Why Enterprise “Didn’t Live Up To Expectations”: Star Trek Actors & Director Give Reasons

Summary

• Enterprise's failure to live up to its promise was due to it becoming just another Star Trek show, rather than something different and unique.
• The show's direction and storyline were heavily influenced by the changing world post-9/11, which altered the initial goals and direction of Enterprise.
• Franchise fatigue and redundancy were contributing factors to Enterprise's cancellation, as it struggled to offer fresh and original content after the success of previous Star Trek series.

Star Trek: Enterprise actors Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating, as well as director James L. Conway, discuss the reasons why the prequel series only lasted 4 seasons and struggled to find an audience. Enterprise was the fourth Star Trek series of producer Rick Berman's tenure, and it was the only show not to run 7 seasons like Star Trek: The Next Generation. Enterprise's cancelation in 2005 concluded that era of Star Trek, and there would be no Star Trek TV series for 12 years until Star Trek: Discovery launched in 2017.
On The Shuttlepod Show, hosts Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating, producer Mark Cartier, and director James L. Conway, who helmed Star Trek: Enterprise's series premiere as well as other accilamed episodes, gave solid reasons as to why the prequel ultimately failed to live up to its initial promise. Check out their quotes and watch the video of The Shuttlepod Show below:

James L. Conway: I think the show didn’t live up to the expectation of it being a different show. It just became another Star Trek show instead of taking the whole idea of a prequel and new characters and doing something different. It just felt, I think, very familiar to the audience.

Connor Trinneer: I also think that our world changed so radically with 9/11. It changed our show. That maybe the initial goal for Enterprise had changed when everything changed. Our show changed. We had the Xindi. We had season 3 that was a serial arc for a whole season, which hadn’t been done…

Dominic Keating: It was in response to 24’s success, too. The one arc…

Mark Cartier: Well also, it was on UPN, which is not where I would want my show to be…