Star Trek: Enterprise [TV Series] (2001)

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The fifth weekly TV series in the indefatigable Star Trek franchise, Enterprise took the viewer "back to where it all began" (or so read the promotional copy). Set 100 years in the future -- yet still 150 years before the "original" Star Trek series -- the new show charted the origins of the starship Enterprise, beginning with the first close encounter between humans and Klingons. Brought to Starfleet Medical after crash-landing in a rural area, the injured Klingon Klaang is treated with hostility by the attending Vulcan physicians, something that the earthling staffer cannot understand. Pioneering Starfleet pilot Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), skipper of the recently constructed Enterprise starship, volunteers to take Klaang back to his home planet of Kronos. The continuity proper begins when Klaang is kidnapped en route by the genetically enhanced Sulibans, prompting Archer and his crew to embark upon the first of many bold forays into "where no man has gone before." Much of the series' entertainment value was engendered by displays of "primitive" pre-Federation equipment and paraphernalia, with new technology being introduced with each passing week -- new, that is, to those three or four people who have never seen any of the various Star Trek incarnations. Featured in the cast were Jolene Blalock as Archer's somewhat condescending Vulcanian first officer, T'Pol; John Billingsley as brilliant Vulcan medical doctor Phlox; Linda Park as hyper-kinetic linguistics expert Ensign Hoshi Sato; Connor Trinnear as wisecracking good-ol'-boy engineer Trip Tucker ; Dominic Keating as weapons expert Malcolm Reed; and Anthony Montgomery as navigator Travis Mayweather. Making its much-anticipated UPN premiere as a two-hour special on September 26, 2001, Enterprise settled into its standard 60-minute weekly length thereafter. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi