SilverWook said:
Berman and company tried to escape the brand name for a while. Star Trek wasn't even part of the show's title early on. Probably a mistake in retrospect.
Dropping the "Star Trek" name from the first season always amused me. I felt like they were trying hard to make it different from the other shows. See, look, it isn't even really Star Trek! No Star Trek in the title, see? And check out this snazzy theme song? Now does that sound like Star Trek to you?
And then the very first scene you see in the pilot episode is a running Klingon. *face palm*
There was a gap of mere months between the end of Voyager and the premiere of Enterprise. (Voyager actually shot an episode on some shiny new sets built for Enterprise.) Nemesis was also in the pipeline. Maybe there was too much Trek product at the time? It might have been better had the franchise taken a little vacation for a year or two. Disney ought to take heed as they prepare to saturate us with Star Wars.
At the time Enterprise first started airing, I'd spent years watching TNG with my dad during its original run, never saw more than an episode or two DS9, and had stopped caring about Voyager a few seasons before it ended.
My first response to it was rolling my eyes at the prequel idea, and after seeing a few episodes, it felt like every character on the show was a knock-off of another ST character we'd already known. T'Pol and Seven dressed very similarly, were obviously both intended as eye candy, and spoke almost identically, and it was hard to see the new doctor and not think of Kneelix (from both the fish out of water aspect, and the comic relief aspect).
I was kind of enjoying the return to the general sci-fi space exploration roots during season one, but then there was that whole damn attack on earth storyline that encompassed the second and third seasons, which was an obvious reference/reflection on 9/11 and the following "war on terror".
Season four had some fun stuff in it, but that only happened because the show was cancelled and they had to hurry up and cover all the cool concepts they had planned on covering eventually. Too little, too late.
I feel like the death of Star Trek was due to an over saturation. Enterprise didn't have anything new to offer us, and it couldn't even figure out its own identity. I don't think we even knew exactly what we wanted from it, or even if we really wanted it at all, while it had no clue what it wanted to give us.
Someone in the General SW section under the J. J. Wars thread posted about how Star Trek fans hated/complained about everything Star Trek, so it made sense to take it from them and turn it into a profitable watered down silly mainstream action series.
I'm still annoyed that this happened, I liked what Trek was, I enjoyed those TNG movies quite a lot actually, with the exception of the terrible Nemesis, which I still had fun watching. I didn't hate everything ST that came out, and I don't think the fans really did either, but I think we did all need a break from it. We went literally over 15 years with Star Trek on the air non-stop (TNG - ENT). I wish they could have slowed it down a bit and continued it later. Sometimes less is more. I would have liked to have seen more TNG films, or perhaps even another series taking place after Voyager a few years down the road. Instead we went from over saturation, to losing it all hook, line, and sinker. The TNG era ST universe I grew to really love is dead, sadly, and I doubt it will ever be seen again. So it goes.