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Star Trek: Enterprise will always be the first Star Trek spin-off to be cancelled rather than retired, the first live-action spin-off to run less than seven seasons. That is what pop culture will remember of the fifth Star Trek series, when it chooses to remember anything at all. That is what large vocal segments of fandom will remember whenever they are asked their opinion on the show. There is no escaping that simple truth. Even Star Trek: Voyager was spared the indignity of killing an entire iteration of the franchise.

Star Trek had been on the air for fourteen continuous seasons by the time that UPN convinced producer Rick Berman to work on what would turn out to be his final season. Fourteen seasons is a long time in television, and it is rare for any property to continuously succeed over so extended a period. The franchise had been on the air continuously since the launch of Star Trek: The Next Generation . The franchise had been a massive success for both the studio Paramount and for the network UPN.

The cancellation of Enterprise perhaps explains why the series has been subject to so much speculation and discussion. There is a desire to rewrite history and to tailor narratives with benifit of hindsight. Nevertheless, the production team have suggested that the version of Enterprise that launched in late September 2001 was not the show they originally wanted to produce. The television show broadcast on UPN to fill the slot vacated by Voyager was not what its creators had wanted it to be.

Rick Berman has talked about the concept of franchise fatigue, and his own deep-seated concern that the Star Trek franchise needed to take a rest from television. After all, by the point that Enterprise launched, audiences had already enjoyed fourteen consecutive years of Star Trek . Not only that, there had been twenty-one seasons of Star Trek produced in those fourteen years. It was possible that the franchise had reached (if not surpassed) the point of saturation, and that the whole thing might collapse in on itself.

There is a certain logic to this argument. After all, even the most popular and successful of franchises seem to implode at some point or another. Over sixteen years, the CSI franchise ballooned to three shows running concurrently before those numbers gradually dwindled and the shows faded from the cultural consciousness. At its peak at the turn of the millennium, the Law & Order franchise had three shows broadcasting concurrently. In the years since, the original show was cancelled and the production team have failed to launch any new shows.

While Rick Berman was suggesting that it might be a good idea to rest the franchise, Brannon Braga had more ambitious notions. Enterprise would serve as a prequel series to the Star Trek franchise, any idea undoubtedly stoked by the commercial (if not critical) success of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace . Braga saw the possibility for a different approach to Star Trek . Writer Chris Black would recall that the idea was pitched to him as the franchise’s version of The Right Stuff .

Braga had several novel ideas for the show. He wanted to set the first season, or a segment of the first season, on Earth in the lead-up to the launch of the ship. In doing so, he wanted to flesh out the world and experiment with the sort of arc-based storytelling that had held his fascination since Year of Hell, Part I and Year of Hell, Part II during the fourth season of Voyager . This approach would have served to clearly distinguish Enterprise from its predecessors and help the show to carve out a new niche.

However, it was immediately clear that UPN was not willing to let either producer have their way. Rick Berman understood that the network would eagerly replace him if he proved unwilling to fill the slot in the schedule left by the retirement of Voyager . Brannon Braga learned that the studio wanted another neatly episodic Star Trek series with no arc-based storytelling and adhering to the traditional format. The Enterprise would not launch half-way through the first season, it would launch about twenty minutes into the first episode.

UPN was also quite anxious about breaking away from the twenty-fourth century setting that had defined so much of the franchise since the launch of The Next Generation . In order to placate the anxious network executives, Brannon Braga came up with the idea of the Temporal Cold War. The idea would be that there were various futuristic powers interferring in the day-to-day lives of Enterprise, with some mysterious and nefarious agendas. At the centre of all this was a mysterious shadowed figure nicknamed “Future Guy.”

In basic terms, the Temporal Cold War loosely resembled the kind of “mythology” that was so popular on contemporary shows. It was a mystery to be solved, not unlike the conspiracy at the heart of The X-Files . However, in practice the Temporal Cold War turned out to be something completely different. It was less a story than a status quo , less a plot to advance than a backdrop for interesting stories. Over the four-year run of the show, Archer never really gets any closer to understanding who is driving the Temporal Cold War or why.

Instead, the Temporal Cold War worked best as a metaphor for the external pressures bearing down on Enterprise . In episodes like Cold Front , it was a way for the series to touch upon its awkward relationship to the larger canon. What if the reason nobody had mentioned Archer over the course of The Next Generation or Voyager was because the ship didn’t exist in the original timeline? What if this whole series was an abherration in the show’s the continuity, a distortion of the master narrative?

Alternatively, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga would also treat the Temporal Cold War as a metaphor for the pressures facing the production, the intrusion of outside forces into the narrative. In Shockwave, Part I , Archer discovers that the only place he can be safe from those meddling forces is before the events of Broken Bow ; literally outside the show’s narrative and in a setting not unlike Brannon Braga’s original pitch for the show. The Temporal Cold War found Archer operating at the whim of vastly powerful forces beyond his control.

Of course, the idea of building an arc around the Temporal Cold War was stillborn. When Enterprise first debuted, it was a stunningly conservative show, from both a narrative and political standpoint. Television was undergoing a massive evolutionary leap at the turn of the millennium, shifting away from a rigid episodic format and towards more ambitious storytelling approaches. Serialisation had already worked very well on cable networks like HBO, but it was creeping into the mainstream. Enterprise premiered in the same season as 24

However, the first two seasons of Enterprise were distinctly uninterested in embracing serialised storytelling. Instead, they hewed rather close to the rigid “done-in-one” episodic format that had defined so much of Voyager . There was very rarely a sense of continuity from episode-to-episode in those early years, with an extended journey towards Risa between Fallen Hero and Two Days and Two Nights and the damage to the ship carrying between Minefield and Dead Stop proving the exception rather than the rule.

This caused some very clear problems in the first two seasons, as Enterprise tackled a number of plot threads that were probably best suited to long-form storytelling. The Temporal Cold War was one such thread, only appearing in the season premieres and finales of the show’s first two seasons along with a single standalone episode in the middle of each season. The foundation of the Federation was another such thread, with the Andorians only appearing three times in the first two years and with little sense of improving relations between Earth and Vulcan.

Part of the appeal of doing a prequel series is the fact that the ending is already known, that the journey has a destination. Watching the first two seasons of Enterprise , it seemed like the show was wandering around in circles rather than advancing towards its goal. There was a sense that the Star Trek franchise was still stuck in 1994. This fear would find its ultimate expression in These Are the Voyages… , the final episode of the show that made a point to jump back to a seventh season of The Next Generation .

The show’s style and sensibility was very much rooted in The Next Generation . While advertised as a prequel to a classic Star Trek , the series was aesthetically and stylistically a sequel to Star Trek: First Contact , to the point that it was James Cromwell as Zephram Cochrane who passed the torch to Jonathan Archer in Broken Bow and that the production team would return to Cochrane in the teaser to In a Mirror, Darkly Part I . The ship looked a felt a lot more like the ships of the Berman era than those from the original sixties television show.

To be fair, the show’s aesthetic would soften over the course of the run. Despite the reintroduction of the Andorians to the franchise with The Andorian Incident , the first two seasons featured rather muted colour tones and an emphasis on industrial design. There was also a relatively grounded approach to issues like make-up and costuming, with Enterprise reluctant to venture too far outside the template established by The Next Generation and carried on through Voyager .

However, with the third season, the show embraced a decidedly pulpier sci-fi aesthetic and a bright colour scheme. The third season featured a literal “planet of the (cowboy) hats” story in North Star , the kind of honest to goodness “genre world” story that the franchise had shied away from during the Berman era. The crew found themselves facing evil aliens that looked like reptiles and CGI insect monsters, with the third season finale featuring Archer wrestling a reptile in regal purple costume on top of a giant bomb. Kirk would be proud.

Of course, there was a downside to all of this. It could be argued that some of the more unfortunate retrograde sexism of the final two seasons – particularly in episodes like Rajiin and Bound – was rooted in this nostalgia aesthetic. There was a sense that the show could occasionally be a little too indulgent of pulp science-fiction tropes, instead of challenging them. In some ways, this contributed to the broad conservative feel of the show, with the series’ embracing pulpy genre tropes at face value rather than interrogating them.

The show’s colour palette grew a little bolder in those final two seasons, with the deep reds of Vulcan in The Forge and the rings of Andor in The Aenar adding a pulpy paperback charm to the show’s production design. Even the strong purples design the eponymous research laboratory in Cold Station 12 evoked the kind of brightly lit (and coloured) set upon which William Shatner might have strode. In those final two years, it felt like Enterprise was reconnecting with the goofy science-fiction b-movies of the fifties and sixties, which felt appropriate for a prequel to Star Trek .

However, in its first season, Enterprise never quite captured the feel of a prequel. The technology felt held over from The Next Generation and Voyager , with the protein resequencer seeming closer to the replicator than the food slots. Following Broken Bow , the transporter becomes a fairly regular part of the show’s technology. Unexpected even has the crew encounter a proto-holodeck, while Minefield gives the Romulans cloaking technology. There is very little about Enterprise that seems appreciably less advanced than the shows it followed.

Indeed, the first three seasons arguably squander some of the most exciting aspects of the prequel setting. Early in Broken Bow , Trip boasts that mankind has conquered war, famine and poverty. It is a single line that immediately erases a whole world of storytelling possibilities. One of the most fascinating possibilities of a prequel to Star Trek is in watching mankind conquer their demons and work together to build a utopian future. Optimism has always been a key attribute of the Star Trek franchise, and it would be intriguing to see that optimism play out.

Even outside of the missed storytelling opportunities, Enterprise was hobbled by a sense of familiarity. The first two seasons wasted too much time treading over familiar ground. T’Pol began as little more than a transparent copy of Seven of Nine. Phlox was very much a generic eccentric alien, because every Star Trek show is obligated to have one. The Klingons regularly appeared in episodes like Broken Bow , Unexpected and Sleeping Dogs . The Nausicaans appeared in Fortunate Son . The Ferengi got a comedy episode in Acquisition .

This was to say nothing of the fact that so many episodes felt like retreads and stock stories. Oasis was just Shadowplay . Dawn was Darmok stripped of its optimism. The Communicator was A Piece of the Action . Vanishing Point was Remember Me meets Realm of Fear . The Breach was Jetrel by way of Duet . Despite the fact that the production team had made a conscious choice to step away from the familiar tropes, even stripping Star Trek from the name of the series in its first two seasons, Enterprise felt like “Star Trek by the numbers.”

In fact, even many of the episodes that weren’t explicitly rip-offs of earlier Star Trek episodes had a very generic feel to them, particularly during the final stretch of the first season. Vox Sola was the standard “creepy space life-form” story. Rogue Planet was a stock “message episode about a social issue” story. Fallen Hero was very much a “ferrying a diplomat” story. The first season of Enterprise seemed torn between the novelty of the premise and the safety of the franchise standards. The second season opted for security over originality.

Of course, UPN had changed slightly in the years since Caretaker had launched the network. The channel was skewing younger and towards ethnic demographics. From the start, there was a conscious sense that Enterprise was going to be a version of Star Trek designed to appeal to a young adult demographic. In particular, the network advocated for heightened sexual content, for more skin and for more physical content. Perhaps the show’s most infamous sequence is the incredibly gratuitous rub-down scene in Broken Bow .

With the exception of the original Star Trek , the franchise had never been particularly good at doing “sexy.” When the franchise attempted to do sex comedies, it ended up with disasters like Up the Long Ladder or Let He Who Is Without Sin… The writers and directors working on Star Trek tended to adopt a rather juvenile approach to sexuality, as demonstrated during the mirror universe episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . Trying to mandate a “sexy” Star Trek show seemed like a spectacular error in judgment.

Indeed, Enterprise never really moved past that creepy voyeuristic approach to sex, combining stilted expository dialogue with scenes of characters touching one another against highly stylised light effects. Broken Bow set the tone for the rest of the series, but the show was consistent in its very childish approach to the human body. Bounty and Bound are perhaps the worst offenders of the four-season run, but even episodes like The Augments and Babel One feature sequences of the show trying (and failing) to be sexy.

That said, not all the errors with the series can be blamed on the network. Enterprise suffered from issues with its scripts from the outset. One of Brannon Braga’s bolder ideas had been to recruit writers from outside the Star Trek gene pool to work on the show. Instead of retaining the strongest writers on the Voyager staff, like Bryan Fuller or Michael Taylor, Braga opted to draft in writers with experience beyond the franchise. It was a good idea in principle, particularly given that Braga wanted to write a new type of Star Trek .

The only issue was that it takes a great deal of skill and experience to write a Star Trek script. The franchise has its own sensibility and aesthetic, and experience in the medium does not always translate to experience within the franchise. The writers’ room featured some pretty heavy attrition over the course of the first season, with many of the show’s new writers turning in offensive nonsense like Terra Nova . Over the course of its four-season run, Enterprise would feature a staggeringly high turnover of writers, leading the show to struggle to find a voice.

To be fair, there were occasional glimmers of a new type of Star Trek to be found in that first season. The first season wold occasionally attempt to tell a unique or distinct sort of Star Trek story. This was particularly apparent in stories like Breaking the Ice , Cold Front , Dear Doctor or Shuttlepod One . At its best, the first season of Enterprise slowed down its storytelling to appreciate the majesty of space flight, to get excited about the possibilities of exploration, to revel in the potentialities of first contact. These episodes had a slower, more deliberate pace.

Unfortunately, these episodes were very much the exception rather than the rule. As a result of the massive attrition from the writers’ room, Brannon Braga found himself radically re-writing most of the first season scripts under incredibly tight deadlines. No matter how much Braga might have wanted to write a new type of Star Trek , that sort of pressure and that sort of workload inevitably forces a writer to fall back into familiar routines and familiar clichés. Enterprise often felt quite bland and samey in its first season.

More than that, the failed experiment of hiring writers from outside the franchise led the production team to become a lot more conservative in its recruitment policies. When it came to hiring writers to replace those who had failed to last the season, Brannon Braga opted for safer choices more familiar with genre work. The result was a conscious move away from the more experimental style that had marked the strongest and strangest episodes of the first season towards an approach perhaps best summarised as generic Star Trek .

Enterprise was also somewhat burdened with a more conservative aesthetic than any of the other spin-offs. The Star Trek franchise had long been regarded as progressive and open-minded, a safe haven for representative diversity. The Next Generation had featured an English actor playing a Frenchman. Deep Space Nine had featured the franchise’s first African-American lead. Voyager had featured a female lead and a cast that was almost fifty percent female.

In particular, the ensembles on Deep Space Nine and Voyager had been incredibly diverse. The franchise had yet to feature an overtly homosexual or bisexual lead, but those shows featured characters and cast members of all colours and creeds. There was not a single white American character in the primary cast of Deep Space Nine , which is quite remarkable in the context of American television. As such, the primary cast of Enterprise represented a clear step backwards for the franchise, with a particular emphasis on white American men.

Archer was very much conceived as a white all-American hero for the Bush era, right down to the daddy issues that drive him to action in Broken Bow . His best friend is Charles Tucker III, a white American Southerner. Both Archer and Trip spend an extended portion of the first season making (at best borderline) racist remarks about T’Pol. There are only two women in the primary cast, and only two people of colour. Indeed, it could legitimately be argued that the cast of Enterprise is less diverse than the original Star Trek .

This would cause all manner of problems in terms of how the show presented itself. The episode Twilight , for example, suffered from the show’s lack of female characters. While Trip and Reed were allowed to be captains of their own vessels, the show’s only African American character was casually killed off and the show’s only female leads were reduced to caregivers and background characters. This is not to suggest Twilight is racist or sexist, but to demonstrate how the show’s questionable casting and concept choices impacted even its strongest episode.

From the outset, Enterprise struggled to define its cast of characters. In the show’s early seasons, Archer was highly volatile and variable, recalling the characterisation of Kathryn Janeway. It seemed the production team never had a read on the character, and it occasionally seemed like the writers didn’t understand the appeal of Scott Bakula’s folksy naturalistic charm. Bakula is perfectly cast as a square-jawed all-American hero, but flounders when asked to deliver a Picard monologue like the one in Shockwave, Part II or to embrace his inner Sisko in Anomaly .

The rest of the cast never quite gelled in the same way that the cast on The Next Generation had come to embody their characters, and were never developed to the extent that the cast on Deep Space Nine were fleshed out. Mayweather barely had any lines, let alone any development. Hoshi seemed to get stuck repeating the same character beats in stories like Fight or Flight , Sleeping Dogs and Vox Sola . The biggest developments for Malcolm Reed in the first season were that he liked pineapple in Silent Enemy and T’Pol’s derriere in Shuttlepod One .

As such, the cast on Enterprise frequently seemed generic and one-dimensional, recalling the way that Voyager had treated its own diverse ensemble. The show’s breakout character was Charles “Trip” Tucker, the speedboat mechanic turned warp specialist played by Connor Trinneer. Trinneer brought a delightful charm to Trip, earning the audience’s respect for (relatively) gracefully navigating storytelling disasters like Unexpected or Acquisition . It is no wonder that Brannon Braga decided to (somewhat spitefully) kill Trip off in These Are the Voyages…

While the first season had teased the idea of recurring crewmembers like Rostov or Cutler, Enterprise never felt like a community in the same way that Deep Space Nine had eventually. That said, Enterprise did manage to cultivate something of a small recurring cast in its final year. Kelby appeared in a few episodes, his humiliations serving as something of a cruel recurring punchline. Characters like Soval and Shran helped to flash out the show’s universe and to create a sense of a world beyond the hull of the ship.

The first half of the first season was written and produced over the summer of 2001. Even then, the show was very much Star Trek for the Bush administration. There was a strong conservative and nationalist element to the plot, with Archer adamant about “going it alone” and fulfilling his father’s dreams. However, everything would change right before Broken Bow premiered. Enterprise would become the first post-9/11 Star Trek show. Almost as much as its eventual cancellation, this aspect would come to define it.

Broken Bow had obviously been produced long before those terrorist attacks took place. In fact, Civilisation was actually in front of the cameras when new began to filter in of what had happened. Because of the nature of television production, the actual impact of 9/11 would only truly ripple through the second half of the first season. Nevertheless, Enterprise launched in the wake of a devastating terrorist attack that completely changed the way that Americans saw the world. The show (and the franchise) would be unavoidably changed by that fact.

9/11 had a massive impact on Enterprise . Indeed, it could be argued that the thematic arc of the show’s four-season run is one about coming to terms with the attacks and their impact on the popular consciousness. The first season is largely about denial, the production team trying to pretend that nothing has changed. The impact of the attacks can be felt on episodes like Shadows of P’Jem , Desert Crossing or Detained , but there is a clear sense that the production team want everything to be business as usual.

The second season finds the show quietly stewing in the anger and confusion of the War on Terror. In the second season of Enterprise , the universe becomes a lot more hostile and alien. Episodes like Minefield and Dawn suggest that perhaps the best that anybody can hope for is that other cultures and people will keep to themselves. Apocalyptic landscapes populate episodes like Shockwave, Part II and Cease Fire . Paranoia and fear of the alien is justified in episodes like The Seventh and The Crossing .

In its second season, Enterprise is at its strongest when it challenges (rather than embraces) this latent xenophobia and anxiety. Judgment confronts the audience with the possibility that the United States has transformed into the Klingon Empire. Regeneration fused all of the show’s fears about its relationship to the rest of the franchise to a post-9/11 zombie horror story. Cogenitor weighed the consequences of unilateral intervention while asking the audience to make up their own minds. However, these episodes were the exception rather than the rule.

At the end of the second season, everything changed. Towards the end of the first season, the management of UPN had changed dramatically. The executives who had insisted upon a Star Trek show to fill their schedule were gone, replaced by individuals with a very different perspective. While Star Trek had traditionally been left alone by the studio and the network, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga frequently found themselves attending meetings and taking notes from people who had no idea of how the franchise actually worked.

Over the course of the second season, it became increasingly clear that UPN was disinterested in Enterprise . The show’s ratings had dwindled, but the network had also shifted its focus away from the show’s target market. For the first time in a very long time, it looked like the Star Trek franchise was not a priority. With ratings down and the network disinterested, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga were instructed to go for broke and to reinvent the show. The second season finale, The Expanse , reconfigured the show for the War on Terror.

Of course, these themes had been bubbling through the first two years of the show. With The Expanse , Berman and Braga brought them to the fore. The episode featured a horrific attack upon Earth, and dispatched Archer on a mission to find those responsible and hold them accountable. Trip was cast in the role of bereaved sibling, his sister brutally murdered by this alien threat. This was a premise that essentially challenged the franchise. What does Star Trek look like in the twenty-first century? How can the franchise’s idealism be reconciled with all that?

The third season was messy and raw. It was also ambitious and exciting. The production team were afforded the opportunity to confront and address issues that had been bubbling away in the background, allowing the season to serve as something of an exorcism for all the worst tendencies that had taken root over the first two seasons of the show. All the xenophobia and hatred, all the paranoia and mistrust, all the anger and bloodlust. The third season could draw them out.

This was not always comfortable viewing. The show seems to embrace militarism in episodes like The Xindi , with Archer taking a full compliment of trained marines on board his ship. Archer also brutally tortures an enemy captive in Anomaly , arguably getting his own hands far dirtier than Sisko did over the course of In the Pale Moonlight or Tacking Into the Wind . At points, it feeled like the show was genuinely confused about all this, about how much it endorsed Archer’s actions and about how much it bought into the “ends justify the means” rhetoric.

Still, the third season journeyed back to traditional Star Trek ideals. Archer had been dispatched on a search-and-destroy mission, but the third season finds Archer making peace with the Xindi. The narrative arc of Star Trek has always been about how our enemies become our friends, and about the triumph of innocence and optimism over brutality and cynicism. The third season reached its thematic and emotional conclusion with the brokering of peace with the Xindi in The Council , even if the action plot continued for two more episodes.

The third season seemed introspective. Cycles of violence became a recurring theme across the year. The Xindi were only motivated by the fear that humanity would destroy them. The torture that Archer inflicted in Anomaly haunted the character, and was visited back upon himself in Azati Prime and upon Hoshi in Countdown . Although the script itself was terrible, Hatchery represented a clear and unambiguous rejection of an overly militaristic approach to Star Trek . Even in standalones like North Star , communities were trapped in repeating patterns of violence.

In contrast to the adventure-of-the-week format of the show’s first two years, the third season of Enterprise opted to construct a single year-long story that found the crew engaged in a mission to save Earth. The transition from rigid episodic storytelling to a more serialised format was awkward, not helped by the fact that the production team failed to use the gap between the second and third seasons to map out the year ahead. As a result, the first stretch of the third season tended to wander a bit, lacking focus.

Still, the production team eventually got to grips with the format, and the home stretch of the show’s third year marks one of the most consistent runs in the show’s history. More than that, the shift in storytelling style allowed the production team to experiment with novel ways of telling their stories. The Forgotten , for example, allowing the series to focus on grief and trauma in a manner that would not have been possible earlier in the run. Similarly, Harbinger was an episode mainly driven by character beats that had simmered through the season to that point.

Perhaps reflecting the show’s declining ratings and the uncertainty of the future, the third season also touched upon anxieties concerning the larger Star Trek franchise. North Star essentially deconstructed the idea of Star Trek as a space western, demonstrating that the western itself is a problematic genre that glosses over its own uncomfortable historical roots. Episodes like Twilight and E² wondered about the sustainable future of Star Trek , daring to ask whether that future even existed in a recognisable form.

There was a conscious shift in Enterprise during its third season, as if the franchise itself became aware of its own mortality. The third season order was cut from twenty-six episodes to twenty-four in the middle of the run, suggesting that the network was not as eager for more Star Trek as it once had been. The cast and crew found themselves addressing rumours of cancellation in interviews. While many of that same cast and crew had talked about the job security of doing a Star Trek show upon the premiere of Broken Bow , they seemed a lot cagier.

The franchise received its first cancellation scare in a long at the end of the third season, with the network taking its time to renew the show. Although Zero Hour ended on a cliffhanger featuring evil!alien!space! Nazis, there was every possibility that UPN would not pick up the show for a fourth season. The fourth season was largely the result of a series of complex behind-the-scenes compromises and negotiations which shifted a lot of the onus of producing Enterprise away from the network and which cut the show’s budget significantly.

These budget cuts took an immediate toll on Enterprise . The special effects in the fourth season looked a lot less polished than they had in the prior three seasons, while the production made the transition from shooting on film to shooting on digital. Although members of the production team were positive about the changes in contemporaneous interviews, Brannon Braga acknowledges that he was not fond of the compromise, believing that it made Enterprise look cheap. It is not an unfair observation.

The budget cuts at the start of the fourth season also forced a change in storytelling style for the show. The fourth season eschewed the idea of a single season-long arc, instead opting for a series of smaller multi-episode arcs running two or three episodes. It was a novel approach for Star Trek , a franchise that had always treated two-parters as big “event” episodes. The reason for the decision were partially pragmatic; building sets for multiple episodes allowed the team to effectively amortise the construction of sets and props.

The fourth season also found Rick Berman and Brannon Braga stepping back from the day-to-day running of the series, handing over the running of the writers’ room to Manny Coto. Coto had arrived around midway through the third season, and had made a strong impression with his scripts for Similitude and Azati Prime . Coto also had experience running the show Odyssey 5 . A massive Star Trek fan, Coto made it his priority to tie Enterprise back into its franchise roots and to embrace the prequel format.

The fourth season of Enterprise was effectively a continuity bonanza. Affliction and Divergence solved the long-standing riddle of Klingon foreheads, while In a Mirror, Darkly, Part I and In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II managed to serve as both a prequel to Mirror, Mirror and a sequel to The Tholian Web . There were other hints of continuity fetishism, with Coto essentially building the season’s first big three-parter ( Borderland , Cold Station 12 , The Augments ) as an extended homage to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .

Although the fourth season was widely beloved by fans who saw it as Enterprise finally embracing its place as a prequel to the sprawling Star Trek canon, there was occasionally a sense that the show’s obsession with continuity led to bad storytelling choices. This was most obvious in the season’s standalone episodes. Daedalus was a somewhat pointless story built around the idea that it might be worth exploring the roots of the transporter. Observer Effect featured Organians for the sake of featuring Organians. The less said about Bound , the better.

In many ways, for better and for worse, the fourth season of Enterprise paved the way for the JJ Abrams reboot. It serves as something of a bridge between two iterations of Star Trek , and not just because they both feature Peter Weller as a xenophobic bad guy or because Star Trek wiped everything but Enterprise from the official canon. The connections run deeper than that, with both the fourth season and the Abrams movies treating Star Trek continuity as a fetish object of itself.

This is most obvious in the way that both the Borderland trilogy and Star Trek Into Darkness both focus on retreading The Wrath of Khan , but it also bubbles through on their shared fixation on Spock as an ambassador for the franchise. Star Trek cast Spock as the one character carried over from one iteration of the franchise to the next, while the fourth season hints repeatedly at the idea of a Vulcan-human hybrid as a sort of messianic figure that serves to summon the Star Trek universe into being.

The most interesting narrative threads of the fourth season focused on the foundation of the Federation and emergence of the franchise’s utopian vision of the future. Although less overt in its social and political commentary than the third season had been, the fourth season was still shaped and informed by the War on Terror. This is most obvious in the recurring theme of xenophobia building through episodes like Home to Demons and Terra Prime . There was a sense that hope for a better future was more essential than it ever had been before.

The fourth season of Enterprise set about reconciling Earth and Vulcan in The Forge , Awakening and Kir’Shara . It brought together the founding members of the Federation against a Romulan threat in Babel One , United and The Aenar . It even featured meetings that would lead to the foundation of the Federation in Demons , Terra Prime and These Are the Voyages… Even more than serving continuity, these episodes embraced the core ideals of Star Trek , the idea that different people can work together for the greater good.

One of the smarter decisions of the fourth season is to present this idealism as subversive in its own way. Repeatedly over the course of the fourth season, it is stressed that mutually beneficial cooperation is not a given. The fourth season returns to the classic Star Trek trope of space-faring Roman-themed civilisations, presenting both the Romulan Empire and the Terran Empire as alternatives to the nascent Federation. Indeed, Paxton’s Terra Prime is specifically coded as a movement that would lead to the Terran Empire rather than the Federation.

Bridging the gap between the first and second terms of President George W. Bush, at a point in time where it seemed like the United States was committed to “going it alone” , it was good to see Enterprise embrace the optimism at the heart of the franchise once again. In many ways, the Star Trek franchise has always been an idealised extrapolation of an American future, and it is good to see the fourth and final season reclaim that following the grim cynicism of the first two seasons.

Indeed, Demons and Terra Prime serve as something of a finale to the series by bringing Enterprise full circle. The ship and crew return home to fight the demons that have been lurking there all along. In particular, Paxton is presented as a counterpoint to Archer, with Coto even casting another eighties science-fiction icon in the role. Paxton is xenophobic and paranoid, mired in daddy issues, just like the version of Archer introduced in Broken Bow . Having Archer come home and vanquish that part of himself feels like an important thematic beat.

The final two seasons of Enterprise are fantastic examples of the franchise innovating and experimenting, despite their flaws. It is a shame that the quality of those two seasons tends to get drowned out by the bland mediocrity of the first two seasons and the long shadow cast be the cancellation. Enterprise will always be the show that marked the end of the Berman era and began the franchise’s decade-long absence from television. However, at its best it was a proud heir to the Star Trek name.

Enterprise was a show that frequently struggled with the question of what a twenty-first century Star Trek show should like, in terms of both theme and narrative. It is debatable whether it ever settled on a convincing answer, but its final two seasons suggest some interesting possibilities. In many ways, those final two seasons have the perfect narrative for a Star Trek prequel. Amid the confusion and chaos of the War on Terror, Enterprise helped the franchise find a way back to itself.

That is no small accomplishment.

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Published May 2, 2024

It's The (Other) Enterprise! How Discovery's I.S.S. Enterprise Connects Three Eras of Star Trek

The Mirror Enterprise had a long road getting from there to here.

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for Star Trek: Discovery's "Mirrors."

A graphic illustration of the I.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701

StarTrek.com

In the classic 1967 episode, " Mirror, Mirror ," when Kirk, Bones, Scotty, and Uhura accidentally beamed across dimensions, and onto another version of the Enterprise , the first clue that this was a parallel universe was the fact that the ship was orbiting around the Halkan homeworld from right-to-left, rather than left-to-right. So, the first glimpse of the I.S.S. Enterprise was simply that it was taking a different path, literally, zagging when it should have been zigging.

Ever since the debut of "Mirror, Mirror," the idea of an evil Enterprise grew in our imaginations, even if we didn't get to actually see it on-screen again. Even as the Mirror Universe expanded in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: Enterprise , and Star Trek: Discovery , an on-screen glimpse of the I.S.S. Enterprise — traveling on a very different path from the U.S.S. Enterprise — remained elusive. That is, until now.

In the Discovery episode " Mirrors ," the final destination of this version of the Enterprise has been revealed, and in that revelation, the entire timeline of the Star Trek universe has been traversed. Unlike the classic 1701 of the Prime Universe, the I.S.S. Enterprise 's journey has lasted centuries. Here's how that journey unites at least three different aspects of the larger Star Trek story.

How Discovery Brings Back the Mirror Enterprise

"Mirrors"

In "Mirrors," the fifth episode of Discovery 's fifth season, Book and Burnham take a shuttlecraft into an unstable wormhole, hoping to find a trace of Moll and L'ak and the next piece of the puzzle that can lead them to the Progenitor 's elusive technology. But instead, adrift and displaced by nine centuries, and an entirely different dimension, they find the I.S.S. Enterprise , a ship Burnham never actually encountered while she was in the Mirror Universe in Discovery 's first season, but is nonetheless instantly familiar with.

While aboard, we learn that while this ship was part of the Terran Starfleet. At some point after the events of "Mirror, Mirror," a group of rebellious reformers commandeered this Enterprise , turning it into a ship of hope. Book finds a plaque on the ship which commemorates the ship's journey, pointing out that "The Terran High Chancellor was killed for trying to make reforms." This could reference Mirror Spock, though Burnham and Book would have no way of knowing that.

In "Mirror, Mirror," Kirk challenged Mirror Spock to be better, and try to reform the Empire which, we learned, actually did happen. But, interestingly, Burnham and Book only have one piece of the puzzle, the audience of all of the Star Trek franchise, has the rest.

The Deep Space Nine Connection

"Crossover"

In the 1994 Deep Space Nine episode " Crossover ," Kira and Bashir find themselves in the Mirror Universe after a warp bubble kerfuffle spits them out the Bajorian wormhole and into very unfamiliar territory. They’re in the Mirror Universe all right, but this is the 24th Century version of the Mirror Universe, not the 23rd Century time frame from "Mirror, Mirror." Kira comes face to face with her Mirror self, Intendant Kira, who tells her all about how Spock became the leader of the Empire, and began "preaching reforms" and "peace."

This neatly parallels what Book says in "Mirrors," but now, we learn that some Terrans who believed in peace escaped on the I.S.S. Enterprise . While the DS9 future of the Mirror Universe was bleak for Terrans, we now learn that some survived, and even made it to the Prime Universe thanks to the Enterprise .

The Story of Another Wayward, Vintage Starship

"In A Mirror Darkly, Part 2"

The Constitution -class I.S.S. Enterprise 's journey from the Mirror Universe of the 23rd Century to the 32nd Century is also reminiscent of another TOS Mirror Universe starship crossover. Back in Discovery 's first season, the crew learns everything they need to know about the Mirror Universe thanks to information about the U.S.S. Defiant , a ship, which like the I.S.S. Enterprise , eventually moved across universes and time, as well.

In the 1968 Original Series episode " The Tholian Web ," the U.S.S. Defiant vanishes, only to reappear in the 2005 Enterprise two-parter, " In a Mirror, Darkly ." As Burnham puts it in "Despite Yourself," this journey is unorthodox, "Data suggests that in the future, the Defiant will encounter a phenomenon that'll bring it into this alternative universe's past." This means that not only did the Defiant cross universes, but time-traveled too, from the 23rd Century setting of The Original Series , to the 22nd Century setting of Star Trek: Enterprise .

The I.S.S. Enterprise didn't travel from the 23rd century Mirror Universe straight to the 32nd century Prime Universe. As we learned in Discovery 's third season, crossing over directly between these universes at this point in time is impossible. But, it did crossover sometime before the end of the 24th Century; one of the mysterious 24th Century scientists, Dr. Cho, was Terran. And, that detail, brings the journey of the I.S.S. Enterprise , all the way back to the story of Discovery .

Discovery 's Hopeful Mirror Universe Tale

Book reads the I.S.S. Enterprise plaque in 'Mirrors'

Book reads the journey of the I.S.S. Enterprise to Burnham, mentioning that this crew escaped all thanks to the help of a "Keplian slave turned rebel leader." Instantly, Book and Burnham know this can only mean "Action Saru" himself, from the Mirror Universe.

This detail ties into Season 3's two-parter, " Terra Firma ," in which Georgiou re-entered the Mirror Universe in the 23rd Century, at a point in time prior to Burnham's crossover in Season 1. But, in this version of the Mirror Universe, Georgiou, like Mirror Spock, tried to affect some positive change, which had dire consequences for her. But, at the same time, in this Mirror Universe, Georgiou had also freed Saru, and we did see him leading a rebellion toward the end of the episode. As the Guardian of Forever told Georgiou in " Terra Firma, Part 2 ," her actions in at least one version of the Mirror Universe had a big, positive impact, "You saved a Kelpien. And you didn't have to do that. And he'll save others. A lot of them."

So, thanks to Georgiou, Mirror Spock, and Action Saru, the story of the Mirror Universe in Star Trek: Discovery 's final season has become an optimistic one. Like the idealistic Terran rebels in Deep Space Nine 's " Through the Looking Glass ," not all stories about the darkest dimension in Star Trek have to end in despair. And thanks to crossover between dimensions, the I.S.S. Enterprise has now become a beacon of hope in not one universe, but two.

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Ryan Britt is the author of the nonfiction books Phasers on Stun! How the Making and Remaking of Star Trek Changed the World (2022), The Spice Must Flow: The Journey of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies (2023), and the essay collection Luke Skywalker Can’t Read (2015). He is a longtime contributor to Star Trek.com and his writing regularly appears with Inverse, Den of Geek!, Esquire and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Maine with his family.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Star Trek Fan Says One Series Doesn't Deserve Its 'Bad Rap'

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Star Trek Fans Notice An Interesting Detail About Strange New Worlds Season 2's Phasers

Star trek: how did data's cat save the enterprise crew, scream 7: should it be the final movie in the franchise.

Star Trek: Enterprise was unique in going back in time, exploring humanity's early space exploits, and adding to the franchise's canon.
Despite mixed reviews, fans are defending the show and praising its writing, plus the newly fleshed-out portrayal of the Vulcans.
Broad criticism of the show stems from how it ended, including franchise fatigue, canon issues, and the overexposure of Star Trek content.

Star Trek: Enterprise has always had an unsteady place in the Star Trek franchise, and one new viewer called the harsh judgment the show receives into question with a querying post on social media addressing other fans.

Star Trek : Enterprise broke the franchise's mold by going back in time instead of ahead and telling the story of humanity’s earliest exploits in space after attaining the technology required for effective space travel. While Enterprise was unique and added many things to the franchise’s canon, including the story behind the name of Star Trek 's Enterprise , which served as the primary location for Star Trek: The Original Series , opinions on the show have been mixed despite starting strong.

Star Trek fans are confused about why the assault phasers in Strange New World's season 2 finale are the same as those issued in Section 31.

Part of Star Trek: Enterprise 's mixed reception consists of fans defending the show and maintaining that several underrated Star Trek: Enterprise episodes don’t get a fair shake from other enjoyers of the franchise. One new defender of the show is Reddit user Vague-emu , who took to r/startrek to pose the question, “Why does ENT get such a bad rap?” Expressing their surprise at how much they enjoyed the show despite apprehension going into it due to the mixed reviews, the user clarified that they’re aware that the last few episodes are controversial. However, they feel that the writing is solid and the newly fleshed-out portrayal of the Vulcans was enjoyable, making them question the show’s poor reputation.

Several other denizens of the subreddit would proceed to weigh in on the issue, with many of the commenters agreeing on the same points of note, including the OP’s already-stated problems with how the series ended. Some of these widely held gripes include the sudden change in story focus brought on by the Temporal Cold War arc, the effort put into setting up the Original Series retroactively, and a host of issues with how the show treated established canon. However, most longtime fans in the replies echo the same conclusion: franchise fatigue. While modern Star Trek fans are worried about too many projects being released as Star Wars does, Star Trek committed this sin first around the '90s and early 2000s with multiple long-running series running into one another and movies of varying quality. This seems to be the broad consensus on why the show got such a poor reception despite its initial critical success.

These weren’t the only problems, as the writing also had issues, and even Star Trek: Enterprise star Jolene Blalock has slammed how her character T'Pol was written. Other commenters also mentioned some individual pet peeves like distaste for the original showrunner’s philosophy on the franchise, the Star Trek epitaph missing from the show’s original title for the first two seasons, the opening theme, and much more–but the core issues do seem to be the ones everyone agrees on. Coming in after years of night endless Star Trek content to capitalize on its previously unexpected success, Enterprise was quick to wear its welcome due to overexposure suffered by fans, making all the legitimate faults the show had all the more glaring and turning minor mishaps and inconsistencies into capital sins. With time to cleanse the pallet, many fans admit to enjoying the show more on rewatching.

While a fan-requested Star Trek: Picard spinoff project might’ve been canceled by Paramount , there’s still tons of Star Trek content to come, as the IP is one of Paramount's strongest and still quite rife with opportunities to expand and draw in new fans with more shows and movies in a similar vein to Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks . Hopefully, the creatives learn from past mistakes and pace the new content accordingly.

Star Trek: Enterprise is currently available for streaming on Paramount Plus.

Star Trek: Enterprise

A century before Captain Kirk's five-year mission, Jonathan Archer captains the United Earth ship Enterprise during the early years of Starfleet, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War and the formation of the Federation.

Data's beloved cat, Spot, was a fixture of his time on the show. Spot became an unlikely hero when a deadly virus spread through the Enterprise crew.

Source: Vague-emu/Reddit

Movies & TV

‘Star Trek’ Fans Can Now Virtually Tour Every Starship Enterprise Bridge

An interactive web portal explores the vessel’s evolution over nearly six decades

Daily Correspondent

For decades, many “ Star Trek ” fans have imagined what it would be like to work from the bridge of the starship Enterprise , the long-running franchise’s high-tech space-exploring vessel. Through various iterations and seasons of the series, created by Gene Roddenberry in the ’60s, the bridge has remained a constant, serving as the backdrop for many important moments in the show’s 800-plus episodes.

Now, die-hard Trekkies and casual watchers alike can virtually roam around the Enterprise’s bridge to their heart’s content, thanks to a sophisticated and highly detailed new web portal that brings the space to life.

The site features 360-degree, 3D models of the various versions of the Enterprise , as well as a timeline of the ship’s evolution throughout the franchise’s history. Fans of the show can also read detailed information about each version of the ship’s design, its significance to the “Star Trek” storyline and its production backstory.

Developed in honor of the “Star Trek: Picard” series finale , which dropped late last month on Paramount+, the portal is a collaboration between the Roddenberry Estate, the Roddenberry Archive and the technology company OTOY. A group of well-known “Star Trek” artists—including Denise and Michael Okuda , Daren Dochterman, Doug Drexler and Dave Blass—also supported the project.

“Through new technology, we can bring audiences back in time as if they were there on set during the making of ’Star Trek,’ providing a window into new dimensions of the ‘Star Trek’ universe,” says Jules Urbach, OTOY’s CEO, in a statement .

The voice of the late actress Majel Roddenberry , who played the Enterprise ’s computer for years, will be added to the site in the future. Gene Roddenberry died in 1991 , followed by Majel Roddenberry in 2008 ; the two had been married since 1969.

The portal’s creators also released a short video , narrated by actor John de Lancie , exploring every version of the Enterprise ’s bridge to date, “from its inception in Pato Guzman ’s 1964 sketches, through its portrayal across decades of TV shows and feature films, to its latest incarnation on the Enterprise-G , as revealed in the final episode of ‘ Star Trek: Picard ,’” per the video description. Accompanying video interviews with “Star Trek” cast and crew—including William Shatner , who played Captain Kirk in the original series, and Terry Matalas , a showrunner for “Star Trek: Picard”—also explore the series’ legacy.

The interactive, 3D bridge models contain a surprising level of detail, right down to the consoles and turbolifts. The site, however, has so far been hit or miss for users, suggesting that the team behind it may still be working out a few of the technical kinks, reports the Verge ’s Sean Hollister. And as Kyle Barr writes for Gizmodo , one big downside is that the models don’t contain any “Star Trek” characters, who he says are “the beating heart of the show and its ideals.”

“Sitting in the captain’s chair, with all the stations empty beside you,” he writes, “is enough to make one wistful.”

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How would you re-imagine and reboot Enterprise?

Discussion in ' Star Trek: Enterprise ' started by Jedi Marso , May 3, 2022 .

Captrek Vice Admiral Admiral

Jedi Marso said: ↑ 13. No visiting Risa in the 22nd Century- it should be much farther out than that if the crew of the Enterprise-D are hanging out there in the 24th Century. Click to expand...

dupersuper Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

No photon torpedoes, less reliable transporter, no Dear Doctor episode, a Klingon encounter that matches Picard's mention in TNG better, add Alpha Centauri, get the writers from season 4 involved from the beginning...

at Quark's Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

My ideas would be to make their ships more primitive than what we got in the original. Not saying there should be no transporters but make them a lot slower and more risky to use. Stop making it look like all tech from the 24th century is functionally already there but with other names implying more 'primitive' versions (polarized hull plating instead of shields, photonic torpedoes instead of photon torpedoes, phase pistols instead of phasers, etc - I liked there being no tractor beams yet). No Temporal Cold war or other enemies that apparently were huge threats in the 22nd century and foundational in ultimately giving the impetus to found the Federation, but never even referenced in the 23rd or 24th centuries. There's enough material in telling the story how the Federation came to be (Romulan threat, complicated and strained relationships between Romulans, Andorians, Humans, and Tellarites before they eventually came to trust one another) to make the invention of entirely new enemies unnecessary.

DarKush Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

I often enjoy these threads, seeing what some others come up with. I've re-imagined ENT a lot before in similar threads, so I'll do a reboot instead. -It takes place after the Earth-Romulan War and the founding of the Federation. -I really liked the refit Enterprise that might have seen made it to the series in a later season. So, the refit would be the hero ship class. But the hero ship itself would not be the Enterprise. It would be the Columbia, with Captain Erika Hernandez in the lead role. -I would combine new Columbia characters with ENT characters (looking mostly here at Mayweather, Hoshi, and Phlox). Recurring would be Admiral Archer who slides into the role that Admiral Forrest had on ENT. -Though I liked the idea of Captain Reed from Trek lit, though I would have him be more an ambiguous ally from Section 31, a recurring character. -T'Pol would be the Earth ambassador to Vulcan, after Soval. (I would keep the idea that she's half-Romulan and use that later on). Also, Shran would be a recurring character, captain of his own Federation Starfleet vessel. -Major recurring villains would be the Kzinti and Tholians. Other challenges would be the Nausicaans, Suliban, and the Syndicate. I might also just create a new villain (s) as well. -While the Romulans would not be major players in the reboot, they would sometimes factor in behind the scenes, and I would seek to do more to build up the Remans. -The Klingons would not be a major factor in the series either. I would just chalk that up to them fighting amongst themselves. -Future Guy being future Archer would happen for this series. -I would also return to the Mirror Universe to see what Mirror Hoshi was up to. -I also would use this series to connect more dots. There are a lot of Motion Picture, Kelvinverse aliens, among others that are out there to be fleshed out and explored and I would have Columbia make first contact or interact with a lot of them. -Also, I would canonize the Daedalus-class in live action.

Duncan MacLeod Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

I would contact The Badger and have him do this: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/starship-enterprise-broken-bow-alternate-version.90084/

Sketcher Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

This is how I would've done it.

Richard S. Ta Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

I'd take a different tack. If I was going to a prequel I would have done a Pike/Enterprise show with Spock and Number One. Maybe keep a few legacy characters like Uhura, Chapel and M'Benga? The Aenar are interesting so I'd have one as the chief engineer maybe? For other characters I'd go back to Roddenberry's original outline for The Cage. Ortegas is an interesting name for a helm officer. I think fans would really like this show. I just can't think of a good title for it. Strange as it seems, titles for New shows are not something that often figure into my world. Or Worlds.

MarkusTay Commander Red Shirt

Its tough for me, because I liked Enterprise a lot, but I am probably approaching this differently (at least time-wise) than most of you - the only series I watched Live, when it aired, was TOS. It wasn't until Enterprise came out that I was allowed to watch another ST show live. Lets just say my ex is my ex for a reason, shall we? Anyhow, seeing Enterprise filled with with nostalgia, feeling the same way I did when I was a kid watching the original on TV. The other shows I saw bits and pieces of over the years, but couldn't 'get into' them. For example, when I saw Worf, I was like, "thats not a Klingon!". So my taste might be different than most, because of my circumstances. As for what I would change? Thats hard for me, because of the above. I think I would show more of how Archer gets other species onboard for the Federation (I can think of at least two he opened negotiations with that the Vulcans either hadn't encountered, or had too much trouble dealing with). So, while be an explorer like the original show, focus more on strengthening the relationships he created, instead of quickly running off to the next 'planet of the week', which was the one major failing of TOS. One of the big problems with most ST shows is that amazing discoveries/tech they find one week are completely forgotten about next. DS9 may have changed that somewhat, but Voyager seemed to have jumped right back into that original trap (there were over-arching, multi-episode plots, but at the same time, it was very much a 'species of the week' show). Also, find abetter, consistant system for warp speed/travel. I think Enterprise may have been getting there, but didn't get the chance. I hated the way Voyager did warp speed ('10' is infinite? WHY? When we KNOW there are other methods of FTL travel that can go fast than Warp 9.99999+?) Maybe if Voyager hadn't dropped the ball, we wouldn't have all these newer shows having to create 'magical space drives' to go faster. However, I still like Voyager, because it really gave us that old-scool TOS explorers fee (and even brought back some of the corniness, for better or worse). Enterprsie was going in the right direction, and I would have gone even grittier*, showing how the brand new UFP needed to make as many new friends as possible, to get as much new tech as possible, because they were basically in an arms-race with the Klingons & Romulans (and whoever else). Oh yeah, and please readdress the First Federation at some point. I know Kirk found them first, but that didn't stop Enterprise from pooping on other canon (and it would have been an easy fix - the FF were a secretive lot). I'd also save Tucker - say that what Riker saw was the 'official story', but in reality, Tucker was brought into Section 31 for a special assignment. Let T'Pol and him get their happy ending in a new final episode. And bring in Sarek, Spock's father, because he was at the first Khitomer Conference. And ignore EVERYTHING from shows that came after Ent./Voy. - I don't like any of that stuff and consider it 'Delta canon' at best. Oh, and explain why, at some point toward the end, they started stuffing their consoles with molten styrofoam rocks. LOL *Like the Battlestar Galactica remake grittier - I feel like Ent. tried for that, but it was a swing and a miss.

Citiprime Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

I used to think Scott Bakula was totally wrong for Archer when the series was airing. Especially in season 1, when the character is supposed to have an undercurrent of resentment towards the Vulcans, I just didn’t think it worked and Bakula didn’t look comfortable in the role. Watching it back now, he’s great once they found their lane for the show in seasons 3 and 4.

Disposable_Ensign Commander Red Shirt

Maybe use the XCV-330 Enterprise. Give it a more realistic feel, by making the interiors like the interiors of modern spacecraft, like the ISS. I think it did this pretty well, but had room for improvement. Set up more things for the future (like the Borg, the Augments, etc.). Some more time spent on Earth or planetside, to give a sort of exploration-y feel. Like they're not just doing space battles. More Tellarites, Kzinti, Tholians, Xindi as allies after the Xindi arc Get rid of the awful "timeline resetting sequence". It would be instantaneous. As a physics student, that hurt to watch.

CarnelianClout Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

I honestly was not a fan of the temporal stuff. We've seen that in every series and to me it undermines the timeline's importance. I would have had more focus on exploration.

Oddish Admiral Admiral

Jedi Marso said: ↑ Just what the title says: How would you re-imagine and reboot Enterprise? ... What are your ideas? Click to expand...

fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

I'll add one that I think needed more emphasis: Have a dedicated diplomatic officer. Not the captain, or the first officer, but someone who take information from Vulcans if needed and work it in to first contact scenarios. Yes, the captain can give speeches but have a diplomat who actually authorizes this stuff, rather than the off the cuff informal way of Archer that came across as someone trying to bluff (badly) in poker.

Dee1891 Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

I don't want a re-boot of "Enterprise" . I don't want a re-boot of anything. If the Trek franchise has to resort to re-boots, then it might as well declare itself over.

There's nothing wrong with a reboot.

Ray Hardgrit Commodore Commodore

Reimagining a long-running ongoing series cuts off the potential for new stories in that universe and complicates the lore by giving audiences a new contradictory set of events to remember.

Jedi Marso Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

Oddish said: ↑ 13. No visiting Risa in the 22nd Century. Have "Two Days and Two Nights" take place on another planet. One with a seedier reputation. They could discuss Risa at the end, that it exists, but it's hundreds of LY away. Click to expand...

E-DUB Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

The "Enterprise" would have been named "Dauntless" and wouldn't have looked like someone broke the "Akira" model and put it back together wrong.

E-DUB said: ↑ The "Enterprise" would have been named "Dauntless" and wouldn't have looked like someone broke the "Akira" model and put it back together wrong. Click to expand...

Tenacity Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

Make Archer a older man, late forties to mid fifties. The Enterprise isn't his first large ship command, nor is deep space exploration something new for humanity, Archer has experience in interstellar space, exploration, combat, diplomacy, first contact, and trade. The Enterprise is however larger and faster than any ship he has ever commanded. The ship needs a first officer. Not T'pol (covered later), nor the ship's engineer who ordinarily would be in engineering and "out of the loop." The purposed first officer would be regular and a new character. Reed would be the ship's sensors/weapons senior officer, separate there would have been a recurring character of the ship's security officer, a young ensign or a lieutenant junior grade. Perhaps this could be Mayweather's role instead of the helm. To be honest the actor had the physical build for the part. And the ship would have a small security/soldier contingent, Eight or so. Hoshi i would make a civilian, I like the idea that maybe a quarter of those aboard the Enterprise would not be Starfleet. Maybe most of the sciences, cooks, some of the support personnel are civilians. I think of Phlox as a civilian. Make clear that the majority of Starfleet people are enlisted, the helmsperson on the bridge would be enlisted, most of the engineering crew, security, Reed's weapons team. Lose the decontamination gel rubbing scenes, I get that they were going for sexy, but that didn't work. The ship has missiles with optional chemial explosives or "atomics." Other weapons would be charged particle beams (which explains why we can see them in a vaccum) and short range gattling guns (because gattling guns are cool). Tucker remains unchanged, why mess with perfection? Jedi Marso said: ↑ No Borg, Ferengi, or Organians, Suliban ... Click to expand...

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Star Trek: Every Version of The Enterprise, Ranked

Star Trek's Enterprise has been through several iterations. While many versions surpass their predecessors, some classic designs still hold up.

Star Trek gave sci-fans the world over the greatest starship in genre history: the starship Enterprise . The classic vessel debuted in 1966 with a deceptively simple but considered design — a very sci-fi saucer attached to a rocket-like fuselage and paired with twin warp nacelles. This design does what every practical, real-world design does: it follows its function.

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Because of that, the original starship Enterprise has endured over fifty years through numerous updates and interpretations. The Star Trek franchise has expanded through myriad live-action and animated television series, as well as feature films. A new Enterprise is generally at the heart of most updates, and each carries on the proud tradition of the first.

Updated on April 28th, 2023 by David Harth: The Enterprise has always been the core of Star Trek . When the show first debuted back in 1966, starships were all either rockets or saucers. The Enterprise changed that, taking familiar design elements and mixing them together to create an iconic vessel that nearly everyone could recognize. Over the last six decades, there have been multiple Enterprises. Two versions of the ship appeared on Star Trek: Picard — one for the first time in live action and another that is totally new.

13 NCC-1701-J (Star Trek: Enterprise)

Star Trek has taken viewers to alternate universes and strange futures. It's also taken viewers into the past, which is why it's so ironic that the series that took viewers furthest into the past also showed them the most advanced Enterprise. Star Trek: Enterprise took place in the 22nd century, but Captain Archer received a glimpse of the distant future in the episode, "Azati Prime."

The Enterprise-J is a Universe- class vessel and serves in Starfleet during the 26th century. Unbelievably massive, it had time travel capacity, like other Starfleet ships that have been portrayed from that time. Fan reaction to the ship was resoundingly negative. Even ship fans didn't enjoy the design, and it's the least loved Enterprise of them all.

12 Future NCC-1701-D From "All Good Things" (Star Trek: Next Generation)

An amped-up version of the Enterprise appeared in the series finale for Star Trek: The Next Generation , "All Good Things," one of its very best Star Trek episodes ever. In an alternate future, the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D packs in a lot more power.

The previously graceful Enterprise adds the third nacelle on the back and a gigantic phaser canon on the underbelly of the saucer. This canon blows Klingon ships to bits in one shot, which is kind of nuts. The future version of the ship also featured a cloaking device, something Starfleet ships generally avoided.

11 The Kelvin Timeline NCC-1701 (Star Trek 2009)

When J.J. Abrams rebooted the franchise in the 2009 Star Trek film, the Enterprise got a major makeover. Kind of. The saucer section of the ship is essentially that of the refit Enterprise , but the rest looks different. The body, neck, and nacelles all feature a much more sweeping, fluid design than the original version of the ship.

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The nacelles are also much larger in comparison to the rest of the ship, and much closer. It's unclear whether fans have seen the last of the Kelvin-era Enterprise and her crew, though it remains a possibility that they will.

10 The NX-01 (Star Trek: Enterprise)

By the time the 21st century rolled on, Star Trek had oddly gotten a bit tired. To change it up, the producers of the franchise went back to the future. They set a new series, Star Trek: Enterprise , a hundred years before Kirk and introduced a never-before-seen version of the starship. The NX-01 actually had some links to ships previous.

The NX-01 Enterprise 's design is essentially that of the Akira-class vessel from the feature film Star Trek: First Contact , featuring one of the coolest alien races ever, the Borg. The designers flipped the ship upside down and called it good. Fans kind of didn't like the series, but the ship remained cool.

9 NCC-1701-B (Star Trek: Generations)

For a long time, the Enterprise -B remained the question mark in the lineage between Kirk's ship and Picard's. Fans knew it was an Excelsior -class vessel thanks to a mural on the Enterprise -D, but not much else was known about it. The ship appeared in Star Trek Generations , and despite the fact it was based on a design people knew, it had some cool new details.

Star Trek Generations modified the secondary hull of the original Excelsior, sweeping out the hull around the deflector dish. This change was actually made to preserve the existing Excelsior- class model, since the move still used physical models and the scene called for the part of the ship Kirk was in to be destroyed. It also added two huge impulse engines and changed the caps of the nacelles.

8 NCC-1701-C (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

The Enterprise -C had been introduced during the run of The Next Generation , in the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise." The Ambassador -class vessel was another link in the chain between the 23rd and 24th centuries and showed how Starfleet got from Kirk to Picard. The Enterprise -C essentially combined elements of the Constitution -class that preceded it and the Galaxy -class that superseded it.

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The dynamic curving lines of Picard's Enterprise weren't present yet, but the size and uniquely colored red and blue nacelles were. This Enterprise fell to the Romulans, among the greatest villains of the Federation, at the Battle of Narendra III.

7 NCC-1701-F (Star Trek: Picard)

The Enterprise-F made its first appearance in Star Trek Online, an MMO that took place thirty years from the end of Voyager . The Odyssey- class vessel was the flagship of Starfleet at the time Its unique design included a connecting boom between the saucer and stardrive section. The NCC-1701-F Enterprise made an impact on fans, so they were excited to see it in the trailer for Star Trek: Picard.

Star Trek is no stranger to retcons , and games aren't usually canon anyway, so bringing the F back to 2401, instead of further in the future was a cakewalk. The NCC-1701-F Enterprise had a great reputation with Star Trek Online fans, although it rarely in the show. The NCC-1701-F Enterprise was scheduled for decommissioning, and the new Borg threat in Picard made that a reality.

6 NCC-1701 (Star Trek: Discovery And Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)

Setting Star Trek Discovery only ten years before the Original Series meant that the U.S.S. Enterprise was destined to show up. It eventually did at the end of the first season. The show updated the classic 60s elements for a modern audience, and the NCC-1701 was no exception.

The original Matt Jefferies design largely remains the same but incorporates elements of the refit from Star Trek: The Motion Picture . The nacelle pylons are swept back, giving it a greater sense of fluidity. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has taken its place among Star Trek 's most beloved shows, a mix of old and new, much like this great new design.

5 NCC-1701-E (The Next Generation Movies)

The Enterprise - E provided the single greatest design change in the storied ship's history. Producers wanted something faster and sleeker, and they got it. The Sovereign -class starship resembles a hot rod, with a flat, elongated profile that is in stark contrast to the big, swan-like grace of its predecessor.

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Designers accomplished this by removing the neck out of the design entirely. Starships during this period, like the Voyager , basically abandoned the neck element and stacked the saucer directly on the secondary hull. This Enterprise was one of the fastest and strongest of them all.

4 NCC-1701-G (Star Trek: Picard)

Star Trek: Picard 's third season helped the series become one of the most beloved Star Trek spin-offs , bringing together the crew of TNG for one last ride. It also introduced fans to a new Enterprise. The Enterprise-G took things back to the old school look in some ways. Originally appearing in the show as the U.S.S. Titan-A , Picard and his crew used the vessel to figure out who was attacking the Federation.

The G is a Constitution III- class ship, sometimes called a Neo-Constitution. Star Trek: Picard fans came to love the Enterprise-G . Its design took elements from Constitution- class and the refit from the later motion pictures and added design flourishes from newer ship designs as well. A mid-sized vessel, it wasn't the most powerful warship, but it had the feeling of a great jack of all trades vessel. Captained by Captain Seven Of Nine, fans are hoping to see more of the Enterprise-G in the future.

3 NCC-1701 (Star Trek: The Original Series)

The first is usually the best, and in many ways, the original Enterprise from the 1966 series remains the most iconic design in science-fiction. It's hard to argue with its basic simplicity and instantly recognizable silhouette. Due to budgetary constraints, the original model of the ship lacked the detail that later versions did, but it's still an incredible work of art.

The original Enterprise appeared in all the most memorable episodes of the classic Star Trek series. The first starship Enterprise established a design lineage that informs every single ship in the Star Trek universe to this day. That goes for Starfleet and alien vessels alike.

2 NCC-1701-D (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Later versions updated and improved on the already awesome original design. Lots of brutal things happened in Star Trek: The Next Generation , but on the positive side, the Enterprise-D received an upgrade. Designer Andrew Probert took the largely static lines of the original and transformed them into flowing, graceful lines that made the Enterprise look more like a glass sculpture than a machine.

Some Star Trek fans didn't take to the new design because of how different it was, especially in 1987, upon its debut. However, the Enterprise-D has aged very well and defines an era of the franchise hailed for its creative endeavors.

1 NCC-1701 And The NCC-1701-A (The Original Series Movies)

The best update the original Enterprise ever received came in The Motion Picture . Legendary concept designer Ralph McQuarrie, responsible for some of the most iconic Star Wars concept art, helped reimagine the Enterprise . The ship got a top-to-bottom makeover, receiving the biggest changes in the secondary hull.

An embedded blue disc replaced the original gold deflector dish, and a weapons port provided the base for the neck. The nacelle pylons were swept back, and the nacelles completely redesigned, becoming more wedge-like and less tubular. It's the perfect redesign of the quintessential starship and remains a huge inspiration for Enterprise designs all these years later.

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Star Trek: Enterprise -- The adventures of Earth's first warp-speed starship crew

Braga and Berman began the conceptualization of a new ST series between the releases of Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis . Perhaps buoyed by the incredible success of Star Trek: First Contact , Braga & Berman eschewed setting the new show a further “generation” ahead of the trilogy of 1980s/90s ST series, instead basing the show in a time period between Zefrim Cochrane’s invention of warp drive and the events of the original series.

With this in mind, according to the supplemental material in the 10th anniversary Blue Ray, Berman & Braga planned for the entire first season of Enterprise to lead up to the launch of Earth’s first proper starship. This was also the duo’s misguided justification for eliminating the “Star Trek” from the show’s title: After all, the first season wouldn’t involve any trekking at all. Paramount executives overruled this plan, demanding that the ship be launched by the premier episode’s end. As a result, season one was hurriedly replanned – and certain scripts certainly show this.

(One wonders why the Paramount “brain trust” nixed the idea of an Earth-bound series, but kept with the “Star Trek”-less series title; we suppose they just wanted to make things more challenging for the marketing team…)

And rather than go with a Jerry Goldsmith theme for the opening titles – after all, the man only won Emmy awards for the Deep Space Nine and Voyager themes, but hey – the Enterprise creative team instead went with “Faith of the Heart,” a song originally written for the Patch Adams soundtrack.

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By season 3 , the audience of 12½ million who’d tuned in for the series’ inaugural episode had been cut by nearly 70% to under 4 million. Other than finally condescending to get “Star Trek” back in the show title, measures were made to alienate audiences both loyal and potential. Continuity and even the very philosophy of Star Trek was blown away in series 3, which essentially turned the Enterprise into a warship to take on enemies that ST fans who’d seen every episode of every series hadn’t heard of and didn’t care about much.

By the time Star Trek: Enterprise was announced without fanfare as to be wrapped after season 4 , few beyond the absolute devotees cared – and the final episode scared as many as them off as possible, too.

Star Trek Enterprise – Cast and crew

Among the many disappointments brought fans in Enterprise, the characters may have taken the biggest hit of all. This cast can really only boast three truly fleshed-out, deep characters: Captain Archer, Tripp Tucker and T’Pol. Heck, characters like Sarek and Shran got more quality screen time on Enterprise than Ensign Mayweather – and perhaps this is yet another reason why Enterprise is so unloved even among the fanbase. After all, who wants to cosplay as Malcolm Reed?

Ah, well, we’ll have to chalk up dramatic losses such as Hoshi Sato and Dr. Phlox as just more misfires from a TV series absolutely loaded with them.

Captain Jonathon Archer (Scott Bakula) – “Earnest” is a good single descriptor of Captain Archer, much of whose backstory fans were robbed of thanks to studio executives’ strange insistence that some dozen story ideas be crammed into a two-part episode. A bit of a figurehead for the human race in many cases – shades of Janeway! – Archer seeks to explore an exciting new frontier, well, earnestly. Retroactive note to the Enterprise creative team: We liked Archer better when he was the serious-yet-disarming sort rather than the shouty Archer of season 3.

T’Pol, science officer (Jolene Blalock) – Another in the honored Star Trek traditions of Vulcan Confidant and Student of humanity, T’Pol is ultimately probably thought as much of an oddball on her home planet as the relatively docile Worf was on his. T’Pol is the rare Vulcan of the 22nd century who flies in the face of Vulcan dogma and comes to respect those ever-resourceful and “fascinating” homo sapiens. Indeed, she ultimately resigns her commission from the Vulcan High Command so as to assist Archer and his crew, but especially the so-human Tucker…

Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker, chief engineer (Connor Trinneer) – Trip and Archer were longtime friend before the first mission of the Enterprise. Within the ruling troika of Enterprise, Tucker was the glue between the often polar opposite Archer and T’Pol. He’s also the sense of humor guy, the crew-relations guy and the most likeable character on the show guy. Like Archer, Trip went dark in season 3 to the detriment of his character but was back in fine form by season 4 … before he was stupidly killed in a stupid way for stupid non-reasons.

Ensign Hoshi Sato, translator/interpreter/communications officer (Linda Park) – One of the two shafted characters on this series, Ensign Sato never really got a chance to shine after season 1 . (Unless you count the surprising badassery of her mirror-universe version late in the series’ run.) One of the stars of “Broken Bow,” subplots of Sato’s friendship with Archer, her fears of outer space and the difficulties of exploring the freaking galaxy *without a universal translator* rarely come to the fore, much to a potentially great character’s detriment.

Doctor Phlox (John Billingsley) – The other Enterprise character whose best bits and character development never truly came to fruition. Phlox was sadly more often used as a plot device portrayed as a victim of Terran xenophobia or sleep deprivation, than a driving force. What nuggets we do find out about his history or “gloriously” complicated mating rituals of Denobulans are quite interesting, but Phlox in the end goes down as the most underused alien character on a Star Trek bridge crew since Arex.

Lt. Malcolm Reed, armory officer (Dominic Keating) – You’ve got to believe that if the show’s creative team could take a do over on the whole Malcolm Reed character, they certainly would. Whenever in a desperate or difficult situation, Lt. Reed could be counted on … to morph into his version of a whinier Pvt. Hudson from Aliens. On top of this, his everyday incompetence can be blamed for at least two cultural and/or temporal distortions, and his failure at weapons took the Enterprise out of many a skirmish. Just bloody awful.

Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) – This guy was also on Star Trek: Enterprise, with a couple of episodes even devoted to his family members, but we’ll be damned if we can think of anything noteworthy about him…

About that final episode...

One can’t really discuss the relative quality of Star Trek: Enterprise without examining “These are the Voyages,” the pretty much universally despised concluding episode seemingly designed to chase off any remaining Enterprise devotees.

Like most of Star Trek: Enterprise itself, “These Are The Voyages” suffers from the result of making every single behind-the-scenes decision incorrectly. From its conceit as a frame story set within a fairly inconsequential and unmemorable episode of The Next Generation ( season 7’s “The Pegasus” ) to the rushed feeling throughout (Surprise, it’s six years later, yet not one of the crewmen has risen in rank!) to the utterly pointless death of Tripp, arguably the series’ most popular character, this episode manages to turn off Star Trek fans of all stripes and kill the prospects for another Star Trek TV series for nearly a decade and a half.

Ah, Enterprise, what happened…? Or, more precisely, why did every single bad decision have to be implemented so thoroughly?

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USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)

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The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G) , formerly the USS Titan (NCC-80102-A) , was a Federation Constitution III -class starship operated by Starfleet in the 24th and 25th centuries .

Launched in 2396 under the command of Captain Liam Shaw , the USS Titan -A was originally the fourth Starfleet vessel to bear the name Titan and the second to bear the NCC-80102 registry . In 2401 , the Titan -A was instrumental in stopping the Changeling / Borg threat to Starfleet and the Federation.

In 2402 , she was rechristened as the Enterprise -G under the command of Captain Seven of Nine , the eighth Federation starship to bear the name Enterprise , in honor of the command crew of the USS Enterprise -D and the crucial part the ship had played in assisting their efforts to counter the Borg.

1.1 Construction
1.2 Early voyages
1.3 Rescuing Beverly and Jack Crusher
1.4 The Ryton Nebula
1.5 Return to Federation space
1.6 Laying a trap
1.7 Borg takeover
1.8 Renaming
1.9 Return of an old friend
2 Command crew
3 Embarked craft
4.1 Appearances
4.2 Background information
4.3 External link

Service history [ ]

Construction [ ].

The Titan -A incorporated components from the previous Luna -class USS Titan , such as the warp coils , nacelle shield mechanism, and computer systems. When Captain Liam Shaw took command of the Titan -A in 2396 , he purged the computer of Captain William T. Riker 's music library. ( PIC : " The Next Generation ", " No Win Scenario ")

Early voyages [ ]

The USS Titan -A at Sol Station following her refit

By 2401 , the Titan -A, under Captain Shaw's command, had completed thirty-six missions over a five-year period.

In 2401, Starfleet Academy Cadet Rew P'Cott Claudia-Jean was assigned to the Titan . ( PIC : " The Star Gazer ")

Rescuing Beverly and Jack Crusher [ ]

Shuttle Saavik departing the Titan -A after being commandeered by Admiral Picard and Captain Riker

Later that year, The Titan -A was stationed at Sol Station when Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Riker boarded the Titan -A under the ruse of a routine inspection; it was really a means to use the ship to get to the Ryton system to locate Doctor Beverly Crusher . They were met by the ship's first officer , Commander Seven of Nine (temporarily going by Annika Hansen at Shaw's insistence). Shaw emphatically denied Riker and Picard's request to change course, but Commander Seven ordered a course set to those coordinates anyway and allowed Picard and Riker to commandeer one of Titan 's shuttles into the Ryton Nebula . ( PIC : " The Next Generation ")

For these acts of insubordination , Shaw relieved Seven of duty and had her confined to quarters. ( PIC : " Disengage ")

The USS Titan -A firing photon torpedoes at the Shrike before escaping into the Ryton nebula

Shaw reluctantly took The Titan -A into the nebula after sensors showed the SS Eleos XII had come under attack from the Shrike , which was holding it in a tractor beam . The Titan -A interrupted the beam and transported Picard, Riker, Beverly, and her son, Jack Crusher , aboard. Beverly received medical attention in the Titan 's sickbay. The Shrike 's Captain Vadic demanded Shaw turn Jack over to her custody, claiming there was a sizeable bounty on his head, and used her vessel’s tractor beam to throw the Eleos at the Titan -A, penetrating its shields and damaging Deck 11 with shrapnel . Due to the Shrike 's overwhelming tactical superiority, Shaw chose to take his ship deeper into the nebula. ( PIC : " Disengage ")

The Ryton Nebula [ ]

The Titan -A took fire from the Shrike , damaging the warp drive and aft sensors. To compensate, Shaw ordered crewmembers to visually search for the Shrike through the windows of the aft observation lounge. The Shrike caught up to them and opened fire, causing severe damage and incapacitating Captain Shaw. He transferred command to Captain Riker, who used a torpedo detonation maneuver to temporarily shake the Shrike off their tail, buying time for the crew to complete repairs.

The Titan -A is forced to go through a portal created by the Shrike preventing them from escaping

The Shrike soon resumed pursuit, using stolen portal technology to forcibly redirect the Titan -A away from the nebula's edge. Commander Seven and Jack Crusher successfully repaired a verterium leak, intentionally caused by a Changeling posing as Ensign Eli Foster , that was allowing Vadic to track the Titan . However, before the Titan could leave the nebula, this same Changeling disabled the repaired warp drive with an explosive. Captain Riker opened fire on the Shrike , which used its portal tech to redirect the torpedo volley at the Titan , causing it to lose all propulsion and fall into the nebula's central gravity well . ( PIC : " Seventeen Seconds ")

The Titan was forced to intermittently lower shields to avoid causing a reactor meltdown, as main power had dropped to nine percent. Commander Seven attempted to locate the Changeling, who had already murdered Foster days prior and murdered another officer while evading pursuit.

Jack and Beverly Crusher devised a plan to manually open the ship's nacelle covers, allowing the Titan to absorb the energy from the periodic shock waves emitting from the nebula's center and "hitch a ride" out. Only Captain Shaw had the necessary expertise to hot-wire the twenty-year-old technology; Commander Seven successfully identified and killed the Changeling infiltrator when it attempted to sabotage this process. By temporarily diverting power from life support , the Titan was able to absorb the shock wave's energy and restore full power while propelling itself toward the nebula's edge.

The Titan -A surrounded by the new life of the nebula after being born

When the Shrike intercepted, Captain Riker had the ship's tractor beam used to snag a nearby asteroid, causing it to collide with the Shrike and damage it enough for the Titan to escape. The Titan crew then witnessed the birth of an unknown species of spacefaring cephalopod lifeforms (the cause of the shock waves) before departing the Ryton system. ( PIC : " No Win Scenario ")

Return to Federation space [ ]

The Titan -A facing off against the USS Intrepid

The Titan then limped back to Federation space where they decided to stop at the edge of the Alpha Quadrant for repairs. Riker then transferred command of the ship back to Shaw who had since recovered from his injuries. Shaw reinstated Commander Seven and informed Riker and Picard that he had informed Starfleet of what had transpired and that they were on their way.

The USS Intrepid rendezvoused with them, sending over a security contingent led by Commander Ro Laren to bring Picard and Riker into custody. However, Ro privately instructing Picard to take the Titan -A on the run and arranged for the majority of its crew to be transferred to Intrepid instead. As Ro returned to Intrepid , her shuttle was sabotaged by changeling spies, and she purposely crashed it into Intrepid 's port nacelle to buy time for her former captain to escape. Intrepid ordered the Titan -A to stand down and opened fire, forcing Shaw to flee. ( PIC : " Imposters ")

The Titan -A scattered multiple decoy transponder buoys to distract pursuers and traveled to Daystrom Station to investigate the recent theft there, beaming a team into the installation, but was forced to flee when Starfleet arrived. Titan went to the Starfleet Fleet Museum and hid itself among the exhibits, with permission from the museum's director . Jack and Titan 's helmsman Sidney La Forge illegally removed the cloaking device from the HMS Bounty and installed it aboard the Titan -A, allowing it to return to Daystrom undetected, where they rescued Worf , Commander Raffaela Musiker and Daystrom Android M-5-10 before the ship was forced to flee again. ( PIC : " The Bounty ")

Laying a trap [ ]

The Titan -A taking refuge in the Chin'toka scrapyard

The Titan -A was able to conceal itself in the Chin'toka scrapyard on minimum power while the crew attempted to locate Riker, which Seven of Nine attempting to connect with allies, including the friend Captain Tuvok , who was discovered to have also been compromised . After determining he was being held aboard the Shrike , they laid a trap for Captain Vadic, sending a falsified subspace message about the Titan -A being crippled in battle with the Vulcan warship VSS T'Plana .

When Vadic and her Changeling crew boarded the Titan -A, Shaw and Seven used the security systems to trap them inside force fields . Unfortunately, the M-5-10's Lore personae gained control long enough to corrupt the ship's systems and free the Changelings, who then seized the bridge. Vadic sat in the command chair and declared herself "captain of the USS Titan " while demanding Jack Crusher's surrender. ( PIC : " Dominion ")

The Titan finishes the Shrike off with a volley of photon torpedoes

Vadic used bridge controls to lock down the ship, shutting off lights and communications and trapping the remaining crew with emergency bulkheads while her changeling troops attacked them. Jack attempted to use his newfound telepathic abilities to have Lt. Mura enter Picard's command override code on the bridge to regain control, but Vadic stopped him and executed Lt. T'Veen as incentive/punishment. Jack then proceeded to the bridge to buy the others time, stalling Vadic by threatening to destroy himself with a bomb unless she released her hostages, which she did. Once Data 's persona fully integrated into the M-5-10 unit, he easily overrode Vadic's lockout and regained control of the ship. Introducing himself as the ship's “positronic, pissed-off security system”, he trapped the changeling soldiers in the corridors and ejected Vadic into space via the bridge evacuation hatch. Jack's "bomb" was actually a portable force field generator , keeping himself and Cmdr. Seven safe during the decompression. Worf and Musiker wiped out the remaining changelings after rescuing Riker and Deanna Troi from the Shrike , which the Titan -A destroyed with a torpedo barrage. ( PIC : " Surrender ")

Borg takeover [ ]

The Titan -A was subsequently taken over by the Borg who assimilated all of the younger crew members. The older command crew managed to escape on a shuttle, but Captain Shaw was killed by one of the assimilated crewmen, passing along command of the ship to Seven of Nine as he died. Seven remained behind with Raffaela Musiker as the rest of the command crew fled. ( PIC : " Vox ")

Subsequently, Seven, Musiker and a few older crew members managed to retake the bridge using adapted phasers to act as handheld transporters and used them to imprison the assimilated bridge crew in the transporter room. Detecting the USS Enterprise -D near a Borg cube , Seven realized that Picard and his crew were engaging the Borg in a ship which couldn't be controlled like the Titan and they needed to buy as much time as they could for the Enterprise to shut down the Collective's signal. Because Fleet Formation required line-of-sight transmissions, the Titan was able to use its stolen cloak to regain autonomy while using every prefix code they had for the entire fleet to scramble their shields. The Titan began decloaking to make attack runs, destroying several ships, before recloaking when the automation tried to regain control of them. However, despite the Titan pulling some of the fleet's attention off of Spacedock , it was eventually destroyed and the planetary shields failed and the fleet began targeting every major population center on Earth. The assimilated ensigns escaped the transporter room and destroyed the cloak, leaving the Titan exposed once more. A direct hit disabled the Titan before the assimilated officers stormed the bridge. However, the Enterprise was able to destroy the Borg cube, breaking the Borg's control over Starfleet and returning the assimilated personnel to normal.

The USS Enterprise -D and the USS Titan -A return to Earth

Following the destruction of the Borg, Admiral Beverly Crusher , now the Head of Starfleet Medical , devised a fleet-wide transporter solution to remove the Borg DNA from the young officers while also scanning for Changeling infiltrators. While clearing the Titan 's crew, Crusher found and exposed a second infiltrator in the crew who was arrested. Following his rescue from the Changelings, Captain Tuvok met with Seven on the Titan , revealing that Picard and his crew had been pardoned for their crimes, including hijacking the Titan . As per Captain Shaw's recommendation in his officer review of Seven transmitted before the ship left for the Ryton system , Tuvok officially promoted Seven to the rank of Captain and put her in command of the Titan . ( PIC : " The Last Generation ")

Renaming [ ]

The Titan renamed to the Enterprise

In 2402 , the Titan was rechristened the Enterprise -G in honor of Jean-Luc Picard and the command crew of the USS Enterprise -D with Seven of Nine as the captain, Raffaela Musiker as the first officer, and Jack Crusher , now a Starfleet ensign, as special counselor to the captain.

Return of an old friend [ ]

The Enterprise -G orbiting a star

During their shakedown cruise , the Enterprise -G was orbiting a red giant star when Crusher was visited by Q who revealed that while the trial of Humanity was over for Picard, it had only just begun for his son. ( PIC : " The Last Generation ")

Command crew [ ]

The crew of the Titan -A under the command of Liam Shaw in 2401

The crew of the Enterprise -G under Captain Seven of Nine in 2402

Liam Shaw ( 2396 – 2401 )
William T. Riker (2401) (acting)
Seven of Nine (2401–) (acting, later promoted)
Seven of Nine (2401)
Jean-Luc Picard (2401) (acting)
Raffaela Musiker ( 2402 –)
Sidney La Forge
Matthew Mura
T'Veen (–2401)
Jack Crusher (2402–)
See : USS Titan -A personnel
See : USS Enterprise -G personnel

Embarked craft [ ]

Saavik ( Type 14 shuttlecraft )

Appendices [ ]

Appearances [ ].

" The Next Generation "
" Disengage "
" Seventeen Seconds "
" No Win Scenario "
" Imposters "
" The Bounty "
" Dominion "
" Surrender "
" The Last Generation "

Background information [ ]

a model of the USS Titan -A prior to its rechristening

According to the Star Trek: Picard Logs , the Titan -A was launched in 2402 . [2] Showrunner Terry Matalas has since confirmed that this was an error and that the Logs were meant to list the launch date as 2401 . [3]

Luna -class components being transferred

Before its launch, Captain Riker lent his expertise during the Titan 's refit. [4]

Production Designer Dave Blass showed imagery of the Luna -class Titan components being transferred to the Titan -A on his Twitter account. That imagery concerned production concept art created for the show by John Eaves and Keene Sin . [5]

Executive Producer Terry Matalas explained in a Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") about the decision to transform the Titan into the Enterprise-G , " In our mind, we were writing the origin story of the next Enterprise and that the Titan name would live on in a proper new Luna Class ship. The Titan-B. Hopefully glimpsed in some future show." [6]

The bridge set was a redress of the USS Stargazer bridge set. [7]

The Titan is the third ship passed to Seven of Nine in the final act of a season of Picard , following La Sirena and the Stargazer .

External link [ ]

USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G) at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
3 Star Trek: Discovery

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Star trek waits too long for nurse chapel to become doctor.

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Steve Schirripa Weight Loss: The Sopranos' Bobby Bacala Looks Totally Different Now

Knight’s exit starts ncis' unavoidable gibbs erasure (3 years after mark harmon left), 1 cooper family member absence at george's funeral makes young sheldon's ending sadder.

It took far too long for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) to become a Doctor in Star Trek: The Motion Picture . Doctor Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett) appeared in the first of the Star Trek: The Original Series movies, set nearly 20 years after the events of Strange New Worlds . Doctor Chapel was assigned to the refitted USS Enterprise as Chief Medical Officer under Captain Will Decker (Stephen Collins), however her promotion was short-lived, thanks to the V'Ger crisis and the return of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley).

Despite this, Dr. Chapel continued to fulfill a valuable role within Starfleet, most notably in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , when she coordinated the relief efforts in response to the ecological disaster caused by the "Whale Probe". Strange New Worlds is showing just how ready Chapel already was to take this next step in her career. She's smart, capable, and regularly deputizes for Dr. Joseph M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun). However, the character's established arc in Star Trek: The Original Series , and real-world production issues stand in the way of Chapel's well-deserved promotion.

RELATED: 6 Ways Strange New Worlds Improved Nurse Chapel From Star Trek TOS

Nurse Chapel Waits Too Long To Become A Doctor in Star Trek

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds revealed that Chapel was serving aboard the USS Enterprise from 2259, almost two decades before Star Trek: The Motion Picture . In Star Trek: The Original Series , it's established that Chapel didn't officially join Starfleet until some time after 2261. Currently, Chapel is serving aboard the USS Enterprise on civilian exchange, although this has rarely been mentioned since the SNW pilot. It's possible that Strange New Worlds will ignore Chapel's TOS continuity in terms of when she joined Starfleet, but TOS canon has firmly established that she remains a Nurse throughout both Pike and Kirk's five-year missions, until the mid 2270s.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has established that Nurse Chapel worked alongside two of the USS Enterprise's most notable Doctors - "Bones" McCoy and Joseph M'Benga. The experience that Chapel would have gained from working with these two men would be invaluable in forging her own career progression within Starfleet Medical. While it's unclear exactly why it takes Chapel so long to make the decision to pursue her MD, there are some real-world and in-universe explanations for why such a capable and intelligent medical officer didn't progress within Starfleet until the 2270s.

Why Nurse Chapel Doesn’t Become A Doctor Until Star Trek: The Motion Picture

The main reason that Chapel didn't progress past the role of Nurse in Star Trek: The Original Series is purely down to TV production of the time. As a network TV show seeking syndication, huge changes to the status quo aboard the USS Enterprise would hamper the ability to sell out of sequence episodes to regional broadcasters. Unlike Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , which is also episodic, TOS rarely had overarching character plots, due to the more ephemeral nature of network TV in the years before home video. Star Trek being canceled in 1969 didn't help matters either, as it would be another decade until the crew of the Enterprise continued their live-action adventures.

The other possibility for the long wait for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' Chapel to become a Doctor could also be down to her own loyalty to the crews of both Pike and Kirk's Enterprise . Studying for her MD would presumably require her to leave the Enterprise behind. As the Enterprise is part of Chapel's life for the best part of two decades, it's easy to see how she might want to wait until Kirk is promoted to Admiral and the Enterprise crew are separated before successfully attaining her MD.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 premieres Thursday, June 15, on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
Star Trek: The Original Series (1966)

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Jonathan Frakes on the ‘Trek’ Ep He Directed 31 Years Ago That Inspired ‘Discovery’ Season 5, Hopes for ‘Legacy’ & More

Christian blauvelt.

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Jonathan Frakes has been directing episodes of various “Star Trek” series for the past 34 years, from his first episode behind the camera, “Next Generation” installment “The Offspring,” to the most recent episode of “Star Trek: Discovery.” He is continuity for the franchise that doesn’t quite exist in any other way.

Speaking to IndieWire about his work directing on “Discovery,” Frakes takes no credit for having had a connection to the original “Next Gen” basis for this storyline.

“It’s just by chance that ‘The Chase was my episode,'” he said. “In the old days on ‘Next Gen,’ you were assigned episodes [to direct] based on people’s availability. I’m very proud to have been a part of it, though and very excited that [‘Discovery’ showrunner] Michelle Paradise chose it as sort of the tipping off point for the season. But it was clearly by happenstance that it happened to be an episode that I had directed then, and now I’m involved with the finale of, so it’s thrilling.”

And Frakes took that to heart: The opening shot of “Lagrange Point,” lensed by DP Maya Bankovic in her first collaboration with Frakes, sees the camera turn upside down, to explore the sprawling interiors of Starfleet Headquarters. It later flies through the sprawling interiors of a Breen ship where the heist takes place with a sweep that would have been unimaginable in “Trek” just a few years ago. “Tunde [referring to Olatunde Osunsanmi, the producing director who usually helms the “Discovery” premiere and finale episodes, given their enhanced scale] encourages that kind of freedom.”

This has changed the cadence of production for many VFX heavy shows such as “Discovery.” Whereas these would have an extended post-production period following the conclusion of principal photography, now much of that VFX work has to be completed in advance so it can be captured in-camera during shooting.

“It’s a time suck, and it’s got to mean so much planning,” Frakes said. “I mean, I was told they need to know 13 weeks before we can shoot it, what sets are going to be created, because I think it’s 30,000 LED lights, and the assets need to be built. So it is a long process to get that canvas, if you will, in place before you go over there and put the live action parts into it.

Pairing the best of the new with the best of the old is the challenge of “Star Trek” these days. For as cinematic and sweeping as its series today look, they have to find ways to build on the nearly 1,000 hours of “Trek” that’s come before — not as fan service but as a way of acknowledging its history so that its present feels lived-in and real.

As for another echo from the past, there’s the persistent drumbeat from fans for a continuation of the final season of “Star Trek: Picard,” which brought back the entire “Next Gen” cast, as “Star Trek: Legacy” — a handoff series that could be built around the new characters from “Picard” plus strategic appearances from old “Next Gen” faves. It’s probably the property “Star Trek” fans most want to see out of everything the franchise could do right now. And yet there’s been no movement on this from Paramount+, and “Picard” showrunner Terry Matalas now signing with Marvel to produce a “Vision” TV series for Disney+ seems like the idea may be dead in the water.

When asked if he has hopes, thoughts, or updates about “Legacy,” Frakes said, “I certainly have hopes and thoughts. Updates? I don’t have, but I do know that the franchise is in great shape. I do know that this ‘Starfleet Academy’ series is going to be an entirely different animal, and I think that the success of what I’m imagining, the success of ‘Section 31,’ Michelle Yeoh’s movie , is only going to catapult us further into the future, and my hope, obviously is that we’ll find a place then to continue the ‘Legacy’ story.”

We can dream.

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Simon kinberg in talks to produce ‘star trek’ movie franchise for paramount.

Paramount is looking to the ‘X-Men’ producer to boldly go and relaunch the property on the big screen.

By Etan Vlessing , Borys Kit May 21, 2024 9:28am

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Longtime X-Men producer Simon Kinberg is beaming up to a new franchise.

The multi-hyphenate is in talks to produce a new Star Trek feature for Paramount Pictures , The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. If all goes well, the door would open to him taking active creative roles on the rest of the storied franchise’s film side. Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman are the main creative producers on Star Trek ‘s television side.

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