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Twenty years after Star Trek: Enterprise ended in cancelation, co-creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have been looking back on the events of the series finale and getting real about the decisions they made.
“These Are The Voyages” saw an uptick in viewers at the time, but it’s fair to say that the majority of them weren’t happy with how Enterprise came to a close in the episode, which sees Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) use a holo-program in 2370 to experience a time when the original Enterprise is due to be decommissioned. This framing of the finale, set around Next Generation characters rather than wholly focusing on Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and his crew, felt like the wrong move to many fans of the series who wanted a proper farewell after four seasons.
Berman and Braga recently reflected on the fallout from the episode on The D-Con Chamber podcast, where they explained that they couldn’t find a way to wrap up the show in the way that they wanted, given its cancelation and quick hop to a finale story that could even attempt to put a neat bow on the series.
While acknowledging fan disappointment, Braga said that they “wanted to send a valentine to the franchise,” and added, “I still stand by the concept of the episode, which is it’s actually an episode of Next Generation where they’re looking back at Enterprise on the holodeck, which I think is a cool idea… Our intentions were not to be in any way dismissive or disrespectful. It was quite the opposite.”
Berman and Braga’s only lingering regret with “These Are The Voyages” is their decision to kill off Connor Trinneer’s character, Charles “Trip” Tucker. “I feel like that’s the real problem,” mused Braga. “One of the most beloved characters. What were we thinking?”
After some thought, Braga noted that they may have been chasing some “emotional impact” by killing Trip. “We felt that the flashback needed some power, some emotional potency, but I can see why that might have been upsetting to people, to find out indirectly, that Trip died.”
Trinneer himself, who co-hosts the D-Con Chamber podcast, doesn’t have any hard feelings about Trip’s death, though, telling Berman and Braga that he’s “very satisfied” with the finale. “As an actor, I got to tell the entire arc of a story,” he informed the pair. “You don’t have to wonder about him. I don’t have to wonder about him. I don’t have to answer questions about him. What you saw was the totality of this person’s career and life.”
It seems like the duo were stuck between a rock and a hard place and felt they made the best decisions possible at the time. Arguably, the real antagonist was the network that cancelled the show and forced Enterprise to skip to the end.
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