{"id":185703,"date":"2026-04-04T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/185703\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:32:08","slug":"enterprise-season-5-stories-trekmovie-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/185703\/","title":{"rendered":"Enterprise\u2019 Season 5 Stories \u2013 TrekMovie.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Star Trek: Enterprise turns 25 this year, so it\u2019s an ideal time to take a look at the legacy of the show, which ran for four seasons on UPN \u2014 a shorter run than each of its Berman-era predecessors.\u00a0At Trek Talks<\/a> this year, writer Diana Keng moderated a panel of\u00a0Enterprise\u00a0writers to celebrate the show\u2019s 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 Andr\u00e9 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.<\/p>\n

No to Colonel Green, yes to Organians<\/p>\n

Diana asked the group \u201cIf 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?\u201d Brannon Braga\u2019s first (and funny) response was\u00a0 \u201cIf you\u2019re asking us to come up another one for Enterprise I\u2019m going to kill myself.\u201d Then he elaborated that \u201cthere was not a single scrap of an idea that wasn\u2019t used because concepts were like mining for gold, however, he admitted he couldn\u2019t speak for the others. He was right, as they started chiming in, revealing all sorts of fun pitches, starting with Gar and Judy.<\/p>\n

Garfield Reeves-Stevens: \u201cOne 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\u2019 \u2018The Savage Curtain\u2019]\u00a0 coming back. And then the decision was \u201ctoo close to the Augments. We don\u2019t want to do another one.\u201d 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\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

With budgets getting tight, they got some pushback.<\/p>\n

Garfield Reeves-Stevens: \u201cBut that one led to \u2018We don\u2019t want to do that,\u00a0 we have to save money.\u2019 And Brandon said, \u2018You know, we save money if the crew, regular cast members are taken over by some alien. So we don\u2019t have to have guest stars.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Judith: \u201cAnd we did \u2018Observer Effect.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObserver Effect\u201d 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\u2019s memories.<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/a><\/p>\n

Organians play chess in the bodies of Mayweather and Reed in \u201cObserver Effect\u201d<\/p>\n

Borg Queen origin story and a trip back to Station K-7<\/p>\n

The Reeves-Stevenses, who\u2019d already written several successful Star Trek reference books, had another pitch that delved into the franchise\u2019s lore. Although the show already had a Borg episode in season 2 (\u201cRegeneration\u201d), they wanted to dig deeper into the their formation:<\/p>\n

Garfield Reeves-Stevens: \u201cAnd 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 \u2014 she, of course, goes on to become the Borg Queen \u2014 but we would see what goes through the mind of someone choosing to join the collective.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Brannon Braga told them it was \u201ca cool idea that we should\u2019ve done,\u201d Garfield reported that Manny didn\u2019t want them reaching back to other shows too often; it was important for\u00a0Enterprise to stand on its own. Phyllis Strong echoed this sentiment and talked about why writing for the show was so appealing.<\/p>\n

Phyllis Strong: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Reeves-Stevenses had an idea for one more dip into The Original Series well, along with optimism for Enterprise\u2018s future:<\/p>\n

Garfield: \u201cA story we never pitched, but we thought of, and now we\u2019ve seen it\u2019s quite a common thing \u2026 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\u2019s crew is there and Sisko\u2019s crew is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s referring to\u00a0Deep Space Nine\u2018s \u201cTrials and Tribble-ations,\u201d when Sisko and crew went back in time to the USS Enterprise during the events of Star Trek\u2018s \u201cThe Trouble With Tribbles.\u201d (For more on that, check out the Trek Talks panel with Larry Nemecek, Ira Steven Behr, and Terry Farrell<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"Kirk<\/a><\/p>\n

Kirk meeting Sisko in DS9\u2019s \u201cTrials and Tribble-ations\u201d<\/p>\n

How about a visit to Stratos?<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Bormanis had another big pitch with a TOS callback:<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Bormanis: \u201cI do remember pitching an idea to Manny that he really liked. It was based on the episode from The Original Series, \u2018The Cloud Minders\u2019 \u2014 the city Stratos, all the people live lives of leisure on Stratos while the miners work down in the tunnels. And I thought it\u2019d be interesting to see that 100 years earlier, when it\u2019s 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\u2019s really cool, we got to think about that. And he said, That\u2019s a season 5 story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

A Troglyte falling to his death from the cloud city of Stratos in Star Trek\u2019s \u201cThe Cloud Minders\u201d<\/p>\n

Manny Coto had big plans for season 5<\/p>\n

Manny Coto became the showrunner in season 4. Mike Sussman and Brannon said Coto had already worked out an arc for season 5.<\/p>\n

Mike Sussman: \u201cThere was no individual episode that I can think of that that didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brannon Braga: \u201cIf Manny were was still alive and he was here, he would tell you his plan for season 5.\u00a0 He had it all mapped out.\u201d<\/p>\n

But season 5 was not to be\u2026<\/p>\n

Brannon Braga: \u201cIt 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\u2019t \u2014 whereas we were certain we were getting a season 5 before, now we were a little uncertain \u2014 and I remember getting the phone call in Rick\u2019s office that they were pulling the plug on the show. But it was during the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Sussman: \u201cIt was in January of 2005 because they had just Andr\u00e9 and I had co written an episode that had aired. It was the after Christmas episode where there\u2019d been no advertising, the show been off for two months for a scheduled break. And the that episode that Andr\u00e9 and I wrote didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t come as a complete shock to the writers.<\/p>\n

Judith Reeves-Stevens: \u201cWe knew that the show might be in trouble when the weekly fruit basket did not arrive at the writers rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brannon Braga: \u201cI didn\u2019t know there was a fruit basket.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

One additional note about this panel: Andr\u00e9 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.<\/p>\n

Watch the full panel at Trek Talks 5<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Hollywood Food Coalition<\/a>. They are still\u00a0accepting donations here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here it is, cued up to the\u00a0Enterprise\u00a0panel:<\/p>\n

About the Hollywood Food Coalition<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0You can see some of the great work Hollywood Food Coalition is doing on their\u00a0YouTube channel<\/a>\u00a0in videos like this one:<\/p>\n

\"Donate<\/p>\n

Keep up with everything to do with the\u00a0Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com<\/a>.\u00e9\u00e9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star Trek: Enterprise turns 25 this year, so it\u2019s an ideal time to take a look at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-185703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}