There was always rumors that UPN had say in the direction Voyager took through the course of its run. One thing I've been wondering recently is why UPN decided after several years of statistically lower ratings to order yet another Star Trek series for fall 2001 giving no break between the two series.
It seems to me that a break is
exactly what they originally tried to do.
Remember, Enterprise was
just Enterprise when it first aired. It was
not Star Trek. They weren't trying to make a Star Trek series.
They tried to make sexed-up SciFi series that was not like Star Trek to attract hip new young fans instead of stale old Star Trek fans. Of course, that failed miserably and
no one watched Enterprise
other than a very small fraction of hardcore, old Star Trek fans. So they slapped the "Star Trek" label onto it in Season 3 to at least try to keep some of them watching, and maybe bring in some of the much larger Star Trek fanbase who
weren't watching it.
Anyhow, my point is they weren't looking at it as 'two Star Trek serieses back to back'. They were looking at Enterprise as a revolutionary new brand - then retconned that idea away after it failed miserably 2 seasons into Enterprise's run.