nterprise, UPN's highly anticipated new Star Trek series, will offer Trekkers an entirely new take on the 35-year-old franchise, taking it back to its beginnings. Co-created by longtime Trek producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, Enterprise will be set in the 22nd century and chronicle the first tentative steps of the human race into the galaxy, aboard the first warp ship to bear the famous name.
But though Enterprise will be something new, it comes from Trek veterans, including Berman. Berman was hand-picked by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry to co-pilot Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, and assumed the mantle of executive producer upon Roddenberry's death in 1991. He has been involved in every Trek series and movie since then.
Enterprise also stars someone familiar to genre fans: Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula, who will take on the role of Capt. Jonathan Archer. He joins a cast that includes Connor Trinneer, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park and John Billingsley.
Berman and Bakula spoke to reporters during last month's UPN fall preview in Pasadena, Calif. The following combines comments made during a press conference and afterward in interviews with Science Fiction Weekly. Enterprise debuts with a two-hour episode at 8 p.m. Sept. 26.
Scott Bakula, can you describe Capt. Archer?
Bakula: My guy grew up in the system. His dad was an engineer in the [warp-drive] project. And worked on developing the warp five engine. So [Archer]'s kind of a brat of the space program. He's a little bit brash. He's a little bit in people's faces. He doesn't like being told what to do per se. He's a great captain, I think. But he's going to make some mistakes. He's very human. He's more similar to Kirk than to Picard. ... It's been a blast. I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be standing toe to toe with a Klingon screaming in my face and spitting all over me.
These are the first pioneers going out into space, and their experiences are all for the first time and the first everything. So we're finding it all very interesting to try and make all these things new, because we're all so familiar with what Star Trek has been. And we have to kind of unlearn all of that and start from scratch. So this character is bold and brash and, yes, the closest to Kirk—even though I'm a hundred years before Kirk—than any of the other captains.
This franchise probably more than any other job on television carries with it an almost certainty of a long-term commitment. Can you talk a little bit about the thinking that went into it for you at this stage in your career, signing on to something that's almost guaranteed to be five to seven years?
Bakula: Well, at this point in my career, one thing I've learned is you never count on anything, so if we get through the first 13 [episodes], and we're still rolling, I'll be happy. ... I approached it really as I approach everything. At the end of the day, they put a two-hour script in front of me that I just thought was fantastic and a character that I really wanted to play, and that I thought should it go for a while, there would be room to do a lot of different things with it, and there would be a lot of opportunity for this character with the other characters on the ship. So to me it's like a gift that this kind of job exists in this town. ... It seems all of a good thing.
Might you possibly write or direct an episode of Enterprise?
Bakula: Possibly. Rick is wonderful that way. Not all executive producers in this town are. My last, ... [Quantum Leap executive producer Donald P.] Bellasario, was that way. But Rick has been very forthcoming. He knows that I direct. But I really want to get my feet firmly on the ground here and devote all my attention to this first season and getting a solid start. I really want the show to be great and not worry about anything else right now.
You've already dealt with one cult fan base. How are you going to deal with an even larger one?
Bakula: Hopefully, we'll all blend together nicely, and everybody will get along. It should be great, actually. I'm really looking forward to it.
What's it like dealing with a huge fan base?
Bakula: It's kind of like when you're on stage in front of a live audience, you know that every move is being watched and analyzed, and hopefully then in the midst of that, people get lost in what you're doing, and they buy everything you're doing, instead of thinking about what you're doing. ... I've had a certain experience with it already with Quantum Leap, a very similar kind of fan style and fan feelings about the show. So in a way, it makes you prepare harder, it makes you work harder. ... I had a great experience with the Quantum Leap fans, and I do to this day, so it's not a bad thing for me. They were always very respectful of me and who I am and what I do, and to be quite honest, I'm not anticipating it to be that much different.
Will there be a romance between Archer and T'Pol, the Vulcan character played by Blalock?
Bakula: No. There's tension, but not friendly tension.
How would you describe their relationship?
Bakula: Very dynamic and very strident.
Rick Berman, how does Enterprise differ from previous Trek series?
Berman: We see this as being the Chuck Yeager of the space program, going back to stories about humanity going where no man has gone before. There are theme storylines that we see literally running through the entire series. We're not going to be doing this on a serialized basis, but there will be serialized elements.
Will you be writing more of the show yourself?
Berman: I've been much more involved in the writing now. Brannon and I wrote the pilot ["Broken Bow"], and we've written the first and third hour episodes, and we're finding ourselves having a great time working together. Very much so.
Can you give us the shorthand for what the Earth and the universe are like at the time that the series starts?
Berman: There's a great irony about developing things that you don't want to be more advanced than things that you know are going to come in 90 years, let's say, at the time of Kirk. That's a problem right now that we have. The computer that sat on Capt. Janeway's desk was bulkier than the one that sits on my desk now. There are cellular phones that are far more compact than the communicators that Capt. Kirk used. So we're always walking a very thin line in terms of developing things that are less advanced than from the time of Capt. Kirk. But we think that one of the most fun elements of this series, especially for our fans, is going to be able to watch all of the things that they know are coming to Star Trek in their infant stages, to be able to see the development of things like transporters and phasers and tractor beams, etc. And we're having a lot of fun with seeing these things when they don't operate perfectly, when they're being developed and perfected.
How close did you come to doing a Starfleet Academy series, and how did you get from there to here?
Berman: It's something that we've never really discussed and never really developed in any way.
Would you also discuss the absence of the Star Trek name in the title?
Berman: Well, you know, if you think about it, since The Next Generation, we've had so many Star Trek entities that were called Star Trek-colon-something: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection. It's just been one after another. Our feeling was, in trying to make this show dramatically different, which we are trying to do, that it might be fun not to have a divided main title like that. And I think that if there's any one word that says Star Trek without actually saying Star Trek, it's the word Enterprise.
As you know, your fans are, let's say, attentive to details. In doing the prequel, did you find any problems in making sure that the mythology works out, that there aren't any sorts of dead ends?
Berman: You know, there have been so many books written that if you really studied them, you find that they contradict each other, that the history between Capt. Kirk and the present has been discussed in episodes and discussed in books and in novels. And we have to take some degree of liberty with just how closely we adhere to those things, because they very often contradict each other.
Which Klingons will we see—wrinkles or non-wrinkles?
Berman: I love this question. You know, in the original series, ... the makeup on the Klingons was a rather simple kind of eyebrow-mustache type of deal. With Worf, which was a hundred years later, people got to start looking at Klingons a different way. But if you are a true Star Trek aficionado, you realize that in a number of the movies, [starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture,] which took place really at the same time as Capt. Kirk, they were using makeup very similar to Worf. So the new look of Klingons is something that in the Star Trek mythology actually began ... after they changed from the original television series to the movies. So, yes, we are going to be using the new look. We're not going back to old Klingon look.
Around the time of, say, May sweeps, are you going to be tempted to have the time-traveling Next Generation Enterprise come crashing back from the future and pay a visit?
Berman: Well, I think you're going to be surprised to find that there are elements of time travel and elements of the future that are going to exist from the pilot continuing throughout this series. But I doubt—even in sweeps—you'll see Jean-Luc Picard making a visit. Probably couldn't afford it anyway.
I sensed a certain weariness when talking about the Klingon makeup, and I'm wondering, the fan base being what it is, what are some of the other nitpicky things that tend to come up again and again?
Berman: About five years ago we did a feature film called [Star Trek:] First Contact, which took place [partly] in the 21st century, and it was about an Earth that was in pretty lousy shape. But it was about the first contact with humans and Vulcans and about the first human who managed to achieve warp speed. And we knew that that period, between that guy named Zefram Cochrane and Capt. Kirk, there was 200 years where Earth went from this kind of muddy little village in Montana, where our film took place, to the world of Kirk and Spock. And we have chosen a place kind of halfway in between to sort of create the world of "How did it all begin?" and "What was it like for the people who truly were the first people to go where no man has gone before?" So in terms of being tripped up by fan kind of things, it hasn't really been that much of a problem, because we're sort of creating an era that's not yet really been explored.
When you move a room from one deck to the other inadvertently, how many e-mails do you get?
Berman: I remember in the second season of Next Generation, we had a phaser beam come out of a photon torpedo port, and we got over 200 letters. And I didn't know the difference. I had no idea which one was which. Two hundred letters.
You mentioned First Contact. There were rumors of a cameo by James Cromwell, who played Zefram Cochrane in the film?
Berman: That's not a bad rumor.
There's already been word that LeVar Burton and Roxann Dawson will be directing episodes. Will any other cast members be directing, and will there be any carry-over in the writers from the other series as well?
Berman: The only actor/director right now that we plan on using in the first season is Robbie Duncan McNeill, along with the two that you mentioned, and we do have a few writers from Voyager.
Have you had any run-ins with broadcast standards as far as something you'd like to do that you're boldly going a little too far for your network?
Berman: I would say, though, that we are taking a few steps in the direction of being a little bit more sexually adventurous with the show. There's some pretty sexy stuff that's coming up, and so far nobody's slapped our hands.
Do you ever sit back and wonder how long this franchise can continue? Seven years from now, we'll be looking at a new Star Trek adventure. Do you ever look that far in the future, not only from a creative viewpoint, but also from the viewpoint of how many viewers out there still have a thirst for this type of entertainment?
Berman: Well, I think that Star Trek is unique in two important ways. First of all, it's been around for 35 years. It's become part of the American mythos. Everyone knows about Star Trek. You'd be very hard-pressed to find somebody who doesn't know about "Beam me up, Scotty" or warp speed or things like that. I think it's something that's comfortable to people because of its familiarity. And I also think that in a world where there's a lot of science fiction that's quite apocalyptic and negative, Star Trek has always had a hopeful viewpoint of the future. And I think as long as that exists, there's always going to be an interest in it. And obviously we need people who can create good television shows and motion pictures.
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