History Series / StarTrekEnterprise

* HybridsAreACrapshoot: Zigzagged in a two-part story arc towards the end of the series. A baby is created from the DNA of Trip and T'Pol such as that she's essentially their daughter even though T'Pol was never pregnant. Throughout the episodes, the baby has a fever and high white blood cell count which ultimately kills her, and other characters wonder if it's because humans and Vulcans have incompatible chromosomes. As it turns out, however, the baby was just created imperfectly; humans and Vulcans are indeed capable of safely interbreeding.

* FemmeFatale: Mirror!Hoshi becomes a rather unexpected example of this trope.

* CosmeticallyAdvancedPrequel: Especially when compared to [=TOS=]. This is {{Handwave}}d in several places with explanations that smooth over the consistency issues with a couple of different theories - one is that the ''Enterprise'' is a very crude spaceship with no designer or creature comforts and all the technology out on display, while the look in [=TOS=] and other series are aesthetically-minded and designed to make things easier to use and less likely to break and come apart at the seams. This handwave is supported by the "Trials and Tribblations" episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' which directly makes reference to [=TOS=] era have particular styles and designs, much as unique architectural styles such as art deco are referenced today.

* OddballInTheSeries: Until ''[[Series/StarTrekPicard Picard]] Enterprise'' was the only Enterprise-centric series to not have a "To boldly go..." speech during the opening credits (Even the more recent ''[[Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds Strange New Worlds]]'' features a speech). Also, ''Enterprise'' is the ''only'' series in the entire ''Franchise/StarTrek'' franchise to have a vocal theme song. Every other series has an instrumental theme song.

* BareYourMidriff: In the MirrorUniverse the Enterprise crewman still wear the standard jumpsuits (with added BlingOfWar) but in homage to Uhura's {{fanservice}}-y outfit in "Mirror Mirror" the women wear a two-piece, including a high-cut shirt that shows off their taut abs.

** The MirrorUniverse! "In a Mirror, Darkly" has both the sexual kind and fanservice for actual fans. It brings back the evil Terran Empire from the Original Series "Mirror Mirror", the USS ''Defiant'' is back ("The Tholian Web"), all the women have BareYourMidriff outfits (combined with the 1960s-style miniskirt), Hoshi sleeps around and gets into a CatFight with T'Pol, and a Gorn is bought back and made into a credible threat.

* {{Homage}}: In RealLife, the first Space Shuttle was called the ''Enterprise'', with the second being the ''Columbia''. In this series, the first warp-5 ship is called ''Enterprise'', with the second called ''Columbia''; and the semi-canon [[Franchise/TrekVerse Expanded Universe]] materials indicate that the remaining warp-5 ships continued with the ThemeNaming (''Challenger'', ''Discovery'', ''Atlantis'' and ''Endeavour'').

* HatePlague: The episode "Singularity" has the NX-01 approaching a black hole for scans, and the closer they get, the more they started to suffer from this as their SuperOCD obsessions clashed with each other.

** John Paxton, the leader of the xenophobic Earth organization Terra Prime. He had unwavering dedication to his cause, and was willing to scorch half of San Francisco to make his demands known. Considering this was after a devastating alien attack, their concerns about an alien alliance had some validity. T'Pol deduced from a trembling hand that Paxton had a genetic disorder, one that should have killed him when he was a teenager, but didn't because of "freely given" alien medical technology. Paxton will only admit that he's not the first leader to fail to live up to the standard of an idol (in his case, a mass murderer from Earth's post WW3 period), and refuses to back down. This fact exposed him as a man who was just racist.

%%* GeneticMemory

* TheGhost: Chef is mentioned numerous times over the course of the series, but he never appears.

* {{Expy}}: The Xindi are loosely this to the Dominion in the latter seasons of [=DS9=], with the Sphere Builders filling the role of the Founders (an enigmatic, all-powerful race who, initially at least, are treated with a near-religious reverence by the rest of the Xindi, and are typically represented by an aloof female spokesperson), the Humanoids, Arboreals, and Aquatics collectively taking up the role of the Cardassians (being somewhat suspicious and paranoid towards humanity, but motivated primarily by survival and being more willing to question the Sphere Builders), and the Reptilians and to a lesser extent Insectoids taking up the role of the Jem'Hadar (fanatically devoted to the Sphere Builders, and {{Absolute Xenophobe}}s who, with one or two exceptions, are beyond any hope of reason).

* ETGaveUsWiFi: The second-season episode "Carbon Creek" implies that Velcro was given to us by stranded Vulcans. Doubles as a CriticalResearchFailure, as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velcro invention of velcro]] is very well-documented.

* RealSongThemeTune: The theme "Where My Heart Will Take Me" ([[RefrainFromAssuming not "Faith of the Heart" as widely believed]]) was originally from the soundtrack of ''Film/PatchAdams''.

[[caption-width-right:350:[-Welcome aboard the Enterprise NX-01.-][[note]]Clockwose from top right: [[TheSpock T'Pol]], [[OfficerAndAGentleman Malcolm Reed]], [[AcePilot Travis Mayweather]], [[TheMedic Dr. Phlox]], [[CunningLinguist Hoshi Sato]], [[TheEngineer Trip Tucker]], and [[TheCaptain Jonathan Archer]].[[/note]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[-Welcome aboard the Enterprise NX-01.-][[note]]Clockwose from top right: [[TheSpock T'Pol]], [[OfficerAndAGentleman Malcolm Reed]], [[AcePilot Travis Mayweather]], [[TheMedic Dr. Phlox]], [[CunningLinguist Hoshi Sato]], [[TheEngineer Trip Tucker]], and [[TheCaptain Jonathan Archer]], .[[/note]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[-Welcome aboard the Enterprise NX-01.-][[note]]From left to right: [[OfficerAndAGentleman Malcolm Reed]], [[TheSpock T'Pol]], [[AcePilot Travis Mayweather]], [[TheCaptain Jonathan Archer]], [[CunningLinguist Hoshi Sato]], [[TheEngineer Trip Tucker]], and [[TheMedic Dr. Phlox]].[[/note]]]]

* CluelessAesop: From "A Night In Sickbay", the moral of the story, essentially, is that sometimes you need to apologize for things even when you don't believe that you did anything wrong, and even when you may have suffered more than the person you're being asked to apologize to. The problem is, while Archer obviously doesn't think he was wrong... he is. Objectively. What he originally did was so absolutely stupid, and something that a Starfleet-trained starship captain should definitely have known better than to do, that he loses any sympathy from the audience. Rather than us rooting for Archer before finally accepting the HardTruthAesop at the end, we find ourselves siding with the Kreetassans and asking for Archer to stop acting like an infant and go apologize already.

%%* NotImportantToThisEpisodeCamp: Porthos.

* MoralDissonance:
** In "Dear Doctor", Archer and Phlox are holding a cure to a disease that will almost certainly wipe out one race of intelligent life and, in their absence, force the other (less intelligent, but still sapient) race to evolve (That is to say, die off in great numbers while they slowly get smarter over millennia). They decide to keep this cure to themselves, dooming one race to extinction, and another to the cruel ravages of natural selection, and call it the moral thing to do.
** "Observer Effect" brings this issue up again, as almost the exact same situation occurs. Two crew members, Trip and Hoshi, [[TooDumbToLive were digging around in an alien garbage dump without protective gear]]. Before too long they have already died from an exotic disease, and Archer is dying as well. A pair of Organians are watching this as a study of "lesser life forms". Archer wants them to ''figuratively'' play God and bring Trip and Hoshi BackFromTheDead, even berating the Organians for not already saving them from the disease when they could easily have done so. While doing this, he continues to defend his actions in "Dear Doctor", despite the similarity of the situation. Apparently, Archer thinks leaving an entire species to die from a medical problem is okay, but leaving him and his crew members to die from a disease they carelessly picked up is immoral and ''unforgivable''.
** As a general rule, if an alien species is ''more'' advanced than humanity then Archer sees no excuse for them to not share their knowledge or render their assistance. However, if they are ''less'' advanced then "interference" is unjustifiable and humanity is righteous in withholding anything they choose. This would later become a core part of how the Prime Directive would be interpreted.

[[caption-width-right:283:[-Welcome aboard the Enterprise NX-01.-][[note]]From left to right: [[OfficerAndAGentleman Malcolm Reed]], [[TheSpock T'Pol]], [[AcePilot Travis Mayweather]], [[TheCaptain Jonathan Archer]], [[CunningLinguist Hoshi Sato]], [[TheEngineer Trip Tucker]], and [[TheMedic Dr. Phlox]].[[/note]]]]

[[quoteright:283:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ENTpromo_5228.jpg]]