Star Trek: Enterprise actors look back: “The network actually f**ked us”
Star Trek: Enterprise aired on UPN from 2001-2005. It was a prequel set 100 years before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series, and is generally considered one of the lesser Trek shows. Created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, the show followed the crew of the Enterprise — the very first Starfleet vessel with the ability to travel at Warp 5 — as they explored the galaxy and made first contact with established alien species from previous shows, like the Klingons.
In the first couple of seasons, the story focused on Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker III (Connor Trinneer) and Sub-commander T’Pol (Jolene Blalock). Compared to the Enterprise fans knew, this version of the ship was very low-tech.
For many reasons, the show just didn’t catch on like its predecessors had, with the first two seasons especially being pretty boring. Also, the UPN network didn’t make the show a priority, often bumping new episodes for sporting events and such.
In a recent Galaxy Con Live virtual panel, Trinneer was joined by cast members John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox) and Dominic Keating (Malcolm Reed). They discussed why Enterprise failed, and they didn’t hold back.
“We came on after so many years of Star Trek, and in a number of those years, double-dipping,” Billingsley said. “Deep Space Nine actually overlapped with Voyager, for instance. I think by the time we aired there was fatigue, understandable fatigue. The show did really at least need a year off. I always felt badly for Rick [Berman] and Brannon [Braga] that they weren’t given that time…The bible for the show just needed a little more work.”
"I think the notions were strong and I think with the character development they had some clarity. But in terms of an arc for the first season, I think the Suliban wasn’t quite as thought through as it maybe needed to be. I think there was a little bit more work needed on what the tonal balance was between the darkness of we are the first fucking ship and we don’t know what the fuck we are doing and the nature of what Star Trek is supposed to be, the optimistic spirit… It is a hard tone to strike for what they were trying to do."
The show never really found its footing, and it felt like the stories were dumbed down or changed around to be more family-friendly. “And the studio itself also needed to kind of grapple with what they wanted to achieve,” Billingsley continued. “I remember there was an early episode where a crew member is transported and they come back. And in the first draft… it was pretty cool because this guy comes back and his head is where his ass is supposed to be and [flails around] ‘what the fuck!’ and we are afraid of the transporter.”
"By the time it emerges and we are shooting it, the guy comes back from the transporter accident and he has got a little twig sticking out of his forehead. And that to me early on crystalized where I think the timidity of the network actually fucked us. To me there was another level of scariness that the show wanted to move towards, and I felt that the powers that be said, ‘But, but, but.’"
Billingsley also talks about Manny Coto who, became a showrunner in season 4. “For Manny, I think there was a sense of joyousness of, ‘Oh boy, I get to write Star Trek!’ He was a lover and appreciator of the first series. A lot of the Mirror Universe, the how did the Klingons get their new faces, a lot of those love-letter episodes in the third and fourth seasons came about because Manny was deeply enamored with Star Trek.”
The problem with the new Klingon faces was that The Next Generation showed them with ridges, while the Original Series Klingons had none…they were smooth-faced. When Discovery came along, it went with ridges, so there was an inconsistency in how that alien species was depicted.
Klingons aside, the three amigos couldn’t seem to come to a unanimous decision on their feelings about visiting the Mirror Universe. “I did not like [the Mirror Universe episodes],” chimed in Trinneer. “I thought it was pandering.”
“They were good fun, John,” replied Keating.
“I don’t know. There are a few episodes I adored,” said Billingsley. “There are some episodes in the third and fourth season that I thought were a little too meta.”
No matter who or what you choose to blame for the failure of Star Trek: Enterprise, there’s little debate that it was something of a failure. When it was canceled in 2005, there wasn’t a new Star Trek television show until CBS All Access released Discovery season 1 in 2017.
There are more virtual GalaxyCon Star Trek panels coming this summer, so stay tuned.
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