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Is former Star Trek franchise runner Brannon Braga finally having that long-overude meaculpa?

The man known for having a creative hand in such shows as "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Star Trek: Enterprise," admitted to Trek fans over the weekend at a convention in Las Vegas that the last hour of Star Trek on television was a huge mistake.

"I do have some regrets about that final episode," Braga said, according to TrekMovie. "It didn't quite creatively align with the rest of the season. The final episode was very controversial and I do have some regrets about it."

Braga maintains that the episode, "These Are The Voyages," which recreated "Enterprise's" final days on a "Next Generation" holodeck with Jonathan Frakes' William Riker and Marina Sirtis' Deanna Troi, was supposed to be a "valentine" to Star Trek fans.

"'Enterprise' just happened to be the show on at the time and it turns out the episode was a failure," Braga said. "It had some great stuff in it, and it was a cool concept, but it was languid. I don't know if it fully delivered and it really pissed off the cast."

Because it was the end of Star Trek on television, Braga said that he and executive producer Rick Berman knew they could do anything in the final episode, which aired in May 2005. That included killing off characters, like Connor Trinneer's Trip Tucker.

"Trip was always my favorite character on the show and I wanted to kill him." Braga said. "I can't give you a coherent response. We wanted to do something that had emotional impact and had consequences, which is something we were never allowed to do."

Manny Coto came in as the "Enterprise" showrunner in the fourth season, and while fans seems to overwhelmingly accept that he was on the right path with the series, it ended up being too little too late with UPN pulling the plug after that season. Braga said that Coto's vision seemed to be the right one for the show, and should've been there from Day One.

"One could argue that 'Enterprise' might have been that from the beginning," he said. "When I was seeing what Manny was doing, it was like, 'You know what? Maybe this should have been the show from the start."

For more of Braga's comments, read the entire transcript over at TrekMovie.

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