The Show- The third season of
'Star Trek Enterprise' hits the shops and we have the bloodiest Trek to hit the DVD shelves. Welcome to the Xindi war !
But before we get into that I need to get my Seasonal gripe of Russell Watson, who is not just back, but he’s murdering a happier, more toe tapping version of his previous Interstellar welcome, oh my lord it’s time to hit the next chapter button…
The show brings with its own reflection of the post September 11th events with an Intergalactic terrorist attack on Earth closing the second season and bringing about the death of 7 million people. Enterprise being the only warp 5 ship available to the human race is ordered to seek the makers of the weapons of mass destruction. It’s up to Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and his Crew, with some help from Special Forces trained Military Assault Command Operation soldiers (MACOs) to seek and destroy any threat before Earth finds itself again at peril.
The shows story arc covers the entire season, a first for any of the Trek shows, and this is probably the most action packed of all the seasons of all the shows but don’t get your phasers out yet.
Entering the expanse, Enterprise and her Crew encounter all manner of friend and foe, including the five races of the Xindi. This group of races, containing Primates, Reptilians, Insectoids, Aquatics and Arboreals, have been informed that Humankind will bring about the extinction of their species and a larger probe, similar but many times larger to the one that previously attacked Earth, is being built in a means to end humanity in a pre-emptive strike. This information comes from a group of inter dimensional beings that created the expanse and the spheres to alter space for their own nefarious reasons.
Continuing through a minefield of spatial distortions, the search for the Xindi is proving just as deadly as this elusive foe. The expanse is littered with marauding ships acting like pirates and other deadly occurrences around every corner. It is in here that Enterprise meets her darkest hour and proves that she must struggle to maintain humanity in order to save mankind. But when they finally come face to face with the Xindi, both races have to face up to the challenge or it may be the end for both of them and of all in the universe.
There are lots of changes to the season, and apart from the action going full blast ahead and the full season storyline, it seems that there are too many episodes that start with a bang and then we get to find out why. This ‘new’ format is fine on the odd episode but is used far too frequently here. Time travel is also back again and is a major plot theme too, although the visits back to Twentieth Century Detroit (Carpenter Street ) and a Wild West episode (North Star ) seem very much like fillers.
As for standout episodes, we have religious zealots and suicide bombers in
‘Chosen Realm’, and
‘Similitude’ is one of the best of this and any other season, covering heart breaking emotional drama and genetic morality, this is a fantastic tour for our plucky engineer Trip (Connor Trinneer).
Again we have the usual mix of episodes but with more than a few nods going into movie homage, with a Vulcan themed episode (
Impulse ) looking scarily like
‘Night of the Living (Vulcan) Dead’ and
‘Hatchery’ doing the
‘Alien’ rounds with dark shadows and dripping clinking chains. Its also nice to see our friendly blue faced Andorian Shran (Jeffrey Combs) making a re-appearance and getting stuck in on the action too in
‘Proving Ground’ . The sex appeal is again on the up with Trip getting more than Vulcan neuro-pressure from T'Pol (Jolene Blalock). And we even get to see the Enterprise J !
This ends again in the expected cliff hanger, although this time it is more in
‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ territory than what you would expect from a
‘Star Trek’ show, it looks like strange days are ahead.
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The Extras- Most of the extras can be found on disc 7, but throughout the series there are lots of deleted scenes. These are a really nice accompaniment as the show things before the music, clicks, beeps, and swishes are added in. There are also a few audio and text commentaries.
‘The Xindi Saga Begins’ has Braga and Berman talk about how Paramount wanted a change to the way they showed the Enterprise, and their decisions for one continous story line through all 24 episodes.‘Enterprise Moments: Season Three’ , the cast reflects on the third season.‘Enterprise Moments: Connor Trinneer’ shows the latest of the Star Trek Engineers in all his glory.‘A Day in the Life of a Director: Roxann Dawson’ is similar to the LeVar Burton extra on season two in that this follows the Voyager crew mate behind the camera shooting scenes from ‘Exile’ , where ‘Star Trek’ mixes in with the tale of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ .
‘Outtakes’ are five minutes of fun and frolics with the cast getting things wrong or just having a lark.‘Photo Gallery’ is exactly what it says…. Plenty of pics for your viewing pleasure, and plenty of aliens too.‘Borg Invasion’ and a funky ‘Star Trek Original Series’ trailer.
‘Behind the Camera: Marvin Rush’ is the gem in the extra quotient, with the director of photography getting to grips in various episode shootings throughout this and several of the other Trek series.
‘Enterprise Secrets’ looks at the location shooting on the Paramount back lot.
For those wanting to know what and where the Easter eggs are, please go to page 3 of this review, for those wishing to explore on their own, thanks for reading.
'Star Trek: Enterprise Season 3' is available in the UK via
AmazonUK and available for pre-order in the US via
Amazon .
Or for UK readers, you can win one now, just go to our
competition page as 2 copies are up for grabs now !!!!! GOOD LUCK !
You can read more about the DVD in our
database .
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The Easter Eggs- To get to Easter egg number 1,
‘NX-01 File 07’ , go to the
‘The Xindi Saga Begins’ option, hit left and this will highlight the plan of the Xindi Reptilian. This has John Billingsley speaking about nude scenes and the endowment of Dr. Phlox.
To get to Easter egg number 2,
‘NX-01 File 08’ , go to the
‘Enterprise Profile: Connor Trinneer’ option hit left, and this will highlight the elevation of the Xindi Reptilian. This a short look at the costume design of the show.
To get to Easter egg number 3,
‘NX-01 File 09’, go to the
‘Borg Invasion Trailer’ option hit left, and this will highlight the elevation of the Xindi Reptilian. A quick look at the episode
‘E2’ , where we find the descendants of the Enterprise crew.
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