Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise, originally titled simply Enterprise for its first two seasons, is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. It originally aired from September 26, 2001 to May 13, 2005 on UPN. The sixth series in the Star Trek franchise, it is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series. Set in the 22nd century, a hundred years before the events of The Original Series, it follows the adventures of the Enterprise, Earth's first starship capable of traveling at warp five, as it explores the galaxy and encounters various alien species.
Following the culmination of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and with Star Trek: Voyager scheduled to end, Paramount asked Braga and Berman to create a new series to continue the franchise. Rather than setting it in the 24th century alongside Deep Space Nine and Voyager, they decided to set it in an earlier period, allowing them to explore new parts of the Star Trek fictional universe. Wanting a more basic, relatable, character-driven series, Berman and Braga concentrated on a core trio: Captain Jonathan Archer, Commander Trip Tucker, and Sub-commander T'Pol.
The show broke with Star Trek convention in several ways. In addition to dropping the Star Trek prefix, Enterprise used the pop-influenced song "Faith of the Heart" as its theme. It was filmed on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, California, on the same stages that housed the Star Trek series and films since the abandoned Star Trek: Phase II in the late 1970s.
The first two seasons were characterized by stand-alone episodes that explored topics like humanity's early relations with the Vulcans, and first encounters with the Klingons and Andorians, aliens already familiar to franchise viewers. Seeking to attract a wider audience, UPN called for changes for Enterprise
Series overview
General
Star Trek: Enterprise follows the adventures of the crew of the first starship Enterprise, designation NX-01. They are the first deep space explorers in Starfleet, using the first warp five capable vessel. The Vulcans have withheld advanced technology from humanity since their first contact, concerned that humans were not ready for it. This has delayed human space exploration and caused resentment in Starfleet test pilot Jonathan Archer, whose father developed the Warp 5 engine but did not live to see it used.The Enterprise was equipped with less-advanced technologies than those seen in previous series. It had no tractor beam, but used grappler cables; and used missiles instead of particle weapons ; in Season 1, phase cannons were added, similar to those on the Enterprise in The Original Series. It had only limited means of synthesizing foods and other consumable items. Communications Officer Linguist Hoshi Sato's expertise in linguistics helps compensate for the lack of the advanced universal translator.
The series also showed the crew making first contacts with a number of races previously seen in the franchise. The Klingons, who appear in the pilot "Broken Bow," have the ridged makeup seen in the movie franchise and from Star Trek: The Next Generation onwards, rather than the smooth-headed versions seen in Star Trek: The Original Series. Berman and Braga attributed this change to advancements in makeup, and felt that such contradictions in continuity were unavoidable. The change in the Klingons' appearance was eventually justified by attributing it to a plague caused by genetic experimentation in the two part arc of "Affliction" and "Divergence." Electronics in Enterprise were also more compact than those of previous series, as advances in real-world technology made devices seen in The Original Series and Voyager seem anachronistically oversized.
The series's first season emphasized a core trio of characters: Jonathan Archer, T'Pol, and Trip Tucker. Other main characters had primary roles in particular episodes, such as "Dear Doctor" and "Fight or Flight." The second season saw deepening relationships between characters—for example, the friendship between Tucker and Reed, seen in episodes such as "Two Days and Two Nights"; and the relationship between Tucker and T'Pol, which begins contentiously but leads to romance in later seasons.
Temporal Cold War
The addition of a futuristic Temporal Cold War element was seen as a "nod to mystery" by Rick Berman, who sought to add an element of The X-Files to the series. Berman decided that the full story of the war would be revealed over the course of several years. At the start of the second season, Braga said that the Temporal Cold War storyline would continue to be included if viewers were still interested, but later described it as "strangulating." Initially featured in the pilot episode, "Broken Bow," it featured the Cabal, an organization composed of members of the alien race known as the Suliban, being manipulated by an unknown humanoid figure from the future, nicknamed "Future Guy" by viewers—a moniker later adopted by the series's writers. At the start of the series, Braga said that they did not have a plan for who the character would turn out to be. Ten years after the end of the series, Braga stated that Future Guy was Archer manipulating his own timeline; he and Berman had previously stated that the character was intended to be a Romulan.Crewman Daniels, introduced in the episode "Cold Front," was revealed as an operative from 900 years in the future who was fighting against the forces which included the Suliban. Archer found that he was being manipulated by those forces, as Enterprise was blamed for the destruction of a mining colony in "Shockwave."
In the third season, an escalation of the Temporal Cold War introduced the Xindi and dealt with the repercussions of their attack on Earth. Daniels explained Archer's importance in history during a trip to the future in "Azati Prime" to witness the final battle against the Sphere Builders—aliens who were also manipulating the Xindi into attacking Earth during Archer's time period. In the closing phase of the Temporal Cold War, Daniels sent the Enterprise back to the 1940s, following a temporal incursion by aliens who had altered the outcome of World War II, permitting Nazi Germany to invade the United States. Once Vosk, the leader of the aliens, was killed, the timeline corrected itself. Vosk's actions had turned the Cold War into an actual war raging through time, but the Enterprise killed Vosk before he could initiate the wars and all of the damage done throughout history was undone. Afterwards, Daniels believed that the Temporal Cold War was finally coming to an end as a result.
In Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, it is mentioned that after the Temporal Wars all time travel was outlawed and all existing time travel devices were destroyed. The Guardian of Forever states in "Terra Firma" that the various factions used him to alter his own history and to kill people, so he moved to another planet and went into hiding.
The Xindi
Braga and Berman created the season-long Xindi story arc, which began with the second-season finale, "The Expanse," and ran throughout the third season until it was resolved in the episode "Zero Hour." It opens with an attack on Earth by a mysterious space probe that kills seven million people in a destructive swath stretching through Florida to Venezuela. As a result, the Enterprise is redirected to unexplored regions of space to find the Xindi and stop a further attack that will destroy Earth. Although certain elements were preplanned, including the success of the mission against the Xindi, others, such as the details of the actual enemy race, were not. At the time of the initial development, Berman and Braga were uncertain if the storyline would last for a whole season or for just half a season.The Xindi themselves were developed from on-set discussions with the writers and the actors who portrayed them. Six species that make up the Xindi were created in this manner. One was originally called "humanoid Xindi," but after further discussions they were renamed "primate Xindi." The first part of the third season saw the crew searching the Delphic Expanse, attempting to find clues that would lead them to the Xindi. In order to complete this mission, they took on additional crew members in the form of Military Assault Command Operations soldiers, due to the increased military nature of the task.
Founding of the Federation
The birth of the Federation was first hinted at during part two of "Shockwave," which opened the second season. When Manny Coto was made showrunner for the fourth season, he decided that the focus of the series should be to link to that event. With this in mind, his intention was for this season to move towards that goal. Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens were hired as writers on Enterprise because they wrote the non-canon novel Federation and after it was suggested by producer Mike Sussman. The episodes for the fourth season were intended to lay the framework for the later creation of the Federation. This was something that the cast said that they would have liked to see more of, with Scott Bakula later saying "I would have loved to have been able to explore that journey to the Federation and their creation of it ... to a greater extent. And I think that would have been, um, just more fun for the audience ... just better, longer storytelling."In "United," the founding races of the Federation - the humans, the Vulcans, the Andorians and the Tellarites - worked together for the first time to defeat a Romulan plot. In "Demons," the xenophobic Terra Prime movement is introduced, which Coto felt was the final element of human nature that must be defeated before the Federation could be formed. The foundation of the Federation was shown on screen in the final episode of the series, "These Are the Voyages...," which was set several years after the rest of the season.