Summary
- Season 4's Mirror Universe episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise brought renewed energy to the show but unfortunately coincided with the news of its cancellation.
- The cancellation of Enterprise after just 4 seasons was due to factors such as low ratings, a regime change at the network, and franchise fatigue.
- The cast initially expected the series to run for 7 seasons, but the cancellation put an end to any potential for Enterprise movies and left fans wondering about what could have been.
Star Trek: Enterprise season 4's Mirror Universe episodes ended up making the sad end of the prequel series. Enterprise season 4 found a new creative energy thanks to showrunner Manny Coto, who wove in more elements from Star Trek: The Original Series. Coto was able to indulge his love of the Mirror Universe with the Enterprise two-parter, "In a Mirror, Darkly," where Scott Bakula and the Enterprise cast got to play evil alternate reality versions of the NX-01 Enterprise crew. Unfortunately, bad news arrived during the production of Enterprise's Mirror Universe saga.
The Star Trek oral history "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years" by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross notes that "It was during filming of “In a Mirror, Darkly"… that the [Star Trek: Enterprise] cast and crew learned that season four would be the show’s last. While this was not surprising, it did come as a tremendous disappointment to everyone involved who could feel the show belatedly gaining its space legs throughout the season." However, Enterprise's cancelation didn't surprise Scott Bakula. Read his response to UPN pulling the plug on Enterprise below:
Everybody is saying, “seven years, seven years, seven years,” and I’m saying, “Not so fast everybody, because the world has changed and the situation we’re in with UPN is different than if we were syndicated.” And then everything else blew up around us and a lot of changes happened at the network. I said, “You can’t plan on seven years,” and that meant with the storylines also. There needed to be a sense of urgency and let’s not just meander and do as many episodes as we can in seven years and everybody goes away. That was kind of my drumbeat underneath it all, let’s really try and focus on the right now with every episode and every day on the set.
