3 reasons why Star Trek: Enterprise got a bad rap early on

The theme song

To paraphrase Jake McDorman from The Newsroom, I love this song and I don’t know why you don’t. Oh, it’s cheesy. It’s so cheesy people have to go on heart medication due to the blockages that it causes. It’s so cheesy that people have to scrape off some just because of how cheesy it is. It’s so cheesy and I love it.

Admittedly, it is the opposite of Star Trek. While the song is eternally optimistic it’s also incredibly not Star Trek. Imagine if the next Star Wars film opened up with Ariana Grande instead of John Williams. There’d be a riot and rightfully so (that’s facetious but still). There are just some properties that have a certain sound to them. Star Trek, like Star Wars, was never about pop culture or pop music. While Star Wars happened thousands of years ago in a galaxy far far away, Star Trek is set in the future.

Admittedly, it’s always weird that all the Starfleet captains listen to classical music from a thousand years prior and not something “classical” from a few hundred years prior but still, modern pop culture has never played into the show.

So needless to say, that even though Rod Stewart’s song (re-recorded by Russell Watson for the show) is just so good, it was also the exact opposite of what Star Trek fans wanted. The new music made many suspect that UPN didn’t think Star Trek was good enough as is, and once fans feel their favorite thing is being nit-picked, it often doesn’t go well for anyone or anything.