Braga On Launching 'Enterprise'

Executive Producer Brannon Braga spoke recently about the difficulties involved in getting Enterprise off the ground.

"Quite frankly, the only real hurdle we had to overcome when trying to get Enterprise off the ground was that some people weren’t totally sold on the idea," Braga told TV Zone Magazine, via the Great Link. "There were a few individuals at the studio who wondered, and perhaps rightly so, 'Shouldn't Star Trek be a show about always moving forward? Shouldn't it be in the 24th century and beyond? Is it the right thing to go backwards? The audience knows what happens already.'

"If you stop and think about it, though, the latter comments doesn't hold water. It's all fiction, and Sci-Fi to boot, which means that anything can happen and at any point in time," he continued.

"As a result of all this it took a while to get the programme going but it was a blessing in disguise. It would have been a real shame had this series premiered while Voyager was still on the air. The show definitely needed its own space, and that's what it got."

Braga acknowledged that the show didn't get it right all of the time. "It wasn't a perfect season - It's important to note that I speak only for myself here. I'm not speaking for Rick Berman or Paramount Pictures," he said. "On a creative level, and I feel this way after every season of a Trek show, there were some disappointing episodes. And nine times out of ten it usually boils down to the fact that every week we have to film a new one. That means we need to have a script ready every seven days. It's non-stop. You don't have any breaks built in. I don't think a lot of people realise this."

"So unfortunately, there were some bad stories and my heart breaks when that happens. But out of 26 episodes, you're bound to have a few duds. Even West Wing has one every now and then."

Much more from Brannon Braga, including his thoughts on the high points of season one, 'Broken Bow' and the Trek phenomenon can be found in TV Zone Special #47, out not in the UK. Extracts from the interview have been made available online here at the Great Link.

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