Brannon Braga now reflects on the show’s debut year, saying Season 1 stumbled due to burnout and a shifting writing staff after the pilot. He explains that the team assembled to craft the early episodes was larger and largely unfamiliar with Trek’s voice, which cooled the energy behind the new series.
Director James L. Conway, who directed four Season 1 installments including the pilot, agrees the opener was strong but notes the rest of the year drifted into repetition and fatigue. He corroborates Braga’s point that the hiring approach contributed to a lack of the seasoned Trek writers the franchise had relied on in the past.
The season’s central conceit, the Temporal Cold War with competing time-travel factions, didn’t gel with the crew’s grounded mission of humanity’s first voyage, leaving the season feeling unfocused. Lead actor Scott Bakula has said the relentless 26-episode workload also pressured the show, affecting its quality.
After Enterprise ended in 2005, Star Trek went quiet for several years before the 2009 reboot film. There’s renewed talk about exploring Archer’s later career in a new light—potentially as Federation president in the early days of the federation—but Paramount has not yet moved forward with that project. Still, the idea shows how some creators want to re-energize Trek by reimagining its era.
Source: Original article
