With the threat of an actors' strike less urgent in Hollywood, the Star Trek producers are said to be making more time between the production of the Enterprise pilot and its first regular episodes in order to have a chance to further enhance the series' quality.

Filming for Enterprise is currently scheduled to begin two days from now, on Monday the 14th of May. Sources suggest that shooting the pilot is expected to take about four working weeks, after which the studio will take a short break to prepare for filming the first regular episodes. Normal production will resume around the second week of July.

Previously, the producers said that they wanted to finish the pilot and at least one or two additional episodes before the deadline of a possible actors' strike, on the 1st of July. The one-week delay in the initial start of filming and this new short break might suggest that Paramount has grown more confident Hollywood actors will not be going on strike after all. With the extra time, the studio will be able to use the experiences shooting the pilot to tweak important elements of the series before going into full production.

Production on 'Emissary,' the pilot episode for Deep Space Nine, also took four working weeks in 1992. Two years later, shooting for Voyager's 'Caretaker' took far longer than expected, after original lead actress Geneviève Bujold left the series while production had already started and scenes with Kate Mulgrew (Kathryn Janeway) had to be reshot when the producers decided to change her hairstyle.

Currently, the Series V pilot is simply being referred to as 'Enterprise' on the Paramount lot. Though it is possible that this will indeed turn out to be the title of the first episode, this would not fit the naming convention used for all previous Trek pilots. It may be that the writers have not yet decided on a final name for the episode, or they may just be trying to keep this element of the pilot under wraps.

In related news, the official Star Trek site yesterday updated its Series V section to include the above new Enterprise logo. Though probably just an early publicity logo created purely for the official site itself, it is interesting to note that it also lacks the word 'Star Trek' in the title, further confirming the show will just be called Enterprise.

Enterprise is expected to be officially announced as part of the UPN line-up on Thursday, when the network presents its Fall schedule. Thanks go out for this to AntonyF at Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers fan site B5LR.com, who contributed part of this report to TrekToday.

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