Bakula Thinks 'Enterprise' Fell Victim To Viacom

Star Trek: Enterprise's Scott Bakula blamed UPN for the woes of his series but said it was impossible to predict that the people at Paramount who had supported the franchise would all be gone within four years.

"I would say simply that we've been on the wrong network for four years," Bakula announced in Star Trek Magazine (via TrekWeb). "That hardly ever happens, honestly. If you're on the wrong network you don't make it out of the first year. But because of a lot of history and positioning and, if you will, corporate synergy, we managed to stay alive for four years...we did manage to squeeze four years out of being at the wrong place."

Discussing how his character, Captain Jonathan Archer, developed over those four years, Bakula said that he liked him a lot at the start: "There were elements in the pilot of a guy who was basically inexperienced and raw and a little bit of a loose cannon." From there, "we got into an area for a while where he was awestruck. That worked and it had value, and I felt that near the end of Season Three and during this season we got into a maturing and a hardening and a toughening up of this guy."

Bakula was sorry not to have had more of an opportunity to see Archer relax, or to show that he was happier out in space exploring the universe without being constrained by the events back home. "We were very attached to the events of our world," he observed.

Because the show's run was abbreviated, Archer's personal life received little attention. "No one could have ever predicted the amount of upset within Viacom in the last four years, in terms of personnel changing and philosophies changing," said Bakula. "Timing is everything especially in television. We're a victim of that and at the same time, we got 98 hours of television out of it."

The complete interview is in Star Trek Magazine, which also has a poll surveying readers' favourite captains, characters, episodes and elements of the magazine among the questions. The excerpts above are from TrekWeb.

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