Spiner himself explained,
One of the ideas that John Logan and I had about what the next film would have been was a Justice League of Star Trek. Something would bring all the great Star Trek villains together, from Khan to Shinzon, and Picard is the only person who could stop them and he actually has to go through time and pluck out the people he needs to help him. He goes back to the moment before Data blows up and takes him back to get Kirk and Spock, and go even further back and get Scott Bakula’s character, Archer.
I can’t imagine it would have been good, but boy do I wish I existed in a universe where this movie had been made.
Picard pulls Archer through time and Archer turns to the camera and goes, “Oh boy”
Waited four seasons for them to do this throwaway gag on #Enterprise but nope, too silly… but invalidating four seasons of Enterprise by revealing that the whole show was a holodeck program run by Riker… That’s a-ok
I don’t think the whole show was a holodeck program? It actually happened and Riker simply ran a holodeck program based on those events. Still a pretty dumb way to end the show, but I don’t think it invalidates the previous 4 seasons.
And they had the perfect episode to do it in too.