Star Trek: Enterprise was doomed from the start, it wasn’t UPN’s fault

Star Trek: Enterprise was doomed from the start, but it had little to do with UPN.

Star Trek: Enterprise is one of my favorite all-time series. The characters, the universe-building, the design of the ship, and the uniforms. It all resonates with me. Yet, I can speak first hand as a long-time Star Trek fan, that the show never appealed to me when it first premiered on UPN.

CBR recently wrote an article about how the failure of Enterprise was due to how the Paramount-owned network, UPN, handled the show. There’s no doubt that there is some truth there, UPN could’ve done more with the series but the show’s handling of it wasn’t the issue.

It was the entire concept and execution. Fans were turned off the show for a variety of reasons, from the name (it didn’t include ‘Star Trek’ at first). the prequel status and the fact we were some-15 years into Star Trek being on television come the fall.

There was an oversaturation of the product, even as far as Star Trek fans go. The show was doomed to fail from the start

Star Trek: Enterprise was never the hit that even the stars thought it was

In the article, they cite Star Trek: Enterprise star Scott Bakula, who claims that the show was mishandled, despite the show being the “highest-rated show on the network.” Now, that’s just not true. While at one time the show did big numbers early in its run, runoff from the debut of a pilot is expected and unpreventable.

Outside of that, however, we have data to suggest that Enterprise was never the champion of the network that Bakula claims and CBR suggests.

According to TV Ratings Guide, we know where Enterprise was falling in the ratings on UPN by the third season. Enterprise was 7th in 2003-2004 (ENT’s 3rd season) on UPN alone. The top-earning show was America’s Top Model, then WWE’s SmackDown, followed by Girlfriends at third, followed by Half & Half, Eve, and the Parkers. All of whom did better numbers than Enterprise.

And if you want to go back even further, in the show’s second season, they were just third on the network. In the 2002-2003 season, Enterprise was at 3rd in network rankings, behind the No. 1 ranked show on UPN, SmackDown, followed by One on One at No. 2. It did track better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer after UPN took over the show from The WB.

And the thing that neither CBR or Bakula cites is that it cost more to produce Enterprise than it did to produce WWE’s SmackDown (which the WWE paid for) or America’s Top Model.