10 Reasons To Greenlight Star Trek: United NOW

8. Bakula Where He Belongs

William Shatner returned in Starfleet Academy (the game!), Patrick Stewart returned in Picard, and Kate Mulgrew returned in Star Trek: Prodigy. We may never truly see the return of Avery Brooks to Trek in live-action, yet if there is something that Star Trek fans enjoy, it's a good old returning commander.  

Scott Bakula hasn’t stopped working since Enterprise left the airwaves. For seven seasons, he anchored his own NCIS spinoff on CBS. He recently played Abraham Lincoln on stage — a wartime leader trying to hold his fragile union together, not unlike a former Starfleet captain. 

And by total coincidence, Bakula is right now the same age Jonathan Archer would be at the start of his presidency — as established in a biographical display seen in Enterprise’s In a Mirror, Darkly, Part Two.

When asked in interviews about a potential return to live action, Kate Mulgrew expressed her opinion that she would be open to it if there was a reason for it to happen. No vanity projects, in other words. Whether this was a gentle jab at Star Trek: Picard specifically, or a simple reading of the numerous legacy sequels and spin-offs that have popped up over the last two decades, is unknown. However, she raises an excellent point.

The world could simply be delivered Enterprise season five, and the audience may even enjoy it. However, United seems designed to take a version of Archer who has grown, not just in years, but in wisdom and experience. The third season of Enterprise saw a man pushed to his limits, breaking rules he had never believed possible. Scott Bakula more than delivered on this in the early 00s. 

Now, in 2026 and beyond, United promises a character with twenty years of growth and pensieve rumination, played by an actor who has only continued to work and develop in the intervening years. While Picard was not without many positives, it ultimately settled back into fan service. United must both offer and deliver, evoking the past without simply rehashing it.