Star Trek: The Original Series had three core characters that most of the episodes were based around—Captain James T. Kirk , Mr. Spock , and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy . The remaining cast were supporting characters that were offered little in the way of character arcs.
To one Star Trek: Enterprise actor, Anthony Montogmery, who portrayed Travis Mayweather for four seasons, Enterprise became just like The Original Series. In an interview Montgomery gave Trekmovie, when asked if they had any knowledge about the potential plans for their charactes had the series been renewed for a fifth season, he said he would have liked to have learned more about his character. He followed that desire with a statement of how things had unfolded on Enterprise, "You guys saw Enterprise, our series became likeThe Original Series. It was about the captain, the engineer, and the Vulcan. So I was excited when we did “Horizon” and we got to learn about Travis. I wanted to see more about his family. That would have been fun."
No one can deny the truth behind Montgomery's words. Except for one or two episodes, most of the stories revolved around Captain Archer , Trip Tucker , and T'Pol . Being as this was a prequel to The Original Series, perhaps that was what the producers were going for. But coming on the heels of successful ensemble series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager, it was unexpected.
The series that took place after The Original Series all managed to create character arcs for their cast, although, The Next Generation didn't do a very good job with Dr. Beverly Crusher . With Enterprise, we learned very little about the characters that weren't the forefront of every episode. We don't know if that would have made a difference in the ratings, but it was something that certainly worked for Enterprise's predecessors.