20 years in the past, Star Trek: Enterprise got here to a (relatively disappointing) finish after 4 seasons, and with that additionally concluded the Star Trek TV run that had been going since The Subsequent Technology premiered in 1987. However the franchise has been going robust once more on the small display entrance since 2017 for these with a Paramount+ subscription, with Unusual New Worlds Season 3 presently airing on the 2025 TV schedule and Starfleet Academy dropping someday subsequent yr. Now it seems that Scott Bakula, who starred as Jonathan Archer in Enterprise, helps put collectively a follow-up sequence for his character that sounds intriguing.
Enterprise producer Michael Sussman, who additionally wrote 22 episodes within the sequence, knowledgeable TrekMovie that he first considered an concept to revisit Archer across the time Star Trek: Picard Season 3 was ending. Sussamn joked in an e mail with Bakula about once they’ll “see Star Trek: Archer on Paramount+,” then realized there was an precise nugget of an concept there. Particularly, Sussman and Bakula are eager to discover Archer’s tenure as president of the United Federation of Planets, they usually need this present to have the identical sort of mature tone that the Star Wars sequence Andor had. As Sussman put it:
One in all my aspirations could be that the sequence might do for Star Trek, what Andor did for Star Wars. It’s a present the place you’ll be able to inform grownup tales about adults and inform them in a really grounded, sensible manner.
The premise for this potential present originates from the Enterprise episode “A Mirror Darkly Half II,” the place the evil Mirror Universe learn details about his Prime Universe counterpart discovered within the database of the USS Defiant, a Prime Universe ship beforehand seen the Unique Sequence episode “The Tholian Net” that had been despatched again in time. There was a graphic exhibiting that Archer entered the political life after retiring as an admiral in Starfleet and finally achieved his presidential place within the Federation, which based six years after the principle occasions of Enterprise, as seen within the controversial sequence finale. Nicely, it seems it was Michael Sussman himself who got here up with this piece of trivia.
Sussman and Scott Bakula are calling this sequence Star Trek: United, with the previous additionally evaluating it to reveals like The West Wing, Homeland and The Diplomat. Upon getting Bakula’s approval, Sussman took his “high-level overview” of United to Secret Hideout, the manufacturing firm run by Alex Kurtzman, who’s been overseeing the Star Trek franchise’s TV facet. The assembly apparently went nicely, and Sussman had been getting ready a follow-up pitch going over “a pilot story, character arcs, and episode concepts.”
Nevertheless, Secret Hideout and Paramount determined to not transfer ahead with additional improvement on the thought, and Michael Sussman and Scott Bakula have gone on to work on a non-Star Trek challenge collectively. Following Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount, Sussman is hopeful that he and Bakula can re-pitch Star Trek: United to the brand new regime. There was even a degree the place they determined to maneuver the present’s setting from Earth to the planet Babel with the intention to thematically differentiate itself from Starfleet Academy, although it’s unclear if that change caught.
Whereas Star Trek: Enterprise is on no account my favourite of the franchise’s reveals, I did like Scott Bakula’s portrayal of Jonathan Archer, and Star Trek: United feels like a great way to meet up with him in a special sort of surroundings placing his political savvy to good use. If the day comes that United is added to the checklist of upcoming Star Trek TV reveals, depend on CinemaBlend to move that information alongside.