I’ll admit it – when Enterprise first came out, I did not like it that much. I was prepared to hate it cause a) I did not really like prequels b) I did not like most of the cast and c) I did not like Scot Bakula at all! So if you do not like the main star, the captain, that didn’t leave Enterprise with much chance did it? The series was being shown in India on Star World (ooh the name matches) and I started watching season 1 at home in Thrikkakara. I liked the pilot, thought it was promising, and settled in to watch the show on a weekly basis. This must have been back in 2004. However the following few episodes didn’t exactly sparkle my imagination & fascination and I slowly lost a bit of interest. If I missed an episode, so what?
I really didn’t give the show much of a chance than I should have; I mean the very first long range Earth ship that heads out to different planets for exploration and meeting newer races and establishing first contact, beyond the clusters close to us. That alone should have made me cheer for the series and jump on board at the very beginning. But yeah – so anyway. I missed a few episodes in season 1 and then season 2 started and I got interested after a few really good episodes. But as luck would have it, Star World stopped airing Enterprise and for the next 3 years I didn’t give the show much thought. When I started downloading tv series & movies from Torrent in 2009, Voyager was my first preference, then DS9 and the original series and HD copies of the movies. Enterprise was the last option but I did get to downloading it. I watched season 1 & season 2 and then was wowed by season 3!
The season starts with the premise, shown in the very last scenes of season 2, of a weapon by the Xindi, (a hitherto unknown alien species) that destroys part of earth and kills 7 million people. And they could be back for more. At first they appeared as violent enemies wanting no interaction with humanity, but common ground gradually emerged as the crew of the Enterprise discovered that the Xindi were being manipulated into this enmity by a more mysterious race called the Sphere Builders. The latter group, calling themselves the guardians of the Xindi, have convinced the Xindi that in the future mankind will massacre them all so they must strike first. Being the most experienced team and the only ones capable of going that far that quickly, the Enterprise is dispatched to the Delphic Expanse to find the Xindi. Joining the Enterprise are a group of MACOs, an elite group of soldiers.
What follows is a dark series arc with a lot of deaths, carnage and gloom and very action filled. About 27 crewmen & women from the Enterprise gets killed. The ship gets the living shit kicked out of it a few times and is nearly destroyed herself. The characters are fully fleshed out & developed over this season. T’Pol & Trip start what is a really complicated relationship and they even have sex. The Xindi aren’t really all bad, as the crew find out, and they even build an alliance against the real villains – the Sphere Builders, who are finally destroyed in the end along with the weapon. And do you think that the crew gets to rest after all that? No, as the season ends, Captain Archer is throw into the past and finds himself, along with the rest of the crew right smack down in the midst of World War 2 in an alternative reality, with another alien species interferring with earth’s past and it’s up to our heroes to put things back in order! Really after all this!
As great as season 3 was it really left a void in the show’s epicenter. How do you top that? Season 4 became almost anti-climatic and it never really stood a chance after that. The show was cancelled mid-season but the final episodes were aired and the series was allowed to be brought to a conclusion. Albeit a very unsatisfactory one. But that is a blog post for another day! Season 3, I salute you.
