I'd be down. There is a great deal that occurs during that time period. I really think we need a new series to cover the Earth/Romulan war and the creation of the Federation.
Mike Sussman talks to TrekMovie about the pitch ahead of his appearance on our Saturday STLV panel.
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Exclusive: Scott Bakula Eyeing Star Trek Return In President Archer Series Pitch From ‘Enterprise’ Producer
It’s been 20 years since Captain Jonathan Archer and the crew of the NX-01 returned to spacedock for the series finale of
Star Trek: Enterprise, wrapping up a four-season run on UPN. It was the franchise’s last network TV series. Since that time, series star Scott Bakula has kept busy, including starring in the CBS procedural
NCIS: New Orleans for seven seasons. But it turns out he has kept an eye on his time in space and kept in touch with veteran writer/producer Michael Sussman, whose Star Trek writing credits include 10 episodes of
Voyager, and 22 episodes of
Enterprise, where he also served as a producer on more than 70 episodes.
Ahead of his appearance on TrekMovie’s
“Does Canon Matter? And If So, When?” panel on Saturday at the STLV: Trek To Vegas convention, Sussman spoke exclusively with TrekMovie about a series concept he has been developing with Scott Bakula over the last couple of years. Bakula himself will also be at STLV for a Sunday main stage panel in a rare convention appearance.
President Archer
According to Sussman, the idea of Bakula returning to the franchise began a few years ago while
Star Trek: Picard was streaming on Paramount+. That show wrapped up in 2023 under showrunner Terry Matalas, himself a veteran of
Star Trek: Enterprise and friend of Sussman. At that time, in an email exchange with Bakula, Sussman first joked “How soon are we going to see
Star Trek: Archer on Paramount+?” then quickly realized he actually had an idea based on some seeds planted two decades before in
Enterprise… and Bakula was intrigued. “He immediately glommed onto it,” Sussman tells TrekMovie.
The seed was based on the last episode Sussman wrote for the franchise, “
In A Mirror, Darkly, Part II,” from late in the show’s fourth season. That episode was set in the Mirror Universe and featured Bakula playing Archer’s Mirror Universe doppelgänger, who at one point had access to a Starfleet database from the future on board the USS Defiant, and looked up his Prime Universe counterpart, in a graphic seen by viewers as well. According to Sussman: ” It occurred to me that someone on the writing staff, not the art department, needed to write this graphic. Somebody needed to think about this, right? This was going to be a graphic that spelled out Archer’s life and career after the series ended.” Knowing “the franchise was going into the freezer for a spell” Sussman outlined Archer’s future, aware this graphic “might be fully visible on the finished episode,” and therefore Trek canon. In the end, it was—and it did.
Thinking back to this episode was sort of a eureka moment for the writer/producer. “Holy shit, I actually have an idea for a series, going back to that viewscreen graphic that I planted all those years earlier,” says Sussman. The key is that on
Enterprise, Sussman established that Archer, after retiring as an admiral, left Starfleet to get into politics and eventually rose to President of the United Federation of Planets.
“Star Trek: United”
The show would revolve around Archer’s time as president, with Sussman likening it to shows like
The West Wing,
Homeland, and
The Diplomat. “It’s a political thriller and a family drama set in those chaotic, formative years of the Federation.” Sussman began outlining ideas for this potential series, working with Bakula, who liked the idea of a different take on the character. “We did 98 hours of
Enterprise and I think he felt he really explored that character, but this was a very different direction for Archer to go in. And I think he was really intrigued by that.”
Sussman and Bakula even had a title ready:
Star Trek: United—though they also considered dropping the colon and going with
Star Trek United. The idea would be for a more mature show, looking to the
recent success the Star Wars franchise had with that approach. Sussman explains:
“One of my aspirations would be that the series could do for Star Trek, what Andor did for Star Wars. It’s a show where you can tell adult stories about adults and tell them in a very grounded, realistic way.”
So a couple years ago, with the approval of Bakula, Sussman took the
Star Trek: United concept to Secret Hideout, Alex Kurtzman’s production company, which makes all the streaming Star Trek series for CBS Studios and Paramount+. The writer producer says he didn’t present a complete formal series proposal, describing it more as “high-level overview” outlining the idea to the executives to see if they were interested in a full official presentation. According to Sussman, he was preparing for a follow-up pitch which would have “included a pilot story, character arcs, and episode ideas.”
Sussman says the meeting went well, with the executives liking the idea but wanting to think it over. It took a couple of months for them to get back in touch, explaining they took the idea seriously and brought it to the higher levels at Paramount. A Star Trek series idea with Scott Bakula as the lead would certainly merit a discussion as he has been a major star the company, including those seven seasons of
NCIS: New Orleans from 2014 – 2021. However, at the time Secret Hideout and Paramount decided not to move forward developing the idea further. The decision was made in the same time frame as Paramount was starting to pull back on streaming spending. There was also some thematic overlap with the Earth-based
Starfleet Academy series, which was in active development, so it wasn’t the right time for
Star Trek: United.

Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer in “These Are The Voyages”
Skydance hopes
Since then, Bakula and Sussman have continued to work together on a separate non-Star Trek project. But they have also kept the conversation about
Star Trek: United alive, developing and refining it further. At one point, they decided to move the setting from Earth to the planet Babel, a center of interplanetary diplomacy first introduced in
The Original Series, to further distinguish it from
Starfleet Academy. The show’s concept “continued to feel rich, resonant, and worth exploring,” says Sussman. And with Skydance now officially in charge of Paramount, Sussman says he and Bakula think it could be time to bring the
Star Trek: United pitch back into the mix.
Sussman tells TrekMovie:
“The hope is that Paramount is planning to invest more in Star Trek on television, and they’ve been very clear about how they want to make Paramount+ a real player in the streaming space.”
In an
open letter released after the merger was completed yesterday, new Paramount CEO David Ellison talked about a new focus on streaming, saying “We are committed to increasing investment in premium, exclusive content because we understand that exceptional storytelling is the single biggest driver of subscriber growth and loyalty.” And Sussman isn’t alone.
Strange New Worlds executive producer Akiva Goldsman has also talked about how Skydance taking over is an opportunity for him to pitch his
“Star Trek: Year One” concept. And
just yesterday at STLV Simon Pegg talked about how Ellison (an executive producer on the last two Star Trek films) taking over, makes now “the right time” for a fourth Kelvin Universe film.

Scott Bakula in NCIS: New Orleans (CBS)
More to come on “Star Trek: United” at STLV
Mike will be joining the TrekMovie “Does Canon Matter?” panel in the Lounge on Saturday at 11:30 AM. His work on
Voyager and
Enterprise makes him uniquely qualified to weigh in on how Star Trek canon can be understood, both when creating new stories and when watching them. Sussman will likely be talking more about his series idea during this panel.
And on Sunday at 3: 30 PM in the Leonard Nimoy Theater, Scott Bakula himself has a panel on the main stage in a rare convention appearance. It’s quite possible the “Star Trek: United” pitch will come up, if not from the actor himself, from audience questions.
Sussman will also be back on two panels Sunday in the DeForest Kelley Theater, on the Treksperts stage. First up will be a panel at 2:00 PM celebrating the 20th anniversary of “In a Mirror, Darkly,” which notably established Archer’s future as president of the Federation. And Sussman will be back at 3:00 PM for “Trek Politics: Living In A Political Universe,” where the subject of Archer’s career in Federation politics could come up again.