Star Trek: Enterprise star Connor Trinneer can be seen in the recently released online series Stargate: Origins. The actor appears in the latest episode of the Alpha Quadrant podcast to talk to Aron Eisenberg and Garrett Wang about his return to the Stargate franchise and also discuss his time as Charles “Trip” Tucker III on Enterprise.
Connor Trinneer in Stargate Origins
Auditioning for ‘Enterprise’ was “Brutal”
Trinneer described a lengthy audition process to land the job of Trip on Enterprise, describing a number of callbacks and delays in getting word from Paramount. He described it as the worst audition process he had ever been through, and he later learned his was the worst among the cast:
I had never been through the ringer like it was for [Enterprise]. And the scope of audition process was really varied for our show. Apparently, they just tapped Dominic [Keating], knowing they wanted to play that guy. I think Jolene [Blalock] walked in and they went “Yeah, you. You’re in.” And [John] Billingsley was easy and I don’t remember Anthony’s [Montgomery] situation, but when I told my story, they were like “Holy cow!” Brutal. Brutal.
Garrett Wang described his audition process as equally challenging. It took eight weeks with six auditions total. After it was narrowed down to him and one other actor, and the other actor was sent home, they kept him on hold while they started looking for older actors. They then whittled it down to Wang and one of those finalists, and finally, he got the part.
Connor Trinneer with the Enterprise cast
Creating Trip as a NASCAR guy from Oklahoma
The actor said that a key to making his character relatable can be attributed to his lack of Star Trek awareness:
That’s a testament to me not really knowing much about Star Trek and not being intimidated. I had not seen anything but The Original Series. I had never watched The Next Generation. I had nothing to go on and then I realized I was on to something. It becomes clear when you are – like the writers will say something – especially when you are doing your first few episodes. Then I was like “I am not going to watch it. Because I didn’t really didn’t know what kind of animal I was a part of until much later and by that point Trip was already Trip.”
Trinneer revealed he developed the voice for Trip based on a character from Oklahoma from a play he had done, adding he was surprised when the writers later established the character was from Florida. The actor also talked about how he thought of Trip in terms he could understand:
What my idea was, is that he was a wonderkind NASCAR engine guy mechanic who happened to be in this other place. So I modeled after that, which I can relate.
When asked if he saw a bit of DeForest Kelley’s Leonard McCoy in his role, the actor agreed, but said it wasn’t something he was prepared for when he got the role.
The whole Kirk, Spock, and McCoy thing was the triumvirate and not dissimilar to the Captain, T’Pol, and Trip. Which was also something I had no idea about when I got the job. I was like “Dude, I’m playing the engineer. I’m gonna work like twice a week and learn how to surf.” I opened that pilot script and was like “Oh, you got to put your hat on.”
Connor Trinneer in Enterprise publicity photo
Diagnosing cancellation and talking series finale
When discussing why Star Trek: Enterprise was canceled after four seasons, Trinneer pointed to scheduling issues with the network (UPN) as well as losing a major corporate backer for the show early on:
The problem was that for the nights that we were on, usually your Major League Baseball team was also on UPN locally. So, we would get preempted by whatever local sports were happening. There were also entire regions – it didn’t even play in St. Louis, Scott [Bakula’s] home town. So, you had these pockets of where it wasn’t even on.
And then [Paramount Television Chairman] Kerry McCluggage got fired, our real fan, really quick [December, 2001]. And then the new regime came in and it was probably as early as the second season when we were like “Huh?” I don’t think we got any lesser ratings than anyone else, but Next Generation. I think we all kind of sat in that same area.
Trinneer noted that during the run of the show he refused to “live in the worry box” over cancellation and it only really hit him when they got notice of the cancellation late in the production of the fourth season, but his bigger concern at the time was for the crew, many of whom had been working on Star Trek since the late 80s on The Next Generation.
As for the controversial series finale (“These Are the Voyages”) including guest appearances from TNG actors Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, Trinneer didn’t actually have any issues, adding:
“That didn’t bother me at all. We were done.”
Connor Trinneer with Jonathan Frakes in the Enterprise series finale
Full Alpha Quadrant episode
Check out the full Alpha Quadrant podcast with Connor interviewed by Star Trek: Voyager‘s Garrett Wang and Deep Space Nine‘s Aron Eisenberg, covering Stargate Origins, playing George W. Bush in a movie with Tom Cruise, and more.
Man, you aren’t going to score any points with the faithful by admitting you didn’t watch every minute of content produced to prepare for the role.
Clearly it worked for his character. Trip was one of the highlights of Enterprise.
Agreed, Bamasi. His character had an easy way about him, and I liked how comfortable Trip seemed in/with his engine room. Definitely one of the better characters on the show, which was my least favorite in the franchise upon first viewing. Enterprise has grown on me a bit since then.
Fully agreed. Trinneer is one of the most underrated actors on Trek. And while I’d never thought of him as playing W, that’s also inspired casting.
TOS and the accompanying movies are all that really matter anyway.
I love it ALL!
In case of Enterprise, probably.
He didn’t have to.
He still did a good job.
He’s an actor, not a writer or director. His process led to one of the freshest human characters the franchise had produced in years. Good on him!
What? Trip was great! He was probably one of the most down to earth characters we had since TOS. I don’t think it mattered he never saw much of the show. Most of the actors, from Patrick Stewart to Martin-Greene has admitted to knowing very little about Trek before they got the roles and they were the main stars.
Doesn’t bother me. He wasn’t playing a character in an established part of Star Trek. He’s obviously a pro and was easily the best character on the show. Did a fine job.
He’s an adult, he can watch or not watch the various series. I don’t care. Connor did an excellent job playing Trip — one of my favourite characters from the entire franchise. He’s a wonderful actor and I wouldn’t want him to change a thing. Every actor has their own process, yours would clearly be different but that doesn’t make it better.
Enterprise wasn’t very good…. that’s why it got cancelled.
I mean no disrespect and it is my opinion, but Enterprise was a poorly conceived show with uninteresting characters and very pedestrian storytelling that plays like a poor imitation of TNG.
Agreed. It needed a new creative team, they were burned out from TNG, DS9 and Voyager.
ENT should have been where they shook things up and took a lot of chances. Instead, they ended up just rehashing the cliches of TNG and VOY without really adding anything.
The show had no identity aside from “oh, hey, more Trek-like stuff, this time in blue and gray.” It only began to develop an identity in its last season. Too little too late, unfortunately.
It was a well-conceived show that was executed extremely poorly.
I for one expected to see a lot more “founding of the Federation”. Instead we got more Borg and Ferengi, grumpy Vulcans, an entire 9/11-inspired season that could have been the Earth/Romulan War but was instead about a race of five aliens never mentioned before, and a First Contact with the Klingons which did not lead to years or war like Picard had said it did. And when we finally got ‘founding of the Federation’ it was in an episode that was more or less just window dressing for a few TNG guests stars.
Really, the show was a serious disappointment.
I never understood why they screwed up the Klingon first contact so poorly. What they did had no bearing on the show whatsoever. On the other hand, had they told essentially the same story but had Archer unknowingly screw it up and the Klingons react horribly, it fit canon and seems far more dramatic.
They were so desperate to make Archer an historic hero in the vein of Kirk and Picard (moreso actually) and it felt so forced. The man of destiny thing just didnt work. I love Bakula but he was all wrong for that role.
The problem with Enterprise is the stories were okay the characters were Dynamic. But they were inventing history as they went along including pushing technology that actually hadn’t come in the place for another 40 years.
I think that’s an apt description of Voyager, for sure. But Enterprise’ problem *was* similar to Voyagers, in that they didn’t capitalize on the premise. Enterprise did have some good prequel’ish episodes during the first two seasons, but they really nailed it in the 4th season It’s a shame it wasn’t allowed to continue as they were finally giving us glimpses of the prequel universe that created(s) the future of Trek as we know it.
Of all the pre-Discovery/Kelvin Trek’s, this one holds up best relative to set design, lighting and general directing. It still looks fantastic today, and in a lot of ways, much better than Discovery (which I love, BTW).
100% agreed. Voyager sucked because it was TNG-lite with a Lost In Space premise they never actually utilized.
Enterprise was Voy-Lite with a premise they never embraced. They were very gutless with that show when it needed them to be bold.
they were wringing the Star Trek sponge of its last few drops.
100%. You could tell it was the same group of people that had been working on Trek for so long. Very formulaic. I DID like some of the familiarity. It “fit” more or less because it was the same group so there was no desire to be different for the sake of being different.
But creatively, they were empty.
I know they like to blame the studio for everything bad but after TNG and Voy, it just means Berman had little stroke with the studio then…
This is on UPN and Paramount this show could have been a big success.
@TV — agreed, Braga really screwed the pooch on this one.
This is on UPN and Paramount.This show could have been a big hit,but they got greedy.Any network at the time would have taken this show and I believe would have gone 7 seasons
Look, UPN had its problems by then – Voyager was fresher and a flagship show the network tried to program around, largely without success. By the time Enterprise arrived, UPN was courting a different kind of audience every night and had WB-envy in how its schedule flowed and successfully targeted a certain demographic. The network was no longer a safe space for Star Trek, and only lasted another year after it canned Enterprise.
That said, I’m not quite sure who else you’re blaming here. If you blame Paramount for being greedy, that suggests you think they asked for too big a licensing fee. I don’t know if that was the case, but the show was not cheap to make by any stretch. Voyager’s fee was renegotiated late in its run to benefit UPN more, and Paramount offered concessions to get the show a fourth season, though those got passed along to a point as a budget cut.
But I still don’t quite understand the criticism. The show IMO failed because its first two seasons are flat-out bad. UPN nixed Braga’s plan for building up to Enterprise actually launching after a number of episodes, and insisted on what became the Temporal Cold War, but that doesn’t excuse the uninspired characters that surrounded Trip and Phlox, the dull scripts for most of the story of the weeks, and the feeling that for all its cosmetic differences, this was not that changed a Star Trek from all the shows we’d been watching since 1987. The show got a huge sampling for its first few weeks, and squandered it, that’s all there is to it. Only when their backs were against the wall did the writers come up with some really compelling storytelling, and by then the ratings were (contrary to Mr. Trinneer’s recollection) disastrous compared to DS9 and Voyager.
As for the notion that any other network would have seen the show through to a seventh season, I think I can safely say that’s absolutely wrong. UPN was in turnaround, but it was still the safest place for a Star Trek show. The quality of the show wouldn’t have been different on another free network, and their notes probably would have been worse and harder to resist than UPN’s (and there were some doozies once the new regime Trinneer laments came in). You’d have seen the same erosion pattern and the big four networks had much less patience and far higher standards for ratings than UPN. Enterprise wouldn’t have seen a third season on Fox or CBS, and it was likely too expensive for cable back then as well.
The bottom line is that had it come out of the gate as put together and focused as it became in its last two years, maybe it would have lasted long enough to make the transition to the CW and a 6th season. If you want to blame Paramount for anything, it should be for playing it too safe.
@Ian — nobody talks about the impact of time-shifted viewing trends during this era. The audience was arguably much bigger than was reflected in the traditional ratings. If they had been measuring same day +3 or +7 ratings at the time, the history of this show would have likely been much different. Take ORVILLE for instance, their SD ratings dropped precipitously over the last half of the season, with a dismal season finale. But the +3 and +7 numbers confirm that there’s money to be made off a sizeable, verifiable audience, even if the initial broadcast advertising dollars are not being boosted by those numbers.
Eh. There’s only so much value in those numbers. Practically, unless you have product placement, just how useful is the knowledge that a show you bought an ad during has a big following amongst those who skip the ads? This argument is relevant to say, Doctor Who, since it’s on the BBC, but it’s tough for the nets to justify their ad prices for +3 and +7 ratings.
Ad-supported networks are desperate for whatever they can get now, but even UPN managed to be choosy back then when it came to a show that was doing less than 3 million viewers and cost a lot. Enterprise limped to its syndication threshold, and even with the outcry and fundraising effort from fans, there’s not much evidence to suggest the number of uncounted viewers was big enough to justify a renewal or remount.
@Ian — well I’d love to see your research numbers. I’ve read plenty of different accounts. That said, I’m well aware of the all important threshold of the ad buys for network TV — which was far more important in the late 90s mentality that spawned ENT. And again, my point for bringing up ORVILLE, which series ratings are horribly low and should have been cancelled by now based on the cost of the show and the license fee FOX has to pay. Yet ORVILLE keeps going.
ENTERPRISE now is in wide syndication and enjoying a new popularity. That belies a larger fan base than the live network numbers themselves indicated would materialize, just like ORVILLE. Moreover, those time shift numbers, not counted in the early 2000s, suggests not only a strong interest which bodes well for building a following, and therefore more direct initial viewer ratings, but also good potential for future syndication, and download sales. That kind of data also boosts the kind of license fee FOX can charge streaming services like Netflix to help pay for the initial investment.
RIVERDALE has some of the lowest ratings on the CW, but has a significant following in online viewing, and particularly with High School demos. That is fantastic news for a studio who wants to build a major franchise out of one of its IPs. TREK is such a franchise. It wasn’t cancelled out of poor ratings alone, but also because CBS was about to make a radical change to it’s newly formed CW programming and branding. However, if Moonves had understood the potential audience for ENT, by having the time-shifted numbers in addition to the network numbers, he might have reconsidered cancelling it.
Quite right Ian. usually if a network show is touting plus numbers, its because they arent happy with the live numbers.
I follow a certain industry that Im involved in and the #2 company in the US used to tout their plus numbers all the time but when their TV contract expired, they didnt get a single offer that wasnt an add split arrangement. The plus numbers just didnt mean anything if they cant be converted to live viewers.
Its another tick in the “Pro” column for streaming (and a knock on the few people who dont understand what streaming is all about)
The plus numbers only have value if you convert those people into money-paying customers somehow. the Plus numbers say that the show is missable (ie. I feel no urgency to watch it and will catch it later if at all) and they dont watch commercials. When the business model relies on commercials to pay the bills, thats not a great thing.
It offers hope, but you have to get those viewers to start watching live or figure out a way to monetize them. While the Plus viewers are potential live viewers, they are just as likely to stop watching.
I know my usual routine of not watching a show anymore is to stop watching it live (or same day) and watching it “later” to “way later” to “first show deleted if I need space on my PVR” to “Skipping it from time to time” to eventually removing the series recording settings.
I still record Y&R every day but once it hits 15-20 on the PVR I start deleting or binge watching…more often, deleting.
Best actor on the show, in my opinion.
I thought Trineer and Billingsley were the two best actors on the show. Montgomery and Blalock were wooden — though they both sure were pretty — Bakula was miscast, and Keating and Park were pretty good.
Corylea, I liked the show a lot but am forced to admit Bakula was a poor choice for the lead. There was just something forced about his performance here. He’s better playing regular guys. Like in that short lived “Men of a Certain Age” show. I feel like he was cast because he was a name and the shine from his “Quantum Leap” days was still there.
@ML31 — Nailed it. He was the worst choice for Archer they could have ever made.
Billingsley, I’d say. Bakula was great in “Quantum Leap” but he did not pull off ‘tough guy / man in charge’ well at all.
Bakula played Archer as too “Aw, shucks!” and wasn’t convincing as a bad-ass in season 3.
Just watched Connor Trinneer in STARGATE ORIGINS. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve seen him in a role onscreen, but I was surprised to see him essentially playing an old man, and dissapointed after his work in STARGATE ATLANTIS, and ENTERPRISE to see him in such a low budget production.
I think I recall him telling those tales before.
I’m in the minority and didn’t hate on Enterprise. (Apart from that opening song!) I think season 3 was a good forward step. (A season long story arc, btw… Didn’t someone associated with STD claim Trek hadn’t done that before?) And season 4 was friggin great. Sadly by that time the dye had been cast. I really think Manny Coto could have done great things with that show.
I thought season 4 was great too, and agree Manny Coto would have taken that show to a whole new level. It’s a shame, some nice quality and continuity was likely right around the corner there.
And Yes, that opening song was absolutely abysmal.
People keep praising Manny Coto. The way I remember it (and it’s been many years) I quite enjoyed the setups of some of these season 4 mini arcs, but was always left disappointed with the resolution. Good start, weak ending. Maybe I should watch it again at some point.
I would be interested in seeing what the Discovery team would have done with Enterprise if it was made today as a visual reboot to re-energize the franchise instead of being released when it was. Enterprise could have and should have been the most freeing experience as a Trek show. There were lines that you had to stay within because of established lore but other than that, it was open doors to do a lot. Unfortunately it came off as a very bloated show not sure of exactly what it wanted to be. I LOVED Tripp -minus the over the top southern accent- and I grew to love what the writers were doing with Tripp and his relationship with T’Pol, and his friendship with Archer by the final season. Killing him off seemed to happen based on shock value. It was ridiculous…
PEB, I shudder to think what silliness the STD writers would have brought to Enterprise. Coto was the right guy to handle that show.
Coto was good but the final season wasnt nearly as good as it gets credit for. Coto turned the fan-servicing up a notch to high.
Trip was one of my favorite characters on Enterprise. In fact, I named my dog Trip after his character in 2005.
I met Connor in 2016 in at a convention in NYC. “Trippy” had passed on and I had Connor autograph a picture of my dog.
He didn’t want to do it at first, but then he asked: “This WAS your dog?” When I explained that Trippy had passed that summer from cancer, he cheerfully signed it and spent 10 minutes with me and my wife.
He’s an incredibly gracious human being.
A real highlight for me and my wife.
We’ve met several Trek actors and I’ll always remember the time Connor spent with us.
Wow. Loved Trip on the show and Love your story. I am actually in tears
That’s a wonderful story! Thanks for sharing it with us.
I liked the portions of enterprise where they actually created/invented things and were afraid of the transporter.
Having the pre-Kirk enterprise run into species that Kirk encountered for the first time, the absence of the Klingon war, and the ridiculous time travel crud made me lose interest.
Is that a Brannon Braga thing? I hate time travel. You can always go back 5 minutes prior to fix something and then the bad guy can go back 5 minutes before that. Dumb.
It’s been said in interviews that the temporal cold war was a mandate from the studio.
May be true but it was highly irresponsible of the team to not have a clue where the TCW was going or who future guy was. No wonder it sucked.
I used to really dig the time travel stuff. But as I got older and the time travel motif has just grown tired. And as you say, the only way it works is you must devise a way for the characters to NOT have control. Only then do the stakes rise. Generations suffered from that problem. I recall watching it thinking when it looked like Kirk and Picard might fail, just let the Nexus take them in and go back and try again! Perhaps going back to Picard’s meeting in 10-Forward and order security to shadow him everywhere. He’d never get a chance to go back to the Observatory much less to the planet. The show “Timeless” set up safeguards for this too. The way it works for them is you cannot go back to a time frame you are in. So you only get the one chance.
@ML31 — I didn’t realize that. Very interesting. Solves a few problems.
Never could into Enterprise, and I watched everything Star Trek starting with TOS reruns from the early 1970’s. I felt the franchise was a lot like Star Wars today, too much product being put out too often. I did find a few Episodes I managed to like but I’ve never seen the entire series. One of my main beefs was having these alien races we’d never heard of in future dated series like the Suliban!
I’m amazed that they made him jump through so many hoops to audition, given that he’s a MUCH stronger actor than Montgomery and Blalock.
Something about not being the right kind of handsome in the execs’ eyes. Berman had to fight them tooth and nail.
Ironic considering how many people seemed to faint every time (and there were a lot of times) he took off his clothes and wandered around in his underwear.
@Ian — Celebrity makes people attractive for any number of reasons. The reality is, many new actors in Hollywood get paraded down a hallway full of female assistants and such, who are used as a litmus test of sorts to determine how attractive an actor is. Trinneer used to work out at my gym, and most decidedly did not stand out against the other aspiring actors. He would not have passed that stereotypical test in the Hollywood studios, so of course there was a fight if the studio was looking for a “McSteamy” like heartthrob. But once cast in such a role and presented to viewers, for whatever reason audiences accept the implied label regardless of otherwise objective looks. Then again, Trinneer has other charms which are magnified in closeup shots, and define another kind of beauty other than that which appears purely on the surface.
Very true. Good on Berman for sticking up for him.
I am a big Trip fan. I always found him intelligent and appealing, wise but not cynical. He’s a Trek actor who could and should be seen more.
I also had a lovely experience with Connor Trinneer at a convention, in Las Vegas in 2016. I was with my son who had his 11th Birthday that day. I wasn’t on the line for autographs, but I stood near him and I caught his eye and said hello. I told him he was both my favorite actor and Trip was my favorite character on the show. I also told him that I would bottle feed my son in 2005, in the midnight shift, when he was an infant as I caught up on the show on DVD. I introduced him to my son and told him it was his birthday. I didn’t expect anything, but he told my son to come over and pick a photo. My son did and then Connor signed it. Conor then winked at me. I took out my wallet to pay him but he waved me off.
I also told him that I had a girlfriend who was a professional actress and watched one episode of Enterprise, I think it was the great “Similitude.” Without knowing anything about the show, she said that Trinneer was clearly the best actor on the show, a step above everyone else. I told him this, and he said “She said that?” in a pleased but humble and slightly surprised way.
The whole thing was a sweet experience from a gracious, generous man who is a hell of an actor.
Thanks for sharing that!
Connor Trinneer always reminded me of a young Tommy Lee Jones. And just as good an actor!
I thought the same exact thing too!
ATTABOY, GRUMPY! FETCH!
Jones would’ve been a great guest star to play Trip’s Father.
Loved Enterprise and still have a lot of time for it. Always watch an episode back-to-back with TOS, and totally buy into the whole look of it as a prequel. Something I really struggle with when watching Discovery. No offence intended to its fans.
What is a catpain? Is it when a feline is in agony? And should Data be made aware of this?
I tried to like this show,I really did.But I found it more annoying than compelling.
The Only thing I didn’t like was how he died at the end. I thought it wasn’t very well thought out.
Enterprise was the ONLY Trek show I ever stopped watching. I got through all of first season and then after that I don’t think I watched anymore of it outside of an odd episode here and there until waaaaaay later after it was cancelled. There were a lot of reasons for me at the time: hated it was a prequel, was kind of burnt out on Trek in general, the episodes were kind of ho-hum and I didn’t love the temporal cold war arc. So it was easy to give up on it early on.
BUT, I have to say once I watched it straight through 8 years after it was cancelled I REALLY regret not giving it more of a chance. It still had problems for sure but it really felt like it was starting to gel in the later seasons. And its actually because of not watching Enterprise when it started why I decided to stick Discovery out, even if I actually have the same issues with it that I did with Enterprise. And I just feel if Discovery is cancelled early too then we won’t see another show for another decade unless CBS just license it to Netflix or Amazon. So I don’t want to see another Trek show pre-maturely cancelled again, even if its still not great because one thing Trek teaches us, they all get better over time.
I stopped watching too. The Xindi storyline was just too desperate and convoluted and the “angry” characters felt forced. I came back for the final season (I’d dip in and out during season 3 though).
I enjoyed the character of Trip… and Mr. Trinneer made for fantastic eye candy too!!
I’m in the process of watching every episode of Enterprise and am enjoying it immensely. It sets the scenes for every Trek that follows.
I’m also watching Next Generation and am not that thrilled with it. Just doesn’t have the same zing as Enterprise.
I would love to see a revival of Enterprise.
What I liked about Enterprise that I feel is currently missing in Discovery is that the show felt a bit more ‘fun’. I know TNG had that same issue that everyone felt so serious all the time compared to TOS where the characters could riff a bit. They tried to capture that same spirit for Enterprise and specifically with characters like Trip. That is probably the one thing I wish they did more on, especially Discovery where most of them, minus Tilly, just feel so heavy and cynical all the time. But maybe due to the war aspect which is now over.
I agree totally, Tiger. It’s not because of the war aspect so much, I think. It’s because dystopian shows, and a dystopian mood, is what prevails on tv these days
I loved Enterprise because it truly was “where no man had gone before.” Because of that, the actors could really create something new without having to worry about what Kirk or Picard would do. Thus, I think Trinneer not being a Trekker was actually a benefit.
Enterprise was well made show if your u were a Trekkie you know that
I liked Enterprise. I complain about it because I firmly believe it could have been SO much more. But I liked it. Well made? No, mediocre at best. It was made by a group of people who had been working Star Trek nonstop for over 14 years at that point, and they were very clearly burned out (see the NCIS crowd today for similar burn-out). Way too many early Enterprise episodes (Season 1 and 2) seemed like scripts from a Voyager “reject” pile. The show really didn’t take advantage of its setting at all, giving us stories that for the most part could just as easily have been done on TNG, DS9, or VOY. (The rare occasions they broke out of that mold, such as “Andorian Incident” and “First Flight” are standouts from Season 1 and 2.) The “Temporal Cold War” (rumored to be at the behest of Paramount, to enable TNG-era guest stars) was an unmitigated disaster, culminating in what was certainly the most idiotic plot twist in Trek history (the notorious Alien Nazi in “Zero Hour” and “Storm Front”, something that you would expect to see in a Saturday Night Live spoof of Star Trek, not real Star Trek.)
Enterprise squandered its first two seasons on very blah storytelling, and when given the chance to show the Earth-Romulan War which a great number of fans were hoping to finally see, we got the underwhelming Xindi War instead. Only the final season of the show (when cancellation was already a certainty) did we get anything like what the show originally set out to be. But by then, only you, me and about a dozen other people were still watching.
I like some parts of the show. I like the Xindi and temporal war, over that long period of time. However the ending was disappointing and so bad. It’s like they couldn’t control their own story anymore. They had everything in place…an didn’t use most of it. They tried 2-3 episodes arcs after that. Wasn’t that bad but I was missing a greater purpose. The 2-3 episodes works when there is also a principal line that will get you toward a season long story. The Timeless TV series is doing this right now. Quite frankly, I was watching the show for T’Pol, Trip and the Doctor. All the rest of the characters felt bland. I don’t fault the actors but the writers didn’t bring them to life that much. Often too late and briefly. I miss out a lot of episodes of Enterprise in the 4th season because of scheduling nightmare. You know a series is gonna die when the network begins to do that. In my view they had the right actor for the Captain. But they cage him the same way they did with Janeway. On top of that Enterprise was another of those ship in grey with under-lit rooms and corridors. Every damn shot was void of colors, exception of the medical bay and the beagle. The exterior of the ship was fine, but the interior was a disaster on many levels.
And yah, I was waiting and waiting for any Romulians or Klingons stories. I mean, I loved the Andorian in the show. But this was suppose to be the beginning of the Federation, and those races were almost nowhere to be seen.
*sigh* dont start a discussion with “if you’re a real trekkie you’d agree with me”. It sort of indicates your lack of confidence in what you’re saying. Rightly so I might add.
Another advantage Enterprise had was they were far enough before TOS that they could update for modern TV but it still looked like it could evolve into what we saw on TOS.
Only thing I didn’t like they killed him off at the end
I just finished watching ENT for the 4th or 5th time and found myself impressed throughout at what a strong character Trip is and how well Trinneer played him. I think there’s truth to the “Trek fatigue” notion often cited as a major reason for ENT’s cancellation. And the drop-off in writing caliber from the TNG peak to the lows in the TNG movies, VOY and through Season 2 of ENT (which is so bad that I can’t even sit through it) greatly contributed to and exacerbated the Trek fatigue. 19 seasons for a sci-fi TV show and its closely related spin-offs is a long run. Had it been 19 seasons with top-quality TNG writing, any Trek fatigue that arose might likely have been too minimal to significantly affect ENT. But, after the slow start of DS9, the extremely inconsistent VOY and TNG movies, yet another Trek series off to a slow start was a bridge too far for too many viewers, myself among them. Complaints about Archer’s character or how Bakula played Archer, or the show reflecting GW Bush-era politics are, I think, secondary. ENT was a great looking show with enough good performances and likeable, relatable characters to last 7 seasons. The writing started to shape up (IMO) in Season 3, which has two or three very strong episodes (such as “Similitude”) and a cohesive compelling seasonal story arc. But by that point it was too late. Too many viewers had checked out and moved on.
I agree. Trip was by far the best character on the show.
Always thought that Connor gave us one of the most grounded characters in any Trek series. He clearly nailed the character the first moment he was on-screen. He was the one consistent character all the way through (though those silly massage sessions with T’Pol were indefensible). His friendship with Archer (in my view) was well played, as strong as O’Brien-Bashir or Data-Geordi. Really liked his work on the show.
I lived in the St. Louis area during the run of Enterprise and I saw every episode of the series on broadcast TV. Connor has been given some bad facts about UPN in St. Louis.
All the series followed the Tng formula, when they should have taken risks. Enterprise should have been more Tos than Tng.
The important thing is never to lose hope – why, one day, the words “Star Trek: Discovery” and “cancelled” could very well appear in the same Variety headline. Ex Astris, Vomite!