Braga Reflects On His Time on 'Trek'

Brannon Braga spoke last weekend at the Las Vegas convention about his happy memories and regrets from many years as a writer and producer of Star Trek, saying he agreed with fans that the Enterprise finale was not successful and saying he would not change his overall creative vision, though he wished he had not done some "really stinky" episodes.

TrekMovie.com reported from the convention that Braga said the appearance was nostalgic for him, as he is not involved in J.J. Abrams' film plans, so "this is [your] chance to get out your final gripes and questions."

Asked if he had any regrets, Braga replied, "I honestly have to say that creatively probably nothing" but admitted that he wasn't happy with "These Are the Voyages..." after it aired. "The final episode was very controversial," he observed. "What we were trying to do was send a valentine to all the Star Trek shows. Enterprise just happened to be the show on at the time...I don’t know if it fully delivered and it really pissed off the cast."

Braga said that he was not sorry that he killed off Trip Tucker, whom he claimed "was always my favorite character" on Enterprise. "I just wanted to kill him," he said. "We wanted to do something that had emotional impact and had consequences which is something we were never allowed to do." He believes that if Manny Coto had been a producer from the beginning, the show might have been better.

As for the visuals for the prequel series looking more impressive than those of the original Star Trek, Braga said that he felt it was "probably more important to make the show look cool than be completely accurate" and anticipated that J.J. Abrams would have to deal with a similar dilemma. "We certainly tried to make it look more futuristic than we have today, but less than Kirk’s time," he said. "But look at the stuff they were using on that show. They got communicators that are bigger than any cell phone. The laptops they used on Voyager were gigantic...they were ridiculous. "

Braga believes that the biggest problem facing Voyager and Enterprise both was airing on UPN, which never devoted sufficient resources to getting the shows aired in as many markets as they deserved. He saiad that he was sorry they had not done an episode dealing more overtly with homosexuality in the future ("maybe with B'Elanna") and said it had been "an honor" to work with the fans and on the series.

The full interview is here.

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