Enterprise: Impressions of Seasons 2 and 3
I’ve spent the majority of the last 24 hours catching up on my Enterprise eps. I’m sad to say that season 2 was composed of mostly uninspiring, insipid plot-driven episodes. There seems to have been a move away from anything deep or meaningful, and towards a hostile-alien-of-the-week style show. That said, there were a couple decent episodes. For example, “Cogenitor” (2.22) was refreshing. For once, they meet aliens who are understanding, friendly and patient even when insulted by Redneck Tripp who sees fit to apply human values to an alien culture. It’s another episode foreshadowing the development of the much maligned Prime Directive, and a significant one given the hard hitting consequences of Tripp’s actions. The writers continue to use the decon chamber as a soft-porn room. Not that I’m complaining, but those episodes tend to be awful in all the other departments.
Interestingly, in Season 3, Berman and Braga saw fit to rename “Enterprise” back to “Star Trek: Enterprise”, thereby bringing it solidly back into the franchise. Season 3 introduces a more solid arc of continuity, centred around the Xindi and a mysterious section of the galaxy called the Delphic Expanse, a sort of Bermuda Triangle where ships really do get abducted by aliens. Because it’s linked to the temporal cold war, the writers play around with time too much and the whole season is one big continuity screwup. I’ve learned to look past that, but it’s still pretty annoying when you have to suspend disbelief just so you can see what point the writers were trying to make. And there’s a lot of weekly “Captain Archer saves the world again” stuff happening which gets pretty tiring. Let’s hope something good comes out of this Xindi storyline.
11:49pm (GMT +11.00) 
