Star Trek: 10 Characters Who Must Return (2023)

The crew of Earth's first warp five starship did end up receiving at least some recognition. They got a whole Federation holiday to mark the anniversary of their launch: Frontier Day. The "83 souls," as Admiral Shelby put it, on that maiden voyage might have been a bit dismayed to see how celebrations for the big 250 turned out in 2401, but it's the thought that counts, and there's always 251 next year.

The captain of the pioneering NX-01, Jonathan Archer, has received a few direct shout-outs in recent years. In the 2250s, when Saru asked the Discovery's computer to show him Starfleet's most decorated captains, Archer was on the list, and by the 32nd century he was a spacedock. He has also had a couple of starships named after him; for example, the USS Archer which featured in the season one opener of Strange New Worlds under the command of Una Chin-Riley, and another USS Archer that was present at the Frontier Day festivities.

During the 2023 TREKTalks2 livestream for the Hollywood Food Coalition, Scott Bakula openly expressed his willingness to return to the franchise if asked.

Archer was a founding father of the Federation, there to sign the treaty in 2161. All things being equal, we would like to see more of this moment outside of the holodeck and of the years that followed. Enterprise's untimely cancellation also robbed us of several plot points the writers had planned. According to Brannon Braga on Twitter, in season five the mysterious 'Humanoid Figure' would have been revealed as a future version of Archer trying to repair a corrupt timeline.