Here is Part 1 of the Enterprise 2001 UPN Press Question and Answer Program, held for the media in Los Angeles.

Part 2 follows it. All of this comes from Star Trek.com

07.19.01 Enterprise Cast, Producers Answer Questions, Part I

On Monday, July 16, the cast of the new Star Trek series Enterprise and its two executive producers appeared before reporters at the Television Critics Association's Summer Press Tour on a day devoted to UPN shows. The following is Part I of the transcript from that appearance.

MODERATOR: Please join me in welcoming the cast in alphabetical order: Scott Bakula, John Billingsley, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park and Connor Trinneer, as well as the executive producers and creators of Enterprise, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. May we have your questions, please.

Q: Scott, let me start out here. Everything they've shown us makes it look like you're going to be the closest to Captain Kirk since Captain Kirk. They already show you waving a gun. They show you as more of an action hero and even getting close to a romance. Give us that feeling. Describe a little bit more how you feel the guy is, and does he have a little bit more of that bravado that Kirk has?

SCOTT BAKULA: Oh, yeah. And I'm still getting to know him also. But he's kind of a free-spirited guy. He's not afraid to say what he thinks. He's not afraid to buck authority. And these are the first pioneers going out into space, and their experiences are all for the first time and the first everything. So we're finding it all very interesting to try and make all these things new because we're all so familiar with what Star Trek has been. And we have to kind of unlearn all of that and start from scratch. So this character is bold and brash and, yes, the closest to Kirk — even though I'm a hundred years before Kirk — than any of the other captains.

Q: Scott, you've already dealt with one cult fan base. How are you going to deal with an even larger one?

SCOTT BAKULA: Hopefully we'll all blend together nicely and everybody will get along. It should be great, actually. I'm really looking forward to it.

Q: For Mr. Berman and Mr. Braga, how long ago did you begin working out what Enterprise would be, and have you had any trouble as far as things you couldn't do because of what's already been established that happens later?

RICK BERMAN: 1959 was when we started developing this, I think. Feels like it.

BRANNON BRAGA: About two and a half years ago.

RICK BERMAN: You know, there's a great irony about developing things that you don't want to be more advanced than things that you know are going to come in 90 years, let's say, at the time of Kirk. That's a problem right now that we have. The computer that sat on Captain Janeway's desk was bulkier than the one that sits on my desk now. There are cellular phones that are far more compact than the communicators that Captain Kirk used. So we're always walking a very thin line in terms of developing things that are less advanced than from the time of Captain Kirk. But we think that one of the most fun elements of this series, especially for our fans, is going to be able to watch all of the things that they know are coming to "Star Trek" in their infant stages, to be able to see the development of things like transporters and phasers and tractor beams, etc. And we're having a lot of fun with seeing these things when they don't operate perfectly, when they're being developed and perfected.

Q: This question is for Miss Blalock. Could you tell us what special perspective you have from a female point of view on playing the character of a female Vulcan?

JOLENE BLALOCK: There's a great advantage in it because, in contrast to Scott's presence — his manly strength, his presence as a captain, his leadership, and it being a testosterone-driven team — the femininity is actually to our advantage, or to my advantage. And it's nothing that you have to push. It just is. And so it's easy to embody that, and it's a great contrast. There's power in femininity that I am still discovering. And it's slight, but it's beautiful. T'Pol is feline in her movements. She's diplomatic with her words. And she's dry. So in contrast to all the emotion ... it works well. It works well.

Q: Scott, a career question. As I recall, you had an either/or situation, this project or a series with CBS. Am I correct on that? Could you talk a minute what determined you to go with this one and not the other one?

SCOTT BAKULA: I actually did that. I played a guest star — it was called "Late Boomers," and it became "Boomers," and I don't know where it lies now. But we were in negotiations on this for a while, and I wasn't sure whether this was going to happen or not for a while. And they agreed to have me on that series. It was the actual lead in the pilot, but as a guest — strictly as a guest star. So do it and walk away. And it worked out happily that this came through and we were able to make a deal, and I'm here.

Q: How close did you come to doing a "Starfleet Academy" series, and how did you get from there to here?

BRANNON BRAGA: I don't think we ever considered a "Starfleet Academy" show, did we?

RICK BERMAN: It's something that we've never really discussed and never really developed in any way.

Q: Would you also discuss the absence of the "Star Trek" name in the title?

RICK BERMAN: Well, you know, if you think about it, since The Next Generation, we've had so many Star Trek entities that were called "Star Trek"-colon-something: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, "Star Trek Generations," "Star Trek: First Contact," "Star Trek: Insurrection." It's just been one after another. Our feeling was, in trying to make this show dramatically different, which we are trying to do, that it might be fun not to have a divided main title like that. And I think that if there's any one word that says Star Trek without actually saying Star Trek, it's the word "Enterprise."

Q: Question for the producers. As you know, your fans are, let's say, attentive to details. In doing the prequel, did you find any problems in making sure that the mythology works out, that there aren't any sorts of dead ends?

BRANNON BRAGA: Not really. Because it's set before the first series, a lot of the continuity elements haven't even occurred yet. But we have paid close attention to all things Star Trek in conceiving the show and plan to utilize and exploit a lot of the things that people have come to appreciate about Star Trek.

RICK BERMAN: You know, there have been so many books written that if you really studied them, you find that they contradict each other, that the history between Captain Kirk and the present has been discussed in episodes and discussed in books and in novels. And we have to take some degree of liberty with just how closely we adhere to those things because they very often contradict each other.

BRANNON BRAGA: In the Original Series it was established that in 1996 half the human race was killed in the Eugenics Wars. Well, what do you do? Do you pay attention to that, or do you just glide on by? So you take it on a case-by-case basis.

Q: And one follow-up. You know, one of the questions raised when this was announced was, which Klingons will we see — wrinkles or nonwrinkles?

RICK BERMAN: I love this question. You know, in the Original Series the Klingons — we're just talking about makeup now — the makeup on the Klingons was a rather simple kind of eyebrow-mustache type of deal. With Worf, which was a hundred years later, people got to start looking at Klingons a different way. But if you are a true Star Trek aficionado, you realize that in a number of the movies, starting, I think, with "Star Trek II," which took place really at the same time as Captain Kirk, they were using makeup very similar to Worf. So the new look of Klingons is something that in the "Star Trek" mythology actually began shortly after they changed from the original television series to the movies. So yes, we are going to be using the new look. We're not going back to old Klingon look.

BRANNON BRAGA: It was "Star Trek III," Rick.

RICK BERMAN: "Star Trek III." (Editor's note: The new Klingon look was actually first used in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture.")

Q: For the producers, I know you're trying to get a little separation from the era of Deep Space Nine and Voyager and Next Generation, but come about May sweeps, are you going to be tempted to have the time-traveling Enterprise come crashing back from the future and pay a visit?

RICK BERMAN: Well, I think you're going to be surprised to find that there are elements of time travel and elements of the future that are going to exist from the pilot continuing throughout this series. But I doubt even in sweeps you'll see Jean-Luc Picard making a visit. Probably couldn't afford it anyway.

Q: Question for Mr. Billingsley and Miss Blalock. How are you finding working in the various makeups you have? Is this the most extreme makeup either of you have worked with, and does it help you with the character, or is it an annoyance?

JOLENE BLALOCK: It takes just shy of two hours to get in full wardrobe and makeup. But you don't feel the ears. You don't feel the wig. They're very well made. And once I'm in full costume, I am T'Pol. It's empowering, if anything.

JOHN BILLINGSLEY: I dig it. My wife started making me up about two weeks before the series started just so I could get a little practice. I echo Jolene. The makeup artists are terrific.

JOLENE BLALOCK: Fabulous.

JOHN BILLINGSLEY: Not coming from a background of having seen a ton of Star Trek, I've been kind of catching up. And, boy, the makeup on the show is just phenomenal. They're the best. It's actually very comfortable. Now, the "beam down to the weird planet" suit is a might problematic, but they're beautiful. They're beautiful. Scott's been wearing it for the last three days, and he was 6 feet 6 when this show started.

07.19.01 Enterprise Cast, Producers Answer Questions, Part II

On Monday, July 16, the cast of the new Star Trek series Enterprise and its two executive producers appeared before reporters at the Television Critics Association's Summer Press Tour on a day devoted to UPN shows. The following is Part II of the transcript from that appearance.

Q: I have a two-part question. This is directed towards the cast. Number one, what was your first exposure to "Star Trek," and number two, are you prepared for the fan onslaught that you're going to encounter when the show airs?

SCOTT BAKULA: Well, I go back to the Original Series, so I'm an old cat. So that was my big thing, and we used to watch that ad nauseam in college, as I recall. And I already answered the other question, so I'll let you go.

JOHN BILLINGSLEY: My first exposure was watching it in my brother's bedroom. He would sit on my head and make me watch it, actually. I like the show, but I was a little bit younger than Scott. I was kind of scared, the few episodes I saw. He wouldn't let me leave. And what was the second part of that question?

Q: Are you prepared for the fan onslaught?

JOHN BILLINGSLEY: Oh, God knows. I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure it will be fine. You know, it beats the alternative of no fan onslaught.

JOLENE BLALOCK: I'm an avid original Star Trek fan. I grew up on it. My favorite was Spock, so it's really strange for me. I would sit there with my dad and my brother and just watch the show, watching the relationship between Captain Kirk, Bones, Spock. My favorite relationship was between Bones and Spock because it was this animosity and this love-hate relationship, but overall there was such utter loyalty between all three of them. I love the way they worked together.

And as far as being prepared for what's coming, I'm using something that works for me, and that's just called denial.

DOMINIC KEATING: And that's not a river in Egypt. I used to watch the original show back home in England. I remember the fried eggs falling off the ceiling on their shoulders.

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: Yes, me too. That's great.

DOMINIC KEATING: God, it was scary, man. And I never really watched it after that. When I first moved out to America, I did live on a commune, and the guy there had the controls for the satellite dish. So whatever Victor watched, we used to have to watch. And him and Dervert just watched Next Generation from the minute they woke up to the minute they went to bed. So I used to sort of plug in now and again and watch this Shakespearean actor lording it over a bunch of space people. (Laughter) And we used to think "God, oh, God, Patrick, you could be playing Mistress Quickly at Leatherhead now." (Laughter) As for the onslaught I can't wait. I'm ready.

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: I grew up watching the Original Series. Not a lot of them. Thought it was wonderful and never in my wildest dreams did I think I was going to move to California and be sitting up here talking to you right now. I just came out to do the best job that I could possibly do, and it happened to be on Enterprise. So I'm going to give them everything that I can.

And as for the fans, like John said, it's better to have some than to have none. So it's okay. This is the reality that they've grown to love, so I want to give them as much of me in that reality as possible and maintain myself in the meanwhile.

LINDA PARK: The first Star Trek was not my first Star Trek. I started with Star Trek: Next Generation, and I loved it. I loved the holodeck. I loved Wesley. He was, like, my first crush, so that kind of kicked it into high gear for me. Later on I started to watch some of the earlier, Captain Kirk episodes, but for me I'll always be a Next Generation fan. That was my first one, so I'm going to stay loyal to that one.

And as far as fans go, you know, it's like one of those things. You can try and prepare for it or whatever, but it just gives me a headache thinking about it. So I figure heck, when I have to think about it, I'll think about it, and I'll deal with it then. Until then I'm perfectly happy just being on the show and having lots of fun.

CONNOR TRINNEER: Well, I'm older than Linda, so I grew up on the first one. And I was a fan of it where I grew up. My brother who was — still is — really, really smart, had these three or four friends who would watch the show and then walk the perimeter of the playground every day at recess having dialogue about the show, and so I got exposed to some of that fan base really early. So my plan is just to keep moving around, go all over the place.

Q: Rick and Brannon, I sensed a certain weariness when talking about the Klingon makeup, and I'm wondering, the fan base being what it is, what are some of the other nitpicky things that tend to come up again and again?

BRANNON BRAGA: I can't think of any. You mean the continuity issues that the fans bring up?

Q: Yeah, the things that make your day interesting.

BRANNON BRAGA: Well, it usually has to do with mistakes we've made in episodes, referring to a room being on a certain deck and accidentally contradicting it later. Those kind of things tend to get irritating because we weren't paying close enough attention so we missed it. But ... we're too busy really to sit down and read all of the Internet mail that comes in about all of the stuff.

RICK BERMAN: If we did that, we'd have to hire other people to do the television series. About five years ago we did a feature film called "First Contact," which took place in the 21st century, and it was about an Earth that was in pretty lousy shape. But it was about the first contact with humans and Vulcans and about the first human who managed to achieve warp speed. And we knew that that period, between that guy named Zefram Cochrane and Captain Kirk, there was 200 years where Earth went from this kind of muddy little village in Montana where our film took place to the world of Kirk and Spock. And we have chosen a place kind of halfway in between to sort of create the world of "How did it all begin?" and "What was it like for the people who truly were the first people to go where no man has gone before?" So in terms of being tripped up by fan kind of things, it hasn't really been that much of a problem because we're sort of creating an era that's not yet really been explored.

Q: When you move a room from one deck to the other inadvertently, how many e-mails do you get?

RICK BERMAN: I remember in the second season of Next Generation we had a phaser beam come out of a photon torpedo port, and we got over 200 letters. And I didn't know the difference. I had no idea which one was which. 200 letters.

Q: You mentioned "First Contact." There were rumors of a James Cromwell cameo.

RICK BERMAN: That's not a bad rumor.

Q: Okay. That's good. You're usually not that forthcoming. (Laughter)

Q: One of the great conventions of the '60s series and one of these things you'll have to resolve is, everybody in the universe speaks English. Is there a universal translator at this point in the technology?

RICK BERMAN: Part of what's fun for us is, yeah, there are universal translators, but they don't work all that well, and they have a lot of problems and they break a lot. And we have this young lady right over here [Linda Park as Hoshi Sato] who is a brilliant translator who has to step in very often to smooth things over when the translator either doesn't work or works improperly.

Q: Mr. Braga and Mr. Berman, can you give us the shorthand for what the world, the Earth, and the universe is like at the time that the series starts?

BRANNON BRAGA: You want us to describe the universe? (Laughter)

Q: Is it a friendly place? Is it a not-friendly place?

BRANNON BRAGA: It's a very terrifying place in that everything is unknown to this crew. Earth is in much better shape than it was in the movie "First Contact," in that poverty, crime, disease, hunger have all been eradicated for the most part, but the Federation has not yet formed. That's a long way off. And Starfleet is very, very young and this crew has met very few alien species since the Vulcans arrived. So really the landscape of the universe is virtually unknown to these people, and they will meet many friendly and also many terrifying aliens.

RICK BERMAN: You know, the Picards and even the Kirks of the world, they tended to take meeting alien races for granted. This was their daily work. For these seven, it's a pretty spooky occasion. It's always something that's filled with awe and excitement and a little bit of trepidation and fear because they're really more like any one of us, if we were to find ourselves in a situation where we're about to run into an alien species. It would be a pretty scary thing and certainly not just a day-by-day occurrence the way it would be for a Picard or for a Janeway.

Q: Mr. Berman, there have been accounts that the Voyager set was maybe a little bit joyless. Now that that's behind you, did you feel that you really hit the ball with that one in the way you had with the previous ones? And how rejuvenated are you guys getting a brand-new Star Trek series now after coming off that one?

RICK BERMAN: Well, I think that it will be a little bit of an overstatement to say that it was a joyless atmosphere on the set of Voyager. I think that with a few minor exceptions, it was a terrific cast and I think we did seven years of some pretty terrific television. One of the things we're excited about this series is after 500 episodes — or more, actually — taking place in the 24th century, moving to another century is very helpful for us. Because Deep Space Nine overlapped with Next Generation, we didn't want that show to take place on a space ship. It took place on a space station. Because Voyager began just as Next Generation was ending, we didn't want to just put another cast of characters on the space ship, so we created an environment where these characters in a sense were lost in space.And for that reason, in a funny way they were heading in the wrong direction; they were trying to get back home rather than going out and exploring.

And we knew we wanted to turn the ship around in this next show. We knew we wanted to do a show about people, humans, going out and exploring, but rather than just taking another 24th-century space ship, giving it another name, throwing seven more characters onto it, we decided to go back to a period where it all began, where it was all in its infancy and where people could watch all this stuff develop, and also where our characters could be closer to contemporary characters today and thus, I think, a lot more accessible. These guys wear baseball caps sometimes and they wear jeans and sneakers and they're a lot less kind of perfect human beings than your Jean-Luc Picards. So I think we've found a refreshing new direction to take Star Trek after Voyager.

Q: For the cast, are you having trouble with the techno-babble and all the little "Star Trek" moves?

CONNOR TRINNEER: Well, sometimes. You don't even know which word it's going to be or which phrase it might be that trips you up for half an hour, but it happens to some of us.

DOMINIC KEATING: We're three days behind because of him. He wouldn't know a vented plating from a —

CONNOR TRINNEER: — from a vented port.

JOHN BILLINGSLEY: We are given a glossary in each script we get that breaks down and gives the appropriate pronunciation of words. Sometimes it's words like "chocolate," though, which is a little insulting, but that's all right. I'm only kidding. That's actually extremely helpful. So you're not plunging for the dictionary all the time.

Q: Rick, do you ever sit back and wonder how long this franchise can continue? Seven years from now we'll be looking at a new Star Trek adventure. Do you ever look that far in the future, not only from a creative viewpoint but from the viewpoint of how many viewers out there still have a thirst for this type of entertainment?

RICK BERMAN: Well, I think that Star Trek is unique in two important ways. First of all, it's been around for 35 years. It's become part of the American mythos. Everyone knows about Star Trek. You'd be very hard-pressed to find somebody who doesn't know about "Beam me up, Scotty" or warp speed or things like that. I think it's something that's comfortable to people because of its familiarity. And I also think that in a world where there's a lot of science fiction that's quite apocalyptic and negative, Star Trek has always had a hopeful viewpoint of the future. And I think as long as that exists, there's always going to be an interest in it. And obviously we need people who can create good television shows and motion pictures.

Q: Scott, this franchise probably more than any other job on television carries with it an almost certainty of a long-term commitment. Can you talk a little bit about the thinking that went into it for you at this stage in your career signing on to something that's almost guaranteed to be five to seven years?

SCOTT BAKULA: Well, at this point in my career, one thing I've learned is you never count on anything, so if we get through the first 13 and we're still rolling, I'll be happy... I approached it really as I approach everything. At the end of the day, they put a two-hour script in front of me that I just thought was fantastic and a character that I really wanted to play, and that I thought should it go for a while, there would be room to do a lot of different things with it and there would be a lot of opportunity for this character with the other characters on the ship. So to me it's like a gift that this kind of job exists in this town... It seems all of a good thing.

Q: For the producers, there's already been word that LeVar Burton and Roxann Dawson will be directing episodes. Will any other cast members be directing and will there be any carry-over in the writers from the other series as well?

RICK BERMAN: The only actor/director right now that we plan on using in the first season is Robbie Duncan McNeill, along with the two that you mentioned, and we do have a few writers from Voyager.

Q: Question for the producers. Actually two questions. One, are you back on stages 8, 9, and 16? And also have you had any run-ins with broadcast standards as far as something you'd like to do that you're boldly going a little too far for your network?

RICK BERMAN: Go ahead, Brannon.

BRANNON BRAGA: No. We're very conscientious about content. We realize it's a show that families watch, so we try to take it easy on blowing up ships with thousands of people, though, quite ironically, that is what we do. But in terms of depicting graphic violence or graphic sensual situations, we're very conscientious. And we're on stages 8, 9, and 18.

RICK BERMAN: I would say, though, that we are taking a few steps in the direction of being a little bit more sexually adventurous with the show. There's some pretty sexy stuff that's coming up, and so far nobody's slapped our hands.

Q: For the producers, regarding the technology that they will and won't have, we saw the phase pistols, I think they were called, and the transporters being very primitive. Can you address some of the things that fans are familiar with that will or won't be, like the shields and the photon torpedoes?

BRANNON BRAGA: Well, we don't have shields. We have something called hull plating. Photon torpedoes don't exist. There's some sort of torpedo that is very much like a high-tech missile. And the list goes on. You know, we do have certain things. We do have a transporter that's just designed for cargo. It's been approved for people, Starfleet has approved it, but nobody wants to use it. They're all nervous about it.

RICK BERMAN: There are also a number of things that will be introduced in our first one or two episodes that would be sort of unfair for us to tell you about now because they'll be hopefully surprising when they get introduced in the first two-hour and next couple of episodes after that.

Q: Scott, you already touched on this but, for the rest of you, how daunting is the possibility of five, six, seven years of doing a new show? A lot of you are fairly new and this is going to be a long time for you guys. How exciting and daunting is that prospect?

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: It's great, man. Come on. Of course. I mean, I haven't done it as long as Scott, none of us have, so if there's a chance that this is going to go forever, hey, let's ride it forever.

RICK BERMAN: They all plan on owning cars by the end of the year. (Laughter)

CONNOR TRINNEER: I thought I might never own a home. I was okay with that. That's different now.

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: Yeah, that's changed. Yeah.

MODERATOR: We're going to have to stop. We have to get a couple of the cast members back to the set. So thanks so much, everyone, for joining us. Please note: All production information is subject to change.

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