While there have been many stories and rumors that "Star Trek: Enterprise" could be on UPN's chopping block come the end of the season, the show's executive producers recently told Zap2it that the show is stronger than ever.

"We're pleased that the ratings have been holding on, and we're pleased that the shows have been terrific," said Rick Berman. "We made a decision to develop a unique, season-long arc, which we are nearly half-done with -- as far as shows that have been completed -- and two-thirds done with in terms of shows conceived and written."

"Enterprise" received stiff competition this year when The WB decided to move "Smallville" against the series. The move, while cutting in to "Enterprise's" leading demographics, was actually more damaging to that show than to Star Trek. The success of "Enterprise" this season, at least the way the show's crew sees it, is because of the new approach.

"There are two things that are really working for us creatively and, it appears, for the fans," said Brannon Braga, one of the show's executive producers. "There are strong sciencec-fiction components to this arc -- the mystery of the spheres, the five-species Xindi, great time travel -- and also, the emotional stakes have been raised quite a bit."

Any fan who has thought that T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) has been acting weird this season will find out why toward the end, Berman said.

"We're also going to find out, in Episode 19 I believe, that there's a specific reason why T'Pol's behvaior might be a little bit different than we would expect it to be," Berman said.

As far as the new name, neither producer said it really made too much of a difference adding the words "Star Trek" to the title.

"Brannon and I both believe that it has made absolutely no difference," Berman said. "They've been very supportive, so I didn't feel it was worthwhile to object. Anybody who had any interest in Star Trek knew that 'Enterprise' was a Star Trtek series, so putting the name 'Star Trek' in front of it to seemingly attract potential Trek fans, I think, didn't serve much of a purpose."

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