Enterprise TV Show - Enterprise Television Show - Yahoo! TV

Had this show aired around the time when "The Next Generation" was ending, it would have gone on for many more seasons than it ended up getting (only 4 seasons before it was cancelled). This show is about the first human vessel sent into space to "seek out new life and boldly go where no man has gone before". It is set in the mid 22nd century, around 100 years or so before Captian Kirk's Enterprise. It really is an exciting show worth watching and it doesn't matter if you know much about Star Trek or not, you will still enjoy it.
This show was different than any of the four Star Trek shows before it as this one was more true to the Sci-Fi genre than the other shows, which I think were at many times like watching a 'space opera'. This show had a more rugged, rough sci-fi feel to it and since it was closest to our current time than any of the other shows, it was more about the excitement of how humans handle new situations in an unfamiliar setting, space. The relationship between the senior crew members was much more informal and relaxed as opposed to previous shows in which the command structure was very strict.
The first two seasons mainly show how the crew gets to know how to deal with new situations, technology, races and themselves. The third season is one long story arch and this is where we really get to see the relationships among crew members really develop to a new level. This season was also packed with the most intensity of any other season in Star Trek history and is an exhilerating experience for anyone watching it. This was also the first time that a whole season of Star Trek was devoted to a single continuuing story line. Finally, the fourth season was the most critically acclaimed one where veteran sci-fi writer "Manny Cotto" came in to tie all the loose knots and connect the different star trek series together using multi-episode story lines.
Well what led to the cancellation of the show? In my opinion, it was the first two seasons of the show that really sank the show. After stellar ratings of more than 12 million viewers for its pilot episode, the show creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga gave the same kind of one episode stories to viewers who had at that time been watching Star Trek for 15 straight years (1987-2001). The ratings had been slumping for Deep Space Nine and Voyager and instead of giving the devoted viewers something new, the creators just gave them a show with the same material but in a different setting. This alone was not enough to keep the viewers from leaving the show as they wanted something fresh and all they got was the same candy in a new wrapper. It wasn't until the third season that they tried something new, a full season based on a single continuuing storyline. This was my favorite season but for the viewers who were not watching the show regularly at that point, it was very hard for them to follow the storyline and this led to a further steady decline in ratings, leaving only the hardcore fans of the show. This full season storyline was a good idea but it should only be tried when you know you have a dedicated audience who will follow through with you. The final season was also amazingly creative as it tried to explain the dicrepencies between the different Star Trek shows and their time lines. The multi-episode story archs really helped in getting the real message across, which would have been impossible using the single episode story tradition. If this multi-episode story line technique had been used in the beginning of the first season to familiarize the crew to the viewers, it would have kept much of the high ratings from the pilot episode and this show could have gone where "no man gone has gone before" in terms of crativity and ratings.