Star Trek: 10 Things You Never Knew About Enterprise

10. Dropping Star Trek From The Title Backfired

A lot of thought went into the actual rollout of Enterprise. Brannon Braga and Rick Berman were very conscious of the over-saturation that Star Trek was ironically enjoying at the beginning of the 21st Century, with Voyager coming to an end and The Next Generation movies still in production.

While there were, at one point, talks about having season one of Enterprise run concurrently with season seven of Voyager, they ultimately opted for a gap in broadcasting.

'Star Trek' was dropped from the name of the show, with the producers opting instead to go with 'Enterprise.' There were two reasons for this. First, Rick Berman explained, if there was one word that was instantly recognizable to all Star Trek fans, it was Enterprise. Second, leaving 'Star Trek' off the name of the show might encourage new fans to try the series, rather than simply relying on returning Trekkies.

The gamble didn't pay off and the numbers were mostly quite low for the first two seasons. In fact, when approaching the end of the second season, the existing fans were bracing themselves for cancellation. A letter-writing campaign saved the show, though Paramount insisted on a few changes. First, there was to be the addition of much more action, which resulted in the Xindi arc. Second, 'Star Trek' had to be inserted into the name of the show, in the hope that fans of the franchise would come back and boost the ratings.

This bought the show two more seasons.