Star Trek prides itself concerning the plausible development of technology. Previous series generally dealt very well with "how you can do that." In its own way ENT supports this trend with its cranky, primitive transporter and phasers.
Yet other technologies are so crucial to plot that their realism or efficacy is rarely questioned. They just have to work or the story falls apart, so they do. One good example of such a technology is artificial gravity.
Every Enterprise including the NX-01 generates artificial gravity and depends on it to function (try operating a floor-oriented panel from the ceiling!). Even the shirtsleeve flight of the Phoenix showed no substantial zero-g effects like strap strain or floating hair.
I hope along the way ENT manages a glimpse of the real gravitational problems found in space - maybe even a gravitation officer. It's too important a problem to be hand-waved away in the next fifty years and then never mentioned again.
And there are more examples. The title of this week's column comes from Star Trek IV of course, an underrated quote by Dr. Gillian Taylor. She referred to the Klingon viewscreen somehow scoping her whales almost all the way from the Bering Sea to San Francisco.
Yet ... how can they do that? There's no known imaging system capable of doing what Star Trek viewscreens routinely do, and for that matter very little basic physics even to speculate. It just has to work or the story falls apart, so it does. And it only gets worse.
(This issue manifested when assembly of my NX-01 bridge model came to the main viewscreen. Experience suggested some obvious choices yet left many details wide open. See for yourself at http://www.hemptrek.com/art/nx01/int/ship/nx01_int_virt.html .)
My understanding of practical filming matters includes bridge sets with removable "viewscreen panels." This allows the camera to approach the actors at their command consoles from the front.
A phaser is at least a prop. A transporter chamber is at least a room. Yet the main viewer likely does not even exist, even to the actors! The studio could probably forego a physical "viewscreen panel" entirely and composite the whole thing digitally. If they have to insert the main viewer image anyway, why not?
So when Archer says, "Let's go," at what exactly is he looking? Nothing except a film crew looking back. Keep this in mind before suspending your disbelief: Our imaginations project a forward view that does not necessarily reflect reality. This is as true of Trek in general as the viewscreen in particular.