Enterprising series 'Star Trek' fans will get a jolt with high- tech slant of new prequel

LOS ANGELES--Rick Berman still shakes his head as he recalls how,early in the seven-year run of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," heand his crew had a phaser beam appear to come out of a photon torpedotube.

Big deal, right?

"We got over 200 letters," Berman said. "I didn't know thedifference. I had no idea which was which. Two hundred letters inthree days."

So Berman and fellow co-creator/executive producer Brannon Bragahave no illusions about what they have going both for and againstthem as they prepare to launch UPN's "Enterprise," which boldly goeswhere four "Trek" series and nine feature films have gone before,beginning Sept. 26.

By making this latest "Trek" TV series a prequel to the original1966-69 NBC series, set 100 years before the 23rd century adventuresof James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and the gang, Berman and Braga knowthey're just asking for trouble from the hardest of the hard-core"Trek" fans.

"In the original series, it was established that in 1996, half thehuman race was killed in the Eugenics Wars," Braga said. "Well, whatdo you do? Do you pay attention to that, or do you just glide on by?...We're too busy really to sit down and read all of the Internetmail that comes in on all of this stuff."

"If we did that," Berman said, "we'd have to hire other people todo the television series."

Some contradictions are unavoidable as technology advances in oureveryday lives. Berman, for example, notes that computer on Capt.Janeway's desk in "Star Trek: Voyager," which ended its seven-yearrun in May, was bulkier than the one now in his office. Heck, mostcell phones today are sleeker than the communicators Capt. Kirk used.

To walk around on the "Enterprise" sets on the Paramount Studioslot is to see the interior of a starship that, while implicitlyprimitive compared to TV's first Enterprise, nonetheless looks moresubstantial, complex and advanced.

Eighty-one working plasma screens dot the bridge alone, replacingthe blinking Christmas tree lights of the original. But missilesresembling today's nuclear arsenal have yet to be replaced by photontorpedoes, and shields have yet to supplant hull plating asprotection for the ship.

"We're always walking a very thin line in terms of developingthings that are less advanced from the time of Capt. Kirk," Bermansaid. "One of the most fun elements of this series, especially forour fans, is to be able to watch all of the things that they know arecoming to 'Star Trek' in their infant stages, to be able to see thedevelopment of things like transporters and phasers and tractorbeams."

Universal translators don't yet work very well or veryconsistently in "Enterprise." Transporters are used for cargo andhave been approved for human use, but no one much feels brave enoughto test them out. Close encounters of the third kind with spacealiens still scare the bejeezus out of these new space pioneers, asthey would scare us today.

"These guys wear baseball caps sometimes, and they wear jeans andsneakers," Berman said., "They're a lot less perfect human beingsthan your Jean Luc Picards. ... [And] we are taking a few steps inthe direction of being a little bit more sexually adventurous withthe show."

Jolene Blalock, who plays the feline Vulcan subcommander T'Pol,talks about her character using "the power in feminity," and earlyindications are that Scott Bakula's Capt. Jonathan Archer will be cutfrom the same cloth as William Shatner's Kirk.

"Rick was quoted last week as saying [Archer] is healthy andavailable," said Bakula, the former "Quantum Leap" star now filminghis third hour of "Enterprise." "He's kind of a free-spirited guy.He's not afraid to say what he thinks. He's not afraid to buckauthority. ... This character is bold and brash and, yes, the closestto Kirk."

The Trekker community of fans, meanwhile, obsesses over detailssuch as whether the Klingons of "Enterprise" will have the wrinklesfirst seen in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" or the smooth skin ofthe original "Star Trek."

"I love this question," Berman said. "We're just talking aboutmakeup. The [original] makeup on the Klingons was a rather simplekind of eyebrow mustache-type of deal.

"But if you are a true "Star Trek' aficionado, you realize that ina number of the movies, starting I think with "Star Trek II,' whichtook place really at the same time as Capt. Kirk, they were usingmakeup very similar to Worf [of 'The Next Generation']. .... We aregoing to be using the new look. We're not going to the old Klingonlook."

Braga nudged Berman. "It was 'Star Trek III,' " Rick," he said.

" 'Star Trek III,' " Berman said under his breath.

Let the countdown begin.

CHANGING CHANNELS: NBC is ordering extra episodes of theunscripted summer series "Fear Factor," and "Spy TV" and is puttingdevelopment of the Conan O'Brien-produced "Lost" on a fast track,leading to speculation that the network is going to overhaul its fallschedule with a reality bent even before it hits this air. Anannouncement could come later this week.