginning, Zefram Cochrine invented Warp Drive technology. The rest was (TV, movie, and merchandising) history!Somehow, I'd never seen STAR TREK ENTERPRISE before. That is until an Amazon.com DVD sale proved irresistible, and I finally took the plunge.I didn't know what to expect. What I did know is that, while I loved both STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES ("TOS") and STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION ("TNG"- Great shows for different reasons!), each succeeding TREK series left me less and less satisfied.I liked DEEP SPACE NINE ("DS9") less than TNG, and VOYAGER ("VOY") less than DS9. As VOYAGER was winding down, ENTERPRISE ("ENT") was starting up. Life's ups and downs notwithstanding, I was also not too eager to sample yet another TREK show that would presumably continue the downward trend.Elaborating on why I felt this way toward DS9 and VOY, I can only say that each moved further away from the "core" of what I thought STAR TREK should be.Both series were not about a ship (Extra points if the ship is named "Enterprise"!) in active service to the Federation. Yes, Voyager was a ship too, but it was (um...) "lost in space", full of weird characters, and wasn't nearly as much fun as was the Jupiter II.There were also too many strange aliens on these shows. In contrast, TOS and TNG were far more relatable to us humans. Vulcans, Klingons, and the occasional Betazoid are okay, but I really started drawing the line at regularly featured Ferengi (DS9 - I HATE Ferengi!) and the very annoying Neelix (VOY).ENTERPRISE goes back to the beginning and, much as J.J. Abrams has done in his recent feature film, starts to tell the story from the ground (Earth's "ground") on up.Scott Bakula, as Captain Jonathan Archer, is the perfect middle-ground between "womanizer/ cowboy" James T. Kirk and "stiff-upper-lipped" Jean Luc Picard.The crew he leads is predominantly human (Engineer Trip Tucker, Armory Officer Malcolm Reed, Navigator Travis Mayweather, and Translator Hoshi Sato), with just the right number of aliens... Vulcan Science Officer Sub-Commander T'Pol and genial Doctor Phlox (a Denobulan who is part of the "Inter-Species-Medical-Exchange").As this series took place a century before the original STAR TREK, efforts were made to look... not merely retro, but "pre-retro", if you will. This Enterprise is small, almost cramped, compared with later models. Try as they might, the set design crew couldn't always make this 2001 show look 100 years more primitive than its 1966 predecessor.The clothing had to step back as well. Starfleet Admirals wore basic (but somewhat futuristically designed) military dress uniforms - and Archer and his crew wore garb that was a cross between NASA gear and the crew jumpsuits from VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA.Oh, and Archer has a DOG! A beagle named "Porthos". A first for a TREK series!As is our custom in these reviews, we'll break it into CONS and PROS.The CONS:Packaging: Why is it that ALL STAR TREK SERIES have packaging that is both annoying and difficult to open and negotiate?! The discs of STAR TREK ENTERPRISE are housed in a large "clamshell" pack that opens like an oversized stick of deodorant!Attached to the package with TWO DABS OF GLUE is a cardboard piece that wraps AROUND THE TOP FRONT, BACK, AND BOTTOM FRONT of the package! You cannot open the package without removing the cardboard. BUT, on this cardboard, is the ONLY PLACE that it is identified as being the FIRST SEASON! So, if you remove it, nothing else on the package can distinguish it from subsequent seasons. WHY?Menu Navigation: STAR TREK SERIES often have the most difficult, and outright noisy Menus to navigate. Though, I must admit that the menus of ENTERPRISE are much easier to navigate than that of the Original Series. Still, it is a CON.No Skipping the End Credits: To my surprise, I found that the EPISODE END CREDITS - the SAME end credits that Paramount routinely shrunk, squashed, and did not allow to be read in its original UPN TV broadcasts - COULD NOT BE CHAPTER-SKIPPED on it's DVDs. Of course, I can choose to fast forward through them, if need be. BUT... Just thought I'd share the irony, folks!The PROS:Wide Screen: STAR TREK ENTERPRISE is the first TREK series to be filmed in wide-screen. When played on my HD TV and upconverted via Blu-ray player, it's a delight to behold!The Episodes - with a special emphasis on the pilot:"Broken Bow": No Star Dates here! This takes place in the almost-relatable year 2151!It has been 90-100 years since Cochrine's introduction of Warp Drive and travel to the distant stars is now a more a reality than a possibility.The planet Vulcan has taken notice of these early experiments, and has sent emissaries to Earth... to "guide us" along the correct path. This is a SUPERB inversion of all those TOS and TNG episodes where the Federation declines or refuses to share its superior technologies with developing planetary cultures, due to the "Prime Directive".Resentment toward our Vulcan "friends" has grown, as they are suspect of holding back on technological developments and suppressing the development of Earth's Warp Program efforts.Jonathan Archer, the son of Henry Archer - an associate of Cochrine's - is selected to be captain of the just completed "Enterprise NX-01", a forerunner of the more familiar later USS Enterprise NCC-1701. The Enterprise NX-01 can reach the as-of-yet unheard of speed of Warp Factor 5! Later ships could travel at Warp 9 and above.Without spoiling too much for those who STILL haven't seen it, we have such grand moments as:The great speech about "boldly going, etc." that all starship captains seem to spout was actually from an historic speech by Zefram Cochrine. The speech is played on the occasion of the launch of the Enterprise NX-01.The first human to go through a transporter. Under duress, I might add. It was originally, not thought of for human use. Shuttle-Pods are routinely used for transport.The introduction of the "phase-pistol" (with two settings "Stun" and "Kill" - nothing in between).No Deflector Shields yet. Instead, they "polarize the hull plating".No phaser-weaponry that can be fired by the ship. There are "photon torpedoes", but they are exactly that - torpedoes that are physically loaded as on a submarine! "Phase Cannons" (the forerunner of ship phaser-weaponry) are developed during Season One.Communicators are of the good old "flip variety".The initial mission involves a Klingon that was pursued to Earth by hostiles unknown, and the sensitive diplomatic mission to return him to the Klingon homeworld. Klingons were an unknown species at the time - the one was even referred to as a "Kling-got" by the admiral in charge.We also meet the series' new major villains: The Suliban. This race is conducting a campaign of aggression against the Klingons and other species, taking its marching orders from a mysterious presence from "The Future". This campaign, referred to as the "Temporal Cold War" slowly unfolds over the course of the season - and beyond.Some pilot, eh? Now, a few other highlights..."The Andorian Incident": Archer and crew stumble onto the ongoing hostilities between the Vulcans and the blue-skinned, antenna-ed Andorians, with unexpected revelations. Perhaps my favorite episode of this season."Cold Front" Archer is surprised to find his steward hails from 900 years in the future, and is a player in the "Temporal Cold War"."Dear Doctor": A grim choice on the part of Archer and Doctor Phlox results in the first contemplations of "The Prime Directive" of non-interference with alien cultures."Sleeping Dogs" Archer and company assist the crew of a doomed Klingon ship. They don't want the assistance."Shuttlepod One": Trip and Malcolm's ordeal marooned aboard a lost shuttlepod."Acquisition": A boarding party of Ferengi incapacitates the crew of NX-01, and begins to loot the ship. ENTERPRISE does the impossible. A Ferengi story that I actually like!"Detained": A militaristic society imprisons Archer and Travis in a detention camp filled with Suliban victims."Vox Sola": A web-like creature invades the Enterprise, takes over a cargo hold, and wraps its captured victims as would a spider! The images of Archer and his fellow captives webbed-up are effectively disgusting. A visual masterpiece!"Desert Crossing": More striking scenic visuals, as a seemingly friendly desert warlord takes Archer and Trip hostage to obtain knowledge of his enemies. Clancy Brown ("Superman the Animated Series", "Lost") is a standout as the warlord."Shockwave": Ah, what would a modern STAR TREK series be without a season-ending cliffhanger episode! This one reveals tantalizingly more about the "Temporal Cold War" and the devastating consequences for the Earth when Archer is removed from the time stream.Extra Features:Numerous features on the genesis and background of the series are included. Scott Bakula appears in a featurette to introduce the series. Bakula is also profiled as Captain Archer. There are also cast impressions of the season and outtakes.There is an audio commentary track for the pilot, "Broken Bow", with producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, and two additional pop-up "text commentaries" by production staffers Michael and Denise Okuda.My favorite feature is: "Star Trek Time Travel: Temporal Cold Wars and Beyond". The "Temporal Cold War" of ENTERPRISE is examined, along with all other notable instances of time travel that occurred in the various TREK series and films.Overall:I'm sorry I missed STAR TREK ENTERPRISE in its original 2001-2005 run. From this first season - and what I've seen of the second season thus far - it is severely underrated, likely from its having come along at a time when the mass audience (myself included) was suffering a prolonged case of "Trek Fatigue".If you are so inclined, give it a chance. You won't be sorry!

I am bringing this review over from the DVDs. It still holds true!This is a long time coming, and I know there is already a ton of reviews for this series. I just have to give my take on this series just too kind of cleanse my soul after watching it for the second time.Broken Bow was the start of the series, and it had a lot of promise and it gave me so much hope for the show. Who wouldn't want to see the missions before the Original Trek Crew of Kirk and Spock? In this episode we see the Klingons for the first time in the Trek universe and to any fan of Star Trek you immediately notice something that most casual fans might not. So it starts to make you think about the possibilities of what could have happened. It was a great time to be a Trek fan.Season One started out strong and for the most part was a great first step in building the Trek universe, That said Season two was dragged down by time travel, too much was used to try and explain things. It was unnecessary and a cheap way to explain things. In my opinion it brought the show down and ruined what could have been an outstanding show. The second season turns Enterprise into an acceptable TV drama that was to busy trying to confuse everyone.Season two brought more time travel into the mix with trying to expand the "Temporal Cold War". Season one had the "Temporal Cold War" and if you didn't get it by the end of season one, season two and three throw it in your face every time they can. It really cheapens the Trek universe and it reveals too much to Captain Archer. Even with all the future information given to him you wonder why he makes some of the decisions he makes knowing full well what would happen if he just did it another way. With the information given to Captain Archer about the Federation being formed you feel as if it deprives you and him of the experience of creating it. There was no need for time travel in this show. Season two was were a lot of the fans left the show on to better things.If Season two was not enough to make you turn it off, Season three was another good reason to do so. As with season two and one the "Temporal Cold War" plays a big role with the Xindi learning of how Earth is going to destroy their home world from another faction of the Cold War feeding the Xindi lies. This in an attempt to destroy humans so the other species manipulating the Xindi could eventually take over the known universe. So you guessed it, more time travel and more nonsense. The Season starts off with the Xindi sending a massive weapon of mass destruction to Earth which ends up killing 7 million people. So humans and Enterprise has to go to "The Expanse" to find the Xindi and stop them from completing an even bigger weapon that would destroy Earth in one blow. This Season also tries to strengthen a romance that you feel was developing slightly in the First and Second seasons. The season ends with Enterprise being thrown back into time. Once again you're left wondering if they will just let the "Cold War" die and get back to being Star Trek!!If you managed to stick with the show you're finally made it to the best part of what unfortunately became the last season of this show. It started out weak with the whole time travel thing, but they finally stopped the nonsense with time travel and focused on what was important. It got the series back on track, and featured more of the aliens we have come to know. The first part started off with the Augments and even has a reference to the "Botany Bay" and "KHAN"! The show also started to explain the Klingon disease that changed their appearance to what we saw in the Original Show with Kirk. This Fourth season was what we craved the show to be from the start and it was delivering on so many levels only to destroy you in the finial episode.The last episode is what makes people cringe with fear when they watch this show. They know what's coming. I for one hated the last episode as it basically makes you feel the whole experience was a joke from the start. Was it real or all fake? The little joke they had going though the whole series about a chief which you never see until now makes you wonder was it all worth it. The last episode cheapens what the whole cast had worked for and basically turned it into a half baked Star Trek "The Next Generation" episode.A few things could have been changed and this episode would have been great! Change one would be get rid of the TNG cast and all references to TNG. Let it be about Enterprise and not William Riker! Don't kill off an awesome character that everyone agrees is one of the best in the show for no reason. This was done just to make fans talk, and it was senseless, there was no point in the killing and it seemed so forced like it was a joke to the writers. Lastly show the speech we all wanted to see. Why was this never shown? It was start of the federation, the speech that made it comes into being and nothing was shown. If you took out all the worthless TNG crap they would have had plenty of time to show the speech. Besides that it was an ok episode and I understood what they were trying to do, but it failed miserably. ( I really believe if you just take out the one death, everyone would be happy with this episode, it would not make it so hated like it is. Still a bad episode but that one death thows it over the top of being bad).Besides the last episode and the clunky 2nd and 3rd season, this is a great show. The fourth season really does hit a home run, and it's too bad they canceled it. I hope they could do something in the future with Star Trek. It's like something has been missing for so long from TV and it needs to come back in the "Original Time Line". Maybe the first episode should try and fix the damage done to Enterprise with another holodeck recreation of the 'Real Events". Having said how badly this show ends, I would still recommend this show to Trek Fans. It's a great show and it was enjoyable to watch twice though.Update:I got the Blu-Ray and I am not blown away by the picture, but I am very happy. I never really owned the real DVD set so(I bought my DVD's in Afghanistan, so what I really have is a Ripped version of the show. :-), I thought it was about time I buy the show in a proper format.First, I would like everyone to understand the reason why the first season of "Enterprise" is not up to picture quality like "The Original Star Trek" or "The Next Generation". This is not a remaster of "Enterprise". This is simply a transfer of the original film to blu-ray disk. I am not the only one to realize this, Blu-Ray.com does not really talk about this, but another review does. Read the Digitalbits review it's very spot on!!The picture is an upgrade over the DVD's, but its not a huge upgrade. If you are like me and have not bought the DVDs yet, than this is the set you want. You will not be disappointed in the quality. The first episode was the worse picture out the whole season, but it did get better along the way. I believe this is due to the fact that the show was filmed when HD was still very young. On the plus side it's the first Star Trek filmed in Widescreen.The sound is not great, but it is 5.1 and it's an upgrade over the DVD's. The best thing about "Enterprise" on blu-ray is the special features. Words can not express the amount of extra's you get on this Blu-Ray. The extras alone prove how much love CBS put into this Blu-Ray set. If you think CBS is taking your money for a substandard blu-ray than the Special Features prove you wrong. All of the DVD extras and even the Best Buy Extras are presented here, plus a few new ones that will blow you away on the amount of information given on why the show was not what it could have been.Overall the score for this release is a solid 8 out of 10 for me. The picture could have been remastered, but I understand the reason why it was not. The picture was state of the art back in 2001 but today it does not hold up. The sound is good but could have been great. Despite the little problems "Enterprise" on blu-ray comes warping out of space dock onto your TV in a great package and is a overall great value.

This is how Star Trek was meant to be.The human kind had made contact with other species, get together as one humanity and starting to explorespace to extend knowledge and discover new possibilities.In the beginning a lot of dangers awaits the crew, adapting to new technology, getting really the feeling how difficult first contact is,find ways to solve impossible problems... and and and....The actors are doing an excellent job making this visible.The characters are believable, no "supertalents" or "heros", just human with known strength and weaknesses.Also life on board. Like in a space navy vessel. The design of the Enterprise is really good, down to the smallest detail.The quality of the episodes?Well, from perspective of style I would say like the original series. Enjoyable when picking up a random episode.But you get the real feeling when seeing several episodes in a row.The crew is slowly melting together as a team.As with all Star Trek series, this one also need time to pick up speed.The story fits good. There are some minor points of discussion. The Klingons are from my point of view a little bit too friendly.It does not fit with the information about the first days with the Klingons in the explanations of the other series.The Ferengi fits better. Other species (not really mentioned in other series) are very interesting and fit in very believable.Relationship with the vulcans are a little bit hostile, but this is explained also very good.The Quality of picture and sound is up to date. Just in some space effects (landing on planets) you see some minor leaks in quality.You can easily see the work with the green wall. This could be better.The creature effects, masks, wounds in battle, is just fine.Handling of the DVD itself is the best so far.Why this series only last for 4 seasons?My opinion: If you start comparing characters with the other series you will soon have a problem.Kirk, Picard, Janeway are legends. Also the characters in the second line are much stronger: Spock, Riker, Chakote, Kira... well there are no real counterpartsin Enterprise.The technology is much less advanced. This also might be a problem, because the crew of Enterprise has a real challenge solving problems because of that.In addition you can easily become the impression, that the crew is not really searching for new technology.You can become bored or disturbed by this.So you can do yourself a favor: STOP comparing from the beginning of the first episode. If you let the crew and story told on itself, you have a lot of fun.

I've been a fan of Star Trek since the early 80's, back when BBC2 began showing the Original at 6pm but doubt many were ever really that aware of Enterprise, because Channel 4 gave it such a low profile. In some respects it came too soon. Hot on the heels of Voyager, TV was saturated with the likes of Picard, Sisko and Janeway, all running around in 24th Century shows, blinding audiences with technobabble... rather than offering straight forward adventure. Keep an open mind and give this a shot, it got better & better over its short 4 year run. One piece of advice, try to look beyond the theme music to the inspiring montage of human exploration. "Faith of the Heart" polarises opinon between love and hate. There are some thought provoking episodes in amongst the action and rough 'n' ready crew talk, as well some intrigue provided by the Vulcans who had never quite been explored this well before. By the time cancellation hit in 2005, we all thought they had struck gold, exploring the backstory of countless original and Next Gen episodes (such as "How did the Federation form?", "Why did the Klingon's appearance look change?", "How did Starfleet fight a war with the Romulans, but never see each other?"). With so many prequel themes to explore, I really wish they hadn't pulled the plug... They should bring it back, especially since the new movie references a certain "Admiral Archer and his beagle"... albeit jokingly.

Great series, took a few episodes to get in to but now really enjoying it, well worth watching.

The design and compact of the box tell you the truth I.ve not started watching them yet but I.m sure the quality is great

Very pleased with the quality of the set and the prompt delivery.