07-21-01 TV Guide Interveiws Rick Berman Earlier, TV Guide interviewed Rick Berman, the cocreator of Star Trek: Enterprise. I was able to get my hands on a copy of the edition of TV Guide, and am presenting it to you here, for those of you who weren't able to see the article. UPN's new fall series, Enterprise, starring Scott Bakula as Captain Jonathan Archer, is the fourth spin-off based on the late Gene Roddenberry's original 1966-69 intergalactic classic, Star Trek-and it has already launched as many rumors on the Internet as there are drones in Borgville. In this exclusive preview, we seperate fact from sci-fi with the show's cocreator and executive producer, Rick Berman. TV Guide: It's said that Enterprise is different from all previous Trek series-but just how different is it? Rick Berman: Enterprise is set in the 22nd century, only 150 years from today. After three Trek spin-offs that took place in the 24th century, we needed something dramatically different [because] every time we go forward, we end up with ships that go faster and species that are creepier, but we don't really go-as Roddenberry put it-where no man has gone before. For Picard or Sisko or Janeway, space travel and aliens and phaser fights were all just part of the job. There was very little awe. So we wanted to go back to a time when space was truly new. TVG: Give us the scoop on the ship. What's the number? What's the warp drive? RB: The number is NX-01. It's not a USS Enterprise because there is no Federation yet. That's decades to come. This Enterprise is a ship from the Earth organization Starfleet, headquartered in San Fransisco. What we have created is a halfway mark between the engine capabilities in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact" [when humanity first made contact with alien beings] and the time of Captain Kirk. After almost a century of having Vulcans patronizing us-during which they were giving us technical assistance at a slow and frustrating rate because they did not feel we were ready to go out into space-humans have finally developed an engine that will allow us to go warp 5, which is much more that five times the speed of light. TVG: Early buzz from the set says the Enterprise is more like a submarine that a spaceship. RB: In the captain's ready room, you can bump your head if you don't watch out. The beams are that low. During the design stage, we spent some time on a nuclear submarine that was in port, getting a feel for what confined, contained military living quarters are like. But our sets are still something to behold. The bridge has more depth than width-unlike previous brides we've seen-and it has 80 plasma screens built into it. In designing various rooms, [veteran Trek production stage designer] Herman Zimmerman has worked with some intriguing new spacial shapes-even though the ship is compact, much more like a contemporary submarine or a contemporary space shuttle than the opulent ships we know. TVG: What about the futuristic gadgetry fans love so much? RB: The terrific thing about this for longtime fans is that they'll get to see the development of all the technological gadgetry and capabilities that have become part of the Trek mythos. They'll see them in their infant, trail-and-error stages, before they end up being what we know them to be. Also, in placing the series closer to the present, it allows us to make the characters more contemporary. We don't have those flawless Rodennberry humans. We have characters who sometimes wear sneakers and jeans. TVG: Doesn't this retro format limit you to species we already know? RB: Absolutley not. In fact, there are some species in Enterprise that will have the audience wondering, "Hey, how come we don't know these people by the time the 23rd- and 24th-century shows roll around?" And there are good reasons for that, as we will find out as Enterprise unfolds. We have some very eerie themes in this series, specifically with a genetically enhanced race of villians, the Suliban, that we meet in the pilot and will meet again and again. We will learng the Suliban-who were formerly a relativley unimportant species-have now gotten very important very quickly. They are being given technical information and assistance-particularly in regard to genetic engineering-from the distant future, where there is a temporal cold war going on. One of the fronts of the war is the 22nd century. But whom the Suliban are taking instructions from and for what purpose are things that will remain very veiled and spooky. There is a scary horror element added to it. And a supernatural element. TVG: The look of the Klingons has changed over time. How will you deal with that? RB: We will take creative license. We established the [most recent] Klingon look with Work on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and we're going to stick with that. The Klingons in the last two or three trek films with Kirk and Spock looked like the Worf-type Klingons, not like the Klingons in the original series. But we'll take license with many things. Look at the computer on the desk of Picard or Janeway. They are no where near as streamlined as computers you can buy right now in 2001. How can we create for Enterprise a communicator even more primitive than Kirk's when Nokia and Motorola have communicators today that are far more compact and cool-looking than Kirk's ever was? That said, I would like to think that most everything about this show is going to be different. We're dealing with a 22nd-century ship, which holds a crew of 70 or 80 and is not all sleek, smooth Plexiglas like the ships we've seen before. TVG: What does Scott Bakula bring to the party? RB: Scott brings great charm and a laid-back quality as Jonathan Archer. He's almost a Han Solo-type boyish hero, which is quite fresh for Star Trek. He is nothing like Captain Kirk or the captains I've been involved with. He is very, very down-to-earth, not a buttoned-down captain like Picard. We wanted someone with a really contemporary feel, somebody who is an exciting and excited human being, someone who is extraordinarily likeable. This is the first Trek series with a captain who already has a big following and a big sci-fi following [Bakula starred in the 1989-93 series Quantum Leap]. TVG: Tell us about the crew. RB: Charles "Trip" Tucker III [played by Connor Trinneer] is our chief engineer, a bit of a cowboy and the second-ranking human on the vessel. He has a certain wit and charm that is disarming even to our Vulcan first officer, T'Pol. She's played by Jolene Blalock, who is not only a great actress but also a whole lot of wonderful lady to look at. TVG: Which is a sore subject with a lot of Web Trekkers. They're having trouble with the concept of T'Pol being the Enterprise version of Seven of Nine. Granted, Blalock is a major dish, but how sexy can-or should-a stoic, emotionless Vulcan be? RB: Well, Kim Cattrall was a pretty damn sexy Vulcan [in the 1991 film "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"], so I don't think we're starting anything new. T'Pol is certainly going to be a sensual young woman. TVG: In a Vulcan cat suit? RB: Those rumors are not true. She'll be dressed as a Vulcan officer. TVG: So there's a big Vulcan-Earthling animosity? RB: Our captain, as well as most of the other Starfleet people we'll come to know, does have a certain animosity toward the Vulcans. T'Pol being assigned to the ship will cause problems for her human counterparts. TVG: Wasn't this character originally envisioned as T'Pau, the younger version of the Vulcan seen in the original series? RB: That's not the case anymore. TVG: Back to the crew. RB: We have Lt. Cmdr. Malcolm Reed-played by Dominic Keating-who is a British tactical security munitions officer. Malcolm is quite proper, rather shy with the ladies, brought up in a military English family, but is someone who loves to blow things us. Our communications officer, Hoshi Sato [Linda Park], is a young Japanese genius linguist, who can learn a language frighteningly quickly. Because universal translators are in their infant stages, they don't work a lot, very often they don't work at all-so Hoshi has to be the captain's right hand for understanding alien languages and getting through some hairy situations. Our helmsman, Ensing Travis Mayweather [Anthony Montgomery], is what we call a "space boomer." Je was born in space, to parents who worked on freighters and transport vessels; and even though he is the youngest of the regular characters, he has logged more space hours than anybody on the ship. The captain has been a Starfleet officer for maybe 15 years, but the amount of space he's experienced [was] quite limited prior to the development of warp 5. Our ships doctor, Phlox [John Billingsley], is a wonderful, strange alien gentleman who just happens to be pulled into this group as a result of the mystery that starts the pilot episode. He's a master of many different alien forms of medicine. He keeps strange little critters in his sick bay. TVG: Word is Enterprise is a much steamier, lustier Trek. True? RB: We're certainly not going to be avoiding [sex] with Captain Archer. What can I say? He's single and healthy.