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Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise (simply titled Enterprise prior to season three) is a science fiction television program created by Brannon Braga and Rick Berman set in the Star Trek universe created by Gene Roddenberry. The series follows the adventures of humanity's first Warp 5 starship, Enterprise, ten years before the United Federation of Planets shown in previous Star Trek episodes was formed. Enterprise premiered on September 26, 2001. The pilot episode, "Broken Bow", takes place in the year 2151, halfway between the 21st-century events shown in the movie Star Trek: First Contact and the original Star Trek television series. Low ratings prompted UPN to cancel Star Trek: Enterprise on February 2, 2005, but the network allowed the series to complete its fourth season. The final episode aired on May 13, 2005. After a run of four seasons and 98 episodes, it was the first Star Trek series since the original Star Trek to have been canceled by its network rather than finished by its producers. It is also the last series in an 18-year run of back-to-back new Star Trek shows beginning with Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.
ProductionIn May 2000, Rick Berman, executive producer of Star Trek: Voyager, revealed that a new series would premiere following the final season of Voyager. [1] Little news was forthcoming for months as Berman and Brannon Braga developed the untitled series, known only as Series V, until February 2001, when Paramount signed Herman Zimmerman and John Eaves to production design Series V.[2] Within a month, scenic designer Michael Okuda, another long-time Trek veteran, was also signed.[3] Michael Westmore, make-up designer for Trek since Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), was announced as working on Series V by the end of April.[4] Returning as director of photography would be Marvin V. Rush,[5] who had been working on various Treks since the third season of TNG. For visual effects, Ronald B. Moore was brought in,[5] who had previously worked on TNG and Voyager. However, the biggest news would wait until May 11, 2001. The title of Series V was revealed to be Enterprise, with Scott Bakula, of Quantum Leap fame, playing Captain Jonathan Archer.[6] Four days later, the other main cast were announced,[7] though the character names would not be announced until the next day.[8]
— Rick Berman[9] On May 14, 2001, shooting began for the pilot episode, Broken Bow, on stages 8, 9, and 18 at Paramount Studios. Three days later, Tom Nunan, entertainment producer at UPN, held a press conference formally announcing Enterprise to the world at large. [10] Featuring a video on the history of the Star Trek franchise, Nunan held up previous installments of the franchise as proof-of-concept that Enterprise would succeed. On September 26, 2001, the premiere episode of Enterprise, "Broken Bow", aired on UPN with an estimated 12.54 million viewers. 
Mars Sojourner, seen in the opening to Star Trek: Enterprise Several episodes of Enterprise have been directed by Star Trek alumni: Star Trek: The Next Generation star LeVar Burton directed nine episodes, TNG and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine star Michael Dorn directed one episode, and Voyager stars Roxann Dawson and Robert Duncan McNeill have directed ten and four episodes, respectively. Cast
PlotSeasons 1 and 2The first two seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise depict the exploration of interstellar space by the crew of an Earth ship able to go farther and faster than any humans had previously gone, due to the breaking of the Warp 5 barrier, analogous to the Bell X-1 breaking the sound barrier. The crew faces situations that are familiar to Star Trek fans, but are unencumbered and unjaded by the experience and rules which have built up over hundreds of years of Trek history established in previous Star Trek series. Star Trek: Enterprise takes pains to show the origins of some concepts which have become taken for granted in Star Trek canon, such as Lt. Reed's development of force fields and Captain Archer's questions about cultural interference eventually being answered by later series' Prime Directive. A recurring plot device is the Temporal Cold War, in which a mysterious entity from the 27th century uses the Cabal, a group of genetically upgraded Suliban, to manipulate the timeline and change past events. Sometimes sabotaging Enterprise's mission and sometimes saving the ship from destruction, the entity's motives are unknown. Agent Daniels, a temporal agent from the 31st century, visits Captain Archer occasionally to assist him in fighting the Suliban and undoing damage to the timeline. In the past eighty years since Star Trek: First Contact, the Vulcans have been mentoring humanity to what they see as an appropriate level of civilization, routinely holding back scientific knowledge in an effort to keep humans stranded close to home, believing them to be too irrational and emotionally-dominated to function properly in an interstellar community. When Enterprise finally sets out, the Vulcans are often conspicuously close by. This generates some conflict as, in several early episodes, Archer and others complain bitterly of the Vulcans' unsubtle methods of checking up on them. Season 3Low ratings encouraged the series' producers to seek a new direction. In analyzing past Trek movie successes, a storyline where the Earth was put in jeopardy was devised, as such a story had proven popular before, as in Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The third season also sees the change of the series' name to Star Trek: Enterprise as well as an updated main title theme. Season three introduces the Xindi, an enemy bent on annihilating humanity via a planet-destroying super weapon similar to Star Wars' Death Star. The third season follows a single story arc, beginning in the second season finale "The Expanse", in which a mysterious probe cuts a wide, deep trench from central Florida to Venezuela, killing seven million people. Enterprise is recalled and retrofitted as a warship, with more powerful weapons and a group of elite Military Assault Command Operations (MACOs), the precursor to the heavily armed Starfleet security personnel of later Star Trek series. Enterprise travels through an area known as the Delphic Expanse to find the Xindi homeworld and prevent another attack against Earth. Season 4Season 4 produced a mixture of two- and three-episode arcs, with few standalone episodes. After closing out the Temporal Cold War and Xindi arcs in the first three episodes, the general theme of the season was a refocus on the prequel concept of the series, with many episodes referencing themes, concepts, and characters from past series. The fourth season saw Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation) as the imprisoned scientist Dr. Arik Soong, an ancestor of Data's creator, in a three-episode arc at the end of which Soong abandons the concept of improving mankind in favour of creating artificial intelligence: a reference to what will eventually become Data. The Soong episodes later gave rise to a story arc where the Klingon were attempting to improve their species through the continuation of Soong's work. This allowed for an explanation of why the TOS Klingons lacked brow ridges and were much more human looking than any of the other series. Season 4 also addressed some discrepancies between the Vulcans of The Original Series and those depicted in Star Trek: Enterprise. In the Vulcan Civil War arc, Romulan subversion of the Vulcan High Command leads to a splinter group of Vulcans opposed to the High Command's actions, believing those actions to be against the teachings of Surak, the mythic leader who brought logic to Vulcan. After this storyline, Vulcans began a cultural transformation that was presumably a turn toward the more dispassionate, honest Vulcans of Trek series set further in the future. In the final story arc of the season, a human terrorist group called Terra Prime, bent on removing all non-humans from human planets, genetically engineers a child from DNA samples of Commander Tucker and Subcommander T'pol. They use the baby as a means to rile up humans who have become afraid of aliens since the Xindi conflict, and launch a campaign from Mars to drive the alien outsiders from human space. This storyline has been said by producers to represent how humanity must overcome its own bigotry and hatred in order to become the human race seen in later Treks. The series cancellation was announced prior to the writing of the final episode of the fourth season, allowing the writers to craft a series finale. This final episode, titled "These Are the Voyages ...", aired May 13, 2005, in the United States, and was one of the most heavily criticized episodes of the Star Trek franchise. much of the criticism focusing on the premise, which essentially reduced the finale to a holodeck adventure from an earlier Star Trek series. The episode featured guest appearances by Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis as their Star Trek: The Next Generation characters William Riker and Deanna Troi. The show took place during the TNG episode "The Pegasus".[13] Brent Spiner lent his voice to the finale, and is briefly heard as Data. Cancellation
By the third season, ratings were continually declining, and the threat of cancellation loomed over Star Trek: Enterprise. This, along with the poor box office performance in 2002 of the film Star Trek Nemesis, cast an uncertain light upon the future of the Star Trek franchise in general. 2004On May 20, 2004, it was announced that Enterprise had been renewed for a fourth season, but that the show would move from Wednesday to Friday nights.[14] This move echoed the rescheduling of the original Star Trek to a Friday night time slot for its third season prior to its ultimate cancellation, as Friday nights have traditionally been considered "Death Row" for a major TV production. Hired as a writer during the third season, Manny Coto was promoted to co-executive producer, becoming the series showrunner for the fourth season. Coto decided to retain the "arc" concept of season 3, but reduce it from one season-long arc to several "mini-arcs" of two or three episodes, with few standalones. The producers attempted to attract viewers by terminating a long-running story arc (the Temporal Cold War) and scheduling numerous episodes that served as prequels to storylines from TOS and TNG. Beginning in the summer of 2004, and continuing throughout the fourth season, there were reports that William Shatner would reprise the role of James T. Kirk or perhaps an ancestor in the series,[15] however an agreement could not be reached.[16] The fourth season got off to a slow start in the ratings on October 8, 2004, due to the Friday time-slot, preemptions by local sports in some markets, and by coverage of the second presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry in others. As well, Enterprise fans continued to indicate they chose to watch the weekend showing rather than the Friday broadcast, or chose to "time-shift" the program using their VCR or TiVo equipment. In October 2004, it was announced that Enterprise was the 25th most popular Season Pass on the TiVo television recording system in the United States.[17] 2005Speculation as to the future of the series came to an end on February 2, 2005, when UPN announced the series had been cancelled and its final episode would air on Friday, May 13, 2005.[18] Fan groups such as "Save Enterprise" joined forces[19] and announced a drive to raise money to finance a further season of Enterprise. Approximately $30 million was the goal of the campaign, based upon estimates of the cost for a full season cited by John Billingsley and others.[19] In addition, Washington, D.C., lobbyist Dan Jensen, circulated a letter on Capitol Hill in an effort to appeal to the sentiments of legislators. As a result, then Florida Congressman Mark Foley (R) agreed to sign the letter. The Washington "lobbying" effort garnered considerable press, and had a feature article on the front page of Roll Call, the most widely circulated political newspaper in the United States. Production of the fourth season concluded on March 8, 2005, and by the end of the month, Startrek.com was reporting the Enterprise sets had been taken down, marking the first time that Stage 9 at Paramount Studios has been without Star Trek sets since the late 1970s. The website did not indicate whether the sets have been preserved in storage (the industry term being 'fold-and-hold') or if they have been destroyed.[20] As of April 13, 2005, Paramount and UPN remained adamant that the cancellation of the series was final and that the studio was not interested in continuing the current incarnation of Star Trek.[21] TrekUnited officials, however, still claimed to be in talks with Paramount over the future of the series.[22] The website IGN Filmforce, reporting on rumors Paramount had actually decided to cancel Enterprise after its fourth season as early as midway through the second year, quoted an unidentified "executive involved with Enterprise" as saying this scenario was "very likely".[23] Media InformationSoundtrackTheme songThe series' theme song, written by Diane Warren and sung by Russell Watson, was a marked contrast to the sweeping instrumental themes used in all other Star Trek series. It was also the first such theme not to have been composed specially for Star Trek, having previously appeared (performed by Rod Stewart) in the film Patch Adams (1998). Like other aspects of the series, the theme song polarized fans. Online petitions were signed demanding its removal from the titles.[24] A new, more upbeat arrangement of the theme song was introduced for the third season, but this did not assuage the song's critics, and elicited criticism from some who liked the original version.[25] The theme song, as well as the opening credits, were altered for two back-to-back episodes in season 4 entitled "In a Mirror, Darkly", which take place in an alternate mirror universe. Throughout the show's run, there was extensive Internet speculation as to whether the theme song and opening credits (which were questioned by some for depicting only American flight and spaceflight advances while omitting historically important incarnations, such as Soviet milestones Sputnik and Gagarin[26]) would be changed.[27] This speculation was fueled in October 2004 when the official website startrek.com posted[28] an opening credits sequence in that Scott Bakula recites a modified version of the famous "Space, the final frontier..." speech (with the phrase "where no human has gone before" in place of "where no man" or "where no one"), accompanied by "Archer's Theme", the instrumental used as the closing credits music for the series. Original novels and relaunchLike the Trek series that preceded it, a series of original novels based on Enterprise was launched by Pocket Books soon after the program debuted. During the run of the series, however, only five books were published (not counting episode novelizations), a low number compared to the other series. No Enterprise-specific novels appeared at all in 2005 and the first post-cancellation novel, Rosetta by Dave Stern, did not appear until February 2006. As explained by Pocket Books editor Margaret Clark, it was decided to scale back the number of books published not due to low sales or lack of interest in the prequel series, but due to the fact that the televised series often conflicted with planned literary plotlines, or beat the book series to the punch entirely. The novel Surak's Soul by J.M. Dillard, includes as a major plot point the aftermath of T'Pol killing a person during a mission. Before it was published, however, the TV series aired "The Seventh", an episode with a similar core plot point, which forced last-minute revisions to Dillard's book. Later, the novel Daedalus, by Dave Stern, included flashbacks to the early days of the NX Program which needed to be revised to avoid conflicting with the already-broadcast episode "First Flight", which also featured a look at the early days of the NX Program. Apparently, things weren't expected to change during the fourth season; in a May 2005 posting at the TrekBBS, Clark explained that the lack of Enterprise novels was intended to avoid any further potential storytelling "land mines" since "Season Four kept doing stuff we wanted/planned to do".[29] With the series concluded, novelists are free to compose continuation novels without fear of being preempted or contradicted by the show, save for any restrictions put in place by the finale episode. In May 2005, Clark announced plans for a new series of Enterprise novels that will constitute a "relaunch" similar to that of the literary continuation of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Clark indicated that the books will cover events in the six years between "Terra Prime" and "These Are the Voyages...".[29] An original novel, Last Full Measure, was released in April 2006. It takes place during the third season Xindi Arc and therefore isn't considered part of the relaunch (Rosetta takes place during the fourth season and likewise is not considered a relaunch volume, either). However, Last Full Measure does contain a "framing sequence" that serves as a preview for the Relaunch. This framing sequence, which has proven controversial, suggests Trip Tucker did not die in the events of "These Are the Voyages..." and is alive in the early 23rd century, though the reason for this is not explained. According to Clark, again posting on the TrekBBS, dissatisfaction over the finale episode is the driving factor behind the continuation novels/relaunch including a story arc that suggests that Trip's death in the finale was not as it seemed. The first official relaunch novel, The Good That Men Do by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin was published by Pocket Books on February 28, 2007, and gives a different perspective on the events shown in the final episode. This book also provides a lead-in to a series of books that will document the Earth-Romulan War that has been referenced in the other Star Trek materials, but was never developed during the television production of Enterprise. This relaunch novels based on Trip not actually dying in the final episode are based on an enigmatic moment in the final episode where when Trip is supposedly near death and is being loaded into a medical chamber he looks up at Archer, smiles and winks. Archer smiles back and also winks. The novels take this to mean the death of Trip was actually an elaborate ruse and not his actual death. DVD releasesIn October 2004, coinciding with the start of the show's fourth season and months before the cancellation announcement, Paramount revealed plans to release the four seasons of Enterprise to DVD in North America during 2005. It has yet to be revealed whether this had any bearing on the decision to cancel the program since Voyager was offered to syndication midway through its run with no impact on its network status, and TNG, DS9, and Voyager all saw episodes released to home video during their runs, long before those series ended. It had also become commonplace for current series to have past seasons released to DVD. The first season DVD was released on May 3, 2005, ten days prior to the broadcast of the final episode. This release marked a couple of firsts for Star Trek TV series DVD releases. It was the first to include extensive deleted scenes (although footage cut from the premiere of Voyager had been included in a featurette previously), and it was the first to include an outtakes or blooper reel. The remaining seasons were released on July 26, September 27, and November 1.
Reception
A graph of Star Trek: Enterprise's Nielsen ratings for the series' duration
RebroadcastsUPN continued to air reruns of Enterprise for only a month after the series finale, with the last network-broadcast episode, "In a Mirror, Darkly Part II", airing on June 11, 2005 this despite initial announcements that reruns would continue throughout the summer. With disruptions from local sports programming, many areas never had the opportunity to see all the episodes, which had been aired elsewhere. Syndicated rebroadcasts of the series began in North American markets on September 17, 2005.[34] Broadcasts in high definition began on HDNet in late 2006. NBC Universal's SciFi ran the series from January 8, 2007,[35] until July, 2008 in four-episode blocks every Monday night. Since Sci Fi does not own HD airing rights to the series, it was shown in a 4:3 letterbox 16:9 format on both the SD & HD feeds. It is aired on Star World on weekdays at 4:30 p.m. in India. In October 2007, Virgin 1 in the UK announced, it was "The new home of Star Trek"[36] and that this would include the channel showing a re-run episode of Enterprise at 9 p.m. every Monday. ReferencesExternal links
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