hen last we left the intrepid crew of the starship Enterprise, they had destroyed the Xindi superweapon, left Capt. Archer (Scott Bakula) for dead, saved Earth from destruction and found themselves back on Earth, under fire from World War II-era fighter planes. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to his crewmates, Archer awoke in a tent, face to face with ... an alien Nazi?
With that curious cliffhanger, UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise ended its third season, having barely squeaked by in the ratings enough to warrant a fourth season. When the new season begins on Oct. 8, many things will have changed. The show will have a new timeslot, Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. With a lower budget this year, Enterprise will be shot on high-definition video instead of the more traditional 35mm film. The series will have a new show runner: former Odyssey 5 producer Manny Coto, who boarded Enterprise as a writer last year and was largely responsible for the season-long Xindi arc.
And Enterprise promises to return to shorter story arcs, stand-alone episodes and classic Star Trek themes and characters. Expect guest appearances by Star Trek: The Next Generation star Brent Spiner, playing an ancestor of the man who created Data, and possibly original Star Trek star William Shatner.
Bakula, co-stars Jolene Blalock (T'Pol) and Connor Trinneer (Cmdr. Tucker) and Coto took a moment over the summer to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about Enterprise's new enterprise, which kicks off with the episode "Storm Front."
Scott Bakula, what can you tell us about this season's new direction?
Bakula: We're late getting started this year. We're late with everything, because we got picked up late. ... We were sitting on our hands kind of waiting, and normally everything is moving at a much brighter pace right now. ... I sit with the guys, [executive producers] Rick [Berman] and Brannon [Braga] and Manny now, and we talk about stories and where they want the show to go, and the great news is, usually they lay the stuff out to me and I'm thrilled with what they're going to do. ... We have some wild, crazy stuff coming this year.
There will be more stuff this year connecting Enterprise with the original Star Trek series?
Bakula: Yeah, there's going to be some fun stuff with that. Some species we're going to bump into and some things like that that'll kind of bring it back full circle for the fans from the beginning. It should be fun.
Is there an overall theme this year? Last year was the mission, and does that continue or is it different?
Bakula: Oh, we have some things to resolve from last year, but ultimately last year's going to be put to bed. ... We're going to do a couple of mini-arcs, but not a [season-long one]. I call our last season 24, because in a sense it was. ... There are definitely some things that'll be driving it, but there's going to be some resolves. Some big issues that have been hanging in the balance for three years now are going to get taken care of.
Archer turned kind of dark last year, and we saw him do some kind of morally questionable things. Are we going to see repercussions from that, or more of that?
Bakula: Well, I think there's definitely going to be a day of reckoning. There's going to be some repercussions. There's also going to be just a man who's faced with having to make some tough choices and now being out of that situation, how does he really feel about that, how has it changed him? I think there's definitely a sense of a war veteran, in essence, who comes back to civilization, so to speak, and then says, "Wow, what have I done?" We read about it every day in the paper.
Dominic Keating, who plays Lt. Reed, said you were very pivotal when the cast wasn't sure if you were coming back next season in keeping everybody together, keeping everybody's spirits up.
Bakula: I said from the beginning, [when] everybody's like, "Oh, man, six years, seven years." And I said, "You know what? ... My philosophy is you got to take every day as it comes and try and enjoy every day of the work, because the business is so dramatically different now." I mean, ... it's our fourth season. Voyager started 11 years ago. So you guys know that the landscape in television has changed in the last 11 years. So to just automatically assume that we're the next franchise and that we're going to get seven years, you know, I just said, "Let's do the work, work as hard as we can, make the best show that we can, and feel good about what we do every day, because television ends. It all ends at some point." And we want to feel good about what we've done and not say, "Oh, next year's going to be really good."
Did you fear that the show was going to be canceled?
Bakula: I didn't, really. I didn't. I have a good relationship with the head of Paramount television, and we had a lot of talks about what was going on, and Rick and Brannon and I talk a lot about what Enterprise means to UPN. ... At the same time I knew, you know, Les [Moonves, head of UPN parent company CBS,] runs the show, and if Les says we're gone, we're gone. But happily he didn't. We get to go again. They're trying a lot of new things. ... Opening up a new night for UPN could be a great thing for us.
Do you think the show will be affected by having a lower budget this year?
Bakula: No. I know where the cuts are, where the money's coming out of, and it's not going to affect the show. I've also seen the first two scripts, and ... I don't know how we're doing it, smoke and mirrors, but it's as big as a lot of the shows we made last year.
You're shooting the show on high-definition video?
Bakula: Yeah, yeah, that helps a lot. It saves a great chunk of money every week, and we've got a great [cinematographer] who's figured [it all] out. ... HD's the wave of the future, so it's just a matter of time, and we're getting very, very good quality out of it.
Can you talk about what Manny Coto brings to the show? What's changed?
Bakula: I think Manny Coto talks for himself. The scripts certainly talk for themselves. Last year, he wrote some beautiful shows for us. He's extremely dedicated. He's a great, hard worker, and I think any time that you can bring somebody to the mix who's compatible, and that's always a big challenge when you have someone like Rick and Brannon and other guys who've been there, you bring somebody big like Manny in, who's run his own show and done all that, how are they going to work together? And they all just get along great, and they seem to creatively spark each other and make each other better, so, for us, it's all better.
Can you talk a little bit about Brent Spiner coming on board for this season? [Spiner played Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and will make guest appearances in several episodes.]
Bakula: I love Brent. He's a great guy, and I don't understand all the history of this character that they're bringing on and how they're going to exactly do it, but I know that they're very excited about it, and I know that I'm going to have a lot of stuff to do with Brent. So we've become friends, and, you know, it's fun, and it's stunt casting, yes, but it'll be correct. They're very good about making sure [of] that, because, you know, the fans want it to be right, and we want it to be right, so it'll be good.
Jolene Blalock, we heard that there's a wedding in the third episode of this season's Enterprise.
Blalock: There is! I'm getting married.
Is this the long-lost fiance that you had back on Vulcan?
Blalock: Or maybe not. Maybe it's somebody on the ship. We don't know. You've got to watch.
How did you hear that the show had been picked up?
Blalock: I found it on the Internet, actually. So it was a rumor. It was a rumor. Yeah, I'm on the Internet, bigtime. That's the only way you can find anything out.
That must have been kind of nerve-racking.
Blalock: Yeah, you wouldn't want to take my blood pressure, but it's up, you know? I took it whatever way the course turns, it's OK. It's all the journey.
Last season, T'Pol wound up with partial emotions and hooked up with Cmdr. Tucker.
Blalock: That was difficult for me. Because you're treading unfamiliar ground with that character when you bring in emotions, and it was difficult for me. I kept asking a lot of questions to the producers and the writers. "What do you mean by this? How far do you want me to go? Where's this coming from?" I really had to justify it to myself as an actor. And it turns out that, because, as you know, the character will begin to behave and then we find out why, so it's like, the character began to behave, and I'm like, "Are you sure guys? Are you sure?" And then it turns out a couple episodes later that it's trellium D, and ... I'm an addict. My God. So they chose that for my character. I find it odd that you have this very respected officer who is a strong female, who is trustworthy and reliable and loyal, and it seems like last season that it was kind of torn down to this emotional, wacky chick who needs to get laid. And does. It's very bizarre. It was very hard for me. But I think that this year, Manny Coto [has] ... been doing some nice writing, and the last two episodes of this fourth season have been a pleasure to unfold.
How do you feel about the relationship between T'Pol and Trip? Would you like to see that go forward, or would you prefer they not?
Blalock: I don't know what to think about that. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that some catfish-eating, honky-tonk guy would be appealing to this serene character, personally, but you know, maybe there's something in the difference. ... I don't know. It depends on the writing. It depends on how it evolves. It can't just be "Hey, buddy, let's go do it." Like, what is that?
Manny Coto, tell us about your new position on the show.
Coto: I'm one of the show runners, let's put it that way. I'm basically running the writers' room, and Rick and Brannon are in the position of where Rick usually is, which is overseeing the entire production.
How do you envision the theme or overriding attitude for the fourth season?
Coto: I'm a fan of the old Trek series, of the original Trek. And season four for me is going to be everything I, as an old Star Trek fan, would want to see on Enterprise. Which is basically a lot of touchstones connecting Enterprise with the old series and with the Next Generation series. Touching on old races, which I've always wanted to see portrayed, like the Orions and more of the Andorians and the Vulcans. Stories that kind of link our universe, the Enterprise universe, with the original series.
For example, a lot of people have noticed that the Vulcans on Enterprise don't behave like the Vulcans from the Kirk era and/or the Next Generation era. The Vulcans on Enterprise are more impulsive. They actually are somewhat more emotional. They lie. They don't have the same kind of values that the Vulcans that we know of. So I envision this kind of scenario, which I'm kind of picturing as Lawrence of Arabia on Vulcan, where you have the Vulcan Reformation. Where a character appears and proclaims that we have strayed from the teachings of Surak. And this character will lead a revolution on Vulcan, which will bring Vulcan and Vulcan ideals to where we know them in the later series. And Enterprise will get involved in this.
What about wrapping up issues from the earlier seasons?
Coto: The Temporal Cold War ends in episodes one and two of this season. ... I just think it's time to move on. I personally am more interested in the Star Trek universe that already exists, exploring that and expanding upon that, rather than doing time travel. Not that I don't like time travel, because ... some of the best Star Trek episodes are all about time travel. But the first three seasons of Enterprise have dealt primarily, in a large way, with time travel. So let's explore something else.
What about other origin stories?
Coto: We're going to touch on that as well in season four. One of the ideas that I've had is, we've seen Zefram Cochrane, the originator of the warp drive. But we've never seen the individual who invented the transporter, which I think is as important an invention as the warp drive, when you really think about it. So I want to do a story about an individual who is kind of a Daystrom, if you remember the old series character [from the original series episode "The Ultimate Computer"], who's invented the transporter, and a story about him.
Connor Trinneer, are you looking forward to working with Brent Spiner?
Trinneer: I met Brent a couple of times. He's a great guy.
Would you like to see Trip hook up with T'Pol again this season?
Trinneer: If they're going to do that again, I sure hope they make it evolve, that something happens, it goes in a direction. That's what I'd like to see. If that's going to happen, then make it go in a direction.
We saw a dark side of Trip last season.
Trinneer: Trip's full of dark, ambiguous stuff. I think that is Trip. ... I think that that was a part of him beforehand. I don't think that was anything new in terms of my own process about playing him.
How anxious were you about the show's fate?
Trinneer: We were f--king worried about it, man. This is our job. ... It was like, "Oh, no, please, stick around." ... There was so much talk about it and so much rumor going around, ... I've come to the conclusion or the realization that ... I just don't want to talk about it anymore. Whatever the fate is of this show, we're going to have four years at least, and syndication and all that. ... I don't know how the syndication stuff works, but I heard you had to have your fourth year, and that was what we were really pulling for, and I think that how they're doing it this year, with going to HD and cutting costs and not using film and really adhering to sort of stricter day schedules in an effort to save money, listen, if we don't piss anybody off too much we might still be around, and I'd love that. But you know, it's always such conjecture by us, because we don't have any idea. We have no idea. And when we wind up talking about it we just end up in a circle going, "Gosh, you know, I heard this, and I heard that." It just got really old.
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