Star Trek: Enterprise turns 25 this year, so it’s an ideal time to take a look at the legacy of the show, which ran for four seasons on UPN — a shorter run than each of its Berman-era predecessors. At Trek Talks this year, writer Diana Keng moderated a panel of Enterprise writers to celebrate the show’s 25-year milestone. Participants were co-creator and executive producer Brannon Braga, writers/co-producers Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong (who often wrote as a team), Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (who joined the show in season 4), and writer/co-producer André Bormanis. One of the many fascinating discussions was about the stories they pitched (or wanted to pitch) before the show got the ax at the end of season 4.
No to Colonel Green, yes to Organians
Diana asked the group “If you could pitch an episode that could air anywhere in the four seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise today, what would it be, and who would be the central character?” Brannon Braga’s first (and funny) response was “If you’re asking us to come up another one for Enterprise I’m going to kill myself.” Then he elaborated that “there was not a single scrap of an idea that wasn’t used because concepts were like mining for gold, however, he admitted he couldn’t speak for the others. He was right, as they started chiming in, revealing all sorts of fun pitches, starting with Gar and Judy.
Garfield Reeves-Stevens: “One we pitched it to Manny [Coto], and he said, break it down. We put it on cards. We wrote a treatment, and it all had to do with Colonel Green [from TOS’ ‘The Savage Curtain’] coming back. And then the decision was “too close to the Augments. We don’t want to do another one.” But the intriguing thing in that was Colonel Green having survived in some way, is going after the people who had hurt him in the past, and also reached out to the people, the descendants of those who’d helped them. And that Reed is we were going to find out his father or his grandfather was one of the supporters of Colonel Green. So we get into a personal story, and that one was going to be a two-parter, which ended with Trip and Reed on the outside of the Enterprise as it was about to go to warp.”
With budgets getting tight, they got some pushback.
Garfield Reeves-Stevens: “But that one led to ‘We don’t want to do that, we have to save money.’ And Brandon said, ‘You know, we save money if the crew, regular cast members are taken over by some alien. So we don’t have to have guest stars.’”
Judith: “And we did ‘Observer Effect.’”
“Observer Effect” was exactly what Brannon had suggested: a bottle episode with no guest stars, thanks to a storyline in which aliens were using the bodies of the crew, and no visual effects. They kept a small nod to TOS when the aliens are revealed at the end to be Organians, who conveniently wipe the crew’s memories.
Organians play chess in the bodies of Mayweather and Reed in “Observer Effect”
Borg Queen origin story and a trip back to Station K-7
The Reeves-Stevenses, who’d already written several successful Star Trek reference books, had another pitch that delved into the franchise’s lore. Although the show already had a Borg episode in season 2 (“Regeneration”), they wanted to dig deeper into the their formation:
Garfield Reeves-Stevens: “And then the one we thought would be really intriguing was to have another Borg show, but bring in the head of Starfleet medical, which would be played by Alice Krige. Yeah, and we would see someone choosing — she, of course, goes on to become the Borg Queen — but we would see what goes through the mind of someone choosing to join the collective.”
When Brannon Braga told them it was “a cool idea that we should’ve done,” Garfield reported that Manny didn’t want them reaching back to other shows too often; it was important for Enterprise to stand on its own. Phyllis Strong echoed this sentiment and talked about why writing for the show was so appealing.
Phyllis Strong: “I was so excited to be going back to a time, 100 years before Kirk and Spock, and to really dive into characters that were flawed, much flawed, and would have arguments and conflict, and that was different from what had come before, since Next Generation.”
But the Reeves-Stevenses had an idea for one more dip into The Original Series well, along with optimism for Enterprise‘s future:
Garfield: “A story we never pitched, but we thought of, and now we’ve seen it’s quite a common thing … We thought for season 7, an ideal episode would be to have one last battle of the Temporal War, and it involves the Enterprise crew going back to the K-7 space station while Kirk’s crew is there and Sisko’s crew is there.”
He’s referring to Deep Space Nine‘s “Trials and Tribble-ations,” when Sisko and crew went back in time to the USS Enterprise during the events of Star Trek‘s “The Trouble With Tribbles.” (For more on that, check out the Trek Talks panel with Larry Nemecek, Ira Steven Behr, and Terry Farrell.)
Kirk meeting Sisko in DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations”
How about a visit to Stratos?
André Bormanis had another big pitch with a TOS callback:
André Bormanis: “I do remember pitching an idea to Manny that he really liked. It was based on the episode from The Original Series, ‘The Cloud Minders’ — the city Stratos, all the people live lives of leisure on Stratos while the miners work down in the tunnels. And I thought it’d be interesting to see that 100 years earlier, when it’s still being built and before this, you know stratification, you know this growing income inequality, you know, had had taken root. And Manny said that’s really cool, we got to think about that. And he said, That’s a season 5 story.”
A Troglyte falling to his death from the cloud city of Stratos in Star Trek’s “The Cloud Minders”
Manny Coto had big plans for season 5
Manny Coto became the showrunner in season 4. Mike Sussman and Brannon said Coto had already worked out an arc for season 5.
Mike Sussman: “There was no individual episode that I can think of that that didn’t get done that was interesting to me. But, and I know this was true for Manny as well, we were hoping, had the show continued, we would have gotten into the Romulan War, which canonically happened.”
Brannon Braga: “If Manny were was still alive and he was here, he would tell you his plan for season 5. He had it all mapped out.”
But season 5 was not to be…
Brannon Braga: “It was during season 4 that probably, maybe even the early stages of season 4 that Paramount went was bought by a new company, CBS, and all the bosses we had had for 15 years were unceremoniously blown out the airlock, and we we had this whole new regime, so we knew we weren’t — whereas we were certain we were getting a season 5 before, now we were a little uncertain — and I remember getting the phone call in Rick’s office that they were pulling the plug on the show. But it was during the season.”
Mike Sussman: “It was in January of 2005 because they had just André and I had co written an episode that had aired. It was the after Christmas episode where there’d been no advertising, the show been off for two months for a scheduled break. And the that episode that André and I wrote didn’t do particularly well in the ratings, but I think it was like, probably, like 3 million viewers at the time, which today, of course, is probably pretty amazing even on network, never mind UPN, which had what, like 75% of the country.”
It didn’t come as a complete shock to the writers.
Judith Reeves-Stevens: “We knew that the show might be in trouble when the weekly fruit basket did not arrive at the writers rooms.”
Brannon Braga: “I didn’t know there was a fruit basket.”
One additional note about this panel: André Bormanis heard about the Trek Talks panel the night before from Brannon Braga, and graciously asked if he could join the group. (The answer, of course, was an immediate and resounding yes.) The event raised over $90,000 for the Hollywood Food Coalition.
Watch the full panel at Trek Talks 5
The full show (including this panel) is on YouTube. Trek Talks is a yearly event, a full day of Star Trek panels online to benefit Hollywood Food Coalition. They are still accepting donations here.
Here it is, cued up to the Enterprise panel:
About the Hollywood Food Coalition
The mission of Hollywood Food Coalition is to nourish the community by rescuing and distributing food, preparing nightly meals, and uniting efforts to achieve food equity. Their vision is a city where everyone has food, community, and support. You can see some of the great work Hollywood Food Coalition is doing on their YouTube channel in videos like this one:
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