Bakula Reflects on Archer's Growth

"I kept trying to tell people last year, especially those who hadn't seen the show, they could relate to the story because it certainly paralleled events in our lives over the last few years, and how they felt and how we responded as a country, and how my ship responded," Scott Bakula said of the evolution of Star Trek: Enterprise, which is due to go off the air next month. "It touched people on a lot of levels."

Speaking to British science fiction magazine Cult Times (via Sci Fi Pulse), Bakula cited the third season's Xindi arc as the beginning of excellence for the fifth Star Trek series. "The whole Xindi idea shook the writing staff up and the notion of doing an arc like that stimulated everybody," he noted. "I know I was really happy about getting those scripts every week...what a great clump of shows. It's phenomenal."

Bakula added that he appreciated the development of his character, Captain Jonathan Archer, over the course of that season and the changes he underwent. "He was forced, because of the nature of the threat, to make decisions and look at the world and his impact on it in a different light," he observed, saying that Archer did things "he would never have dreamed of" before the attack on Earth and the events that followed: choices that included torture, theft of alien technology and the use of force in situations where previously he might have used diplomacy.

"Obviously those choices impact him forever...I liken him to men and women who have been in a war situation, come home, then had to adapt and look at some of the things they did and how that resonates to the rest of their life," said the actor.

On the other hand, Bakula thinks Archer became a stronger captain because of the choices he was forced to make. "After going through what he has, what is really out there that can scare or upset him any more?" he mused. Like the character, Bakula has been toughened while fighting for his show, but he said that he was not overly concerned about the spectre of cancellation hanging over Enterprise. "I'm in a business where you can never please everybody," he stated. "You have to be pretty thick skinned to be in our business, and on daily basis actors get rejected so many times just trying to get a job. I always try to encourage everybody to focus on the work and do the best we can for as long as they let us do our job."

The full interview is available in the new issue of Cult Times. Thanks to Sci Fi Pulse for these excerpts.

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