9. Star Trek: Enterprise Xindi Attack Earth All Of Season 3
Now I am probably one of the few fans of Star Trek Enterprise in existence (sorry ladies, this one of a kind guy is spoken for!) but to me Star Trek Enterprise was at least an attempt and trying to give the franchise a much needed shot in the arm. Fans argue that it went against everything Roddenberry, it broke canon and that production was, putting lightly, crap across so many areas. Whilst this was true; I can argue that breaking from canon and deviating from Rodden-law has been two of the many reasons a certain two Star Trek films have seen such success in the last few years; they picked up from where Enterprise left off, Enterprise fell mostly because of production issues in my opinion, fans could have forgiven the break in canon if the show was more watchable. I digress, Im here to talk about when Enterprise jumped the shark; and no Im not going to say the minute it started! Enterprise had at least two good seasons that were at least entertaining but then for the third season they decided to mix things up a bit by introducing us to an alien race we had never encountered before; the Xindi. Enterprise as a whole was a very complex series within Star Trek so trying to explain the Xindi storyline will probably cause a low sense of self worth that youd be mistaken to thinking you had just left a One Direction concert. However the basis of the story was the Xindi had been led to believe by some evil race of the future that Earth was a threat to them and that they must be destroyed before they get too powerful, so the Xindi create a weapon with the help of these future dwellers, which looks like it was designed by George Lucas and Anthony Burgess, and launch an attack on Earth (attacking Florida, maybe they were sick of the queues at Disney). This then causes Starfleet to respond by sending the Enterprise to the Delphic Expanse (where the Xindi are dwelling) which is a huge nebula cloud where the laws of physics dont operate apparently. The whole of Season 3 followed this story, in fact Im fairly certain that Enterprise was one of the first TV Shows (probably after 24) that had a continual story running through a whole Season. Whilst this is common now and revolutionary in its day (I for one was initially excited) the tapestry quickly unravelled; the writers seemed to be struggling to come up with stories to keep the momentum going with the Xindi story, they restricted themselves and ultimately things which you would probably not see beyond the brainstorming session were green lit for lack of a better option. There were other things about this season that stick in fans throats as well; I think this was the first season that saw Star Trek actually added to the opening credits, they changed the already hated theme song to make it sound more acceptable and instead made it worse, Tpol became a more emotional Vulcan (oxymoron if ever there was one). Needless to say this season was the turning point for the few fans Enterprise had and whilst it did get one more season it was only through hardcore fan reaction that there was ever a season four, and even that wasnt enough to save the floundering franchise.