Brannon Braga regrets Enterprise finale episode
By Duncan Smith
More than a decade after the finale of Star Trek: Enterprise, showrunner Brannon Braga has expressed regrets over how the show ended.
Star Trek: Enterprise showrunner Brannon Braga didn’t shy away from justly apologizing to fans earlier this month at Star Trek Las Vegas. In what can only be described as the height of bad timing, the end of Enterprise came at the conclusion of its fourth season, after the show really seemed to be hitting its stride. That end was all the more difficult to take because the finale they aired for it went over poorly with fans, crew, cast, and basically the whole Trek world.
"I thought it was the coolest thing ever when we were writing it, the idea of doing a ‘lost episode’ of The Next Generation, but they’re going to the holodeck to look back at Enterprise, Rick and I thought was a great sendoff to Star Trek [the franchise as it existed in 2005], and it didn’t work out so well…It was a kind of a slap in the face to the Enterprise actors. I heard it from everybody, it was the only time Scott Bakula was ever mean to me. I regret it."
In essence, the finale was an episode in which Commander William Riker of The Next Generation was studying the last mission of the inaugural Enterprise under Captain Jonathan Archer. Rather than being a fitting send-off for a show that never really got its due, it ended up pleasing nobody. The cast of Enterprise was brushed aside and didn’t even get to star in their own going-away party.
Obviously, from the reactions Braga recounts, the cast made their feelings known. While there is no going back to fix things, at least Braga can take responsibility for what might have been the most disappointing episode of Star Trek ever aired.
Next: Is Seth MacFarlane's Orville on thin ice?
Currently, Braga is an executive producer on Seth MacFarlane’s Star Trek-influenced dramedy “The Orville”.