Rick Berman is interviewed by Ian Spelling in the latest edition of Star Trek Magazine. Berman discusses the genesis of Enterprise and some of the problems which beset the show’s four year voyage on UPN.

“I was a strong proponent of giving Voyager at least a year on its own and the studio reluctantly agreed, but they said that as soon as Voyager was going to end its run they absolutely wanted something to take its place. They didn’t want a hiatus where there was nothing on the air, which I thought would be a healthier thing to do. They did not.”

Berman goes on to explain his and Brannon Braga’s thinking behind going for a prequel concept.

“Our feeling was, rightly or wrongly, that we’d done three series in the 24th Century – two series on spaceships and one series on a space station – and so the idea of doing another show with another ship with another name, with another crew, set at the same time as Voyager and the Next Generation movies, just was too much. We liked the idea of going back. There was a time that took us from the primitive, post-apocalyptic era that we visited in First Contact to a world that had Kirk and Spock, the Federation, Starfleet and ships that were capable of going at incredible warp speeds. How did we get from one to the other? So we chose to show the very first baby steps that humanity made out into the galaxy, as the first ship with warp 5 capability made it out into the populated quadrant.”

Looking back one year on from the cancellation, Berman weighs up what worked and what didn’t with the series.

“There was a lot of fan feedback that was not positive to us. There was a feeling that Enterprise was going to be a show that was a precursor to the Original Series, and although I’ve read a lot of depictions of both Brannon and myself ‘hating’ the Original Series, that could not be farther from the truth. I can openly admit that I did not see all 79 episodes but it was something we respected and did our best to lead up to. I think that was unsettling for the fans.”

“Brannon and I wanted to do a more contemporary series, by taking characters who were closer to our time, who were more like us in terms of being inexperienced about going out into space. They weren’t from the distant future as much and were something a little different from the Roddenberry humans of the 23rd Century or even the 24th Century who were pretty flawless. From that point of view these were choices at the time that seemed pretty reasonable and I would probably do it all again. But this approach had its pitfalls, and maybe at times it became a bit too casual, and a bit too contemporary, and lost some of its science fiction flavour and more importantly, the flavour that would make it a precursor to the Original Series.”

With ratings continuing to slip during the first and second seasons, Rick and Brannon mapped out a season-long arc with 9/11 parallels. This introduced the Xindi, in what was essentially an Earth in jeopardy continuing story which ran for nearly 24 hours in total. By this stage however, it was made clear to the production team that Enterprise was living on borrowed time. “The Studio had been taken over by the CBS people, who were in a sense making it clear that we were lucky to have a fourth season at all”, Berman reveals.

“By the fourth year, we had created a tougher, more experienced, more hard-boiled crew as a result of the Xindi Crisis and we brought in Manny Coto. Manny had a tremendous amount of excitement about the potential links between Enterprise and The Original Series, and he wanted to build those bridges, or at least create steps that would foreshadow some of events that would happen in that future. I think to the hardcore fansit was a terrific direction to go. On the other hand, the rating continued to slip a bit and the poor reaction to our final movie, Nemesis certainly didn’t help. Looking back, the lack of support and lack of interest people seemed to have in UPN didn’t help us, either. We were not getting any promotion and were on a network that, in a sense, was completely contradictory to the nature of the show. UPN had become a network with the wrong demographic, that of young women and girls.”

Ending on a positive note, Rick Berman thinks Enterprise will hold up in the future on DVD and syndication.

“It’s on HDNet and looks gorgeous in Hi-Def and thanks to a recent deal, it will soon air in syndication on The SCI FI Channel.”

STAR TREK Magazine #130 ( #3 US Edition ) just out in the UK heavily features Enterprise including interviews with Connor Trinneer, Eric Pierpoint, a rundown of the 10 best episodes plus a look at the Andorians. Other series features include are a look at Star Trek Remastered with Dave Rossi, interviews with Brent Spiner and Robert H. Justman, a preview of Of Gods and Men and the regular Year-by-Year feature continues by looking at Star Trek events between 1976-79.

[A big thanks to Chris from Trek United for this posting]