[grunts]
[McFadden] After the original series and The Next Generation,
it felt like Star Trek had been just about everywhere imaginable.
No, don't. No!
[McFadden] But it hadn't.
Deep Space Nine , we decided, "Let's do it on a space station."
Space station?
[McFadden] And there was even more.
With Voyager , "Let's do something that's gonna toss us across space.
So instead of going out, we're trying to get back in again."
[McFadden] And that's where it might have ended.
Welcome back.
[McFadden] But it didn't.
They went back for more.
Right back.
Then for Enterprise , "Let's see how it all began."
Be ready.
[McFadden] So join us one final time,
as we look back at the end of Star Trek on TV...
for a while.
And you can see it all from here in The Center Seat.
Perhaps this is where it begins.
[McFadden] At the dawn of the 21st century,
the 20th century's longest running sci-fi franchise was ready for a reset.
I'll never forget you.
[Rick Berman] When Deep Space Nine ended and we had the last seasons of Voyager ,
the studio was very stern about wanting to get right into something.
[McFadden] And not just because the struggling UPN network loved Star Trek .
Voyager absolutely was our premier show.
[McFadden] And now they needed another one.
"The network is floundering. We need the...
We need the bolstering of the boon that a new Star Trek will bring us."
We were asked to be a cornerstone of the network.
[McFadden] So with the fate of a franchise
and possibly a whole network in the balance,
Paramount turned to the man
who had been successfully steering Star Trek 's course on television.
Rick Berman was the torchbearer of Roddenberry's vision,
and I think he oversaw everything.
[McFadden] But he couldn't do it alone.
Brannon and I had developed a very close relationship,
and we decided that we would do it together:
Brandon running the writing staff and me overseeing everything.
[McFadden] Also on deck was veteran Paramount executive Kerry McCluggage,
who had worked with the duo on DS9 and Voyager .
Kerry McCluggage was a huge fan of Star Trek.
[McFadden] And so the Star Trek veterans began their new enterprise:
creating a brand-new Star Trek series.
Our goal was to make Enterprise different, but not different for different's sake.
We wanted to explore a new phase of Star Trek.
[McFadden] Except in this case, the idea wasn't exactly new.
In fact, it was actually really old.
Rick, he had a concept for a prequel. He wanted to set it in Star Trek 's past.
[McFadden] The way forward was to go back.
Obviously.
The final frontier begins in this hall.
[McFadden] In a time largely before prequels,
it was actually quite a brilliant idea.
[Andre Bormanis] We're going to explore the origins of the Federation,
our encounters with the species we've all come to know and love
from the original series and all of the other spinoffs.
[sighs] Who the hell are you?
Who we are is unimportant.
[McFadden] Enterprise would have
the entire history of Star Trek as its playground.
In a time before Federation of Planets was formed,
the new show imagined a unique point in human history.
Starfleet, the Federation, is pulling together with other planets,
with other races aboard the ship as well.
And this is what Gene Roddenberry wanted to see.
[McFadden] But would modern audiences want to see it?
Or would they be opening up a can of wormholes?
Interspecies alliance?
[McFadden] The jumping-off point for this new phase was the mid-22nd century.
We were picking up where the movie First Contact left off.
You're all astronauts on some kind of star trek.
[McFadden] Which had seen the Vulcans drop by,
only to catch humanity at a bad time and not expecting guests.
Look at the state of the world that they land in. It's war-torn.
It's like, a guy invented warp drive.
It means they've reached a certain level of sophistication,
but they're hillbillies.
[rock music playing]
[McFadden] Which raised an interesting question.
Well, what happened between First Contact,
where the Vulcans land, we're meeting them for the first time,
and Kirk's era?
[McFadden] To help them explore this fertile ground,
in casting the new series, producers wanted to emulate
the famous Star Trek triumvirate
that had served it well since the original series.
[Mark A. Altman] The original Star Trek , you had Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.
Next Gen, you had Picard, Data, and Worf were sort of like your big three.
And then on this show, it's like, "Who are the big three?"
It's Archer, T'Pol, and Trip.
Trip. I'm called Trip.
[McFadden] Much like Kirk's Iowa farm boy,
Trip hailed from the heartland.
Keep your shirt on, Lieutenant.
All I got in the breakdown was that he's a good old Southern boy.
I had done a play the year before, playing this kid from Oklahoma.
I did that and I stuck with it and they liked it.
Fried catfish with hush puppies.
And then we're well into the show, it turns out I'm from Florida.
And I said, "Wait, wait, wait a minute."
This is nothing compared to a hurricane coming up through the Florida Keys.
"I'm not doing Florida and you guys don't wanna hear Florida."
And they were like, "Ah, they're never gonna know."
And I was like, "People from Florida are gonna know."
No kidding.
[McFadden] Unlike Kirk's trio from the original series,
this one would feature a woman.
Infinite diversity...
...in infinite combinations.
Vulcan characters have to walk this really hard line
of being tight-asses and somehow a little charming.
I won't dispute that.
[McFadden] That balancing act became a challenge
for young actress Jolene Blalock.
Is there something I can do for you?
You are very beautiful.
Now, Brannon told me privately, "They just loved the way Jo looked.
I mean, she has a slightly gorgeous, alien look to her."
And she did.
Is there a problem?
No, sir.
[McFadden] For its captain,
Enterprise would be returning to the tried and true.
Rick and I had an archetype of, like, Harrison Ford.
[McFadden] But naturally, Paramount had a TV hero in mind.
[Brannon Braga] Kerry McCluggage,
who was running TV at Paramount at that time,
was friendly with Scott Bakula.
[ Quantum Leap theme playing]
He just seemed like the perfect guy.
[McFadden] So much so, he never even had to read for the role.
Producers just took a leap.
Don't screw this up.
Bakula was a huge get. Everybody was talking about it.
You know, he was a big star.
He had a fan base already from Quantum Leap.
It was the biggest captain get Star Trek had ever had.
[McFadden] British actor Dominic Keating...
Coffee.
[McFadden] ...played Lt. Malcolm Reed.
-No tea? -Yeah, no crumpets either, thank you.
[McFadden] But he had some reservations.
"If I play this for seven years, I'm gonna go barking mad, mate.
It's gonna be boring and... I'm gonna go crazy."
Well, I just went, "You know what?
I'm gonna let some of Dominic come through
and see what happens."
[chuckles]
"Loosen him up a bit."
Awfully nice. [chuckles]
[McFadden] The ship's doctor was an amiable alien,
played by John Billingsley.
I'm Dr. Phlox, the ship's physician.
[John Billingsley] Dr. Phlox carried a tremendous amount of exuberance
and enthusiasm around with him.
Optimism, Captain.
It wells up and it manifests itself.
See if you can find a good place to set down.
Yes, sir.
[McFadden] Anthony Montgomery played Ensign Mayweather.
I read it and was like, "Oh, this would be fun. I'd love to get this."
I was scared because I knew that there were really big shoes that I had to fill.
It must have felt like you had lead in your boots.
Obviously, I did well 'cause I got the job.
[screaming]
Do you know how to tell him to shut up?
Shut up!
[McFadden] Communications Officer Hoshi Sato,
played by Linda Park, rounded out the core cast.
Starfleet seems to think that we're ready to begin our mission.
[McFadden] But what made this ensemble remarkable
was its unremarkableness.
They're more like people like you and me,
as opposed to the sort of heroic, larger-than-life characters
that we're familiar with from the other shows.
This is a crew who's brand-new to deep space exploration.
Wow!
Whoa!
[McFadden] And with a different crew came a different kind of pilot.
It takes practice.
We were looking to do something that had a little more pace, a little more action.
[McFadden] And action we got.
That opening sequence with the Klingon was fantastic!
[McFadden] Thanks to the unexpectedly compelling combination
of a Klingon and corn.
We actually, uh... We built cornfields.
[McFadden] This was a set piece that was corny by design, not by accident.
[Merri D. Howard] We had to seed the field and the corn had to be raised
to whatever amount of feet that we did.
[groans]
On Enterprise , I wanted to really push the limits of what we could do.
I wanted it to be more ambitious.
[McFadden] The pilot for Enterprise , broadcast on September 26th of 2001,
seemed to have everything.
They threw a lot of money at our pilot and we shot it for a long time.
[McFadden] The stage was set for Enterprise
to be the best Star Trek series ever to carry the Star Trek name...
minus the actual name.
They just wanted to call it Enterprise.
[McFadden] So not Star Trek ?
It's called Enterprise.
They didn't want to put Star Trek in front of it.
[Braga] Rick had the idea to call it Enterprise,
which is the only word that says Star Trek
without saying Star Trek.
That's Enterprise.
Something that had a slightly different tone to it.
Prepare for warp.
[McFadden] And the pilot was also slightly less engaging,
if you know what I mean.
-Engage. -Engage.
-[record scratches] -Let's go.
[McFadden] So what did audiences think?
I remember watching the pilot, thinking, "Wow, this could be a pretty good show."
The show really got off to a bangin' start.
We got an extraordinary number of people coming to look at that.
We got 13 million.
You must really be proud of yourself.
[McFadden] The premiere's stellar ratings were music to flailing UPN's ears.
But as for the actual music?
[man] ♪ It's been a long road ♪
The theme song was, out of the gate, panned.
[McFadden] They had a big problem.
[man] ♪ Faith of the heart ♪
[McFadden] Despite fantastic ratings for the first episode,
when it came to the theme song, the verdict was unanimous.
[man] ♪ I'm going where my heart will take me ♪
That sounds terrible.
[McFadden] And it wasn't just panned, it was protested.
There were a group of people picketing outside and I thought,
"What are they picketing Paramount for?"
And the placards were... "We hate the theme song, we hate..."
[laughs]
[man] ♪ I can reach any star ♪
I was accused of heresy.
[McFadden] Well, to be fair...
If anybody is to blame about the theme song, it's 100% me.
[McFadden] And it could have been so different.
For a long time, we had "Beautiful Day" by U2 in there.
Against "Beautiful Day," It was badass.
[McFadden] There was only one problem with "Beautiful Day."
We're going to need money. U.S. currency.
They couldn't afford U2's "Beautiful Day."
[McFadden] And its replacement was not making anyone's day beautiful,
least of all Rick Berman's.
How dare you put a song at the opening of a Star Trek series.
[McFadden] But the first season had a much bigger problem...
best summed up in a number.
Twenty-six episodes.
You know, you're doing 26 little movies.
Brannon's office, the walls were covered with calendars.
And when every episode was scheduled to start shooting
and we had to have a script by that first day of shooting, if not sooner,
or we were in trouble.
All work and no play.
You're like, "How are we gonna do this?"
[McFadden] Before long, the writers were struggling to keep up with the schedule.
It could be 3:00 in the morning and what they would call the finished script,
to date, would arrive.
[Connor Trinneer] You know, act four didn't exist yet.
You wouldn't even know where you were going.
And that's when things get kind of scary.
We just made so much of it.
You couldn't hit the bullseye every time, you know.
[McFadden] The writers weren't only struggling with the punishing schedule,
they were struggling with the long legacy of their own franchise.
There was something familiar about all this.
[Trinneer] Being the fourth Star Trek series in a row,
I mean, there might have been some going to the well one too many times.
[McFadden] There's even a name for this condition.
It was franchise fatigue.
Captain, you need a vacation.
I have absolutely no intention of taking a holiday.
-Is that clear? -Very clear.
[Dominic Keating] You know, writing a variation of a theme
for 17 years, you try coming up with a new episode,
26 a year for a lot of those years.
[glasses clink]
You'd think they would've come up with something
a little more imaginative this time.
[McFadden] Some episodes were blighted by bizarre tangents,
including this scene from "Breaking the Ice."
This is important.
[McFadden] Which literally raised more questions than it answered.
When you flush the toilet, where does it go?
[McFadden] It was starting to look like Enterprise was also going down the tubes.
A poop question, sir?
[McFadden] But not all the scripts were stinkers.
Don't forget, Brannon and the writing team had the origin stories
of original series characters to draw from.
For example...
Andorians?
I wanted to do these people with antenna.
But try to do them believably, like where you're not laughing at it.
[sighs]
[McFadden] Both the audience and Captain Archer struggled to take
the Andorians' feelers as seriously as their feelings.
What?
They told me, "With the Andorians, if you can't make the antenna wiggle,
we're not gonna do 'em."
There's no need for threats.
[McFadden] Which was a shame because
these Andorians were more animated than most.
We made 'em wiggle.
You've earned a brief respite. Andorian ale.
[Bormanis] They had wiring inside of them and little motors,
and there was a puppeteer off camera who would, you know,
work the antennae.
Stop looking at me.
Okay, okay, don't get your antennas in a twist.
Andorians on the Enterprise was not only a shock.
I don't like the idea of having the Andorians down here any more than you do.
...and an excitement...
Starfleet could certainly use you.
...but it was a signal to me that Rick and Brannon had liberated their parameters.
You've endangered us all.
[McFadden] But when it came to the Vulcans,
some felt Enterprise had pushed the parameters too far.
Vulcans are very deceptive.
And we thought, "Well, what if the Vulcans just had a heavy hand
and they didn't think we were really ready?"
You're a stubborn man.
[McFadden] These were not Spock-era Vulcans.
The Vulcans were stern, kind of mentors.
It's a Klingot.
A Klingon.
[McFadden] They were more like overbearing life coaches.
Your superiors don't think we can flush a toilet without one of you to assist us.
We conceived them as annoying nannies,
but a lot of fans were like, "Those aren't Vulcans.
You know, they wouldn't act that way. Why are you doing that?"
The Vulcans we saw the first season of Enterprise were kind of strange.
I will kill him if necessary.
So that was controversial. A lot of people didn't like it.
[Doug Drexler] We're always supposed to admire the Vulcans.
They're wiser than we are.
Sometimes they could be annoying because they're so logical,
but they made them unlikable, really unlikable.
-Tea? -I only drink water.
Why do Vulcans if you're not gonna do something new?
[McFadden] Enterprise 's Vulcans were creating problems behind the scenes too.
Well, one key Vulcan.
Is there a problem, Commander?
[Keating] Jolene, she's not a natural.
It's hard to put it any other way.
That's his theory.
She had an acting coach on set for the first season.
[muffled] As your highest ranking officer,
I assumed command while you were incapacitated.
-What? -[indistinct]
[director] Cut.
They literally would coddle off into the corner after every take.
That was quite disconcerting as a cast.
Acting isn't exactly a Vulcan tradition.
[Keating] I literally was biting my knocker, going,
"Oh, well, we're not gonna make it past the first five episodes."
[McFadden] Jolene Blalock's on-camera performance
took time to get right, but luckily not too much time.
You see, very quickly, Jolene take command of the character.
It's not an opinion.
It's simple logic.
[McFadden] There were problems at the top of the billing too,
where Scott Bakula was slowing things down in a different way...
[Archer] By all means.
[McFadden] ...because his...
I wonder...
[McFadden] ...peculiar...
...if they'll believe that humans and Vulcans will be...
[McFadden] ...cadence was...
...swapping chromosomes one day.
[McFadden] ...unsettling for some.
He paced Archer 10-20% slower, to put it bluntly,
than Rick and Brannon had perceived it,
to the point of they're cutting scenes because the scripts are running way long,
and there was a back and forth between, "We need to have Archer be oomphier."
[McFadden] But where Enterprise really needed more oomph
was on the ratings front.
The drop in ratings was quite dramatic.
[McFadden] On Paramount's own struggling network,
Enterprise was languishing in a syndicated television's no man's land.
[Larry Nemecek] It's UPN. They were the little tinhorn network.
Not in the whole country, they didn't have total penetration.
This antenna is inadequate.
[McFadden] In some parts of the country,
you needed your own antennae to pick up UPN.
It was not like NBC or CBS. Not everybody got UPN.
It's probably just white noise.
[McFadden] And even then, the show's haphazard scheduling
made it hard for Enterprise to find its audience.
Most affiliate stations, they have a contractual obligation
to air the network's shows.
That wasn't true for UPN.
Individual stations could choose to move it around the schedule.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
[announcer] ...this pitch.
Major cities would postpone our show for the baseball game.
[McFadden] For those on Enterprise, it was starting to get lonely.
[Billingsley] At the very first convention we did in San Antonio,
we're there, it was like, "There's nobody here."
Well, it turned out it never aired in San Antonio
and it was always canceled for high school football night.
[McFadden] The convention center might have been empty,
but the Enterprise cast and crew weren't alone at all
because the on-screen camaraderie the crew shared
was happening off-screen as well.
And when you're with people for as long as we are, it's truly a family.
[McFadden] A fact Dominic Keating was acutely aware of.
You know, my mother died in the second season.
And, uh...
[sighs] And what could have been a really lonely time
was saved by the...
the closeness of our family.
Look hard at those stars, find something that looks familiar,
and tell me which way to go!
[McFadden] Star Trek, at its heart, has always been about a quest,
and Enterprise was no different.
The show was searching for its identity.
In the first couple of years, you know, it lost its way,
it kind of found its way, it lost its way again.
There was not really an overarching sense
that the show knew exactly where it was going.
Obviously don't know anything about writing.
[McFadden] Maybe none of them did.
[Manny Coto] Brannon had unfortunately put together a brand-new writing staff.
And a lot of them just weren't able to get the voice of the show.
Some people left.
He was in desperate need of someone who can write the series.
[McFadden] Someone like this gentleman perhaps.
[Coto] When I got there in season three, the ratings were already pretty low.
Everybody was scrambling to figure out, "How do we fix this?"
[McFadden] New writer Manny Coto was meant to be part of the solution.
He came to the show
having already completed a lifelong apprenticeship in Trek.
[Coto] I was one of the generation that found Star Trek in the reruns.
[McFadden] That was a time
when Star Trek had been out in television wilderness.
Now his favorite show was nearing the same fate,
and he wanted to save it.
Star Trek was what made me go into this business.
[McFadden] He arrived just in time.
Paramount had already pressed the panic button.
[Braga] We got called into one of the big bosses at Paramount.
"You gotta do something. You gotta do something.
Shake up the show. Do something new."
"Guys, turn this ship around, or you're out of here."
All right, what do you got?
[McFadden] Brannon's idea for something new was not new at all.
But it was an idea whose time had finally come.
And I'm like, "I would like to do a season-long arc."
[McFadden] With a deep disdain for the concept during Deep Space Nine...
The studio absolutely said no.
[McFadden] Now things were different.
The idea of doing serialized storytelling
was becoming more and more common in television.
Yeah, the serialized notion was super hot.
[McFadden] But a real-life drama was about to unfold,
and it was going to change a lot more than TV.
There's been an attack on Earth.
[McFadden] A catastrophe would be the catalyst Enterprise needed.
We took our cues from 9/11.
Build a weapon to destroy an entire world.
[McFadden] The story envisioned an alien attack on Earth
whose echoes of terror would not be lost on anyone.
[Braga] 9/11 hit, I think, when we were producing the first season of Enterprise,
so it was on everybody's minds.
Why would someone do this?
[McFadden] It was either a brilliant idea or a terrible one.
The network bet on the former, greenlighting Brannon's plans
for an epic tale of war and destruction.
Ever since the attack on Earth, all I've thought about is getting back
at whoever was responsible.
[Bormanis] With, you know, 9/11 still fresh in our memories,
if we're gonna do that story, we're gonna need a pretty big canvas to service it.
Your species is doomed.
I had this idea for a species called the Xindi.
[speaking Xindi]
[McFadden] They were the scheming, enigmatic enemy.
Which species of Xindi were they?
[McFadden] Star Trek had created its own terrorists.
What everybody wanted to do was to go out and hurt the people that had hurt us.
I don't think you'd be very comfortable torturing another man.
There was an episode and we essentially say, "I'm throwing you out the airlock
if you don't give me what I want."
You better start talking now 'cause in about 40 seconds,
you won't be able to.
He was torturing people and fans didn't like that
because that's not what a captain would do.
He'll die.
-[groans] -The Xindi.
[McFadden] As the story stretched into season three,
fans proved to have little appetite for art imitating life
in Enterprise 's new format.
Why are you wasting our time?
The serialized idea, I do think that there was a momentum loss
as a result of that.
Enterprise was designed to be a ship of exploration.
It did take us a little bit away from the premise of the show,
the foundations of the Star Trek universe.
A United Federation of Planets.
[McFadden] And the serialized Xindi saga wasn't doing anything for the ratings.
Damn.
[McFadden] Enterprise looked destined
to have one more thing in common with the original series.
[gasps]
[McFadden] Cancellation.
Just because of the ratings, there was a very real possibility
season three was gonna be the last.
[McFadden] Bad ratings aside,
there were actually even larger forces at play.
The universe that sustained Enterprise was now collapsing in on itself.
UPN, that was a network that was itself on the verge of extinction.
We would survive if UPN survived,
and it was UPN's handwriting that was on the wall.
[McFadden] And on top of all that,
behind the scenes, a seismic shift at Paramount
was about to change the balance of power.
CBS took over Paramount Television and all of a sudden,
there were a whole new bunch of executives at CBS.
[Braga] All our bosses changed virtually overnight,
and the people who had built this franchise with us were gone.
[McFadden] CBS big cheese Les Moonves
was installed as Rick Berman's new overlord.
He was the wonder boy at Viacom, CBS, and the like,
and he put Dawn Ostroff in charge of UPN.
[McFadden] That meant Star Trek stalwart Kerry McCluggage
was thrown out of the airlock.
[Trinneer] Kerry McCluggage was a huge Star Trek fan
and when he got let go, I was just thinking, "That kind of pinched.
I'm not sure if that's a good thing for us."
My impression was that Les Moonves did not have a tremendous amount of affection
either for the franchise or perhaps even the genre.
Jeez, you know, I mean, it's like, find somebody who does like it.
At least recognize that it's a great, viable franchise
and let somebody run it.
The network didn't support us in the same way that the previous networks had.
They don't get it. They don't seem to like their own franchise.
[McFadden] But that wasn't the only thing Les Moonves didn't like.
He didn't like Rick Berman.
[McFadden] Down in the ratings and down in network allies,
an under-fire Enterprise suddenly found itself having to defend even its name.
[Braga] Les wanted to put Star Trek in the title
and I think Rick took offense to that,
and I suspect he was trying to increase the show's odds of continuing.
[McFadden] And he wasn't anywhere near done undoing Rick Berman's work.
They suddenly jazzed up our theme song 'cause apparently it was too funerial.
[McFadden] Yep, Rick Berman's signature theme tune was in for a tune-up.
The studio wanted to put the fun back into funerial.
[man] ♪ It's been a long road ♪
They asked me to remix it so it had a little bit more of a pop feeling to it.
[man] ♪ I will touch the sky ♪
Yeah, they put a tambourine in there.
They give it a little extra percussion or something.
- ♪ No, they're not gonna change my mind ♪ -[snapping fingers]
The dance version.
[man] ♪ 'Cause I've got faith of the heart ♪
[McFadden] But this was merely window dressing a broken window.
If I'm giving you a great show and you're just not liking the show,
I don't think putting in a symbol or a tambourine or whatever it was,
that's not going to do anything.
[McFadden] Moonves was recalibrating more than a theme tune,
he was retooling an entire network for a younger audience.
When he took over the network, they put much more a focus
on shows for teenagers, young girls.
Their whole promotional wing became less and less focused on Star Trek .
[McFadden] And besides, it was the early 2000s.
Getting higher ratings would be easy.
In one of the first meetings I had...
[McFadden] The answer was so obvious, someone just came right out and said it.
[Berman] ...one of the new executives actually said...
"Can we get a boy band on the Enterprise to play in, like, the rec room?"
Oh, Lord, have mercy.
That was their pitch.
Are you kidding?
It was one of the legendary bad ideas.
[McFadden] Star Trek 's track record with pop music speaks...
♪ My friend ♪
[McFadden] ...and sings for itself.
Well, what's it going to be?
I don't think I laughed, but I think that I probably said,
"Oh, yeah, that's something worth discussing."
Their understanding of science fiction
was nothing like the previous three series.
[McFadden] Rick Berman felt he was now in a battle
to defend Star Trek from an existential threat.
[Altman] Berman thought it was his job to protect the legacy of Gene Roddenberry.
The network, they just cared about doing whatever they could
to increase the ratings.
Now get the hell out there and make yourself useful.
[McFadden] Star Trek appeared to be under attack from its own network.
Surrender or be destroyed.
Go to hell.
[Nemecek] People say Les Moonves hated science fiction.
I say that might be true, but he hated a loser more.
Are you saying this was a failure?
[McFadden] Poor ratings led to a purge of top executives.
Now Les Moonves was preparing to purge Star Trek itself.
Kind of feels like being called to the principal's office.
Les wanted to replace Scott Bakula with another actor
'cause he thought he was terrible.
I am not prepared to walk away.
There was talk that replacing him with somebody else was in the wind.
We can't be afraid of the wind.
[Coto] They were just trying to figure out how to fix the ratings,
and I think they thought, "Maybe if we bring in a new captain,
maybe the ratings will go back up,"
which was a little silly.
[McFadden] The writers prepared for the worst,
imagining their show without Captain Archer.
Captain Archer is dead.
[Coto] We were talking about doing a season where Scott is,
if not dead, then incapacitated or lost,
where you have a crew trying to function without a captain.
I can't let that happen.
[McFadden] But the fight to control Star Trek
was merely a proxy war for the battle between the executives.
Les and Rick had a huge disagreement.
Rick refused to do it.
That speaks to Rick's loyalty.
Rick was not gonna have it.
The answer is no.
[McFadden] There's a technical term for this.
It became a pissing match.
-[laughs] -[McFadden] Yep, that's the one.
Rick, rightly, was like, "No, Bakula is wonderful."
I'm glad that that didn't happen.
That would have been a completely disastrous move if they had done that.
[Keating] I can't say enough about Scott Bakula. He's just such a gent.
He made those years joyous and lovely and, you know,
a lot of Hollywood sets are not that.
[McFadden] Captain Archer's charge was preserved,
but Rick Berman's defense of Star Trek came at a cost.
[Coto] Rick made a lot of enemies at the studio
because he was protecting Star Trek.
[McFadden] And the one thing that would have strengthened his case
for the status quo still eluded him.
The ratings continue to go down despite their best efforts.
So if anyone has a suggestion...
[Nemecek] They say, "Part of the deal for a fourth year is,
Rick and Brannon, that you guys step back.
Shake things up and have somebody else run the ship."
[McFadden] Taking less of a hands-on role.
And I think I was just ready to move on.
[McFadden] Making room for someone to move up.
Brannon called me and said, "I want you to run season four."
I was like, "Oh, wow. Really?" [chuckles]
[McFadden] For the first time,
a hardcore Trekker was about to take the helm,
as Brannon stepped back to focus on writing.
Brannon was never a full-bore Trekkie like I was.
I have a deep love for Star Trek . I spent most of my adult life there.
But I think I probably could have used more passion
about the original series, which is what Manny had.
[McFadden] As showrunner, Manny Coto knew
exactly where he wanted Enterprise to go.
"Let's live up to the promise of the show.
Let's make Enterprise a prequel to the original series."
[McFadden] At the start of season four, Enterprise 's newly installed showrunner
found himself in charge of the program he had grown up with.
I just wanted to do what I thought the show should be.
[McFadden] But first he had some loose ends to tie up
because executive producer Rick Berman had left season three's audience
at the edge of a cliff.
For the third-season finale, they intentionally made a cliffhanger
because they thought it would help them get renewed for a fourth season.
-[Archer] What year is this? -It's 1944.
Season three ended with Archer waking up in World War II Earth.
[McFadden] So season four began locked into a story
set in one of Star Trek 's favorite haunts, World War II.
Hail the Führer.
-Hail to the Führer. -Hail.
"Look, its Archer in World War II. Nazis come to Star Trek again."
In Hollywood movies, Americans always win.
Too bad for you you're not in a movie.
[McFadden] This was a classic alternate-universe scenario,
in which the Nazis won the war, with a Star Trek twist.
The very last thing you see is alien space Nazi.
Wait, what?
That was an extraterrestrial.
A Martian?
That was an attempt to wrap up the season, but leave a thread dangling.
[McFadden] But that thread was intended to be woven into a rope
to form the backbone of a whole season of space Nazis.
Or Spazis?
I didn't believe in Nazi Martians, you know, not until I saw one myself.
Season four was going to all take place in World War II.
[McFadden] This was not what Manny signed up for.
[Coto] Here's an opportunity to run a season of Star Trek,
and I'm gonna be stuck doing World War II stories?
I mean, I like World War II as much, I'm fascinated with history as much,
but I don't wanna Archer and these guys running around Nazi Germany.
It's not what Star Trek is.
I mean, maybe an episode or two, but no.
I've arrived at the same conclusion.
[McFadden] Even though Rick and Brannon were still around...
I certainly was reading and commenting on stuff.
[McFadden] ...Manny wanted to throw out the entire series arc.
At that point, it was his show.
[McFadden] Maybe it was in Manny
that Rick and Brannon found their heroic Indiana Jones.
Nazis. I hate these guys.
[McFadden] Many did away with all of them.
No!
[McFadden] Indy would be proud.
And with a clean slate,
Manny got to work mining what was always Enterprise' s greatest treasure.
We have plenty of species that are fascinating to deal with.
Vulcans, Klingons, Suliban, Xyrillians, Andorians...
God knows who's gonna be lurking around the next planet we run into.
[McFadden] But there was one alien world
Manny wanted to explore above all others,
a true Mecca for all Trekkers,
if they could only go there.
Tell me how your planet Vulcan looks on a lazy evening when the moon is full.
[Coto] We were like, "We wanna go to Vulcan.
We wanna see elements of Vulcan that we have not seen before.
I wanna see a sehlat."
Sehlat?
It's sort of a fat teddy bear.
[sehlat screeching]
What the hell was that?
Sehlat.
[McFadden] Hoping to appeal to Trek fans old and new.
When I was a child, I had one has a pet.
You had one of those?
Domesticated.
[McFadden] Season four of Enterprise
further explored almost every avenue the original series had hinted at.
Prepare yourselves.
[Altman] Back to the Organians.
A non-physical life form.
Brent Spiner shows up.
Permission to come aboard, sir?
[Altman] They're calling in all the favors.
Thank you, Captain.
A lot of missed opportunities were being made up for in the fourth season.
There were a lot of things about the four season that were fun.
Great callbacks.
Orion females are known for their extreme appetites.
[Altman] You wanna tap into all these parts of Star Trek lore,
but they haven't happened yet.
[sighs] We're not a patient people.
[Michael Westmore] We redid the Tellarites,
and I thought we did a beautiful job in redesigning them.
[screaming]
[McFadden] If it was an original series alien,
it could have a guest spot.
Enterprise also fulfilled its prequel mission statement
by rebooting and reimagining a famous moment
from Star Trek: First Contact.
Or should that be first conflict?
Board their ship! Take everything you can!
[McFadden] In a two-part special, Manny took fans back to the Terran Empire,
first seen in the original series episode "Mirror, Mirror."
Terror must be maintained or the Empire is doomed.
[Coto] I love alternate realities.
I thought it would be cool to do the whole episode
as if it was from the mirror universe.
Apparently some kind of transposition has taken place.
[McFadden] In which a bearded Spock
showed us how, in a parallel universe,
things might have worked out differently.
That's when we got to meet the evil Kirk and the evil Spock.
I am ordered to kill you.
[McFadden] Now a new Enterprise crew was suffering,
or enjoying,
the same fate.
And I went, "Oh, I get to be a badass?"
Oh, let's have some fun with Travis."
We had to play, you know, the bad version of ourselves.
[groaning]
Reed.
I'll kill you when I get out of this.
Manny Coto did this ingenious thing, where, in the mirror universe,
even our title sequence was different.
[Coto] I just thought it was an opportunity
to do at least one opening credit without that theme song.
[man] ♪ 'Cause I've got faith of the heart ♪
[mirror universe theme music playing]
[Billingsley] The theme song turned into what the theme song would be
for a fascist television show.
[Braga] It was better.
The mirror universe version of the theme song was much better.
[McFadden] By returning to its roots,
Enterprise could finally give the fans what they wanted.
From what I'm told, the maximum setting can actually disintegrate a person.
I've been looking forward to trying it.
[Billingsley] The fourth season worked because it captured
more of the spirit of the original.
We were really picking up steam.
I felt like we jelled as a family and by season four,
we had definitely found our space legs.
And I felt it was on an upswing.
Enterprise was just starting to get good and take off.
[McFadden] But just as Star Trek: Enterprise
began to show the promise of its forebears...
We were in the middle of shooting those "Mirror, Darkly" episodes.
[McFadden] ...things went darkly.
[Trinneer] Season four, we probably had four episodes left,
and we found out that the plug got pulled.
Will you kindly die?
[McFadden] On the eve of its fifth season,
Star Trek: Enterprise received some bad news.
[Keating] We'd spent some years together,
and now we were taking it to the finish line.
[McFadden] Enterprise was canceled.
It really was sad that it had to end at the end of four seasons.
[McFadden] Sad, but not unexpected.
This is quite a surprise.
No, it was a surprise.
[McFadden] Okay, but only for some.
Oh, come on. [laughs] I mean, what were you expecting?
I started hearing talks of us being canceled the first season.
It was a miracle that we survived as long as we did.
[McFadden] The way Rick Berman found out
said a lot about everything that had changed at now CBS-run Paramount.
I remember the person who called me and told me that the show
was not gonna go to a fifth season was somebody I barely knew at CBS.
We were never given a reason. We were just told it was over.
I think the studio was just like, "This is it."
I was hoping it was all just a bad dream.
[McFadden] But this wasn't just a bad dream
or about bad ratings.
This was about bad blood.
That's what happened there. It was a personality conflict.
The problem was CBS, Les Moonves, who was in charge,
and he and Rick Berman hated each other.
The pissing match had been pissed, and Rick lost.
Les Moonves just says, "Well, I'm gonna shut this down right now."
[McFadden] Whether the hit on Enterprise was personal or professional...
I was as disappointed as everyone.
[McFadden] ...if it felt slightly personal for Rick Berman,
it was just as hard for the Enterprise crew.
Ah, something in my eye.
[Trinneer] Getting canceled was such a slap in the face.
I took it kind of personally.
You know, I've devoted four years of my life to this thing.
"Say it ain't so." "Yeah, I'm afraid so. It's done."
At least I'm capable of accepting our fate.
[McFadden] The question now was how to go out with a bang, not a whimper.
I looked at "Demons" and "Terra Prime" as the finale for Enterprise.
[Archer] Enterprise has been called home
for what could prove to be a pivotal moment in human history.
[McFadden] A two-episode arc that proved the crucial peace
in the Star Trek prequel puzzle.
An unprecedented alliance.
[McFadden] How the Federation of Planets came to be.
Those two episodes were really good.
And a lot of people consider those the finale of Enterprise
and they don't count the finale.
[McFadden] That's because for many fans
the official finale saw Enterprise not just taking leave of its post,
but taking leave of its senses.
[Braga] Rick and I had been working on Star Trek for a long time.
Maybe the last one would be a little Valentine to the franchise.
That's better.
[McFadden] But this Valentine turned out to be more like a Valentine massacre.
[groans]
[Braga] What if it's actually a Next Generation episode
that we haven't seen?
I don't like it.
[McFadden] And so the whole final episode
takes place on a different Enterprise,
with Commander Riker from The Next Generation
taking viewers to a different era.
Pull up a chair. I could use the company.
[McFadden] It was like Star Trek had been hijacked by itself,
and it was all thanks to the holodeck...
End program.
[McFadden] ...where Riker had been playing back Captain Archer's Enterprise odyssey.
Have you learned anything on the holodeck about breaking orders?
Not yet. I've gone back a couple of days earlier to get a perspective.
The device to get Jonathan and Marina into our episode was pretty clunky.
[McFadden] Not only that, it raised some uncomfortable questions
for Enterprise fans.
[Anthony Montgomery] "So, wait, did our show actually happen then?
Are you saying that these 96 episodes, they happened on a holiday?
Is that what I'm reading?"
That's where I was with it.
Like, "Wait, what?"
We'll see about that.
[McFadden] Scott Bakula reacted so badly,
Brannon almost lost his seat at the captain's table.
[Braga] It's the only time I ever saw Scott Bakula get mad.
He was mad at me.
Scott loathed that last episode.
Here's to the next generation.
[Braga] The cast felt disrespected.
It wasn't really their final episode.
We tried to do something more all-encompassing,
and perhaps we diminished Enterprise as a result.
I had to memorize this speech in grammar school.
[McFadden] This was an ambitious finale
designed to wrap up much more than just one show.
[Coto] Rick and Brannon wanted a finale to wrap up the entire 18 year
of Rick's Star Trek from Next Generation on.
That's impossible.
[Coto] Rick and Brannon wrote it on their own and produced it on their own.
It was not just the end of Enterprise,
it was the end of what we now call the Berman era.
Trying to bookend and put a bow on the Berman era,
you know, it made sense.
-[applause] -End program.
[McFadden] But not to fans.
Great idea at the time, but that's a much-maligned episode,
judging from the reaction to the episode over the years.
[McFadden] And so 18 years of Star Trek,
now known as the Berman era, had come to a confusing conclusion.
I never thought it would come to an end.
All good things.
[Altman] This wasn't the cancelation of four years of Enterprise.
This was the cancelation of like 20 years of Star Trek.
Impressive.
[McFadden] Enterprise now had the distinction
of being the first live-action Star Trek show since the original series
not to run a full seven seasons.
[Trinneer] The fact that we went four seasons,
I guess in the club of Star Trek was a disappointment.
I think that's ridiculous.
We did 98 episodes.
In my mind, that's nothing but a success.
You should be very proud of yourself, Captain.
[McFadden] The reign of Gene Roddenberry's handpicked successor was over.
Nineteen years of doing Star Trek , it was incredibly rewarding.
[McFadden] After more than 600 episodes across four series.
[Berman] It meant a great deal to a lot of people.
But to me, the thing that I'll remember more than anything else is that family.
[McFadden] The Star Trek family has survived
and remains the most enduring science-fiction dynasty on our screens,
after well over half a century.
Energize.
Don't think I'm quite ready to have my molecules compressed into a data stream.
[McFadden] And despite dematerializing many times,
it continues to transport us.
[Altman] You know, Star Trek always resurrects itself and reinvents itself.
You know, it's a hard thing to kill.
We live in a world where you can't turn on the television
without a Star Trek spinoff.
There's a legacy involved here that we're privileged to be a part of.
[McFadden] Today, as one of the most watched, most loved,
and most influential franchises ever,
for 55 years and counting,
the Star Trek mission continues.
[theme music playing]