1. It is a fresh start, the temperal cold war should be a hint that they are not going to follow the old time line.
2. It is NOT ladened with political correctness, it has a little now and then, but nothing like ST:Next Generation, DS9 or Voyager.
3. They are not the biggest boys on the block and they know better than to act like it.
4. The human characters actually act like humans and not like wooden pc riddeled puppets.
5. Archer reminds me of Kirk, except that he smart enough to know better than to screw every pretty alien female that he meets. Die hard Terkies, you have to admit that Kirk’s love life did can back to haunt him on a couple of occasions.
6. Trip is a gentleman, who acts like a gentleman. And he has a sense of humor and is pro-life to boot.
7. In the Enterprise series there is not always a happy ending, there ARE unintended consequences, like in Cogenitor. Trip meant well but things happen.
8. The show is somewhat linear, in that what happens in the last episode is carried over to the next episode.
9. No one really wants to use the transporter. The crew of the Enterprise is intellegent enough to know that it is not a good idea to screw around with your own molecules.
10. The doctor of the Enterprise has come up with the most creative way yet to use a tribble, as petfood for his many animals.
Trekkers, please.
And Kirk was sexist and a womanizer, as I have noted, so no excuses are made for the realities of TV show sales in those days.
They all had to end with a fist fight. And no one used seat belts. But we nerds still loved it.
Actually, it's been veering too far to the left for my taste. A few episodes have been so PC I can't even watch them. For contrast, Next Generation was a total PC gagger, I loved DS9 and Voyager, and only one episode of Voyager was so PC I turned it off.
Another problem with Enterprise is that the actors have not transcended their roles. By that, I mean that they are always just actors reading a script. They have not managed to attain that magic quality found in so many other shows, where the actors convincingly become the roles they play.
Furthermore, as a scientist, I have a big problem with ALL of these SF shows: is it too much to ask to have a scientific advisor on staff to tell the writers whether something is actually scientifically plausible or not?