[horatio]

I guess that all Trekkers (including me) consider ENT's last year the best. I wanna play devil's advocate for a moment.
Nearly all of the stories are plot- and not character-driven and many repeat previous TOS stories or add something new to them, be it Augments, Organians, smooth and crunchy Klingons or Orions.

Would such a lack of character moments and development have been possible in an earlier season?

Storm Front - ending the arc from the previous season
Home - great character moments
Borderland, Cold Station 12, The Augments - fan wank
The Forge, Awakening, Kir'Shara - great, continuing the Vulcan arc
Daedalus - forgetable
Observer Effect - fanwank
Babel One, United, The Aenar - great, laying the foundation for the Earth-Romulan War and thus the forming of the Federation
Affliction, Divergence - fanwank
Bound - fanwank
In a Mirror, Darkly - fanwank
Demons, Terra Prime - nice finale
These Are the Voyages - better to be ignored

That makes (from the perspective I assumed for argument's sake) 9/22 good episodes.

[Zardoz]

In a Mirror, Darkly-I disagree a bit here. I thought it was inspired to have the TOS Defiant, lost in the TOS Episode "Tholian Web" reappear in this timeframe. I thought it was insinuated that this was how the Empire came to look as it did in Mirror, Mirror. Becuase the Empire spent a century or so reverse engineering the Defiant instead of making their own technological strives.

[kevin]

There seems to be a lot of fanwank in there though.

I suppose kudos on Coto for trying to knit the show into TOS more properly but having read the synopsis for most of the fourth season, I'm not sure all his ideas for doing so were that great.

Given the convoluted 'Klingon Ridge' story - I rather prefer the elegant simplicity of Worf's 'We do not discuss it with outsiders'.

To me, that's more how TOS would have approached it rather than modern era Trek's allusion to genetics. Not saying it wasn't clever, as such, but clever and satisfying are not always connected.

[horatio]

Retconning the smooth Klingons, such that they have the blood of Khan in them, that is definitely fanwank.
A non-military Klingon and his concept of honour were more interesting to me.

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by horatio

Retconning the smooth Klingons, such that they have the blood of Khan in them, that is definitely fanwank.
A non-military Klingon and his concept of honour were more interesting to me.

We could argue that all the Trek films and series have "fanwank" parts/episodes to them. Alot of these were good ideas that could have been done better.

[Roysten]

I agree that Affliction/Divergence were a bit of a fanwank and that the idea of a non-soldier Klingon was more interesting, building on season 2s 'Judgement'.

I really enjoyed In a Mirror Darkly, I think it's one of ENTs best episodes, DS9 got it's Mirror episodes, why can't ENT (I think DS9 was much more fanboy then ENT was with the Mirror universe).

Borderland, Cold Station 12 and The Augments were good in my opinion, a strong story with some decent themes and allegories in there. The only place I thought it was fanwank like was at the very end when Soong practically forced the link between him and Noonien making Data on the audience, to me hints and nods to the other series should be more subtle.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Roysten

Borderland, Cold Station 12 and The Augments were good in my opinion, a strong story with some decent themes and allegories in there. The only place I thought it was fanwank like was at the very end when Soong practically forced the link between him and Noonien making Data on the audience, to me hints and nods to the other series should be more subtle.

That line was indeed unnecessary as it was already quite obvious that this Doctor Soong is an ancestor of Data's creator.

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by Roysten

I agree that Affliction/Divergence were a bit of a fanwank and that the idea of a non-soldier Klingon was more interesting, building on season 2s 'Judgement'.

I really enjoyed In a Mirror Darkly, I think it's one of ENTs best episodes, DS9 got it's Mirror episodes, why can't ENT (I think DS9 was much more fanboy then ENT was with the Mirror universe).

Borderland, Cold Station 12 and The Augments were good in my opinion, a strong story with some decent themes and allegories in there. The only place I thought it was fanwank like was at the very end when Soong practically forced the link between him and Noonien making Data on the audience, to me hints and nods to the other series should be more subtle.

I tend to agree.

[Roysten]

Recently just watched the Observer Effect again, whilst a bit of a fanwank I actually quite enjoyed it. I think one of it's problems though is that like many episodes that link to previous episodes the point is stressed too much, let the people who know the history have their nod to continuity and give enough information so that intrigued new viewers so that they know what's going on without forcing them to see it.

Organians aside though the episode commits a sadly common sin in Star Trek, that being pretending main characters are going to die when it's obvious that they won't, examples being Worf in Ethics, Spock in Spock's Brain and The Doctor in The Swarm.

DS9 does it surprisingly well though in episodes like Change of Heart and Rapture where the focus is less on are they going to die and more on the other issues in the episode and how the crew is responding to that.