Enterprise should’ve gotten the followup movie, not the “Justice Leauge of Star Trek”

The Next Generation era of Star Trek films had a fifth film planned but Enterprise deserved it more.

Star Trek: Nemesis killed the Star Trek film franchise for nearly seven years until they did the reboot, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t other films in the works. We’ve heard before from Brent Spiner that there was an idea in place to do a huge mashup of all the living villains and captains of the franchise.

Described as the “Justice League of Star Trek” It would’ve featured Jean-Luc Picard, James Kirk, Spock, presumably Kathryn Janeway, Benjamin Sisko, and even Jonathan Archer. That means the movie would’ve gone into production around 2003 or 2004 at the earliest. They would’ve squared off against the greatest living Trek villains, like Khan Noonien Singh, and the less than great villains, like Shinzon.

It would’ve been a very expensive film had it gone through, just to bring all of those talents on board, that’s why it didn’t happen. Yet, despite all that, Nemesis should’ve been the end of The Next Generation films regardless of any future film projects. The series had running for 15-plus years at that point and it was time to move on to a new property. That said, the idea shouldn’t have been the mash-up film idea or the reboot.

It should’ve been Enterprise getting their films.

Star Trek: Enterprise deserved their film franchise

It’s one thing to say that Star Trek: Enterprise deserved its film franchise, and another to say it would’ve been successful. The only way Enterprise would’ve gotten a film is if UPN/CW greenlit a television film franchise. At the point of Enterprise’s cancellation in 2005, the Star Trek television franchise was dead.

UPN failed them in so many ways and allowed the franchise to take a massive hit with how they produced, promoted, and marketed the series. Enterprise is a great show, it was burdened by a few bad ideas, like dropping “Star Trek” from the title, making it a prequel (which are always harder to sell), and not giving it at least a seven-season order from the jump like the other series got.

The show was great, the cast blended so well, but there was so much storytelling to still do. When Enterprise was launched by UPN, the idea was that Paramount (who owned UPN) would position the series to be the next film franchise once The Next Generation crew wrapped up.

That was always the plan and while the television series may not have had the fan support to make people think the film franchise could sustain a film series, the fact is they could have given them a single film to see if there was an audience.

With the right booking, the right management, and the write promotion, the film could’ve found the same success that Star Trek 2009 found, had they just given them a chance. Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know what an Enterprise film would look like.

But, never say never.