Braga said it would be a "valentine" to the fans. Instead, it feels more like we've been the victim of grudge sex. It screws up "Pegasus"[TNG7] and tries like hell to screw up Enterprise by using the characters and referring to events that occurred while also contradicting both at every turn. It is, in effect, the ultimate expression of Berman and Braga's inability to write.
That, of course, is the nice theory . . . the alternate theory would be that it's a two-for-one special of retribution . . . after all, not only does the Enterprise part of the tale attempt to unwrite the threads woven through the fourth and best season of Enterprise (which was not run by Braga), but furthermore the episode wrecks all sense out of one of Ron D. Moore's babies, "Pegasus". (The bitter end between Ron Moore and Brannon Braga after the end of DS9 has been commented on elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Braga had a great deal of jealousy, no doubt heightened now due to the success of Battlestar Galactica.)
Other writers like Sussman have said that the view of B&B as evil Trek-destroyers is misguided. And yet, it is so very difficult to see how this could be the case. Braga stepped back, Coto stepped forward, and the fans loved what Coto helped to create.
The reasons for the demise of Enterprise have been and will be discussed at length. There will be unceasing discussions about UPN, Paramount brass, "franchise fatigue", and so on. In the final analysis, though, Coto and the writers of the fourth season proved that there are still good stories to be told in the Trek universe, and that the only fatigue involved was that of Berman and Braga and of the fans in relation to their less-than-stellar talent.
They may not have intentionally destroyed Trek, but they certainly served and aided the Trek-bashers. Whether the franchise can ever return after bashing became such a popular pasttime for some so-called fans is unclear, but I predict that over time ENT4 will remind people of what might've been, and what could be again.
I hate to see Trek off the airwaves, but if that's what it takes to enable talented people like Coto or the Reeves-Stevens duo to come back in a few years and make Trek the way it should be made, I'm all for it. And if Trek never returns . . . if the real world catches up too far and makes the whole thing too anachronistic, or if the powers that be never get their act in gear . . . well, at least with the last season of Enterprise we got to see good Trek again, instead of there being no counterpoint to the idea of "too many trips to the well".
