Charles “Trip” Tucker III may have been killed in the series finale, but actor Connor Trinneer bristles at the suggestion that the cancelled Star Trek: Enterprise killed the Trek franchise. The actor also says that (unlike most fans) he really liked the finale. More from Connor below.
Trinneer: Enterprise didn’t kill franchise
Star Trek: Enterprise’s Connor Trinneer spoke to the official site about his time as Trip Tucker on the NX-01. Here are some excerpts.
Trinneer on what he would have liked to do with Trip if Enterprise had a fifth season:
I think that they would have explored that relationship with T’Pol more. I think there was a lot to harvest in that one and I think you would have seen a lot more of that. There probably would have been more of this evolution of that Vulcan-human relationship and maybe them trying to have children.
Trinneer on the controversial Enterprise finale “These Are the Voyages”:
I was totally satisfied with it. I know other people weren’t, but I was satisfied with it as an actor because there was a lot to do, a lot going on. They were talking about their feelings about that character and all that. I know that people had their opinions about bringing in The Next Generation people. Hell, I loved working with Jonathan Frakes and I wished I could have done it more. I loved the guy. I didn’t care in regard to how they were going to sew it up. I was really happy with my involvement as a character in it, if that makes sense.
Trinneer on how some fans think Enterprise “killed” the Star Trek franchise by being cancelled and ending 18 years of Star Trek on TV:
Responsible for any demise? I think that was nonsense. When you look back on it, all of the shows took a couple of years to find their sea legs. And I think, absolutely, we got our sea legs. Is there an argument that you can only go to the well so many times? Absolutely. It’s also an argument I’d agree with. How many years in a row can you keep it going? We happened to be the show that, for whatever reason, they said, “Stop.” They were expensive. They were all expensive. But in terms of what we did and what we accomplished, I think everyone involved with it, myself included, has nothing but pride for what we did and we hang our hat on that.
Read full interview at official site: here and here.
POLL: Did Enterprise Kill Trek on TV?
With the cancellation of Star Trek Enterprise the franchise ended a 18 year run on TV. So was it inevitable, or do you think a different show could have kept the Trek franchise going?
[poll=674]
I personally loved Enterprise AND its finale.
I wish that Enterprise continued for 3 more years. Enough said.
Hated the final episode but loved Enterprise.
What alternate universe are you living in to say that there will never be another Trek series? Hell, even when television is a distance memory, Trek will exist on what medium we use to pass on great stories to our kids. Trek has become part of our human conversation. It ain’t dead.
Enterprise killed Trek on TV. But it wasn’t alone. Voyager, apathetic writing, and over saturation played huge parts.
“distant memory, Trek will exist on whatever medium we”
jeez, I wish we could edit our own posts.
Part of the biggest problem with the “demise” of Trek on TV was the move from a major broadcast network to UPN during Voyager’s run. Major portions of the country couldn’t easily get UPN and that, coupled with sub-par writing and episodes toward the end of Voyager, played more of a roll than Enterprise did. Enterprise was fresh, bold, exciting, and brought new-life to a tiring franchise…it just wasn’t in time to save the sinking ship that Berman, and others, had caused. Enterprise would have only continued to get better if it hadn’t been canceled.
Voyager killed the franchise on TV — Enterprise didn’t stand a chance.
Enterprise Killed the franchise dead. Continuity out the window. Producers admitted they never watched the original series. Well Mike Sussman apparantly did but it was too late to save the franchise. Better off to reboot the series with the new movie. The only tradgedy being is that ENTERPRISE could be part of the new Star Trek universe too!
I agree with everything he said.
Well said Connor. Agree with everything.
Enterprise was shut down when it was getting really interesting, and it was a time when SciFi was having a bad time on tv.
If it were airing today it probably would have more success.
I think Enterprise like many shows that get cancelled were not appreciated at the time but eventually find their feet in reruns.
I did enjoy it at the time, but had issues with it. Looking back I feel fans could have got behind it sooner.
I will say over saturation of trek on tv hurt the series at the time (along with constantly using the same producers and probably the same writers over and over again didn’t help either). The fact is all shows go through times where there is a lot of hype around them and then, once that hype is finished, the show goes off the air. The Law and Order franchise looks to be going through that now.
Give trek a little bit more of a rest on tv (until after this trail of movies are over) and then look into bringing it back then. Granted, I want to see a new series right now but I also don’t want the series to become over saturated again and have lots of people lose interest in it.
I actually really liked Enterprise, though I may have helped lead to its demise because I never really watched it when it was on (I was in college and just never had much time for TV weekday nights). I’ve learned to appreciate it since then, however
Television is all about ratings, and as such, “Enterprise” did put an end to Trek on tv. So I did have to, unfortunately, vote yes. The third and fourth seasons were outstanding, but by then it was too much, too late.
“Voyager” in my opinion, was the bigger disappointment and “Enterprise” paid the price for that.
But “These Are The Voyages…” ended up being the final insult. Let’s make sure that episode isn’t known forever as the last ever Trek episode.
It was terrible as a TV series, let alone as a Star Trek show. There was some truly horrible writing going on, and to top it of, some truly terrible acting aswell. Off course he’s gonna be in denial, as he was part of the problem.
I loved Enterprise, particularly the third season.
I was OK with suggestions to “wait until the movies are done” apart from the fact that they’re being stretched out FAR too long.
I’d much rather see Trek on the small screen, on a regular basis, than see it a couple hours every 4-5 years.
Did it kill the Star Trek franchise? .. . . . That’s an awkward question. When I watched Voyager, I saw a lot of ridiculous episodes that I didn’t care for, but I still came back and ended up watching the entire series from it’s start to it’s end. With Enterprise, I wasn’t that interested.
I guess it has to do with the series trying to be an origin story to every other Star Trek series that came before it. Nothing really exciting about that since we know nothing bad will ever happen. But what really turned me off was how rude these characters were to each other. Everyone acted like a jerk towards each other, and from the reviews I’ve watched from SFDEBRIS, it didn’t get much better. Condemning a whole race to die simply because of crappy evolution, and the moral of the story is that they didn’t come out here to play god?
But I will give the series this. When they have a linguistics expert named Hoshi onboard, and the crew are being contacted by an alien race (The Romulans) who speak a language they don’t understand, she actually translates their language from scratch so the crew can understand it. WAY better care for the characters than Uhura from Trek09 who’s just there for…. I don’t know. Make out with Spock because JJ likes that stuff I guess. She also gets bonus points for wearing a full uniform that has the same amount of clothing as her her male colleagues’ uniforms and is not romantically involved.
Yeah. I’m not going to say that Enterprise killed the franchise as a whole, it just killed itself as a series. Worse comes to worst, I can stand by Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Trials and Tribble-ations to say that Enterprise didn’t happen. All they had to do was not name the darn ship Enterprise. :)
I really miss Enterprise. It was getting to be so good when it was cancelled.
I also think TV changed a lot since the Next Generation was in its heyday and an expensive show like Enterprise wasn’t as sustainable any more. Plus it didn’t benefit from syndication to the extent of previous Trek shows did, and was stuck on a dying station like UPN.
Definitely count me as an Enterprise fan. I had a few issues early on, but for the most part I found it to be an entertaining and plausible precursor to all we hold dear.
I loved Enterprise, but hated the finale. That was just insulting. Trip’s death served no purpose whatsoever. And no, I don’t think it killed the franchise. I completely agree with Connor.
Oh, and I loved the characters. The actors who portrayed them did a very good job of making them colorful and interesting.
Mayweather…not so much I guess.
Also, the potential problems from putting a new Trek series on the air right now don’t involve over-saturation of Trek, but is more about when to air the show and on what network. I can’t see CBS airing it, or selling it to a rival. I’m also not sure it would get enough exposure in a sea of reality and talent shows. Could get lost in the shuffle. There are plenty of talented writers out there. Quality wouldn’t be the problem, logistics would be.
ENTERPRISE didn’t really “kill” Trek (Voyager and Parmount’s general overstaturation of the franchise lended a lot to it), but I think it’s fair to say it was the final nail in the coffin.
No, Enterprise didn’t kill Star Trek- putting Les Moonves in charge killed Star Trek and left it on life support waiting for someone to come and make it all flash and no substance. Cut to 2009. Star Trek is back… sort of.
DS9 and Voyager killed Trek!
I watched every episode, loved the show. It wasn’t the show that killed the franchise, scifi on major network stations (which UPN was pretending to be) just don’t stand a chance ratings wise.
I have to admit I didn’t like Enterprise at first but I was really enjoying it by the fourth season when they had mostly two or three part episodes. I wish they had kept that up for the full seven seasons that the other shows had (or even ten seasons and have it finish with the birth of the federation).
As for the last episode I actually really liked it. I felt that it was a good way to say goodbye to both Enterprise and Star Trek in general… at least a goodbye for now hopefully.
Oh no show killed Trek. It was a temporary halt due to fatigue. Trek series was not best show for the prime time/channel, starting with TOS. It just have perpetual audience. I became a big Trek fan from theater showing of ST IV, but hardly ever watched brand new episode on TV live from TNG onward. Only re-runs.
With that said Enterprise is the only series that I go back to re-watch more than 5 times in entirety in the last decade besides the movies. All other series I only picked a subset. That speaks loud for me.
I don’t think that Enterprise killed trek on TV. I think the network was at least partly to blame. I think that UPN which is now CW was shifting to a different demographic and Enterprise really didn’t fit with them. It would have been interesting to see how Enterprise would have fared on a different network.
With the fourth season Enterprise was really beginning to find it footing with Manny Coto heading the writing department. If they had brought him in earlier I Think that Enterprise would have had a better chance of jumping the shark.
But I do believe that Star Trek will be back on TV it is only a matter of time.
A lot of what killed the Trek franchise on TV (so far, at least – maybe there will be a revival someday) had nothing directly to do with Star Trek, either Enterprise, Voyager, or any other particular version. This was also the period when so-called “reality” TV (which is, of course, anything but) began to take over the airwaves on broadcast and cable (Top Model, Project Runway, chef shows, Queer Eye, Deadliest Catch, and on and on and on and on and … ) Come to think of it, the same thing is killing the History Channel! Think about it: much cheaper to produce, bigger audience, better bang for the advertising buck for Paramount or any other studio. The era of the hour-long serialized TV drama is slowly coming to an end. The arrival at Paramount of a lot of front-office executive “suits” who didn’t know much or care much about or understand Star Trek also did its bit (Scott Bakula has commented on this in prior interviews, as has the unfairly dissed Rick Berman). Yes, the golden goose was overused. That did play a big part. But there were other things going on in the background that came down to cutting costs.
UPN killed Trek, end of story. The Augment arc, the Affliction / Divergence arc and lastly, the In A Mirror Darkly arc was some of the best Trek that ever got made, hands down. And no one can deny that.
It bugged me, geeky detail guy, that it was visually still a lot like DS9 and Voyager — the uniforms had the same shoulder patches as those future uniforms, the catsuits, the ship — it felt like they weren’t even really trying to acknowledge what came before, they were making yet another version of TNG.
And, heck, couldn’t they have called the ship something else? The Enterprise-worship has become a bit silly. Surely other ships made a difference. And name/brand-recognition didn’t actually do the show any favors.
I think that Paramount killed the franchise. One of the reasons why Enterprise failed was that it was on their network versus being syndicated like TNG and DS9 were. I know that I never really got to see those episodes of Enterprise when it was on the air because I did not get the UPN network. Another thing was that how many different shows did they need to make? The TNG cast was actually contracted to do 8 seasons, but Paramount decided to make Voyager and send TNG to the movies. Honestly, TNG still had strong legs to it even after 7 seasons (I think it was nominated for an emmy for best dramatic series), but because of the “wisdom” of Paramount sent them to the big screen where it utterly failed with the exception of First Contact. Maybe it was a warning sign/turning point of the franchise when they decided to kill Kirk off for really no good reason in my opinion. DS9 was a great show, but I think for the first couple of years it was stuck in TNG’s shadow, and fans didn’t catch onto it right away, and I think that starting up Voyager during DS9’s run started the downward spiral that ultimately culminated in Enterprise really failing to get off the ground; and in reality, the UPN network really just stunk, and I don’t even think it exists today. I think Paramount should have realized that they were going into the well too many times in terms of TV, and that having their own network instead of syndicating like they did with TNG and DS9 was eroding the franchise. Ultimately, Enterprise was more of a victim than a reason why the franchise is no longer on television.
Is there any hope of a return to Star Trek?
I really loved Enterprise, btw.
All of this IMHO: There will never be another live action Star Trek on TV. Why? The economics have changed. There is no network, including CBS, that can afford to invest the huge production budget numbers to make a JJ-type ST series. Ratings across all networks now are a fraction of what they were in the TNG days. Even Terra Nova stands very little chance of making back its $4M/ep costs and will likely crash and burn at 13 eps or less since America (as a whole) does not watch scifi of any kind. With the bulk of syndication of ST limited to primarily English-speaking countries, no one at CBS is crazy enough to toss away tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on an ST series which will never break even.
if they hadn’t have done season 3 it would have continued and hopefully we would have seen the romulan war! oh well, the books are awesme!
Although I didn’t watch any of the first run episodes until the last 5 or 6 episodes, I have to say in reruns and DVD I have really come to enjoy this show quite alot. I think they really got alot of unfair bashing over the years, and I wish the series HAD continued to develop over time. Certainly just as good as some of the other “modern era” Trek, and waaaaay better than Voyager, IMO.
I believe that Trek will return in 2016. It just needed a few years off the small screen to calm down and reset.
It was the continuing conveyor belt of Star Trek shows being churned out from Paramount that caused the franchise to “Burn Out”… GREED is the cause for Star Treks demise on television, not the shows themselves.
Paramount and CBS wanted to grab as many viewers as possible and make lots of money in the proccess instead of just allowing one show to run at a time and allow for the natural evolution of the Star Trek universe…
Having said that… I believe that TNG and DS9 went together nicely, however Voyager should have been held back until DS9 had finished for at least a year or two… then start Voyager with a decent episode on DS9 as a pilot episode, just to say goodbye to DS9 one last time and move on with the franchise…
The films aswell probably made little sense as there were so many series going on, but we were still rolling with the TNG crew… perhaps they could have capitalised on having more than one captain in the movies, or made the movies and series link or something…
STAR TREK WILL RETURN IN 2016… I guarentee
So what ALMOST killed Star Trek? If its not enterprise, then what?
I voted NO!!!> Ebterprise was a great show and it’s 4th season was fantastic. Only wish they could have gone at least 2 more.
I went and bought the Enterprise series four and to this day is the only complete star trek series from all the shows that I put my cash on. I have a lot of the original series DVDs and the Fan Collectives but not a complete series as such. That season was the best of times, not the worst of times. Did not get the show in its initial run, me being from the Caribbean island of Trinidad but got the reruns on SciFi and religously watched all four seasons. Long live Trip I agree the last episode sucked Harry Ballzzz.
Enterprise killed the franchise? The hell it did, far from it. I love ENT and think in years to come it will be rediscovered and appreciated alongside the rest of the series.
Loved all the Star Trek series except for maybe Voyager but even it had its moments.
ENTERPRISE was a darn good show. Could it have been better earlier on? Yes. The show had really found it’s legs in that last season. Manny Cotto did an exemplary job as the show runner. We would have had some great TREK ahead of us if it had survived for future seasons. Too bad that we’ll never get to see it.
Enterprise didn’t kill trek on TV. Berman and Braga stayed too long and should have had Manny Coto and Mike Sussman take over the show from the beginning. New and free lance writiers should have been allowed to submit story ideas.
An example is DS9, Berman and Braga had very little involvement in the day to day running of that show and most fans thought it was well done.
Voyager killed Trek on TV for me — in 2001, I was just completely burned out on Star Trek. I watched the pilot for ENT, liked it, but just had other priorities. I didn’t even know ENT had been cancelled until 2007, when I decided to catch up and see how the show was doing.
Now I’ve seen the whole show and (even including the first two seasons), it’s tied for my favorite Trek series with TOS. I really wish I’d given it a chance while it was on the air.
And agreed with those who don’t expect any Trek TV any time soon — until VFX gets a lot, lot, lot, lot cheaper, no network’s going to lay out the millions-per-episode for a big sci-fi show when they can get similar ratings for comparative pennies with America’s Top Shiniest Objects.
Hell, even Lucas can’t get a network to cough up for his Star Wars TV show, and that’s pretty much guaranteed to pull in a viewer or two.
I admit I was a little aprehensive about Enterprise. I had the assumption that they were trying to destroy what had already been established in other series based hundreds of years later. I questioned how this other ship named Enterprise existed without the slightest mention of it 200 years later, even though Kirk was mentioned on multiple occassions & Archer was a major player in the founding of the Federation. It took time, but I came to appreciate Enterprise like the other series and I was dissapointed that it ended prematurely.
Was Enterprise responsible for killing Star Trek? Absolutely not. They never stood a chance. Being used to 24th Century treknology and storys, moving back to 22nd century stories seemed a poor choice, just one of many that were made years prior in DS9 and Voyager. As I watch old episodes of all the series on DVD I do see many parallels too between episodes on different series. As if the basic storylines / principles were taken, and simply rewritten for the different characters rather than brand new material. (Which I suppose is to be expected, you eventually run out of material after 18 years)
I would sort of agree with Trip and disagree. To an extent, he’s right, I don’t think the show itself killed the franchise, it was already in decline before Enterprise even started. I just think people were same of the same types of stories and writing and wanted something new, and they weren’t getting it. That is what almost everyone was saying during Enterprise’s run. We were promised something different than the other series. There’s no reason it couldn’t have been…but what we got was more like a Voyager 2.0. The biggest failing of Trek TV is when Star Trek stopped telling stories that related to real-life, something it had done well in TOS, TNG and DS9, and it started just being about telling Star Trek stories.
Stargate is also going through a lull after being on nearly as long as TNG and its spinoffs were (15 years, 17 seasons) and I would argue the same thing about Stargate. SGU did not kill Stargate, in fact SGU was a great show IMO. But like Trinneer said, sci-fi is expensive. We learned that with SyFy’s recent cancellation of Eureka, despite the series being the #2 (sometimes #1) highest rated drama on the network. Stargate’s strength is in being set in our own time and being about US vs. Star Trek’s strength – being in the future and telling stories that relate to real-life events.
I think a big failing of both Voyager and Enterprise was compared to the other Trek series the character were very two-dimensional characters. It felt more like they were there to serve the stories, rather than the stories being there to serve them. In almost any regular story those shows did, you could pretty much replace one character with another and still tell that story.
Another thing that I think served as the demise of Enterprise is back in the 90’s when Trek was running there really was not much in the way of Sci-fi competition, except for a couple shows it was basically the only place for us sci-fi fans to get our fix. Around the early 2000’s is when the genre kind of exploded and you started seeing more shows pop up, from Smallville and Battlestar to Firefly and Farscape and Stargate SG-1.
Still, I’ve loved all the Star Trek and Stargate series, and in their worst moments both series are far better than just about anything else you could find on TV. Trinneer is also a fantastic actor and one of the best things about both Enterprise and Stargate Atlantis.