Star Trek currently has only a couple of things on the horizon, which is a far cry from a few years ago, when five shows were running concurrently. There is a thought that the upcoming Trek shows will eventually ramp up, however. This was a point that was amplified as we recently learned that Enterprise star Scott Bakula has had conversations about bringing Captain Archer back through a spinoff.
Thus far, Paramount+ hasn’t decided to move forward with the project, but that hasn’t stopped the former Enterprise writer and producer Mike Sussman from doing what he can to get fans excited about it potentially happening. In an interview with TrekMovie.com, he even talked about the spinoff diving into a moment we never saw on the original series, the Romulan War:
Something that has become clear to me from feedback since we first started talking about this, is fans saying they never got to see the Romulan War. We were waiting for it, and you guys just kind of skipped over it [in the Enterprise series finale]. And I share their frustration. So I would want to show [some of] that, and a particular pivotal moment that’s not just pure fan service. The scene would actually introduce a very important character for the show moving forward.
To be clear, Star Trek: Enterprise‘s ending remains the most divisive of the series, opting instead to pay homage to the The Next Generation era in its entirety rather than resolve major Enterprise plotlines. Beyond the goal of bringing Captain Archer back to television, it seems Mike Sussman and others are invested in picking up on other moments that fans of the prequel didn’t get to see.
That’s an exciting thing to hear, especially when Sussman discussed the added storytelling potential of leaning more into the Romulans. This included talking about their relationship with the Vulcans, and posing an interesting question:
It almost seems like the Federation, or the people of Earth as well as the Romulans, don’t want the Vulcans to know who they are. And why would that be? I think that’s a very intriguing question. I’ve certainly got my ideas.
The writer is referring to the fact that Romulans weren’t seen by Starfleet or the Federation until the TOS episode “Balance of Terror.” Of course, since that episode, we’ve seen La’an Noonien-Singh and Christopher Pike both encounter Romulans, albeit in alternate timeline adventures they retain the memories of.
As for characters from Star Trek: Enterprise that he’d like to bring back, Mike Stussman surprised me by name-checking actor Todd Stashwick, perhaps more well-known for his Picard Season 3 role as Captain Shaw. Before that, Stashwick played a Romulan disguised as a Vulcan named Talok. He is currently booked and is set to appear in Picard showrunner Terry Matalas’ Vision series for Marvel, so I can’t imagine he’d be available for this series if it were greenlighted anytime soon.
That may be just fine, because it doesn’t feel as though Star Trek is in the business of greenlighting any shows in the immediate future. The recent merger with Skydance seems to imply more work is being put into reigniting the franchise’s presence in theaters, though we could see more shows announced in the upcoming year. I’ll be interested to see if the Enterprise spinoff, spearheaded by Scott Bakula returning as Captain Archer, is one of them.
Star Trek: Enterprise is available to stream on Paramount+ right now. For those who haven’t seen it in a while, it certainly holds up. It may age better with a follow-up that helps wash away the taste of that terrible finale.