I hate to say it, Atrocities, but the ST franchise has been going downhill for awhile now. It's a natural outworking of the "We gotta top the Last series" syndrome, and it leads to things like this (totally screwing with the timeline so that entire series 'never happened' in-canon, whatever that means.)
(EDIT - a good turn of phrase I have heard about this syndrome is "jumping the shark". Apparently in one of the Last episodes of
Happy Days they had Fonzie jump his motorcycle over a pool full of sharks. They had fallen badly into the "gotta top the prior episode" syndrome, and it marked the beginning of the end of the series.)
IMHO, they ought to quitely retire ST for a period of time, rest their creative juices, and come back to it when nobody cares about "having to top the Last series".
ATTN: Paramount - Stick a fork in it, it's done...
(EDIT again - here's a
Jump the Shark Website's take on
Enterprise...
Link Here )
[ August 21, 2003, 11:52: Message edited by: General Woundwort ]