The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years

by Mark A. Altman

BRANNON BRAGA The series finale was an hour that’s very controversial and I’ll take the blame for this with Rick since we wrote it together, but we wanted to end an eighteen-year run that was a huge part of our lives and the audience’s with a valentine to this era of Trek. Manny had just done a stellar three-part episode, which I considered to be Enterprise’s finale in its own right. We wanted the final episode to be a very high-concept idea where we’re on Picard’s Enterprise and Riker’s in the holodeck to look at one of his heroes, Captain Archer. What an interesting way to look back at Enterprise, through the eyes of a different Star Trek character. I thought it was great, but the episode was flat and I don’t think it really worked. And killing Trip felt flat and just pissed people off. It certainly pissed the cast off. They hated the script.

JEFFREY COMBS That episode was a bit of a mess. I think the message that was being sent there by Rick Berman, frankly, was: “OK, we may have been canceled, but I want to put in front of you that I also had a successful Next Generation.” I thought then and I still do that it was insulting to the series regulars of Enterprise that they weren’t even given the dignity and the time therefore to wrap up their own damn show. And you know, even Jonathan Frakes felt the same way. “Why am I here? What is this? It’s a job, I’ll take the paycheck and I’ll do this, because if I don’t, somebody else will.”

JONATHAN FRAKES (actor, “William T. Riker”) Rick called me and said, “We’d like you to do the last episode of the show as a valentine for the fans.” I thought, “Okay, it’s Rick and it’s Star Trek and I always say yes,” but it was at least my feeling that it was an uncomfortable situation to be brought into a show that, first of all, has been prematurely canceled. And to essentially be part of their finale when it was really Scott’s show. And he was such a gentleman. He was notably generous and civil and thoughtful, and I thought inside he’s got to be thinking, “What the fuck are you guys doing? My show’s already been canceled and you guys are coming here to try to close it out?” I would have been so insulted. I didn’t think that was our finest hour.

BRANNON BRAGA Scott Bakula was the nicest guy, and we had a great relationship, and it was the only time where he called me about the script and said he had big problems with it. He was pissed that we were doing an episode that really wasn’t an Enterprise episode, but was a Next Gen episode. Everyone, including the fans of the show, felt the same way.

MANNY COTO My feeling was that “Demons” and “Terra Prime” were the final Enterprise, that’s how I always pictured it. It was evident that this was the end of the long run, the eighteen-year run, so Rick and Brannon wanted to do an episode that would pay homage not just to Enterprise but to all the years, and I had no problem with it whatsoever. I liked the idea at first, but it wasn’t as great as it could have been.

BRANNON BRAGA It was truly a mix of feelings, because on the one hand I was greatly relieved, I was moving on to other things, and it was such a scalding experience toward the end with an estranged network and an apathetic fan base. At the same time, it was a show that we thought was finally really good, so it was upsetting that it was over. I really think we could have continued for another two or three years with Manny at the helm. We were already cutting corners, the shows had shifted to high-definition video the fourth season and I thought it looked like shit, but even with cutting corners, the show could have continued creatively. Star Trek is a long-term investment, but at the end of the day, I think I was very ready to do other things. In fact, I’d already had another project sitting in front of me that I had to tackle, which was another science-fiction show for CBS, Threshold. It was doomed to failure, but I’d been doing Star Trek for fifteen years. I was ready to do something else, but looking back it was bittersweet—more bitter than sweet, because it should not have been canceled.