Why Star Trek: Enterprise Considered Killing Scott Bakula's Captain Archer
The late Manny Coto only worked on "Star Trek: Enterprise" for two seasons, but during this brief stretch, the writer/showrunner attempted to leave his mark on the series by killing Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula). According to "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years," a self-described uncensored and unauthorized oral history written by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Coto wanted to kill Archer to infuse "Enterprise" with a little extra drama but co-creator Rick Berman vetoed the idea.
"I remember at one point we debated actually killing [Archer] as a way to inject a dramatic situation into the fourth season, where the characters now have to get used to someone brand-new coming on board," said Coto. "This person would have a totally different way of doing things ... and so you would have [all the] characters kind of butting heads against this individual ... that was one where [Berman] said no ... I probably would have done it if we had known we were going for seven seasons."
Coto added that removing Archer from the equation would have been a temporary situation because the show banked on Bakula to bring in viewers. It's possible that Berman rejected Coto's pitch because Bakula almost wasn't cast on "Enterprise" and he didn't want audiences to think that the actor was getting fired. It's also possible that the dropped narrative thread was too close to a stunt that UPN wanted to try.
Les Moonves wanted to replace Scott Bakula with a younger, trendier actor
It might seem strange in hindsight because the series is experiencing a second wind fueled by the cyclical nature of nostalgia. However, "Star Trek: Enterprise" struggled to build an audience in the early 2000s, so much so that every subsequent season pickup was a surprise. While the numbers weren't ideal, they were trending upward ... but UPN didn't believe in the show's staying power. That's why there are only four seasons and so many unresolved plotlines in "Enterprise" — the network pulled the plug. But before UPN lopped off the whole limb, the studio bigwigs suggested a more surgical approach.
According to "Inglorious Treksperts," a podcast co-hosted by Mark A. Altman and Daren Dochterman, former CBS CEO Les Moonves blamed Scott Bakula for the poor ratings and wanted him gone. During the episode "It's Been a Long Road: Revisiting Enterprise," producer Rob Meyer Burnett said, "[I was] interviewing many people [that] were involved with ['Enterprise'] and one of the highest-ranking members [of the production staff] told [me] flat out that [they were] told by Les Moonves to let Scott Bakula go. [Moonves] didn't like [Bakula's] performance ... and the person [I interviewed] basically told Les Moonves, 'no, I'm not going to do that,' and that person's career subsequent to 'Enterprise' going off the air was made very frustrating."
Burnett added that Moonves' decisions regarding "Enterprise" were often made from a place of active dislike for the franchise. While canceling the series and hating Bakula are among the lesser of Moonves' many alleged crimes, "Star Trek" fans are hopeful that Paramount will eventually write a new journey for Bakula: it could even happen in "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."