Deal also includes 'Twilight Zone,' other shows

The Sci Fi Channel has gotten its hands on a piece of the "Star Trek" franchise, picking up rights to the prequel series "Star Trek: Enterprise."

The deal with CBS Paramount Domestic TV, which syndicates "Enterprise," also includes an extension of the cable network's contract for "The Twilight Zone" as well as rights a pair of Stephen King miniseries and several short-lived shows with supernatural bents, among them "Threshold" and "Wolf Lake."

"We are delighted to be able to deliver so many successful programs to our audience," says Thomas Vitale, head of programming at Sci Fi. "Our deal with CBS Paramount enables us to bring a great deal of fresh and extremely popular genre programming to our schedule."

The centerpiece of the deal is "Enterprise," which ran on UPN from 2001-05 and will premiere on Sci Fi in the fall. It's set about 100 years after "First Contact" and stars Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer, commander of the newly commissioned ship Enterprise.

The deal also includes a number of shows from recent years that never got a chance to complete their initial runs on network TV. In addition to "Threshold" and "Wolf Lake," Sci Fi has picked up former UPN shows "Haunted," "Special Unit 2," "All Souls," "Jake 2.0" and "Level 9," as well as the mid-'90s FOX vampire show "Kindred: The Embraced."

Miniseries "The Stand" and "The Langoliers," both based on works by King, are also part of the agreement, along with several made-for-TV movies, one of which we must point out. It's called "Primal Force," and Sci Fi says it "features Ron Perlman as a rescuer trying to reach plane crash victims trapped on an island with mutant baboons."