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AUDIO:



Hear an interview with Scott Bakula, captain of the most famous starship in the galaxy.

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With a nod to the past and an eye on the future, the most famous starship in the galaxy, the U.S.S. Enterprise, sets out on its first mission.

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The fifth Star Trek series — Enterprise — debuts Wednesday night with a two-hour pilot on UPN. Long-time fans are in for a shock. Gone are the clean, do-gooder, cerebral Starfleet officers who inhabited starships through four other television series and nine — soon to be 10 — movies.

Instead, the franchise is being reinvented quite literally from the ground up to appeal to a broader audience.

The new series will track the adventure of humans at the dawn of interstellar travel, some 150 years in our future and 100 years before Capt. James T. Kirk will take the bridge of the Enterprise. While producers have promised to follow the long time line established in the 35-year history of the franchise, the new series won’t be tied to the past.

“After three sequels and nine movies, Star Trek was clearly running out of steam,” Daily Variety’s television reporter Josef Adalian wrote in an e-mail. “The new show feels a lot less sanitized than previous efforts. (Scott) Bakula acts like a guy rather than a god.

“I think this show has a good shot of connecting with a broader audience than (Deep Space Nine and Voyager).”

Taking center stage on the new drama is Capt. Jonathan Archer, played by Bakula — who is well known in science-fiction circles thanks to his seven-year run as Dr. Samuel Beckett, the time traveling scientist from Quantum Leap.

The new captain and the new show are a far cry from the two most popular series — the original Star Trek and The Next Generation. In those two shows, smart, well-intentioned crews used superior “technology” and ingenuity to avoid conflicts.

This time, humanity is still a little rough around the edges, and decidedly untrusting of alien races.

This show will be a more complex show centered on a decidedly mixed cast of characters who don’t see eye to eye. Disagreements and fights are the norm on board.

“The great thing is that we’ve thrown (Star Trek creator Gene) Roddenberry’s world out because it doesn’t come into play for 100 years after us,” Bakula said. “My character and the other characters act very emotionally. It’s the first time for us. We’re in awe. We’re scared. We make mistakes. This ship doesn’t work perfectly.”

Long-time fans seem ready for a change of pace. After years of advancing technology and story lines that felt recycled, Trekkers — die-hard Star Trek fans — are anxious to see a new world.

“The characters have become too perfect, the fake technology too magical and the galaxy too well mapped and civilized in the 24th century,” wrote Dennis Russell Bailey, 47, who also wrote two scripts for The Next Generation. “Time to reboot and to upgrade the conceits and characters that energized the franchise to begin.”

For Paramount, attracting the long-time fans isn’t a question. Instead, the network hopes to use Enterprise to establish itself as a solid fifth network. With the addition of the WB’s castoffs, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Roswell, executives hope to capture the young, male demographic, Adalian said.

To that end, producers have fallen back on the tried-and-true. When ratings sagged on Voyager, executives decided to add busty Jeri Ryan to the cast. Ryan’s character “7 of 9” gave the series a ratings boost, no doubt in part because of the form-fitting uniform she wore each week.

Having learned their lessons, producers went ahead and added a bombshell to the cast. Trek fan sites — TrekWeb, STEnterprise, and Trek Today — have been filled with discussions about Bakula’s main foil on the bridge, Jolene Blalock, who plays Vulcan Sub Commander T’Pol.

The first episode of Enterprise also pays homage to the most enduring Star Trek woman, Susan Oliver, whose green-skinned Vina seduced Jeffrey Hunter’s Captain Christopher Pike — the man William Shatner replaced after the pilot episode “The Cage” was filmed.

Of course, any good tribute has to outdo the original, so viewers will be treated to double the pleasure. Twin sisters Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski make cameos as Orion slave girls lapping butterflies out of the air with their tongues.

While the series is a departure from the traditional world of Star Trek, producers made sure to stay true to the vast chronology that has been developed while adding several winks to fans of the other series.

The new series is at once a prequel to the other four television shows — Star Trek, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager — and a sequel to at least one of the movies, Star Trek: First Contact, which featured James Cromwell at Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of the warp engine in the Star Trek universe.

Cochrane’s character makes a brief appearance in the new series, referencing the opening themes of both Star Trek and The Next Generation. The now-famous voice-over themes laid out the mission of the starship Enterprise.

“And we’ll be able to explore those strange new worlds … and seek out new life and new civilizations,” said Cochrane, in a recorded speech given 32 years after the end of First Contact. “This engine will let us go boldly … where no man has gone before.”

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