Bakula As Part of Star Trek Legacy
2 min readScott Bakula, currently starring on TNT’s Men of a Certain Age with Ray Romano and Andre Braugher, spoke about J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek and his own contribution to the Star Trek legacy, as well as Quantum Leap‘s fan base and modern social media.
Even though his time on Star Trek: Enterprise is in the past, Bakula still feels that he is part of the ongoing Star Trek story. “You’re part of the lore and history of this forty-five year or so legacy. I don’t think there’ll ever be anything like it again and I have to say I’m honored to have been a part of it.’
Like many other Star Trek actors, Bakula took time to see the latest Star Trek movie, and he gave his opinion on it as well as the performance of Chris Pine, the newest Star Trek captain. “I saw the movie last summer and thought he [Pine] was fantastic,” said Bakula. “I though the movie was fantastic; I thought they did an incredible job of creating a new franchise for the studio. I thought it was great.”
Bakula also spoke about another popular series on which he worked, Quantum Leap. It didn’t take long into the Quantum Leap series until Bakula realized how passionate the fan base for the show was. “I think we knew by the end of the first nine episodes, the first half season that aired, that we had a passionate fan base because the fans basically kept us on the air,” Bakula explained. “When they switched us to Wednesday nights they made a big announcement and rallied the troops, back in the old days before there were emails and Twitters to use; the news went out the old fashioned way, in newspapers.”
“We knew we had a strong fan base but I kind of marvel that we’re almost twenty-one years since we went on the air and as I go around the world, the amount of people that are still coming up and acknowledging the show is kind of amazing,” said Bakula. “I don’t think any of us anticipated that.”
Nowadays, fans have new technologies to keep up with their favorite actors and shows and the days of letters have given way to Twitter and Facebook. “It’s just so different now,” said Bakula. “When Chuck was making a big appeal to their fans they have access to this new way to reaching people that we never used to have. I remember NBC made a commercial with Warren Littlefield where they dumped letters on top of him throughout the commercial and he was like, ‘Alright, alright, we’re bringing Quantum Leap back.’ The idea of using that image of dumping letters on the head of a network in this day and age is just antiquity.”
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