Star Trek: Enterprise premiered on UPN on September 26, 2001, and ran four seasons and 97 episodes before ending on May 13, 2005. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga created it as a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, set in the 22nd century aboard Earth’s first starship capable of traveling at warp five. It is a show with real strengths and real problems, and the parts that work are the parts nobody expected to.
A Warp Five Engine Built by Henry Archer
The premise is the show’s sharpest idea. Jonathan Archer, played by Scott Bakula, commands Enterprise, and his father, Henry, designed its engine. That gives Archer a personal stake in the ship that no other captain in the franchise carried.
Berman described the character as a cross between Chuck Yeager and Han Solo. Braga called him more “laidback and relatable.” Bakula plays Archer as a man genuinely excited to be in space and genuinely unsure whether he belongs there. The character starts the series openly prejudiced against the Vulcans, and that prejudice softens over time. It is one of the few long arcs the show commits to and actually finishes.
Casting Archer took longer than any other role, slowed by extended contract negotiations that pushed back production. The executive producers had sought Bakula for the part. He wanted to feel he was “making a good deal and that everyone was going to work together to make this a good experience.” He had already signed for a CBS pilot called Late Bloomers before agreeing to Enterprise.
T’Pol, Trip Tucker and the Core Trio
Berman and Braga wanted a more basic, relatable, character-driven series, and they built it around three people: Archer, Commander Trip Tucker, and Sub-commander T’Pol.
T’Pol, played by Jolene Blalock, is the science officer, originally attached to the ship by the Vulcan High Command to keep the humans out of trouble. She becomes loyal to Archer, leaves her position in the High Command to help him find the Xindi, and later joins Starfleet. In later seasons she forms a romantic relationship with Tucker.
Connor Trinneer’s Trip Tucker is the chief engineer and Archer’s longtime friend. He starts as a relatively modest personality and becomes more seasoned and outspoken as the series runs. The character changes across the run, and the change is written into the part.
The romantic relationship between T’Pol and Tucker in the later seasons is the show’s most divisive choice. A Vulcan and a human, both bad at saying what they mean, is a workable engine for drama.
Malcolm Reed, Hoshi Sato and the Bridge Crew
The supporting cast does more than fill chairs. Dominic Keating’s Malcolm Reed is the tactical officer and head of ship security. Reed comes from a long line of Royal Navy men and joined Starfleet because of his fear of drowning. He is extremely taciturn. His own family, when asked, could not name his favorite food. It is pineapple.
Braga said the producers knew Keating and John Billingsley were right for their roles “right off the bat.” Keating had auditioned for a role on Voyager two years earlier, but Berman wanted to keep him for a future main role. When he auditioned for Reed, Berman said the actor “nailed it.”
There were discussions about the accent. Keating suggested one from the north of England, which the producers mistook for Scottish. They went with his natural voice.
Linda Park’s Hoshi Sato is the communications officer and a linguistic genius, capable of learning alien languages extremely quickly. She serves as interpreter between the crew and new species even after the universal translator is online. She starts the series anxious about her place on board. Park was not required to audition. She was hired on the basis of a scene she appeared in on The WB series Popular alongside Anthony Montgomery, even though the character was intended to be older until Park was cast.
Montgomery plays Travis Mayweather, the helmsman. He had previously auditioned to play Tuvok’s son on Voyager, and after being chosen for Mayweather he turned down a role in a low-budget movie. Billingsley’s Doctor Phlox rounds out the crew. Keating called him “perfect” in the role.
Faith of the Heart and the Break From Convention
Enterprise broke with Star Trek convention in ways that still get argued about. It dropped the Star Trek prefix entirely for its first two seasons, going by Enterprise alone. It used a pop-influenced song, “Faith of the Heart,” performed by Russell Watson, as its theme.
It was filmed on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, California, on the same stages as the previous series. Enterprise was built inside the machinery of a franchise that had already produced three shows.
The show’s biggest problem is not the theme song or the prequel setting. It is that the first two seasons spend too much time on standalone episodes. A prequel about the early years of Starfleet, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War and the formation of the Federation, has a built-in spine. The early seasons rarely use it.
The Xindi Arc and the Later Seasons
The third season gives the series a season-long spine with the Xindi arc, and it forces the characters to make choices a 24th-century crew would never have to make. The fourth season runs multi-episode arcs that dig into Vulcan politics and the founding of the Federation.
The show ended after four seasons and 97 episodes, on May 13, 2005. The finale is a point of contention among viewers, and it sits awkwardly against the season that preceded it.
What Enterprise Got Right
Star Trek had become a machine for producing competent, interchangeable episodes. Enterprise tried to be a show about people who were not yet good at their jobs. Archer is not a great captain. He is a captain who is learning. T’Pol is not the fully formed Vulcan officer the High Command sent. She is a Vulcan slowly, reluctantly, becoming invested in a species she was sent to babysit. Trip is not the finished engineer. He is a man who gets better and harder as the series runs.
That is a real idea, and when the show commits to it, the results hold up. Bakula, Blalock and Trinneer carry the core trio, and the writing gives them somewhere to go.
The show’s weaknesses are equally clear. The first two seasons drift. The standalone episodes are forgettable. The theme song is a strange fit for the franchise. And the finale sits badly against four years of work.
The Score
Star Trek: Enterprise is a 7.5 out of 10. That is a score for what is on the screen: a series with a strong central idea and an uneven record of using it. The prequel setting gave the writers room to explore parts of the Star Trek universe the other shows had skipped. The cast was capable of more than the early scripts asked of them. The execution was inconsistent across four seasons.
If you are coming to Enterprise for the first time, start with season three and go back. The first two seasons have their moments and their long stretches. Either way, the show is worth a look.
Hard Numbers
- Score: 7.5/10 (TMDB audience score, 986 votes)
- Created by: Rick Berman and Brannon Braga
- Network: UPN
- First aired: September 26, 2001
- Last aired: May 13, 2005
- Seasons: 4
- Episodes: 97
- Setting: 22nd century, a hundred years before The Original Series
- Ship: Enterprise, Earth’s first warp five starship
- Theme: “Faith of the Heart,” performed by Russell Watson
The Core Trio, Ranked
- Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) — The captain whose father built the engine.
- T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) — The Vulcan observer who becomes loyal to Archer and joins Starfleet.
- Charles “Trip” Tucker III (Connor Trinneer) — The chief engineer and Archer’s longtime friend, who hardens as the series runs.
The supporting cast — Malcolm Reed, Hoshi Sato, Travis Mayweather and Doctor Phlox — fills out the ship. Enterprise rarely gave all of them enough to do. It is still worth watching.
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