STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE
AS STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE TURNS 20, CO-CREATOR BRANNON BRAGA REFLECTS ON THE SHOW THAT ENDED AN ERA
TIME HAS A TENDENCY TO SMOOTH out even the roughest of edges, especially when it comes to Star Trek. The passionate fanbase has never been shy about voicing when they don’t like choices made regarding the television series or films. But as years go by, assessments are almost always revisited and kinder eyes prevail. Such is the case with Star Trek: Enterprise, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of its launch on 26 September 2021.
The sixth series in the television franchise, Enterprise represented a big creative swing for the fences: a prequel, set 100 years before Kirk’s time, with the pilot taking place in 2151. The NX-01 was the earliest class of deep space explorer ships, with a Warp 5 engine, and a sort of The Right Stuff vibe prevailed.
But the looser, pre-federation world of Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula)’s ship, the more Earth-based stories in season one, the reliance on standalone episodes and even the theme song “Where My Heart Will Take Me”, eventually provoked the ire of critics and audiences. It lived to see four seasons, but its passing closed the door on television Star Trek stories for 12 years.
BRAGA-ING RIGHTS
The end of season three of Enterprise also marked the end of showrunning a Trek series for long-time franchise writer and executive producer Brannon Braga. Having started as an intern on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1990, Braga (and co-creator Rick Berman) left season four to Manny Coto’s capable hands.
That was Braga’s Trek universe swansong. He’s never really left space though, having since executive-produced two seasons of Cosmos and the very Trek-inspired series The Orville. Looking back, Braga has only gratitude for his Trek history, including Enterprise.
“I loved working on those shows,” Braga tells SFX on a call from his new series, shooting in Montreal, Canada. “I love the universe, and the optimistic sensibilities that Gene Roddenberry created.”
The call from startup network UPN to conceive a new Trek series pulled Braga from his showrunning on Star Trek: Voyager. “Season seven, I handed the reins over to Ken Biller so that I could focus on Enterprise,” Braga details. He and Berman then got to work on brainstorming.
“Rick felt that if there was going to be a new series, it needed to have something different about it,” he remembers. “And it seemed like an interesting way to go, where the people are still on the right track in a future we all knew. They’re a little rough around the edges, and we can explore how they got there. The [crew] are a little more like you and me, closer to you and me than Captain Picard, say. We just thought it would be fun to have a captain of a ship that’s a little more primitive, that has a dog, and where people can wear tennis shoes. It felt like we could loosen it up a little bit but still inherently make it Star Trek.”
Braga says he and Berman had a lot of fun conceiving the show and writing the pilot, but the series was challenging on all other fronts. “We did 26 episodes back in those days, so it was a punishing schedule,” he emphasises. “It was a completely different show and I was not working with writers that I knew very well. The people that I’d worked with for so long had scattered to the wind and gone on to do other things. And so it was not easy.”
However, Braga is quick to assert how much he really loved a great deal of what they achieved with Enterprise. “Even at the time, there were certain things that I knew I was proud of, like the cast. I think we put together a great cast with these characters, like Dr Phlox [John Billingsley] and Trip Tucker [Connor Trinneer]. I think all the characters worked. They were all very distinctive.”
He also loved Scott Bakula’s Captain Archer, who imbued an early-astronaut feel to his performance. “We always would point to Tom Skerritt from The Right Stuff as a kind of archetype,” Braga explains. “A rugged, rough-around-the-edges guy. Scott brought
We just thought it would be fun to have a captain of a ship that’s a little more primitive
a real humanity and likeability to Archer too. You felt for the guy. He was just dealing with a lot of new stuff.”
Assessing where he feels the show really succeeded, he says, “There are some episodes of Enterprise that could only be episodes of Enterprise. One of the criteria I would use in evaluating individual storylines was: is this an episode we could only do on the show? And I look at early episodes, like ‘Dear Doctor’, and I think, ‘That’s a great hour of Star Trek’. It’s got all the ingredients, and it could only be done on Enterprise.”
“I think we made a really ambitious, really beautifully made pilot,” he continues. “Arguably, in some ways, it’s one of the strongest of the Star Trek pilots. But although the pilot was very well received, the show took a lot of punishment.”
ARC LIFE
Braga says that though they were asked to keep the show as standalone episodes in the first two seasons, the network eventually relented, and he considers that a creative watershed moment for Enterprise and Star Trek in general. “By season three, we were allowed, in large part due to a show I would go on to work on called 24, to do something radical that Deep Space Nine had done to some extent, but not fully, which is do a season of serialised storytelling.
“And so, I’m very proud of season three,” Braga enthuses. “That completely changed things for me. It really was creatively liberating, and I was able to figure out the arc of the season ahead of time. I knew where I was heading. I wasn’t flying by the seat of my pants. It was a solid season. At the time, there was 9/11, there was 24. TV was changing. We were allowed to evolve Star Trek with it.”
Season three’s season-long arc centred on the threat of the Xindi, aliens who launched a devastating attack on Earth at the conclusion of season two. Braga says that executives and the networks at the time saw serialised stories as the domain of soap operas. But with shows like 24 and The Sopranos engaging audience loyalty, there was an opening to push into it with Enterprise too.
“I’d wanted to do a serialised season of Star Trek for many years, because I just thought it would be a bold experiment,” Braga says, referencing his “Year Of Hell” arc on Voyager. “But I think there was probably a business component to the decision, because these shows were sold into syndication for a lot of money. With syndication at that time, you needed standalone episodes.”
Braga and Berman exited Enterprise at the end of season three, and he admits it was a somewhat difficult decision. “On the one hand, I did Star Trek for 15 straight years, which is a long time,” he explains. “One of the reasons I stepped away from Enterprise is because Manny [Coto] was kicking ass and I needed a break from it because it’s really hard, continuous work. I didn’t want my fatigue to affect the show. But I knew in my heart of hearts that I was going to miss Star Trek terribly. And I did.”
Trek on television stopped when Enterprise came to an end on 13 May 2005. Asked if that was massively disappointing, Braga is pragmatic. “By the time Enterprise was over, Star Trek had been on for 18 straight years with three different shows, and several feature films,” he contextualises. “It was time for the
show to have a break. I wish Enterprise had continued. It was an expensive show, and I’m not sure how well it was doing for that relatively new network, or even how well it fitted into their vision. I wish that it continued for a couple more years, as I think it had a lot more life in it. And I feel bad, because I wish the cast had had a chance to continue working on it.
“But Star Trek needed a break. And now it’s back, and back at a time when creating multiple shows is not only okay, but encouraged!” he laughs. “And there’s repetition, but there’s so much room for it. I mean, the fact that Discovery is another prequel that’s after Enterprise… it just goes to show that with the original series and the first feature films, and then that 18-year span, we built a universe that was ready to go and help spawned the new shows.
“Things are different on TV now,” he continues. “Star Trek was very ahead of its time with having multiple shows on the air. It was a universe, so to speak, before there was a Marvel [Cinematic] Universe. And yet there was a certain scepticism about it being overexposed. Whereas now, there are multiple Star Trek shows on the air and more coming, because that’s what people do now.”
ONGOING ENTERPRISE
As Trek fans now assess Enterprise’s impact on the Trek universe, Braga reiterates his pride in it. “I think it gets a lot of love nowadays that it didn’t get when it was on,” he says. “I have a very close friend and a cousin, one of whom is a TNG fan and one who is a Voyager fan, and neither of them had watched Enterprise. I was like, ‘Guys, you’ve got 98 episodes of Star Trek you haven’t seen!’” he laughs. “They started watching and they both love it.”
The lure of stellar exploration was too much for Braga to stay away, with The Orville eventually filling that empty space for him. “By the time Seth Macfarlane came to me with his idea, I was both incredibly excited but nervous too. But what happened was that I realised I missed it. And The Orville isn’t Star Trek, but it’s certainly inspired by it. It’s more of the standalone storytelling, science fiction, high concept stuff that I was missing. And I love it.”
Braga is also delighted that whatever flavour of Trek is favoured by fans, the universe is still as robust as ever, with a global community. “I often think to myself when I’m at a Star Trek convention that I’m in a room with 5,000 people and we all have a shared history. It’s a fictional history, but we all know it, and any of us can discuss it. And it’s wonderful.”
Star Trek: Enterprise is streaming on Paramount+ in the US and Netflix in the UK.