Star Trek Voyager S01e01 720p Vs 1080i
Christal Rasband
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 (played by Scott Bakula), Commander Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer), and Sub-commander T'Pol (Jolene Blalock).
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" (performed by Russell Watson) as its theme.[1] 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's third season. It was renamed Star Trek: Enterprise, and was changed to focus on action-driven plots and a single, serialized storyline: the crew's mission to prevent the Earth being destroyed by a newly introduced alien species, the Xindi. In 2005, UPN cancelled the series after its fourth season, despite a fan-led campaign to continue it. It was the first time in 18 years that no new Star Trek television series episodes would be produced, the beginning of a hiatus that lasted until the launch of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, another prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series and chronological sequel to Enterprise.
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,[2] using the first warp five capable vessel.[3] 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[2] and caused resentment in Starfleet test pilot Jonathan Archer, whose father developed the Warp 5 engine but did not live to see it used.[3]
The Enterprise was intentionally equipped with less-advanced technologies than those seen in previous series (which occurred later on the Star Trek timeline). It had no tractor beam, but utilized grappler cables; and used missiles instead of particle weapons (see Weapons in Star Trek); 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.[2] Communications Officer Linguist Hoshi Sato's expertise in linguistics helps compensate for the lack of the advanced universal translator.[4]
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 (excluding Star Trek: Discovery), rather than the smooth-headed versions seen in Star Trek: The Original Series.[5][6][note 1] 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 (future) series, as advances in real-world technology made devices seen in The Original Series and Voyager seem anachronistically oversized.[8]
Crewman Daniels (Matt Winston), 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.[17] Archer found that he was being manipulated by those forces, as Enterprise was blamed for the destruction of a mining colony in "Shockwave."[18]
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.
Braga and Berman created the season-long Xindi story arc, which began with the second-season finale,[12] "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.[22] Although certain elements were preplanned, including the success of the mission against the Xindi,[23] others, such as the details of the actual enemy race, were not.[24] 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.[25]
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."[24] 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.[9] In order to complete this mission, they took on additional crew members in the form of Military Assault Command Operations (abbreviated as MACO) soldiers, due to the increased military nature of the task.[26]
The birth of the Federation was first hinted at during part two of "Shockwave," which opened the second season.[27] 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.[28] 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.[29] The episodes for the fourth season were intended to lay the framework for the later creation of the Federation.[30] 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."[31]
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.[32] 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.[33] 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.[34]
Prior to the end of Star Trek: Voyager and following the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in June 1999, Paramount approached Rick Berman and Brannon Braga about the production of a fifth Star Trek series, either to overlap with the final season of Voyager or to immediately follow.[42] Berman had previously created Star Trek: Deep Space Nine along with Michael Piller, Voyager with Piller and Jeri Taylor,[2] and had been wanting to work with Braga on a series concept. While the fans online were suggesting that it could either be based on Starfleet Academy or the adventures of Hikaru Sulu, the producers took care that no information was leaked to reveal what the concept was going to be.[3] They later revealed that the Academy idea was never properly considered.[43]
Instead, they opted to create a prequel to The Original Series set after the events in the film Star Trek: First Contact,[3] as Braga and Berman felt it was a period in the Star Trek universe which was unexplored.[44] The idea was for the series to portray the first deep space explorers in the Star Trek universe, with Braga explaining that everything would be new to the crew and that since the setting was closer in the timeframe to the modern day, their reactions to situations would be more contemporary.[2] As part of this, they sought feedback from members of the submarine service of the United States Navy, which was reflected in certain design work on the series such as the Star Trek uniforms.[35] The network executives needed to be convinced of the viability of a prequel series, as they had assumed that the series would take the franchise further into the future.[45] The initial idea was for the first season to be almost entirely set on Earth as the Enterprise was rushed to completion to respond to first contact with the Klingon, and the crew being put together. This idea was rejected by the studio executives, and these story elements were instead restricted to the pilot, "Broken Bow."[12]
They sought to make Enterprise more character-driven than the previous series in the Star Trek franchise, and hoped that this would gain viewers who had watched The Next Generation but had lost interest with Deep Space Nine and Voyager.[3] It was intended to link the series directly into The Original Series by having T'Pau, who had previously appeared in the episode "Amok Time," as a main character. Instead, this character was developed into an original Vulcan character, T'Pol.[46][note 2] Berman explained his vision for the series at launch, saying, "We'll be seeing humanity when they truly are going where no man has gone before. We are seeing people who don't take meeting aliens as just another part of the job. It's not routine. Nothing is routine. Also, by bringing it back 200 years from Voyager, we're making the characters closer to the present, and by doing that they can be a little bit more accessible and a little bit more flawed and a little bit more familiar to you and me."[49]
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