Enterprise Getting New Aliens, Hairdos, Weapons

Steve Krutzler writes "The news about Enterprise's radical "new direction" for its third season is going mainstream on May 10th in TV Guide. Rick Berman reveals that the season finale will bring about major changes in the struggling Star Trek series for next year including new aliens, new weapons, new hairdos and a mission he calls a Star Trek "first."" I've felt like the show has been slipping all season, so here's hoping.

Comments

I hope they don't use Borgs!

[antdude]

Next week's episode (5/7/2003) will be a Borg episode.

Synopsis:
An arctic research team on Earth discovers debris from an alien vessel, nearly a century old, buried in a glacier along with the bodies of two cybernetically enhanced humanoids. Once those beings are thawed for investigation, they come to life and abduct the scientists and their transport vessel. Enterprise is called to intercept, but Captain Archer and his crew find these cyborgs to be an intractable, insidious enemy.

Re:Borg

[hpa]

What this episode proves (assuming a rumor I read is true...) is that Enterprise takes place after the Enterprise-E visited Earth in First Contact.

Given the fact that First Contact introduced the first Earth warp ship, bar none, wouldn't you say that's pretty well established already?

Re:A Star Trek "First"?

[AmateurCoder]

I didn't see the trailer either but after you mentioned it I checked out the summary of the next episode at upn.com/shows/enterprise . Here it is:

"Regeneration"

An excavation team on Earth makes an astounding discovery when they uncover a pair of never-seen-before cybernetic aliens (Borg drones) buried in the Arctic Circle. When these aliens mysteriously revive themselves and take off into space in one of the Earth ships, Enterprise is called upon to investigate and stop them. Meanwhile, as Archer and the crew close in on the fleeing aliens, the drones send a signal back to The Collective meaning regardless of what happens in this fight, humans and the Borg are destined to meet again.

I totally agree with you that including the borg into the preqel series would ruin it.

Re:Borg

[NanoGator]

"I understand what you're saying... you mean that from the point of view of Archer and crew, the past has not yet been sullied by the intrustion of the Borg and Picard"

No, I'm saying that the timeline that Archer exists in, Picard and the Borg *have* changed the time line. The big startling clue here is that the NX-01 was named Enterprise, yet the NX-01 was never mentioned in any of the other series. This wouldn't be a big deal except the ready room on the Enterprise-D depicts all of the ships named Enterprise starting with the aircraft carrier in service today.

" I'm not really sure what difference that makes though, since it's been established that Picard and co "fixed" the past so that it was close enough to what had originally occured that there were no significant differences."

Not really. We're missing a key bit of information here: Did the Enterprise-E return to the timeline it originally came from, or did it show up in the post-FC timeline? That isn't clear, and the method of travel used makes the answer to that question a bit fuzzy. We (the audience) don't know for sure what happened right after that.

"That being the case, then why does it matter if Archer is in the same timeline or not? It's a given that the future can be changed... we've seen that again and again. So anything that happens to Archer has ramifications for all subsequent events. But if Berman was so bold as to say that events had become so messed up that all of the things in previous shows didn't happen, wouldn't we then have to form a mob and KILL him?"

The point I was making is that STTNG, TOS, DS9, even VOY took place happened before the time-line was polluted. Archer exists in the polluted time-line. That means that no matter what happens in Enterprise, the original series would be completely in tact. Confusing? Watch Back to the Future 2. That movie explains what I'm talking about better than I can here on Slashdot. There'd be no reason to get mad at Berman over it, they found a unique way to tell a new story. It'd be boring if we saw a documentary of passing references over 24 seasons of Star Trek.

Creation of the Borg

[CleverNickName]

I do think the Borg have been done to death. They were at their best in Next Generation, and I still give props to whoever thought them up in the first place. Definitely one of the most original sci-fi enemies ever.


It was Michael Piller who created the Borg, and it was he who made them the terrifying badasses that they were in Best of Both Worlds I&II.

On the DVD for Season 3 or 4, Michael says that he was planning to leave TNG after he wrote Best of Both Worlds Part I, so he went ahead and made them so bad ass, and so undefeatable, because "someone else would have to figure out what to do with them."

Then Gene convinced him to stick around another year, so he ended up being "someone else!"

I think this is awesome, and it's a good lesson for writers: get your characters into trouble. Put them in a place where REAL death is certain, and then let them figure out how to get out of it. Michael wrote those stories without any hesitation or fear, and that's why they are two of the best TNG episodes ever.

For the record: In my opinion, Michael Piller is responsible for some of the best stories -- well, some of the best everything -- on The Next Generation.