After three successful seven-year runs on television, Paramount was eager for Star Trek‘s second wave to keep flowing. Against the protests of longtime producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, the studio insisted on another series. The two collaborated to create Star Trek: Enterprise, which moved the storytelling from the 24th Century backwards 200 years to Earth’s first Warp 5 starship. While the series still had many familiar elements, Enterprise rarely used Star Trek‘s iconic transporters in favor of sleek shuttles to get the characters from place-to-place.
Multiple featurettes on the complete series Blu-ray release of Star Trek: Enterprise detail how the show came to be. In a conversation between Berman and Braga, the series co-creators discuss the opposition they faced in trying to evolve Star Trek beyond what they’d been doing for the previous dozen years. Still, despite the pushback they received, Enterprise’s pilot episode is still the franchise’s best. The technological advancements in visual effects and the experience of artists at every level of production over the past decade has helped them tell a perfect story. Even though Captain Archer uses the transporter for the first time by the episode’s end, the series still committed to using the “shuttlepod” as a primary means of transport for the crew.
Why Star Trek Introduced the Transporter in The Original Series
Which Star Trek Series Had the Best Mirror Universe Episodes?
Star Trek often visits its evil parallel dimension, called the Mirror Universe, but which of the man series who travel there told the best stories?
Of all of Star Trek’s iconic technology, the transporter is perhaps the best known, even by those who aren’t fans. “Beam me up, Scotty,” became a national catchphrase despite never actually being said on the series. However, transporters exist simply because the production needed to save money and move the story along. “I would blow the whole budget…just in landing the [ship] on a planet,” series creator Gene Roddenberry said in The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. “[T]he transporter idea was conceived, so we could get our people down to the planet fast…and get our story going by page two.”
However, by the Rick Berman era of Star Trek, the transporter was less a convenience and more a storytelling problem to be overcome. When the crew of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation found themselves in trouble planet-side, the writers needed to figure out a way to disable the transporters. Otherwise, the crew on the ship could beam the characters to safety, obliterating the tension and stakes. The technology was still useful, however. In both The Original Series and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the transporter was the primary way to get to the Mirror Universe. Similarly, Star Trek: Voyager used it, along with a unique alien flower, in the Season 2 episode “Tuvix,” which presented the show’s biggest moral dilemma.
Enterprise’s Use of Shuttles Was One Way to Show It Was a Prequel
William Shatner Almost Radically Changed Enterprise’s Final Season
Star Trek: Enterprise Season 4 almost featured a cameo from Willam Shatner as Captain Kirk – but not the version that fans would have expected.
In the Blu-ray special features, Braga and Berman noted the introduction of phasers and the transporter in the pilot undercut their goal. Rather than build up to the introduction and first uses of this technology, it happened immediately. The climax of the pilot episode shows Chief Engineer Trip Tucker using the transporter to beam Captain Archer back to the ship and out of danger. The slow introduction of these familiar elements was supposed to be part of the fun of the prequel. “Once that’s done, it’s done,” Berman said. The same “gag” (a term for a visual effects sequence) was used in the Season 3 finale in a similar way.
However, just because it happened a handful of times didn’t mean the fear of the transporter was gone from the crew. “We never really used the transporter,” Braga said, “we always took these shuttlepods which we spent a lot of money on.” Other than an episode in which the developer of the transporter visits the ship in Season 4, the primary mode of transport was the shuttle. One of the standout episodes of Enterprise Season 1 was “Shuttlepod One” in which Tucker and security officer Malcolm Reed believe the ship was destroyed. The two are trapped in the vehicle with nowhere to go and deliver a brilliant two-hander episode.
Other technology, such as the “phase pistol” and the universal translator became as ubiquitous as they were in every other iteration of Star Trek. Phaser fights and being able to understand aliens who don’t speak English are, like the transporter originally, simply better for storytelling. Thus, other than the lack of the United Federation of Planets, the crew’s use of shuttles instead of beaming was the clearest reminder to the audience this show was set before Captain Kirk or, even, Captain Pike took to the stars on their continuing missions.
Star Trek: Enterprise’s Shuttlepods Were Expensive and Necessary
Why Star Trek: Enterprise’s Most Controversial Torture Scene Was Necessary
One of the most controversial scenes in Star Trek is when Enterprise Captain Jonathan Archer tortures a prisoner, but it was prescient and necessary.
One way Enterprise was unique from earlier Star Trek series was the absence of physical models for the ships. The NX-01 Enterprise was a completely digital model from a design by Doug Drexler. Inside the vessel, however, there were physical buttons, cramped spaces and other elements that blended the modern aesthetic of sci-fi television while still looking “older” than the 24th Century LCARS touchscreens. The shuttlepods were digital models for the exterior shots with a practical set for the interior, just like previous shows.
They were, ironically, sleeker and less boxy than those seen in Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation. However, they lacked the small warp nacelles and could only be used for shorter trips. The ship-to-ship battles and exploration of new planets weren’t much different in Enterprise. Making the shuttlepods the crew’s primary mode of transport from the NX-01 to planets, asteroids or wherever else added a unique dynamic. It also allowed the away teams to be in good dramatic trouble without needing an ion storm or other sci-fi reason the transporters couldn’t do the job.
Still, as Roddenberry knew back in the 1960s, the vehicles took valuable time from the story and money from the budget. The shuttles had to be animated for each use. The show needed a permanent shuttle set, to show the actors as they travel. A full-size shuttlepod set piece and prop was built to show the actors getting in and out of them, as well. So, if the shuttlepods were as expensive as Braga suggested, they were worth every penny.
Star Trek: Enterprise Committing to Shuttles Also Made Transporters More Dramatic
Star Trek Theory: Picard Retconned the Divisive Enterprise Series Finale
One shot of the NX-01 in Star Trek: Picard suggests the Star Trek: Enterprise series finale didn’t happen the way fans think – and that may be good.
As mentioned, the first time a Starfleet officer traveled by transporter happened in the Enterprise pilot, “Broken Bow.” Captain Archer is rescued at the last minute. In the Season 3 finale, the away team sent to an alien weapon-ship to destroy Earth is rescued the same way. However, Archer doesn’t make it in time, subverting the audience’s expectation. Ironically, he is transported by a time-traveling Starfleet officer, to set up the cliffhanger ending that forced Paramount to renew Enterprise for Season 4.
In Season 2’s “Vanishing Point,” Tucker and communications officer Hoshi Sato are stranded on a planet and must be beamed back to the NX-01 Enterprise. The episode highlights Sato’s fear of the transporter, and when she returns to the ship her birthmark had moved. She then starts to lose corporeality, meaning the crew can no longer see or hear her. The episode goes on like this until the very end, when it’s revealed the whole story was a hallucination she experienced while in the transporter’s “pattern buffer” for all of eight seconds. It’s a story that could only work on Enterprise.
Because the crew so often relied on shuttles instead of a transporter, it helped one of Star Trek‘s oldest inventions feel fresh. Instead of worrying about ways to overcome the ease of beaming out of trouble, it simply wasn’t an option save for the most dire circumstances. While Berman feared they’d blown the novelty of the technology in the pilot, the storytellers pulled it off. When the crew did use the transporter instead of the shuttlepods, it came as a pleasant surprise rather than seeming like the obvious choice.
Star Trek: Enterprise is available to own on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital and streams on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Enterprise
A century before Captain Kirk’s five-year mission, Jonathan Archer captains the United Earth ship Enterprise during the early years of Starfleet, leading up to the Earth-Romulan War and the formation of the Federation.
- Release Date
- September 26, 2001
- Creator
- Rick Berman and Brannon Braga
- Cast
- Scott Bakula , John Billingsley , Jolene Blalock , Dominic Keating , Anthony Montgomery , Linda Park , Connor Trinneer
- Rating
- TV-PG
