I honestly think that music did more to hurt the show than anything else. It was the musical equivalent of starting EVERY EPISODE with a voiceover saying: “we hate all that old star trek. This is the new WB Network Star Trek, with 70% more down home, Midwestern American values! Yeehaw!”
Yep … completely agree and I’ve said the same before. Whether the producers liked it or not, the opening and its vibe is part of Trek. If you want to do a different kind of show … cool … but you’ve gotta meet fans somewhere in the middle. Starting the whole thing off with a complete undoing of the whole vibe of the thing is not the right way to meet fans in the middle.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but when I first saw enterprise, I honestly thought it was a cheap rip off that was bound to get sued, and the song was a huuuuge part in the that impression. “No Star Trek would start with that song, this is some weird corporatised shit”.
And the effect of that … to this day, even though I didn’t mind ENT S4, I don’t count it as part of (my) Trek (it also did particularly bad on the bechdel test). And to this day, even with new-Trek, we’re struggling to get new series that push Trek forward without being nostalgia driven, a reboot, prequel or maybe even all of the above (looking at you SNW!). Lower Decks, in this way, really does stand out (Prodigy too, though I haven’t seen it).
I liked the song when I was a kid and watched Enterprise (and I liked Enterprise in general) but growing up, the sheer American nationalism throughout the series was pretty unwatchable. Still leagues ahead of the all-American new Trek.
To quote the great Nicholas Meyer (Director of Wrath of Khan) who spoke on this topic:
“Roddenberry had his own utopian vision about the perfectibility of man, and I never really believed that. And I don’t think the show demonstrates that. I think it is about gunboat diplomacy. In the final analysis, the Enterprise fires. They’re always shooting and bringing civilization, and coming to worlds where they don’t approve of tyrannical enterprises – no pun intended – and they substitute their own quote unquote enlightened version of how society is supposed to work, which is essentially American.”