They switched out showrunners.

I was aware of this. I'm glad it made a difference.

There was a decent portion of last season where it didn't suck either.

It must have lost me before it got to that portion. I watched the first two seasons faithfully, if not contentedly, but I just couldn't take anymore by about 15 minutes in to the episode where the crew starts turning into monsters on some planet. I turned it off and never looked back. By sheer luck I managed to happen upon the season finale last year and it was alright, aside from the cheesy running slow-motion from explosions sequence. When I heard there was a new showrunner I figured I'd give it another shot and have been pleasently surprised so far.

It started getting better when Captain Archer started throwing bad guys into airlocks to get them to cooperate.

I wonder where he picked up that trick from?

Yeah, lots of suspicion from the Firefly community.

They still have sound in space and traditional camera work, tho.

It's not as if Firefly was the first series or film or book where the Captain threatened someone with spacing. Not by a long shot.

Nope, not by a long shot. Didn't stop the grumbling, tho. Mainly because Firefly was the first TV show in recent memory that actually threatened to space someone like in real SF.

I haven't watched Enterprise since...um the first episodes, but it doesn't sound like a the kind of blatant rip off that Charmed does.

Charmed is almost the poster child for worst case scenerio IRT ripping off, isn't it?

My god, when Phoebe's ear got cut off, I almost sprained my eyes with the rolling.

The airlock thing was meant as a joke. It doesn't take much of a leap to go spaceship->airlock. Also, after the ridiculous amount of "It's a rip-off of Cowboy Bebop/Outlaw Star" I heard when Firefly premiered I'm pretty hesitant to level the "rip-off" tag at anything that's not blatant.

My god, when Phoebe's ear got cut off, I almost sprained my eyes with the rolling.

Bwah!