Back in May of 2005, Star Trek: Enterprise ended its 4-season run to less than mediocre reviews. It was the end of an era. After nearly 40 years of (mostly) consistent programming, be it on television or the big screen, Star Trek’s impulse engines came to a full stop.
Thankfully, Star Trek returned the big screen in the 2009 J.J. Abrams alternate timeline/reboot, followed by Into Darkness in 2013 and Beyond in 2016. Though many Trek loyalists saw this new take as a far cry from the source material, it injected a much-needed boost of adrenaline in a staling franchise.
Cut to 2017, where the airwaves (or stream-waves, rather) are ready to activate their warp drives with Star Trek: Discovery, a new story in the prime timeline set 10 years before Kirk’s deep space mission on the Enterprise.
In that decade-plus gap, there have been many attempts to get Trek back on TV, as well as the big screen, that were not successful. Here’s a look at the shows and movies proposed to revive Star Trek between the time of the cancellation of Enterprise in 2005 and the premiere of Discovery this month.
1. Enterprise Season 5
Star Trek: Enterprise was an attempt to take Trek back to its roots; to rewind the clock back to when the Federation began to discover the spirit of adventure and exploration. It didn’t have an orchestral opening theme, but a crooning, soft rock track instead. It didn’t even have Star Trek in its title (at first).
Alas, the down-to-earth (for lack of a better term) series wound up being more of the same, and the series was almost cancelled after the second season. But the fans pleaded, and Paramount listened — for awhile. There were some changes to the series after that scare, including a new action-oriented plot, and putting Star Trek ahead of Enterprise in the title. Still, Enterprise could not find a clear course, and was officially cancelled after season 4 in 2005.
Enterprise writer and science consultant Andre Bormanis said at Star Trek Las Vegas last month that the show’s fifth season would have taken a look the relationship between Humans and Vulcans after the formation of the United Federation of Planets, showing it more like the way things were in Star Trek: The Original Series.
Executive Producer Brannon Braga said that the series would have also explored the Romulan War that led to the creation of the the neutral zone.
