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Enterprise - there is no Star Trek in the title - is about
to warp onto our screens. But what's it all about, and Anthony
Clark asks more importantly, will it be any good?
Set
in 2151, 150 years from now and 100 years or so before James
Kirk, Enterprise is set in the pioneering days of interstellar
exploration. The crew of Enterprise exhibits a sense of wide-eyed
wonder at the strange things they encounter. The show also
explores the intergalactic upheavals that eventually led to
the formation of the Federation. Moreover, Enterprise is the
first Star Trek series to feature an ongoing plot line from
the beginning.
In
the pilot episode, Broken Bow, a mysterious alien from
the future is introduced. In partnership with the genetically-manipulative
Suliban, this unknown figure is set to recur throughout the
series.
Broken
Bow Plot Synopsis: A Klingon, carrying vital information
to his homeworld regarding the shape-shifting Sulibans, is
shot down over Oklahoma and pursued through cornfields by
Suliban agents. The Klingon manages to kill his pursuers but
gets shot by a farmer. While transporting the delirious Klingon
home, Starfleet captain Jonathan Archer encounters more Suliban,
who invade his ship and kidnap the Klingon.
As
Archer and and his crew search for their lost Klingon, Archer
learns from a Suliban dissident that the Sulibans are trying
to instigate a Klingon civil war at the bequest of the enigmatic
man from the future. In return, the mystery alien is teaching
the Suliban how to enhance their DNA and give themselves superpowers.
Meanwhile, T'Pol, the Vulcan science attaché assigned to the
mission, thinks Archer should have returned to Earth the minute
the Klingon was captured.
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The
Enterprise: Facts and Figures
Registry
number: NX-01
Crew
compliment: 87
Length: 190 meters
Weight: 80,000 metric tons
Armaments: The Enterprise
is equipped with laser cannons, hull-retracting plasma-charged
artillery turrets and spatial torpedoes.
Defensive mechanisms: No
shields, only equipped with retractable polarized hull
plating.
Shuttlepods: The Enterprise
is equipped with shuttlepods, each carrying six passengers
and a pilot. They are launched using a magnetic arm,
which lowers them through bomb bay doors below the hull
of the ship and then releases them. Used for ship to
shore, ship to ship and ship to station transportation.
Capable of sub-warp speeds only.
Replicators: The Enterprise
stocks regular foodstuffs but has primitive replicators,
or protein resequencers, that can produce limits items
like pasta or beverages.
Transporters: No bio-filters.
Crewmembers must decontaminate themselves in a Decon
Chamber with phosphorescent gel. Transporters are only
used for cargo, though human transport will be pioneered
during the first season.
Communications: Long-range
communications only possible while at warp. Intra-ship
communications through touch-panel only. Away teams
will carry communicators with primitive universal translators
in them.
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The
Enterprise: The Crew
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JONATHAN
ARCHER (Scott Bakula)
Archer is a San Francisco native, is the son of one
of Zefram Cochrane's chief warp-drive collaborators.
He is a reasonable but headstrong Kirk-like figure who
resents the Vulcans because he believes they impeded
his father's work by not sharing more of their science.
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T'POL
(Jolene Blalock)
T'Pol is a young, all-business science attaché
with the Vulcan consulate. She is assigned to the mission
as science officer, but when Archer is badly injured midway
through the mission, she asserts that her rank in the
Vulcan military is higher than the Starfleet ranks of
anyone else on board, so she also serves as the ship's
de facto first officer. Like Dr Phlox, she's at first
only supposed to be assigned to the ship during its eight-day
mission to the Klingon homeworld and back. |
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CHARLIE
TUCKER (Connor Trinneer)
The chief engineer, fills the McCoy role as captain's
friend and confident. Like Bones, he's a southerner who
provides a lot of pointed wisecracks. Like fellow engineer
Montgomery Scott, Charlie also seems to be third-in-command
after Archer and T'Pol. |
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HOSHI
SATO (Linda Park)
Sato is the communications officer. Not only is she in
civilian life a linguistics professor with an ear for
alien languages, she also seems to demonstrate in the
pilot some kind of super-hearing that even T'Pol comes
to respect. |
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MALCOLM
REED (Dominic Keating)
Reed is the ship's armory officer. We don't find out too
much about him in the pilot, but toward the end he provides
Archer and Tucker with weapons they've never seen before,
Phase Pistols: "They have two settings, stun and kill.
Best not to confuse them." |
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TRAVIS
MAYWEATHER (Anthony Montgomery)
Mayweather is
the ship's helmsman, who was raised on much slower interstellar
cargo ships. |
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PHLOX
(John Billingsly)
Phlox is an alien doctor delighted with the opportunity
to make an extended examination of human physiology. He
also likes Chinese food. |
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