Boy bands in space!

[Anna Yolei]

It could have been very interesting to have Archer leave the show one way or another at the end of S3 and have a new captain (would Earth let T'Pol captain the Enterprise?) in S4.

Funny you say this because a whole lotta Tucker stans people wanted exactly this by the end of season 2. While I wasn't especially fond of Archer in the first season, I never blamed Bakula for this. At the end of the day, an actor is only as good as the material is consistent. Hayden Christensen is the most famous poster boy for this.

 

[DonIago]

I don't know. Bakula's clearly capable of giving good performances, but there's a multitude of factors that govern what we ultimately see on the screen, and it's not clear to me how much of it was his own choices and how much of it was what he was given to work with.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

would Earth let T'Pol captain the Enterprise?

They did, in "Twilight".

 

[DonIago]

They did, in "Twilight".

Was Enterprise in contact with Earth at that point? Wouldn't they still have been in the Expanse, at least for a long part of it?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Was Enterprise in contact with Earth at that point?

They must have been. After Archer's memory failed, Starfleet contacted T'Pol and gave her a commission so she could command the ship.

 

[Anna Yolei]

I don't know. Bakula's clearly capable of giving good performances, but there's a multitude of factors that govern what we ultimately see on the screen, and it's not clear to me how much of it was his own choices and how much of it was what he was given to work with.

The description of Archer was basically that they wanted a guy that was Kirk's childhood hero who did cowboy diplomacy. Given that, I don't think Scott Bakula was the right fit at all, but TBTP were looking to cast a lead w sci-fi cred and he was arguably the biggest household name they'd ever cast in a leading role at the time. That guy who played Lorca in DSC would've been a good fit for such a version of Archer that Berman and Braga supposedly wanted and Bakula could've made for a pretty decent Christopher Pike.

 

[DonIago]

Yeah, Bakula's more of a Picard than a Kirk.