Bakula: 'We Just Started Up at the Wrong Time'

Scott Bakula blames timing and UPN's lack of promotional support for the demise of Star Trek: Enterprise, though he conceded, "if we hadn't started up when we did, we may not have ever started up."

Though the actor believes that if the show had been on a different network, he would now be preparing for a fifth season - "if we were where Stargate SG-1 was, in a different kind of syndicated land." He believes upheaval at the network and Paramount Pictures and the changing executive staffs contributed to the show's cancellation, Bakula told Starburst (via Sci Fi Pulse).

While he said that he and his fellow Enterprise cast members were very emotional in the final days of the series, Bakula added that they were "the short-terms" in terms of working on Star Trek, where some of the staffers had been on board since The Next Generation. "There were lots of tears," he admitted. "A lot of people had been here for 18 years, so a lot of people were saying goodbye."

Even so, added the Archer actor, it was the absence of people at the executive level that played the biggest role in the decision to cancel Enterprise. "There was a big mighty world swirling around us, and there are so many people that aren't here anymore. Paramount has radically changed from the top down in the short span that we've been here, as has UPN, as has CBS, as has Viacom. So the whole family has gone through this whole big shift," he noted.

Bakula finds it ironic that 20 years from now, Enterprise will likely still be watched on DVD, while UPN's continuing shows will vanish. "It's nothing against them; it's just that it's the nature of the genre."

For more, including Bakula's comments on the upcoming DVD release of Enterprise, see the new Starburst. These excerpts are courtesy Sci Fi Pulse.

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