By BWilliams / 14:48, 22 July 2005 / Reviews - Products

STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE - SEASON 2
DVD

Price: $99.99
Pub Date: July 2005

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Introduction:

Once the first season of ENTERPRISE was in the history books, fans began to wonder about the status of the beloved STAR TREK franchise. The series was on shaky ground, having lost many of the 12-15 million viewers during the course of the first season due to tired, worn out storytelling that rehashed many of the same plots from previous TREK series. Add to it the growing reliance upon sex to promote the series, a lack of connective tissue to the Original Series, a dependence upon all things NEXT GENERATION, and the growing threats from other popular series such as SMALLVILLE and AMERICAN IDOL, and you've got the perfect recipe for disaster.

"Shockwave, Part II", which was actually the second episode filmed, picked up the threads from the first season with Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) caught out of time in a world decimated by the Temporal Cold War and seemingly no way to return home. But just as Archer is facing problems of his own in the far-flung future, the Enterprise crew face their own troubles at the hands of the Suliban, with T'Pol tortured and drugged into revealing Archer's fate. "Shockwave, Part II"
is one of those rare episodes in television, and the only STAR TREK episode in the saga's 40-year history, where the repeat telecast ran longer than the original telecast; about a minute of additional dialog and scene extensions were restored for the repeat telecast.

This was followed up with the head-scratching episode 'Carbon Creek", which showed Vulcans on Earth over a century before their crucial first contact with humanity. A freak accident sends a Vulcan space probe crashing to Earth with only three survivors, one of them T'Pol's great-grandmother (who happens to astonishingly look just like Jolene Blalock), who must somehow integrate among the 'primitive" humans while phoning home. Of course, you wonder during the whole time whether or not T'Pol is simply pulling Archer's leg in telling this story, and with the Vulcans' penchant for wry humor it could easily be a tall tale on her part. I call this one a head-scratcher because Berman and Braga once again dipped into the revisionist well to have the notion that Vulcans were secretly checking out Earth at the dawn of the space age in 1957, despite their continued comments that they had no intention of rewriting STAR TREK history. They could have fooled me.

Still, ENTERPRISE managed to pull a few surprise rabbits out of its hat, with two quite intriguing episodes. 'Minefield", written by John Shiban, cleverly addressed the recurring threat of the Romulans without actually having them shown on screen. In 'Minefield" we learn more about Malcolm Reed's (Dominic Keating) character and his commitment to duty and sacrifice for the good of the crew. This was followed up with the equally eerie 'Dead Stop", written by Michael Sussman and Phyllis Strong, which picked up the pieces of 'Minefield" and took it into a visually cool-looking episode. A battered and crippled Enterprise arrives at an automated space station that looks and sounds too good to be true. But you know the rest of the old adage, and for Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery), he apparently learns it a bit too late.

You'd think that with two great episodes back to back, ENTERPRISE would apparently have its act together. Not so, as they followed up with one of the most critically drummed episodes of them all, 'A Night in Sickbay", which shows Archer at his most distressed over a first contact mission gone wrong that takes a toll not only on him but also on his beloved dog Porthos. Instead, we're given more sexual allusions, as Archer begins to have tempting thoughts of T'Pol. With inane comments like 'I'm doing the breast that I can," fans were nonetheless displeased at this huge step backward in creativity.

In early 2003, all television series addressed the issue of the AIDS epidemic, and ENTERPRISE was no exception. In "Stigma", T'Pol encounters a group of Vulcan scientists with a racial bigotry and intolerance for those fellow countrymen who had been suffering from a rare untreatable neurological disease, only to find out that one of the scientists on the research team is among the carriers. Where other series sought to sensitively address the AIDS issue, ENTERPRISE seemingly did a blatant job of hitting the viewers front and center with the topic. (On a more sensitive note that moved viewers, "Stigma" began with a touching on-screen tribute to the crew of the space shuttle Columbia who had perished only four days before. More on this later...)

Another interesting episode, 'Regeneration", also written by Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong, brought back the Borg in quite a convincing way that ties in to FIRST CONTACT. Apparently, once the Enterprise-E had destroyed the Borg sphere, some of the wreckage laid buried on Earth for nearly a century, only to be unearthed by curious scientists and brought back to life like futuristic Frankenstein's monsters. While pulling it off very stylishly, some fans took ENTERPRISE, along with Berman and Braga, to task by continually relying upon previously established elements from the Berman era without acknowledging the Original Series at all.

'First Flight" is an exciting romp in the vein of THE RIGHT STUFF that truly gets back to ENTERPRISE's original intentions of looking at the beginning of the STAR TREK universe. Archer receives an untimely word that an old rival from his past, Captain A.G. Robinson, has died in a mountain climbing accident, leading Archer to reflect on the time he and Robinson were test pilots for Starfleet's warp two project and the leading choices for command of the Enterprise. Guest star Keith Carradine more than holds his own as Robinson in this moving episode, splendidly directed by LeVar Burton. If ENTERPRISE had produced more episodes of this caliber, perhaps we could have gotten a much better series.

That's not to say that ENTERPRISE didn't have its share of major clunkers: the aforementioned 'A Night in Sickbay", along with another sexually charged romp in 'Precious Cargo", the bland and uninspiring 'Horizon", and yet another sexually charged tale with the season's penultimate episode 'Bounty", did very little, if any, to keep interest in ENTERPRISE alive. Having the crew run around the ship in their underwear or rub up against each other over and over again is definitely not what Gene Roddenberry had in mind for his 'Wagon Train to the Stars" concept back in the 1960's.

The second season ended in quite a bang with "The Expanse", a 9/11-inspired parable that changed the face of ENTERPRISE forever. When an unknown alien ship attacks Earth and kills over seven million people, among them Tucker's sister, the Enterprise is summoned back to Earth with new orders: find the beings responsible and bring them to justice. T'Pol, however, is faced with the dilemma of divided loyalties to her captain or to her home world. But just as the Enterprise embarks on its most dangerous mission yet, an old enemy of Archer's waits to exact vengeance. By this time the ratings had continued to further slip, and Berman and Braga were charged to come up with something quick that would ensure the series' continuation. And as UPN pondered ENTERPRISE's future, this highly dramatic season finale set the stage for what was to come: a season-long arc that would resolve the events of "The Expanse", if not the entire series, once and for all.