Berman Answers Fan Questions
2 min readIn the first part of a two-part interview, Rick Berman answered several questions regarding his involvement with Star Trek.
Question topics include Ron Jones, hypercritical Star Trek fans, Enterprise and its finale, Star Trek versus Babylon 5, DVD/Blu-ray commentaries and having Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise airing on UPN rather than on a higher-rated network.
Had Berman had his way, Enterprise would have aired on Fox or NBC. “When it came time to create Enterprise, I had the head of both Fox and NBC call me and really strongly ask me if I would see what could be done about their getting the show,” Berman explained. “I went to the people at Paramount, kind of excited, and their attitude was they could not do it, that they had to stay true to UPN, which was their baby.
But UPN’s demographic changed over time, which did not help the ratings for Enterprise. “So, Enterprise, as Voyager before it, remained on UPN and what happened to UPN was there were changes within the ownership and direction and the executives that were running that network. It slowly started becoming more of a teenage and female network than it had been conceived to be when Voyager began. As a result, it was problematic for us because we were on a network that was being watched by an audience that not attracted to Star Trek, and it affected our ratings.”
Even now, fans are left wondering what a S4 finale for Enterprise would have been had S5 been commissioned. “We had no idea [what that kind of finale could have been],” said Berman. “We hadn’t gotten that far. We were probably shooting six or seven shows earlier at the time that we got canceled and we had not really decided what the season-four ending episode was going to be. It might have been a cliffhanger or it might not have, but we hadn’t made that decision before learning that the plug was being pulled.”
About The Author
