Enterprise had a goal before its cancellation

While the series has its fans, it’s hard not to consider the 2001 series Star Trek: Enterprise a slight disappointment. Starting in 1987, Star Trek was on the rise throughout the 1990s, gaining popularity with Star Trek: The Next Generation and debuting with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. ” in quick succession. Several feature films were released in theaters and merch sales increased significantly. It was a nice, nice time to be a Trekkie.

However, “Enterprise” didn’t hit theaters until two weeks after 9/11and it seemed like no one was in the mood. The show’s creators seemed a little jaded, and post-9/11 audiences really weren’t in the mood for a series about exploration, diplomacy, and making peace with their enemies. The three previous Star Trek series each lasted seven seasons. Enterprise was canceled after its fourth season in 2005, officially ending its glory days.

To remind readers, the premise of “Enterprise” was intriguing. Set a century before the original Star Trek, Enterprise follows the adventures of the very first Starfleet ship to launch from Earth. There was no Prime Directive yet, nor were there shields, photon torpedoes, or – most importantly – an “Enterprise” so reduced and shabby, trying to recapture a “Wild West” atmosphere that existed in the previous ” Star Trek” shows were missing, the fans would probably consider it a success.

However, because the series was canceled after the fourth season, some of the more ambitious plans were never fully realized. Co-creator of the show and former Star Trek boss Rick Berman spoke to StarTrek.com back in 2011and he lamented the missed opportunities, including the inability to achieve his single central goal: to represent the formation of the Federation.

Some of the world’s most ardent Trekkies will be able to tell you that Enterprise is set in the mid-2150s and that the United Federation of Planets was founded in 2161. The Federation was founded by a quintet of future species from Earth, Proxima Centauri, Vulcan, Tellar and Andoria. Rick Berman likely set up Enterprise so that the events of the series could lead to the founding of the Federation.

However, because the show was canceled after just four years, the story of the Federation could not be told the way Berman or his co-creator Brannon Braga wanted. There was no concrete plan for a Federation story, but Berman always had it in the back of his mind. He said:

“We basically wanted to develop a show that would lead us to a logical and dramatic method of founding the Federation by season seven. It was something that (showrunner) Manny Coto, Brannon and I hadn’t really laid out specifically, but it was our goal that the sixth and seventh seasons would go there.

The finale of Enterprise did dramatize bits and pieces of the founding of the Federation, but in what many would say was a truncated, unsatisfactory way. Instead of the crew of the USS Enterprise forming alliances and engaging in diplomacy, the series decided to have the final episode of the series (entitled “These are the journeys…”), a centuries-later holographic recreation witnessed by William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Unfortunately, the series’ ratings declined before such a foundation could be established. Yes, there were scenes of the Federation treaties being signed, but seeing the Enterprise characters as just holograms didn’t have the same impact.

The cancellation of “Enterprise” came as a bit of a surprise to Berman, Braga and Coto. They were still writing Enterprise in a largely episodic structure (which was considered old-fashioned in 2005) and weren’t looking ahead to future seasons. Therefore, when it was announced that the fourth season would be the last, they had to work quickly to write a satisfying finale. When asked what the show’s unmade fifth season might entail, Berman was at a loss. He said:

“We had no idea. We hadn’t gotten that far yet. At the time we got canceled, we were probably filming six or seven shows early and hadn’t really decided what the final episode of season four was going to be. Maybe.” It was a cliffhanger or maybe not, but we hadn’t made that decision before we found out the plug had been pulled.

“Enterprise” struggled a lot with structure. In the early 2000s, many high-profile shows shifted from the syndication-friendly episodic model to a binge-friendly serialization model. Many series told stories that took entire seasons to complete, while others continued individual storylines over many years. Star Trek previously thrived on the episodic model and only spread toward serialization with “Deep Space Nine.” Enterprise transitioned to a longer, serialized narrative in its third season and had several mini-arcs (three or four episodes each) in its fourth season. The show had to evolve over time.

Unfortunately, this could be the reason viewers were kept away. It wasn’t ambitious enough for a production model and had already worn out its episodic model. Four years, it seems, was all “Enterprise” intended.