'Enterprise' Is About Firsts, Says Braga

Each successive Star Trek series has had to establish its own identity in order to succeed. According to executive producer Brannon Braga, Enterprise will lend a new dimension to the saying that there's a first time for everything.

"I would definitely say it's about firsts," he told Gregory L. Norris and Laura A. Van Vleet at Trek Galaxy. "It's about what it would be like for you and me to go out there in space. These are trained astronauts, but not all of them are entirely comfortable being on a warp ship meeting creepy aliens. They've never done it before now. There is a corny line we keep using about 'making history with every light year'. Every step these people take is being scrutinized back on earth. Nothing is taken for granted. So Enterprise is about making history."

Braga spoke about what viewers can look forward to in the forthcoming season. "Oh, a lot of spookiness!" he said. "You are going to see the Suliban again, our villains in Enterprise. We are going to reveal a little more about the Temporal Cold War that's going on. But for the most part, we are going to be doing some exploring, and the crew is going to find some really weird stuff. We are going to see one of the characters totally freak out, and want to go home early on. We are going see the Vulcan/human rift come out again in a very dramatic episode. We are going to see a surprising character development with T'Pol. It's going to be a lot of firsts."

This theme is set to give Enterprise a brand new edge. "You know, even having the Enterprise pull up to another spaceship to say hi is a big deal to this crew," Braga said. "They don't have any of the famous Star Trek protocols yet, so it's going to have a different feeling from other shows that we've done. And we are already finding that out as we cut together the first episode now. It feels different from anything that's gone before. It feels more naturalistic somehow, and realistic, and it's totally cool. It's great to work on."

Currently viewers have only seen glimpses of the series through the UPN promotional trailers, and according to the producer, they're not a patch on the real thing. "Remember, these clips you are seeing are from raw footage," he said. "You are not yet seeing opticals or special effects yet. It's going to look ten times better when you see the actual pilot. The Suliban have subcutaneous pigment sacs, like Octopi have on their skin. This allows them to not become fully invisible, but take on the colourization of backgrounds. It's a very imperfect camouflage. The Suliban are bald, and they have a really weird texture to their skin, and we've came up with a makeup design that is really unique and very cool looking."

To read more from Braga, including his hopes for the series and how he and Rick Berman developed the concept, the full interview at Trek Galaxy.

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