A Brief Guide to Star Trek

beginning with
Last Full Measure
and
The Good That Men Do
(both by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin), which revealed the holographic depiction of his demise was a fabrication covering up Tucker’s involvement with the shadowy Section 31 intelligence agency. According to the novels, Tucker faked his own death in order to be sent undercover to infiltrate Romulan space, aiming to prevent an interstellar war. These novels, and further follow-ups, presented an opportunity for the authors to expand upon the back-story and future of one of
Enterprise
’s most loved characters. It was an unusual example of those who police the expansion of the franchise in licensed spin-off material allowing an on-screen development to be superseded by ancillary material, a development that played well with Trip Tucker fans.
    Almost immediately after the demise of
Enterprise
, Rick Berman attempted to further prolong the
Star Trek
franchise by beginning development work on a new film to take place after the events of
Enterprise
but before those of the original
Star Trek
TV series. An executive reshuffle at Paramount put paid to Berman’s efforts and he was finally removed from controlling the
Star Trek
franchise after eighteen years in charge, the most influential person on its development after creator Gene Roddenberry himself.
    Berman was a television production professional, responsible for delivering hundreds of hours of technically complicated television on time and to broadcast standard over a period of eighteen years – no mean feat. He was not primarily a creative storyteller himself, but he’d been surrounded by key figures who’d used the
Star Trek
format in various ways to tell modern, meaningful stories. Key among those whom Berman had supported in their project to reshape Gene Roddenberry’s universe were Michael Piller, Ron Moore, Ira Steven Behr, Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga and Manny Coto.
    The opening episode of
Enterprise
in 2001 had attracted 12.5 million viewers, but the number of people watching regularly dropped to less than 6 million very quickly. By the final season that number had halved again to under 3 million viewers, with a series low of just 2.5 million in January 2005, resulting in cancellation. Based on the number of viewers alone, the show must be considered a failure, whatever narrative achievements may have been made. It was a downward spiral Rick Berman could not deny. ‘The show certainly had a great start. It got very good reviews and it had a huge audience for the first half dozen episodes and then it started to slip’, he said. ‘I could take the blame for it. I could put the blame into the scripts. I could put the blame into franchise fatigue. I don’t know why it didn’t work.’ Brannon Braga suggested that the reason for the cancellation was viewer fatigue, noting that ‘after 18 years and 624 hours of
Star Trek
, the audience began to have a little bit of overkill’.
    It would take almost exactly four years from the transmission of the final episode of
Enterprise
, but
Star Trek
would return – not on TV, but back on the big screen once more – and it would become bigger and more successful than ever before.

Chapter 12

Hollow Pursuits: Unmade
Star Trek

‘I think there is a need for the culture to have a myth. People look to
Star Trek
to set up a leader and a hearty band of followers. It’s Greek classical storytelling.’
William Shatner

    With the creation of so many stories for the ongoing
Star Trek
universe, it was inevitable that many often fully developed ideas for scripts would fall by the wayside. From the earliest days of the original
Star Trek
pilots through to the abandoned plans for the fifth season of
Enterprise
and beyond, to series ideas that were never progressed, storylines, characters and plots were developed that would never see the light of day. Perhaps the largest body of abandoned work came during the development of
Star Trek: Phase II
and
The Motion Picture
(discussed in chapter 5 ), but there have been many more untold adventures of Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer (and several other captains) through the years that now only exist as scripts filed away in Paramount’s archives.
    There were enough abandoned episodes from the three years of the original
Star Trek
series between 1966 and 1969 to have filled two additional seasons on air. Almost sixty storylines and script ideas were developed, some not far beyond just the basic idea stage, while others