A Brief Guide to Star Trek

-planations or origins of things already seen in the
Star Trek
universe – became something of a fetish during
Enterprise
’s fourth year, much to the pleasure of many fans of the franchise. The series also explored long-standing discrepancies in the ongoing depiction of the Vulcans throughout
Star Trek
history, attempting to explain variations by creating a splinter Vulcan society who follow the teachings of Surak, a mythical guru who developed the race’s penchant for logic (as seen through Spock). This allowed the Vulcans of
Enterprise
to be more emotional, even war-like.
    The mirror universe of
The Original Series
and
Deep Space Nine
was revisited – again, a fan-pleasing gambit. The two-part story ‘In a Mirror Darkly’ was a prequel to
The Original Series
’ ‘Mirror, Mirror’ episode and saw the show sport a darker title sequence depicting the rise of the Terran Empire. The familiar
Enterprise
characters were reshaped as the most barbaric members of the evil Empire. Other episodes saw a return to the shuttle diplomacy practised by the 1960s
Enterprise
, featuringraces such as the Tellarites and Andorians, drawing on
The Original Series
second season episode ‘Journey to Babel’ (which had also introduced Spock’s parents). Although these connections were pleasing to
Star Trek
fans, it seems that was the only audience the show was reaching. This trio of episodes (‘Babel One’, ‘United’ and ‘The Aenar’) received the lowest Nielsen ratings for the show to date, leading network UPN to cancel
Enterprise
in February 2005. It was the first
Star Trek
show to have been cancelled by the network rather than wrapped up by its producers since the original series in 1969. The termination of
Enterprise
brought to an end eighteen years of continuous
Star Trek
on television and effectively finished off the franchise for the next four years.
    Even so, Manny Coto still had to wrap up the show. The result was a final set of episodes exploring terrorism (a thematic follow-up to the real-world driven Xindi attack storyline of season three).
RoboCop
actor Peter Weller starred as the leader of an anti-alien faction attempting to use an artificially created half-alien baby (using DNA from T’Pol and Trip) to rouse alien-fearing humans living in dread since the Xindi threat. This anti-immigration storyline was ripped from the day’s headlines, but was also seen by the producers as a dramatic narrative stepping-stone, taking humanity towards the utopian depiction that
Star Trek
creator Gene Roddenberry had intended in his original conception. The episodes were additionally packed with fan-pleasing references to other
Star Trek
shows, but came far too late to do anything to save the series from the ignominy of cancellation.
    As the end of
Enterprise
was announced before the writing of the final episode, and with the producers’ awareness that this was likely to be the last
Star Trek
seen on television for a while, the decision was taken to broadcast an unusual finale. Not only would ‘These Are the Voyages . . .’ be the final episode of
Enterprise
, it would also function as a franchise finale for the whole eighteen years of modern television
Star Trek
, from
The Next Generation
through
Deep Space Nine
and
Voyager
to
Enterprise
. This decision was yet another taken by
Star Trek
’slong-serving producers that would be extremely controversial with fans of the venerable franchise.
    The setting of the episode was not
Enterprise
’s time period of the twenty-second century – instead, events featuring the NX-01 crew were part of a holodeck recreation experienced on the
Enterprise-D
in 2370, observed by
The Next Generation
’s Riker and Troi. The events were even tagged as having taken place during a particular
The Next Generation
episode, season seven’s ‘The Pegasus’.
    Faced with a decision about whether to make a difficult admission concerning a cover-up to Captain Picard, Riker (a returning Jonathan Frakes) visits a simulation of the final mission of the original
Enterprise
, commanded by Captain Jonathan Archer. He sees the creation of the Federation, within which all following
Star Trek
captains will operate.
    Although co-writers Berman and Braga intended the episode to be (in Braga’s words) ‘a valentine’ to the fans, its intended recipients reacted badly, especially to the surprise death of ship’s engineer Trip Tucker. Fans of
Enterprise
in particular felt short-changed that their series’