For a long time, Enterprise had the sad distinction of being the series responsible for getting Star Trek off of television after a remarkable run of eighteen straight years. Its production, from 2001 to 2005, was in constant danger of being shut down by network executives. Longtime fans were divided: as a prequel to The Original Series, it was expected that Enterprise would contain more familiar characters and settings, as well as copious amounts of fan service. Instead, Enterprise tried to carve its own identity in the first three seasons before finally embracing its heritage in the final stretch. Unfortunately, it was too late to save the series by that point.
With its attempts to court casual Star Trek fans as well as those who had never watched an episode before, Enterprise alienated its core audience, and it showed in the ratings. Though it would end up gaining a bit more respectability in subsequent years, it is still widely regarded as the worst series to bear the venerated franchise’s name. Though the writers and showrunners certainly have their fair share of blame to shoulder, the amount of drama Enterprise had to survive just to get on the screen is truly astounding.
In that spirit, we found the 25 craziest facts that best illustrate the troubles that besieged the series. Four seasons might seem short for a Star Trek property, but after reading this, you might think it’s a wonder Enterprise survived as long as it did.
25 Not Your Typical Vulcan
Jolene Blalock, who played T’Pol on Enterprise, was the perfect actress to cast as the second lead on a Star Trek series. She is a self-admitted Trekkie and has been a fan of the series her whole life. In different interviews, she has stated that her favourite character has always been Spock, so she was understandably stoked when she got to play a Vulcan. After all, she had a pretty solid idea of how her character should be carrying herself. The series’ writers had other plans however, as Enterprise’s Vulcans were different from those that came before: T’Pol would spend the series losing her cool, expressing feelings and acting generally un-Vulcan. This was almost blasphemous to Blalock’s eyes, and she would later admit that she hated the way her character was handled throughout the seasons.
24 At Least It’s In Good Company
When a series is widely regarded as having ruined a storied franchise, there usually aren’t that many positive things to be said about its existence. In the case of Enterprise, though I would personally argue that it was significantly better than its reputation would let you presume, there’s one particular fact that can be seen in a good light. In fact, it’s a little bit of trivia that puts it in the same category as the beloved Original Series.
As it is, Enterprise was the first series since TOS to be canceled before completing the now-standard seven seasons run.
The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager all got to complete their story in the same amount of time, despite disappointing ratings in the case of the last two. Imagine how bad things had to be for Enterprise to get cut like that.
23 I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This
It has to be a bad sign for a series when even its creator thinks it shouldn’t exist. Rick Berman, who was the creator and co-showrunner of Enterprise, did not even want to work on the show in the first place. After having worked on Star Trek for fourteen years of his life, he thought that the franchise might need a little break. After all, the TNG movies had been making less and less money over the years, while Voyager had finished its run with lower ratings than the previous series. It’s with that in mind that he initially refused Paramount’s idea for a new show, asking them to give it a few years before attempting another series. The network made it clear that they had other people in mind to work on the project if Berman would not, so in the end, he went along with the idea.
22 Keep Your Hands Off My Trek
On top of forcing a new Star Trek into this world despite protests from people who had experience with the franchise, Paramount executives had a whole bunch of crazy ideas which did not really help matters. Some of them thankfully were unanimously rejected by the writers, such as the idea of bringing it several pop acts of the time to perform on the show, in-universe.
On the other hand, they successfully imposed the “Temporal Cold War”, which with hindsight is a low in Enterprise history.
This storyline was created because the executives were afraid that a prequel would not be futuristic enough and would leave the viewers bored. It is only in season three that they finally gave the showrunners more freedom, because they had basically given up on the series several times by that point.
21 Early Meddling
The first season of Enterprise was going to be relatively risky before executives interfered. Despite being a spin-off of a series based on space exploration, the first season was going to take place entirely on Earth. Vulcans would have been there, of course, watching over as humans were building their finest spaceship to date. There would have been a whole lot of butting heads, some learning from the alien visitors, with the Enterprise ultimately launching in the season finale. The main bad guys would have been the xenophobic human faction which ended up appearing late into the fourth season, as they would have felt that exposing Earth to possibly hostile species was a risk. In the end, the network basically said, “this show is called Enterprise, so launch Enterprise in the first episode”, so that’s what we got.
20 The Vote Of Confidence
Though they were giving more freedom to those actually producing the show by the third season, network executives still had many ideas and demands for the Enterprise crew. Among them was an idea which would have completely changed the look of the show:
They wanted Scott Bakula’s Captain Archer to be gone by the end of the season, to be eventually replaced by a younger face.
Their suggestion was to have Archer sacrifice himself to save Earth near the end of the season, making place for a new character to take command and hopefully save the show. The showrunners felt that this would be like admitting that the show was terrible and did not work, so they stood behind Bakula and rejected the idea.
19 Subtlety Is A Lost Art
While Paramount had some very strange ideas to try and improve the show’s status, there is one change which was at the behest of the producers and not the network. Starting in season three, the showrunners introduced a change of wardrobe for the ship’s resident Vulcan. Their ill-fated decision was to give T’Pol more cleavage, a move which did not help the ratings at all, and which was transparently unnecessary. Jolene Blalock was, once again, completely against it, but her opinion was pushed to the side. Brannon Braga, the show’s co-creator with Rick Berman, tried to justify it by saying that T’Pol had left the Vulcan High Command. Therefore, she needed a uniform that was more human to blend with the rest of the crew. Meanwhile Ensign Hoshi Sato, a human, was still wearing the trademark unisex jumpsuit.
18 Desperation Move
On top of the additional cleavage to T’Pol’s uniform, the producers of Enterprise had another idea to save the show at the start of the third season. When T’Pol’s assets were not enough to raise the ratings, they retitled the show. Starting with the third episode of the third season, the originally named Enterprise became Star Trek: Enterprise.
Paramount Studios were convinced that the show was bombing because people didn’t know it was about Star Trek.
They were afraid that when people saw an ad for a show starring a giant spaceship called Enterprise, they would assume it was about something else entirely. They were wrong, obviously, and it is best illustrated by the fact that the series’ ratings were at their highest during the first season.
17 Breaking Continuity
It is always a risk when writing prequels for storied franchises, and Enterprise was no exception: the show totally broke the Star Trek continuity several times, with the most severe infraction occurring in the season two episode “Regeneration”. The episode introduces the Borg way before The Next Generation’s crew is supposed to encounter them nearly two hundred years later. It isn’t a small encounter either: The Borg are on Earth, attacking scientists near the North Pole, and alerting the rest of the Borg to the planet’s existence. Even if we ignore the fact that the Enterprise crew had an easier time dispatching the Borg with their primitive technology than the TNG cast ever did, we are still left with only two explanations: Either Archer is terrible at writing reports and the info on the Borg never made it to Starfleet, or Picard and the gang missed the Borg chapter in their history class.
16 Oh No, Not Again
The Enterprise episode “Extinction” features members of the crew mutating into lizard people before being brought back to normal. The Voyager episode “Threshold” features Captain Janeway and Tom Paris mutating into Salamanders and making babies. You might be noting some similarities between the episodes, and you would be right.
Brannon Braga wanted to redeem what was seen as one of the worst episodes in Star Trek history.
He had written “Threshold”, and he wanted a chance to do it right the second time around. Unfortunately, he failed once more, since “Extinction” is often cited on the same “worst episodes” list as its inspiration. Even Levar Burton hated the episode. As its director, he has said that he was ashamed to have been involved with it at all.
15 Inspired By True Events
The third season of Enterprise took some risks by taking a darker turn. It features a season-long storyline where the Enterprise ventures into the Delphic Expanse to find the Xindi, a species who attacked Earth and made millions of victims with a gigantic laser. The writers admit that they were inspired by the 9/11 attacks, which were barely a year old at the time of writing the episodes. The parallels were obvious, with some main characters being directly affected and losing family members as a result of the Xindi’s plot. This dark version of Star Trek also reminded a lot of fans of Deep Space Nine, which had tremendous success with the “Dominion Wars” arc. Though the characters on Enterprise had to do some pretty nasty stuff to survive the expanse (such as stranding the crew of another ship so they could continue their mission), it made for a much more interesting season.
14 All In
Captain Archer is of course played by Scott Bakula, who brings an everyman sensibility to the job which previous Star Trek shows did not have. It’s a nice change of pace from the usual heroic, Starfleet-for-life type, but this particular casting almost did not happen. It would have been bad, since Rick Berman admitted that they had no one else as a backup if Bakula had refused the role.
They wanted him so badly that they did not bother auditioning anyone else for the role.
The negotiations took so long that it delayed the start of the production, since Bakula had already signed on for a CBS series called Late Bloomers. Thankfully, that one did not make it past the pilot stage. In the end, it is the co-founder of UPN, the network hosting Enterprise, which convinced Bakula to take the job; they were long-time friends, having worked together on Quantum Leap in the past.
13 A Different Kind Of Archer
Captain Archer is a man who likes to get his hands dirty and who cultivates good relationships with his crew. That characterization was the result of many rewrites and tweaks. As he was originally envisioned, Archer was going to be an intellectual man who spent a few years on Vulcan before ever becoming a Captain. He would have become very familiar with the Vulcan culture, learning how to do mind melds and other obscure techniques. The showrunners thought that this was not dramatic enough, so they decided to make him the total opposite. You will notice that near the start of the series, Archer is a blue-collar type who is kind of racist against Vulcans for the perceived disrespect they gave his father. It is only after spending a few months in close quarters with T’Pol that he has a change of heart.
12 Diversity Issues
Enterprise got some major flak from the press because of its lack of diversity. Deep Space Nine and Voyager had both managed to portray a fairly diverse galaxy, at least when compared to other contemporary TV shows. Enterprise was seen as a step back; the only two non-white characters were Helmsman Mayweather and Ensign Sato.
This would have been a good start if it wasn’t for the fact that they were often relegated to the background.
Mayweather was one of the first humans born in space, while Sato was a highly intelligent linguist, and yet, they were rarely given anything to do to develop their personalities. Ensign Sato did get the occasional episode, but more often than not she was portrayed as panicking and helpless. As for Mayweather, by the end of the series, he was lucky to get more than one line per episode. The critics, and the general public, were not blind to these facts.
11 The Return Of The Evil Goatee
Like every other Star Trek property before it, Enterprise wanted to pay its homage to The Original Series. This should have been fairly easy to do, since it is a prequel and they could have been continually hinting at things to come that long-time viewers would have recognized. For Enterprise, the big idea was to get William Shatner as a guest star. He was supposed to appear in an episode which would have dealt with the Mirror Universe. The script was written and finished, but in the end, there was a fight over Shatner’s remuneration. Thinking he was worth a lot more than he was being offered, The Shat dropped out of the episode, which had to be rewritten. It became the Mirror Universe two-parter that we know, which might be entertaining, but has almost nothing connecting it to the main universe.
10 Founding The Federation
Though the actual founding of the United Federation of Planets is shown in the series’ finale, the road taking us to that moment was supposed to be much longer. Manny Coto had been named showrunner for the fourth season, replacing Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. He decided to shift the focus of Enterprise to the founding of the Federation, hoping to bring the show closer to The Original Series.
This was going to be an ongoing concern for the remainder of the series, until he learned that the show was being canceled.
He had no choice but to rush the storyline to its conclusion, including an episode where the four founding races have to work together to fight the Romulans, as well as a two-parter where humans have to fight the xenophobic group that had been planned for the first season before being scrapped by the network.
9 What Could Have Been
The founding of the Federation was going to be the main focus of future seasons, but it wasn’t going to be the only thing happening. The fifth season of Enterprise was almost entirely planned before news of the cancellation got to the producers. The list of stories imagined for the fifth season would certainly have made it the best yet. It would have revealed how Earth became a more utopic version of itself, as seen in other Star Trek series. We also would have witnessed the genesis of the Borg Queen, who was supposed to be a nurse from Earth who was assimilated under Archer’s watch. The Romulan War would also have made an apparition, but the best thing would have been the addition of the beloved Shran to the main cast, as an “alien advisor” to the Enterprise crew.
8 They Really Messed Up On This One
Possibly because of the rushed conclusion, Enterprise has what is widely considered to be the worst finale in the history of Star Trek. It is an episode which, logically, should be celebrating the characters we have been following over the course of four seasons. Instead, the episode has more to do with The Next Generation, with Commander Riker visiting a simulation of the first Enterprise on his own Holodeck.
Brannon Braga at least admitted that it was a mistake.
His intention was to celebrate all of Star Trek as a franchise, since it was the end of the line for the time being. Instead, it ended up looking like a lack of respect to the Enterprise actors. According to Braga himself, filming the finale was such an insult that even Scott Bakula, usually a joy to work with, couldn’t help but lash out at the producer.
7 Timeline Jumping
The 2009 Star Trek movie was thought to be a reboot at first. Instead, it famously split the Star Trek universe into two different timelines: One which starts with The Original Series, and one which starts with the rebooted movies. Why am I mentioning this in an article on Enterprise? Well, with the timeline being split around the time of Mr. Spock and the rest of the gang, it means that Enterprise it the only Star Trek series to exist and be canon in both universes. Captain Archer and the rest of his crew existed exactly as depicted on television in both continuities. Now imagine if instead of blasting Sabotage by the Beastie Boys all the time, Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk had a thing for the soft rock anthem “Where My Heart Will Take Me”.
6 Not All Surprises Are Good
There are many reasons why the theme song to Enterprise is the most hated in Star Trek history: It’s cheesy, it’s based on a Rod Stewart song from the Patch Adams soundtrack, and it doesn’t fit the Star Trek mould. However, there’s also the fact that fans had been given hope that it was going to be something else entirely. There was a rumour that Jerry Goldsmith, a long time composer of Star Trek movie themes, was working on a new TV show.
The fans were disappointed when it was revealed to be false, and the actual song did not ease the blow.
Petitions were signed, and an actual protest was held outside of Paramount Studios. Braga and Berman tried to call the reaction among fans “split”, which is the understatement of the century. Actor Simon Pegg, a well-known Trekkie, even called it “the most hideous moment in Star Trek history”.
