2. Straying From Roddenberry's Vision
Gene Roddenberry had very specific ideas for how the universe would be two-hundred years in the future, and therefore had very specific rules for how his show would be run. They are legion, covering everything from production design to public health. But the ones affecting the rendering of stories and characters are the most precient. They are as follows: There will be no interpersonal conflict between the main cast. They are Starfleet officers and are the best of the best. Starfleet can do no wrong. Humanity surmounted it's moral quandaries in the interest of bettering itself Racism, sexism, poverty, strife, disease, war, and greed have all been eliminated. They will not appear on the show. Now, just to be clear, I don't believe that Roddenberry's rules make good storytelling, or even good television. There are in turns both hopelessly optimistic and aggressively naive, in the same way George Lucas believed that bra's don't exist in space. But they present an interesting challenge to those writing the show, as it forces them to come up with new conflicts and solutions. How can you broach the social ills of this century 200 years in the future? How can mankind fail, and how can they persevere at such and advanced level? I even think it's refreshing to see a cast come together instead of bickering about an issue for half an episode. Yet again, not so with Enterprise. As the first show completely free of Roddenberry's tradition, the narrative freedom afforded was often abused. More often than not, conflict was generated almost
completely from within the cast. What's more, the characters seem almost obstinately fallible. For at least the first two seasons, every episode's central action was motivated by Captain Archer pointedly doing something that the only reasonable person on the ship, T'Pol, told him
not to do. It's tiring to say the least, and maybe makes a case against so much narrative freedom. but only maybe. Because Enterprise's greatest fault is probably it's biggest boon.