roudly ready to go where no Star Trek has gone before, executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have given Enterprise something that other Star Trek series haven't had before. A mission, and what a mission it is.
In the second-season finale of the UPN series, a devastating attack on Earth by an alien probe led the crew of the Enterprise into a dangerous Bermuda Triangle-type area known as the Delphic Expanse to look for an alien race known as the Xindi. With the crew's mission determining the fate of the human race, Berman and Braga promise these events will lead to a "startling" new direction for the series as it heads into its third season next fall. That's a development that star Scott Bakula, who plays Capt. Jonathan Archer, is excited about.
Berman, Braga and Bakula took a moment to chat with Science Fiction Weekly during a press conference about Enterprise's new mission, the Borg and what T'Pol will be wearing next fall.
The big season finale was seemed reminiscent of 9/11. Why explore this territory?
Braga: It was not a conscious effort to explore 9/11 or the events that led up to it. ... The parallels to 9/11 though, if you've seen the episode, the parallels are unmistakable. [But] it was not our intention.
Berman: We were literally way into the scripting stages before we started to see the parallel. I think one of the things that motivated us is in analyzing the 10 existing Star Trek movies, we were looking for something that would help torque up our series and add a little dimension to get a little added excitement towards the end of the season. We did a little
analysis of our own and we saw that two of the most popular movies were Star Trek 4, which was the one about whales, and Star Trek 8, which was First Contact. These were both films that had to do with the future of Earth being at stake. And we decided that that would be a great place to start with. You know a lot of great science-fiction premises are based on this, just as the great Star Trek films were based on this. So that's where we started. It wasn't literally for a long time that we suddenly realized [the parallel]. But the idea of aliens coming to destroy Earth has been around a lot longer than 9/11.
Scott, what did you think about the parallels?
Bakula: I have to be honest with you. For me as an actor, I guess because I'm involved in our world here, subconsciously I know everything is framed by 9/11 now. But when I got the script I wasn't thinking, "Oh, we're going to take advantage of the 9/11 disaster and use it to our advantage." This is really more about a direction for our series. ... But I hope that it's compelling, and I hope it gets the fans ... from what I understand, there's a tremendous interest and excitement in the fan base around the world, right now, about this final episode.
Even though the parallel might not have been preconceived, are you glad that it's there? Is there the feeling that will make the series significant to viewers to today the way maybe the original series did, dealing with issues like race relations?
Braga: Anytime that we can revolve around contemporary issues makes the show that much better.
Are the Xindi a race we have seen before or not?
Berman: We have not seen them before.
Braga: These are things we play with as we develop the Xindi and their role on this Star Trek show. There may be reasons we've never heard of them. You know what I'm saying.
Berman: By the time we're done with this arc, there's going to be a reason why the Delphic Expanse has not been discussed by Capt. Kirk or Capt. Picard.
How long will this arc last? Will it be the third season or the whole rest of series or something in-between?
Berman: That's to be determined.
What would you say would be the difference between the coming year and what we saw this past year?
Berman: What we've decided to take on here in our third season, which is more than hinted on in this final episode, is that for the first time a Star Trek television series is taking on a specific mission, other than just exploring space. And because this mission is preceded by a very heinous act of destruction on Earth, the series is going to be far more action
packed. It's going to be fraught with a lot more tension and action. Both our series and our captain are going to be more driven. There's a ticking clock and a great deal at stake for ... Earth and the Starship Enterprise.
So I think we're going to see a lot more action. I think we're going to see a crew from the captain on down that are going to be a lot more sure of themselves. Gone are the days of the first two seasons where these people were getting their sea legs. Where these people were taking their first steps out in space. It think they're going to be a lot more self assured, and I think they're going to a lot more mission-oriented in terms of going out there and getting a very urgent job done.
Braga: It's going to be the ultimate test for this crew.
It would seem that there won't be a lot of familiar faces either if you stay in the Expanse.
Braga: That's not necessarily the case. One of the promises next season of the Expanse is that it's a very, extraordinary dangerous part of space. And there will be a lot of new faces. It doesn't necessarily preclude us seeing [familiar faces, however].
On the face, it's starting to seem a lot like Voyager, where you're just meeting new civilizations and new creatures episode after episode?
Braga: It's actually quite the opposite. This mission is a mission which is going to be like a puzzle. They are searching for a specific species and a specific weapon. They will be putting together kind of the mystery and puzzle of the Expanse itself. It's not going to just be a ship heading home. They're trying to figure out the mystery.
Berman: And they're also going to be looking for a specific group of people who are in turn going to be looking for them. Enterprise at any time if they needed to could turn around and go home. This is not like the lost in space situation like we had in Voyager. Also, we are not going to be out of touch with Earth, nor are we going to be in an area where it's
going to be out of the question that we're going to run into other humans. We're going to run into Klingons or Vulcans or what have you.
Scott, how do you feel about these changes?
Bakula: I'm thrilled about them. Rick and Brandon and I were talking several months ago about the first two seasons and what we had learned and what was ahead of us and one of the things that I was talking about was, I felt like they'd been enough experiences between the Suliban and what was happening to me with the Klingons and being an escaped prisoner from Rura Penthe, etc. That it was kind of time for the captain to stand up to a couple of these things and either take on the Suliban, take on the Klingons, whatever. That it was time for him to pick up something and really pursue it.
That was kind of half way through this thought of mine and both Rick and Brannon said, "Stop, stop, stop! Listen to what we've got going." And they proceeded to tell me what this third season was going to be like, which greatly enthused me. I'm very excited about it. I love the sense of purpose, of intensity, of sense of mission.
And it's not like I'm not a fan of the prior Star Trek franchises where it was kind of a planet every week. But ... it just feels like the right time to really get into something that has arc, that will survive not just the standalone episodes per se. That will have something for the fans to really hook onto every week and really get involved with. So I'm very excited about it.
How do you feel your character's going to be changing next season, because of this arc?
Bakula: Again, it's a totally different atmosphere for the whole crew and the whole ship. I've made a plea to please let me and my crew go out there, and risk our ship and our lives to potentially save Earth. So I've gone way out on a limb here, and my captain is going to do whatever he has to do to deliver on that promise to help save Earth. So again, in great sci-fi history ... at some point in time we know that I'm going to save Earth. So our crew is going to have some way of doing that. How we get there, how we figure it out, is what's the fun part. That's what the ride's all about.
But my character is going to be more determined, I think. And again, I haven't seen any pages for next season, so this is just conversations that I've had with Rick and Brandon, but he's more determined. He's more driven, and in a sense he's more worldly. He's maturing as a captain, and he's maturing in his third year of deep space exploration, as the first man to do this. So I think he's going to be ... I hate to say, more interesting than he's been in the past, but he's definitely going to be more driven and evolving.
Now that you've been on Enterprise for two years, how is this different than your experience on Quantum Leap?
Berman: He doesn't have to work as many days [laughs].
Bakula: That is a huge difference ... No, you know, it's been interesting for me to be part of a crew, a cast of seven, who are all very capable and wonderfully gifted actors, and many of them are just beginning to discover how good they are. So it's a pleasure to be involved. Before, it was just Dean [Stockwell] and myself. And that was great fun, but it also made the work difficult because I had a random cast to deal with every week, with the exception of Dean. So now, I have ... our bridge days are very enjoyable, sometimes too enjoyable for our poor directors.
We have a great time. There's a great sense of camaraderie. I'm a big advocate of a cast working together and getting along, and that comes forth and onto the film. And I think that we've got that. I think it's a great bunch of actors. There's a lot of great chemistry. So that part, to me, is really a lot of fun. So that's a big difference. I'm really enjoying the collaboration, and the great sense of working with Rick and Brandon, and that's different from my experience with Quantum Leap. I never really got to participate that much in the show in terms of ideas and things, and input.
Berman: That's because he was 15 years old at the time [laughs].
Bakula: So that's been a big difference for me, and I'm enjoying that also. I'll tell you, it's wild be involved with something that's been around for 35 years and has history. Someone asked earlier about paying attention to the prior franchises. These guys are amazing in terms of their sense of detail and ... reverence might be too high of a word ... but they're really loyal to the fans and the history of the show, and they really take amazing care in paying attention to those things. So it's an extraordinary experience for me, and I'm thrilled that we get another year to keep going at it.
Rick and Brandon, obviously you're hoping that this new direction will bring back some fans and kind of halt the ratings slide that Enterprise has seen.
Berman: Oh, we're not interested in getting any more ... yeah, of course we are! [Laughs.]
Braga: Look, any time you have a show that's been on for as long as Star Trek, you always are have looking for ways to rejuvenate, whether it's the character Seven of Nine or a place called the Expanse or experimenting with the format of the show. It's an ongoing creative process to find ways [to keep it fresh] after 650 episodes.
You guys have been at this for a very long time with the different Star Trek series. What's surprised you most about Enterprise?
Braga: I think I speak for Rick when I say it's the most fun we've ever had working on a show. We've never enjoyed characters more and we've had a lot of fun writing the show.
Berman: It's just a remarkable ... I'm not saying this because one of our seven actors is here.
Bakula: I could leave.
Berman: Oh, no you don't. You've got to stick it out ... [Laughs.] We just really got lucky with these seven characters. We hired seven actors. The studio, the network, everybody was agreed on all seven of our choices and we just hit a home run with every one of them. They're just such a delight to write for. And we just have so much fun with them.
What happens each year as each character gets 26 more stories under their belt, they become more layered and they become richer and it's much more fun to write for them. They've got much richer back stories. And every one of them, they all step up when it comes to being able to get to the next level. So it's just been a delight for us. In a way, we're going to be trying to step away a little bit from the character-driven stories next year because we want to get them a little bit more plot-driven, adventure-driven stories coming in. But that doesn't mean that we're going to walk away from these wonderful characters that we're slowly [developing] with the help of these actors.
What can you tell us about these new villains, the Xindi? Besides the parallel of 9/11, there seems to be a parallel to the Iraqi war in there.
Braga: Again ... it was an unintentional parallel. But what you have in this case is a series of preemptive strikes [where] Archer begins to unravel the mystery and it may very well be that you don't know where the first strike happened. It becomes an interesting question.
Berman: Just remember that well before 9/11 in the creation of Enterprise, we were dealing with this temporal cold war that we created over three years ago where people from the distant future were communicating with Archer and dragging Archer to the future and coming to the past and telling us about various dastardly things that are going to be happening to us in the future and that we're going to be involved with and a whole series of cause and effects that we are supposedly to be part of. We're not quite sure how and why and there this character that we kind of affectionately refer to as Future Guy who has contacted Archer. But he's also contacted the Suliban.
That was part of our series at the very beginning. So we had dealt with the idea of wars and attacks and destruction in the future before. The fact that here we're taking about something that is taking place in the future and a group of people who are preemptively coming to attack us so that a future attack that they have learned about from time travelers is not going to
happen. People who've been following Enterprise for the last two years, it clicks in a little bit more into our mythology and it's a little bit less coincidental.
Braga: There actually is a preemptive strike of a preemptive strike. [Laughs.]
Bakula: Just in terms of our own timeline here, this script was conceived and pretty much written before the Iraqi War was even started, so I just want to kind of clarify that for the guys here.
We don't even know if Future Guy is even telling the truth. The Xindi could be made up. He certainly has his own agenda.
Braga: Exactly ... And that's all part of the mystery that they're going to be getting into as they enter the Expanse to try and figure it all out. And somebody asked about the Xindi themselves, and we're just getting into conceiving the third season right now ... But our initial talks about the Xindi are that they are one of the more complicated species we've met. Imagine on earth if human beings not only evolved into [people, but also] certain reptiles, certain amphibians, certain insects, etc. etc. What if we had been a planet where there were many different kinds of species that came about? What would that be like? What would that culture be like?
I've heard there's going to be some changes in T'Pol's character. Could you talk about that?
Berman: Well, if you seen the story, you know that T'Pol has resigned her commission. She'll be doing the entire third season in the nude [laughs].
That will get the ratings up.
Berman: T'Pol, obviously now that she is no longer part of the Vulcan High Command, definitely there are going to be some changes and some of them are going to be physical. She's going to stop wearing her, so to speak, her Vulcan High Command uniform. We're going to start seeing different outfits on her. I think we're going to see some slight changes in her hairdo. I think it's going to be fun to see a slightly less austere T'Pol.
But I think also we're going to see her try to experiment a little bit with some of her emotions with the help of her fellow alien Doctor Phlox, she's going to perhaps try to experiment with some of the emotions that she sees exhibited with her counterparts everyday. So that will be something ... another element of the season that I think is going to fun as well.
What's the future of the movie franchise look like?
Berman: Obviously the last film Nemesis—which I truly believe is one of the best, I'm very proud of it—It didn't do well at all. Nobody's quite sure why and it's sort of finishing its international run now and it's coming out on DVD this week. I've had no discussions at all with the motion-picture people. So if that discussion occurs, it's probably not going to occur within this season.
Do you think you're always going to have more Star Trek stories to tell?
Berman: I don't know if I'm going to have more Star Trek stories to tell, but I think this franchise, it's been ongoing for 37 years. I think that there are times where it probably could use a nap, just like anything else. But I think it's ingrained in the American mythos and I can't imagine that it's ever going to go away for a very long time.
You guys have been involved, I believe, since Next Generation. Are you planning the next series?
Berman: Brannon and I have both been involved since Next Generation. I've been involved for a few years longer than he has. Brannon was involved with two of the movies. I've been involved with four. Right now our only focus is on Enterprise. I can happily say we're in no discussions either between ourselves or with the studio on any other Star Trek project.
Do you have to worry about the mythology of the previous Star Treks?
Berman: When we started with the concept of a prequel three years ago we realized that we had to pay great care to the Star Trek mythology. But we always did, because when you're dealing with science fiction you not only have to deal with the past, you have to deal with the future. Ever since we got involved with Star Trek: The Next Generation 16 years ago, we had to tread very carefully in waters that touched on things that dealt with the history of various species and various things that happened in Gene Roddenberry's original series. We've had to deal with that over the years in both movies and television series. We've had to deal with that more closely here because we're dealing with a time that precedes Capt. Kirk and Capt. Picard. It's really no different now. We treat Star Trek mythology with a great deal of respect. There are rules that we bend a little bit, but we try not to break them.
What was the thinking about why you decided to bring the Borg back and are you thinking of bringing the Borg back again?
Berman: The interesting premise of that was that in the movie First Contact, Capt. Picard and company went back in time to the 21st century. They kind of chased the Borg back in time. That was one of those movies I told you about where they went back to save Earth from being assimilated. There was some fighting between the 24th century Starfleet guys and the Borg back in the 21st century. So the premise that was brought here was that one of those Borg ships crashed on earth in the 21st century. And then in the time of Archer a hundred years later, one of those crashed Borg ships are discovered. Of course, nobody knows they're Borg. Nobody's ever heard of the Borg. It's the 22nd century. And that gave us a reason to have the Borg in a time when humanity had never heard of them before. So that was a wonderful standalone opportunity for us. As to whether they'll be brought back again, I don't know. We haven't discussed it.
What about bringing back Q?
Berman: That's something else that we've discussed and certainly is a possibility.
Scott, are you concerned at all that with the story arc about the Xindi that there won't time just to have that fill of exploration and discovering something new.
Bakula: Well, again just going back to what Rick said, I think that there's still going to be that opportunity and obviously the Delphic Expanse by itself is totally unexplored. And there have been no records, there's no knowledge of it at all, except that it's a place where people come out of it in a bad way. So I think that, I don't know that excitement is the right word, but there certainly is going to be an opportunity for great new experiences. So that emotion won't be lost.
Underlying everything is, and again I haven't seen a word from next season yet, but we won't have the opportunity to linger on the lovely island of Manitoba or whatever, and hang out swimming in the ocean for a couple of weeks, because there is a ticking clock and there's a sense of urgency. So it won't preclude us, I don't think from having experiences.
And Rick and Brannon even talked about that there still will be an opportunity to have an episode that has a little bit lighter moments. Obviously, you can't stay in that place 24/7. Again there will be a balance, but the overall sense will be the sense of mission. And I think that's OK. We've had two years of great experiences and great exploration and great learning. And now I think it's OK to go in a different direction for a while.
It seems like this is almost taking the crew from being children to being adults.
Bakula: I think it's a great opportunity for our part of the Star Trek history ... we parted ways with the Vulcans. We reached the point of being able to survive on our own and to make choices on our own and I think it's just natural that we're pushing that now. It's the third season. There's a certainly level of frustration for the Vulcans that my character's always felt and Starfleet has felt, and you're right. You know, cut the strings and let's go. They're not going. They're not interested in helping us in this particular venture. So it's a great way to tell the stories, I think.
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Also in this issue:
Lee Unkrich of Finding Nemo
