The Controversial Enterprise Death That Star Trek Keeps Undoing

Any new project in the "Star Trek" franchise has decades of lore to keep up with, which can be challenging even without the various "Star Trek" storylines that have become unwatchable with age and tend to be quietly ignored. As such, mistakes sometimes happen. These range from strange oversights — such as when the credits for "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" managed to misspell Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) as "Uhuru" — to creative decisions that turn out to be flawed in hindsight, like writer Ron D. Moore's admission that the biggest mistake "Star Trek: Voyager" made was defusing the conflict between the Starfleet and the Maquis far too early.

Sometimes, though, things get so weird that the franchise keeps deliberately undoing a particular plot point over and over again, across several different projects. This is what keeps happening to Charles "Trip" Tucker III (Connor Trinneer) from "Star Trek: Enterprise," who infamously dies on the show. Tucker's abrupt death is fairly iffy, seeing as the erstwhile chief engineer borderline randomly blows himself and a group of antagonists up in the final episode of "Enterprise," titled "These Are the Voyages..." Still, his demise seems fairly definitive –  though that hasn't stopped other "Star Trek" projects from bringing Tucker back into the mix over and over again, creating potential for mighty confusion.

For a man who gets caught in a gigantic explosion on "Star Trek: Enterprise," Trip Tucker has continued to lead an eventful existence in post-"Enterprise" media. First, the "Star Trek: Enterprise" novel series utterly refused to let Tucker die. Instead, it retconned the show's finale by having him fake his death and embark on new adventures as a secret agent for Starfleet's black ops agency Section 31. Then, in 2023, the animated "Star Trek: Very Short Treks" episode "Holograms All the Way Down" featured a hologram Tucker in a string of Easter egg-laden, franchise-wide Holodeck cameos that heavily implied that the holograms have a degree of self-awareness. Finally, "Star Trek: Lower Decks" Season 5, Episode 9, "Fissure Quest," introduces an alternate-universe version of Tucker's romantic interest T'Pol (Jolene Blalock), who has been married to the very alive Tucker for over 60 years.

In all fairness, the novels don't necessarily take precedent over the events of "Star Trek: Enterprise," and neither the "Very Short Treks" holo-Tucker nor the unseen "Lower Decks" one are the same as the original. Still, the fact that the "Star Trek" franchise keeps bringing Trip back in so many ways is a pretty telling sign that the character's story didn't end in the best possible way, and that various showrunners and project helmspeople are acutely aware of the situation.

One of the reasons "Star Trek" is able to get away with these constant Trip Tucker references is the way "Star Trek: Enterprise" handles the character's death. The events of "These Are the Voyages..." unfold through the eyes of Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fame, some two centuries after they actually take place. Riker is struggling with an ethical decision and hits the Holodeck to explore the Enterprise NX-01 crew's stories, playing the role of the ship's chef. His simulated session depicts the events that make up the "Enterprise" finale, including Trip's death. The novels then exploit this narrative choice by framing the explosion as a high-level conspiracy that has been written in official history books in order to fake Trip's demise.

Of course, it's still fairly certain that the events depicted on "Star Trek: Enterprise" are a whole lot more official than whatever happens in tie-in books, alternate universes, and jokey little mini-episodes. Even so, the way the "Star Trek" property keeps juggling Trip's "dead or alive" status and poking fun at its expense seems like a not-so-subtle sign that the franchise prefers to keep the character as alive as it feels it can get away with ... which is a lot. After all, the mirror universe antics, projects with dubious canon status, time travel adventures, and Kelvin timelines of "Star Trek" make it a very good property for character interpretations that differ from the official story.

"Star Trek: Enterprise" is currently streaming on Paramount+.