Manny Coto, The Showrunner Who Tried To Save 'Star Trek: Enterprise,' Dies
Executive producer who breathed life in series' last season dies of cancer at 62
Manny Coto — the television producer, director and screenwriter who tried to parlay a lifelong love of Star Trek into salvaging the doomed series Star Trek: Enterprise — has died. He was 62.
Coto died after a 13-month battle with pancreatic cancer.
The third spin-off from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the first prequel in the franchise, Enterprise already was flailing in its third season when Coto joined the series as a writer.
With episodes like “Similitude,” “Chosen Realm” and “Azati Prime,” Coto came aboard the Enterprise creative team in 2003.
He quickly moved up to become a co-executive producer later that season. In the fourth season he became executive producer of the show, alongside series creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, taking on the duties of showrunner.
Coto went on as executive producer of four seasons of 24. And he was an executive producer and writer for the fifth season of the Showtime television series Dexter.
Berman credits Coto for bringing his love of the original series to the stories of Enterprise.
“He wanted to build those bridges, or at least create steps that would foreshadow some of the things that would happen in the original series. I think to the hardcore fans it was a terrific direction to go,” Berman said in a 2006 interview.
Star Trek: Enterprise couldn't survive, however, on UPN, and it became the first series in the franchise since the original went off the air in 1969 not to run for seven seasons. Enterprise was cancelled after just its fourth year.
Berman blamed the network — not Coto — for the series’ demise.
“We were working on a network that, in a sense, was completely contradictory to the nature of the show. UPN had become a network of young women and girls and it was not a good marriage at that point,” he said in that same 2006 interview.
Just this week, Berman paid homage to his former colleague this week in a tweet, after news broke of Coto’s passing.
“If we had been given a fifth season on Enterprise, Manny Coto would have lifted it to levels beyond my imagination. An extraordinarily talented writer and lovely friend. How very sad,” Berman posted Monday.
Actor John Billingsley, who played the Denobulan Dr Phlox on Enterprise, likewise posted to social media in memorial to Coto.
“Bummed as hell to hear that Manny Coto passed away from pancreatic cancer. What a kind, well read, delightfully astringent, man. I'd say 'flights of angels' and etc., but if memory serves he was an atheist, we had that in common. So just: THANK YOU, MENSCH!” the actor tweeted.
It was Mark A. Altman, the journalist who chronicled Star Trek for decades, who really described the magnitude of Coto's death within the franchise.
“Heartbroken to hear about the death of MANNY COTO. He was a wonderful guy, talented showrunner and his love for #StarTrek knew no bounds. Not since Michael Piller died of throat cancer has the Trek writing family lost such a legend,” Altman posted.
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