Brannon Braga Suggests Netflix Could Bring Star Trek Enterprise Back For Season 5

Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air after four seasons in 2005, despite a fan campaign to save the series. But that may not be the end of the story. In a new interview Enterprise co-creator and exec. producer Brannon Braga opines that good performance on Netflix could lead to a new season. More details below.

 

Braga Suggests Netflix Bring Enterprise Back

The folks at TrekCore have an interview with Star Trek: TNG, Voyager and Enterprise writer/producer Brannon Braga, conducted at last year’s Star Trek London con. One of the most interesting bits of the lengthy interview was regarding the fan fundraising effort for a fifth season of Star Trek: Enterprise – which he dismissed as implausible – but he then suggested that the show could have a future, if it performed well on Netflix…

The best possible thing the fans could do is, if they want to see another season of Enterprise, is watch it on Netflix…My neighbor produces Arrested Development, and they’re making a new season of Arrested Development. I recall him telling me that it’s because for that show, they know they’re gonna get… they have data! They know a certain number of people are going to watch that show. I’ve heard rumors in town that the CBS show Jericho might get another season, because the numbers on Netflix are big! Watch Enterprise!

Much more from the Braga interview at TrekCore: Part 1 and Part2.

You can also watch the two-part interview below.


 

POLL: Netflixprise?

Would you want to see Enterprise get a 5th season on Netflix (exclusively):

[poll=710]

 

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I think there should be a Star Trek: Enterprise kickstarter. It would be a good way to see if there’s enough interest in a new season. It worked for Veronica Mars.

Now, I do like “Enterprise”. But if Netflix picks up the show, then I’m a Mugato’s uncle.

He said he knows they pay attention to those statistics, but he is in no way saying if this is actually something that could happen or not. Hopefully people don’t take this too seriously. This is like Alan Tudyk saying he still thinks Serenity 2 could happen every year for like the past seven years. Take it with a grain of salt.

Sounds like a plan!! Make it so!

@1 – Veronica Mars is WAY less expensive than Enterprise would be to make, Braga points out in the interview that fans raising money for Enterprise would be fruitless.

Sure why not, people are hungry for star trek now, maybe picard loads up season 5 on the holodeck and there is a accident and he gets thrown into the reality of season 5 as archer and he wakes up and says oh boy

Well, I think the entire cast is available. Even Bakula hasn’t done much since “Men of a Certain Age” ended. But if it comes back, Enterprise should be set an equal amount of time in the future, so any of the cast who doesn’t want to do it can be easily written off as taking a new assignment over the last 8 years. Just pretend “These are the Voyages…” never happened (have T’Pol wake up and find Trip in the shower) and move right on into the Earth-Romulan War. That would be enough to make me sign up for Netflix.

A Star Trek: Enterprise Kickstarter? No. Hell no. Kickstarter is for poor people who are creative and need start up funds. Sorry, but Star Trek and the companies behind it make enough money to produce their own content. This abuse of crowd funding websites by big companies and people already in the industry has to stop.

If the show comes back, get Manny Coto, Ron Moore, Bob Orci, and Alex Kurtzman to do the writing.

Focus on doing only about a dozen episodes per year, covering the Romulan War, with the odd Mirror Universe episode thrown in.

And make sure Brannon Braga stays on the sidelines.

But I can’t see this happening. It would be too expensive, though the possibility of a non-network Trek show could be something special.

I wouldnt mind seeing a kelvin prime series or tng with stargazer, tom hardy or cumberbatch as young picard

The ironic thing is, Braga is pushing for this, the same guy who ruins everything Trek in the first place.

I’d love to have Enterprise back for a 5th season. We’d finally get to see the Romulan War.

Yes please. Especially if Manny Coto helps out.

“A Star Trek: Enterprise Kickstarter? No. Hell no. Kickstarter is for poor people who are creative and need start up funds.”

Exactly. I’m still annoyed at Michael Dorn trying to raise $750,000 for a vanity project because he thought Trek fans would pay to see former TNG/DS9 actors read from the phone book.

And Enterprise looked cheap the first time, I can’t imagine it looking decent on a Netflix budget… but what the hell do I know?

Personally, I never liked the mirror universe episodes after Mirror, Mirror. they seemed like fun for the actors and an excuse for girls to make out, but otherwise completely pointless.

Yes, if we could get the same caliber of writing that was coming together at the end of the last season! (Also if we could just pretend that Trip’s death was just a bad dream, thanks)

I loved the Mirror episodes! Especially the Enterprise and DS9 ones!

I voted NO.

I would love to see early 90s style star trek or 60s style, as long as there is no war arcs or stuck on a space station.

Exploration with aliens of the week and outer limits and twilight zone style show.

I would love to see either a new series in the Prime Universe or at least miniseries/DVD movies.

please let the old star trek rest in peace.

YES! But the show would have to have Manny Coto running it. I would simply LOVE for Enterprise (And T’pol) to come back!!! Season 4 was one of the best EVER!

More Trek?

I’m buying NETFLIX, tonight!

How would that even work?
The budget to reproduce even half the sets would be huge for a Netflix production. SFX? Can you say Revell hung on a thread?

Seriously, did anyone store the sets, props, costumes, or are you seriously envisioning starting from scratch?

Yes, it would be nice to undo the finale. Just have Tripp wake up from a drunken stupor and swear, “Never again!”

Because of our fighting between ourselves as to the many desires of us fans and not keeping our mouths shut, I want this and I want that is exactly why Netflix wont touch it.
Let them do whatever they want!!!!!

Only ideas for episodes in whatever form they choose, please, please…

Okay – if Netflix does pick this up, it’s going to be a budget driven production. So, hopefully good, character driven sci-fi storytelling. No epic special effects driven space battles. And I’m okay with that, it would be nice to see Trek return to it’s roots. In Enterprise’s case, they would have to ignore seasons 3 and 4 though….

Please God, Nooooo!

The Enterprise actors have gotten older so they can’t pick Enterprise up were it left off right? Enterprise’s last season was set in 2155. The actors are seven years older now. If you treated Enterprise like it was in real time then Enterprise would have to be set in 2162 and that would go against canon since their wasn’t an Enterprise NX-01 as a Federation Ship. Plus the NX-01 was decommissioned in 2161.

@15. May I ask why?

I voted yes, mostly for the reasons mentioned on post 24.

A good reason to vote no, though, would be because to return to the yes reasons, a lot of what was already committed to film would have to be ignored – so if they go that route they might as well start clean.

I don’t see a wrong answer here, except for the fans who want to a weekly barrage of space battles…and there is a s**tload of that garbage on YouTube to begin with….

A 12 episode season.

If Netflix were going to do Star Trek, why bother with Enterprise? They could do anything they wanted.

And why not just do TNG?

Great, Brannon.

At 8:40 – 9:50 (second part) Brannon admits that he would love to write “till the end of his career… this technobabble… this shit.”

NEXT!

30 minute episodes. There would only be four or five stories per season, each 4-5 episodes long. That might work…

#29

I think they had nothing else to do after defeating the Borg in First Contact. The ship was flat, uniforms was dull, everyone looked so stale, there was no creativity left in the tank and Star Trek died until 2009.

TNG was good whatever happened to good Star Trek on TV?

LOSER.

Sorry Phil and somethoughts. Still steaming from that interview.

YESSS!!!! Make it SO! Number One! =D

ENGAGE!!!

Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Did I mention, hell-frackin’ yeah? Either as a kickstarter or on Netflix. Hey, if Veronica Mars can get a movie, why can’t Enterprise get another season? It’s becoming more and more plausible.

I do miss the mysteries and good character driven stories. Enough with the Xindi’s, Dominion War, Bajoran crap, give us some good sci fi Star Trek that makes us toon in weekly.

I would love a 5th season. We could finally watch the Romulan war.

This has no chance whatsoever of happening. Period.

NEVER going to happen. NEVER.

@21 CmdrR – IIRC the budget for Enterprise was about 3.3 million per episode. That’s in line with many current mid-high end TV series on any network. Netflix set out to make a point with its original series House of Cards. The series cost over $100 million dollars for 2 seasons (20 episodes, 10 completed). Thats $5 million per episode! Netflix will shell out the cash if they think its worth it. Arrested Development’s new season is probably running at least half of that price, if not less.

@26 You only *think* it was decommissioned. Pretty clear it’s involved in black ops with Section 31, with Commander Tucker in charge, and T’Pol as his XO. Secret missions, time travel, etc. Sounds fun. Don’t really need any of the other regulars, although keeping Reed and Phlox makes some sense. They’ve never solved the mystery of Future Guy, for instance.

If we’re going to get Trek back on TV let’s get something new, not try to resurrect the least popular Trek series we ever had. No disrespect to those that enjoyed Enterprise, but that ship has sailed.

Netflix is down the street. Please don’t kill them with these ridiculous suggestions!! The local economy needs them to survive in spite of themselves….

Now if they want to fund another season of Firefly, that’s different.

On the other hand, an animated series done in this style would be awesome (and less cost prohibitive):

http://mattwileyart.com/portfolio/trekkedout.html

Rest in peace.

After reading a few months back that Future Guy was Archer, I would love to learn how he went from Earths first President, to a 28th century temporal terrorist. The death toll from the Paraagan colony alone implies there must have been something pretty big at stake for him to kill all those people.

Brannon suggests a two hour tv movie, which would have the potential to be awesome, and could lead to more “Trek Mini-series”. They could revisit NextGen, do a Sisko returns DS9 story, check in on what the Voyager crew has been up to 10 years on, crossovers, new stories etc. The problem is Paramount tho. Don’t think they would go for it.

It seems like a good idea at first, but there are some problems:

(1) Trip is dead and he was one of the main characters. I suppose they could clone him from some cells of the Trip clone that got preserved or something, and then engineer the clone to slow to a normal aging rate once it reached the age that Trip would be now. But that’s kinda cheesy, and it would retroactively mar the death of Trip in the Season 4 finale.

(2) The actors would all be TEN years older than they were at the end of Season 4. Do they all have the same ranks? That’s pretty lame. Is T’Pol still running around in that sexy Vulcan sheer outfit? There are issues here.

(3) The production values of Enterprise were top-knotch, especially at the end. Is a Netflix-only viewership going to allow them the same budget as when they were a network show?

These are not insurmountable problems, but Enterprise Season 5 would likely need some changes over what it was in Season 4, namely some cast changes. I think a better idea would be to advance some members of the NX-01 to the next model Enterprise…the NX-02 or some other suffix, kinda like the popular sports car lines that revamp every few years but keep the same name—Corvette, Mustang, Firebird—Or, they could advance them to a new ship and name the series after that ship, but a substantial cast change either way would probably be necessary.

They’d probably wanna bring Archer back as captain of the new ship, I’d bring Flox back—he was a good character with lots of potential, the rest of the crew could be new cast—I’d include a new, sexy female officer, perhaps as first officer to preserve the winning formula of Enterprise.

And bringing back Manny Coto would be crucial…or someone as good as him to run the show.

notch*