was when Captain Archer exclaimed he was a super fan of water polo!It was finally getting good with decent plotlines in season 4 then it got axed.
Enterprise and Voyager both could have been so much better.
was when Captain Archer exclaimed he was a super fan of water polo!Yep. Ironically season 4 of Enterprise was the only decent season, then it got axed. If season 4 had been season 1, the show's audience wouldn't have declined the way it did. Enterprise's best decision was when they developed previously established alien races that we knew little about, like the Andorians.
Voyager was better than Enterprise, especially when it came to interesting characters (like the holographic Doctor), but it was uneven. The biggest problem with Voyager is that some individual episodes were excellent, but the show overall was a disappointment and never lived up its premise. Having them stranded on the other end of the galaxy where nothing is familiar should have made the series like the X-Files of the Star Trek franchise. Instead, they kept rehashing old stuff like the Borg.
That being said, I'm probably in the minority because I don't agree with the sentiment that "Star Trek belongs on TV". It originated on TV, and I'd like to see it come back someday in the right hands, but I don't want a repeat of the 90s when some Rick Berman-type producer is oversaturing the franchise with multiple TV series running simultaneously, and giving us a bunch of soap operaish filler episodes.
Since Paramount has ignored the animated series, that basically means the "canon" Star Trek survived from 1970-1986 WITHOUT a new TV series. It prospered in reruns and on the big screen, and then there was genuine surprise and curiosity from the public when it was totally revamped as Star Trek: The Next Generation. At the time, people thought a totally new cast and ship wouldn't work, and there was speculation that TNG would be canceled after one season.
Since a lot of fans think the JJ Abrams films (which focus on fistfights and explosions) are "not real Star Trek", I'm also going to get some flack by saying I'm fine with a new TV series being set in the Abrams universe. The "old" Trek universe was beat to death by Berman and Enterprise was the final nail in the coffin, you can't revive that. That being said, do I want Abrams producing and micromanaging a new Trek TV series? Absolutely not! Hire a real producer who "gets" Star Trek and can do it justice, and add some meat to the Abrams universe. We don't want a repeat of the 90s when Berman was micromanaging the films AND the TV series at the same time. Trek should look and feel different on the small screen.