I've been an Enterprise fanfic writer for about 5 years now and those, who know my stories, will remember that most of them are located towards the end of the series, often starting at the time of "Bound" or after the events of "Terra Prime".
For the shipping heart that is convenient, because you can start with an already establish bond and a planet Vulcan that's not ruled by blithering idiots, but other than that it is a right pain in the backside. For the best part of the first two seasons the writing was (pardon my French) a monumental clusterfuck and it got only marginally better later on. The fourth season then was a marked improvement, but was soured by that unspeakable contrived angst-spectacle around Trip and T'Pol.
Archer was portrayed as someone, who should be doing just about everything, but not commanding a star ship. The Vulcans were militaristic fools, who mistook logic for abandoning common sense by blindly following a government that was so corrupt they almost started to bribe themselves. T'Pol turning drug addict, Archer sending away a rapist unpunished, everyone was speaking English by episode seven, that's just a short list of abominations that one has to carry through if starting late into the series, endlessly jumping through hoops to incorporate the bad writing earlier on.
For just about every story that doesn't aim at being an angst-fest you have to write a chapter at some point during which T'Pol has to explain, what in the name of all that's holy was going on in her head when she decided to do drugs. With this project I'm aiming at writing my idea of Enterprise regardless of the TV series, in a universe in which we won't meet a new hostile of the day in every chapter, where Starfleet doesn't just send them on their merry ways with no support, no stations to turn to and that doesn't retro-actively diminish the novelty-factor of Kirk's Enterprise.
Some key moments from the TV series will still feature here, but in different circumstances.
Have fun everybody.