Any franchise entering its fifth decade is bound to have had a few ups and downs along the way. Star Trek's midlife crisis landed in the '00s.
Nemesis, the tenth Trek movie, had brought the film series to a stuttering halt, consigning the old odd numbers bad, even numbers good theory to history (check out our Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best article to see what we mean). On the small screen, meanwhile, the premature cancellation of Enterprise had brought 18 continuous years of storytelling on the final frontier to an end. A wilderness period to rival Doctor Who's absence between 1989 and 2005 could easily have been on the cards.
