By GustavoLeao / 20:09, 23 November 2012 / Enterprise

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Media Geek Network posted a "Retrovision Interview" with Star Trek Enterprise star Scott Bakula and we post excerpts hereas part of our "Archives Interview" series. This is the first time this interview from 2001 is posted online.

Regarding Archer, he told journalist Ed Gross “I’ve got to be honest, I responded to the idea of it and this character and then I got the script for the pilot and everything just fell into place. I like it, the character is great and it’s really a return, in many ways, to what the original Star Trek was all about. There’s just a lot of emotion in this show, this version of it, and there’s a lot of relationship among the crew, which is great. It very much has an ‘anything goes’ feel to it, which I think is going to be a lot of fun for the audience.”

In assessing what he brings to Enterprise – and, indeed, every role he plays – Bakula notes, “What I try to do is bring reality to a situation. As much reality as I can, because I see that as my job as an actor. Believability, reality, whatever you want to call it. As I said to Rick and Brannon early on, I don’t know why I’ve done as much sci-fi as I have. Part of it, I think, is that I want to believe. If the job calls for me to stand in front of a 60-foot dragon and battling it to the death, then I want to believe that that dragon is out there. If I believe, then maybe I can help the audience believe it. If I believe I can travel in time, then the audience believes it also.

“At this point in my career,” he says, “one thing I’ve learned is you never count on anything, so if we get through the first 13 and we’re still rolling, I’ll be happy. And everybody walks around saying five, seven, six – throwing all these numbers out, but I’m not pessimistic at all. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know it all seems a wonderful thing. So I’m approaching it as, you know, hopefully at least a two-year job. And I approached it as I approach everything. At the end of the day, they put a two-hour script in front of me that I just thought was fantastic, and a character that I really wanted to play, and that I thought should it go for a while, there would be room to do a lot of different things with it and there would be a lot of opportunity for this character with other characters on the ship. So, to me, it’s like a gift that this kind of job exists in this town. There are very few opportunities like this, if it turns out to be a show that lasts for a long time, and it’s a franchise that I love. It seems like a good thing.

No interview with the actor, particularly at this stage of the game, could be conducted without one obligatory question. Cliches be damned, Bakula’s ready for it. “I know Kirk and Picard probably the best,” he says. “Again, I think Archer is very human and I think certainly he would be closer to Kirk. But because he’s a Starfleet brat and moved up through the ranks and the whole system, and his dad was part of it, it’s been his whole life and his whole dream. To get an opportunity to live that dream is something that very few people ever get a chance to do, so he’s driven in a sense to do this. Not that Kirk and Picard weren’t driven, but there’s just an excitement about being the first that you can only have if you are the first.

The full extensive interview is here.