Star Trek Enterprise: Season 2 (www.the-usher.com)

"Tactical Alert"

Enterprise continues it voyage into strange new regions of space, discovering new life and new civilisations, boldly going where no man has gone before…

Shockwave (Part 2)
Daniels and Archer must find a way back to the 22nd century in order to make sure history plays out as it should. Meanwhile, on board Enterprise, the Suliban have taken over the ship, but Reed, Trip, and T'Pol formulate a plan to eject the aliens.

Carbon Creek
After Archer and Trip become curious about a visit she made to a Pennsylvania mining town called Carbon Creek, T'Pol explains to them that Vulcans actually had their first contact with humans in 1957. That year, a Vulcan ship crashed on Earth and three crewmembers survived, including T'Pol's great grandmother.

Minefield
When attempting to explore a new planet, Enterprise triggers a cloaked mine. While the crew deal with the resulting damage, it's discovered another mine is stuck to the hull. During Reed's attempt to disarm it, a spike is driven into his leg, trapping him out there.

Dead Stop
Suffering from damage inflicted in the Romulan minefield and unable to complete repairs on their own, Archer orders a distress call to be put out. A response leads Enterprise to a repair station, which surprisingly has no crew aboard it and is run by computer. Repairs on Enterprise are carried out quite efficiently and quickly, though the price for all this is much higher than the crew could've guessed.

A Night In Sickbay
Archer spends a night in sickbay with Dr. Phlox after Porthos contracts a deadly virus on the Kreetassan homeworld. Crewmembers suspect Archer's increased stress level is due to Porthos' illness, but Dr. Phlox suspects it has to do with Archer's repressed sexual tension.

Marauders
In need of fuel, the Enterprise arrives at a Quonset mining colony for deuterium supplies. They discover that Klingons are forcing the colonists to give up all their deuterium. Archer and the rest of the crew work to train the colonists so they can fight back against the Klingons.

The Seventh
Archer, Mayweather and T'Pol travel to an arctic world to apprehend a fugitive, when Vulcan High Command contacts T'Pol. The mission takes a dangerous turn when T'Pol begins having flashbacks that suggest the events she remembers about a former mission may not accurately relate to what happened.

The Communicator
Archer and Reed return to a pre-warp society that is on the verge of war, to recover a lost communicator from an undercover survey mission.

Singularity
While Enterprise is surveying a black hole in a trinary star system, the stellar phenomenon causes strange effects on the crew.

Vanishing Point
Hoshi experiences her first transport and strange after effects lead her to believe she wasn't reassembled correctly.

Precious Cargo
Trip boards an alien cargo vessel to help repair a stasis pod, which holds a beautiful woman in suspended animation. When the woman accidentally wakes up, she reveals she's not a passenger, but a prisoner.

The Catwalk
When a lethal neutronic storm approaches faster than Enterprise can escape, the crew take shelter in the maintenance shafts inside the warp nacelles. They also provide refuge to a group of aliens, who aren't exactly honest about themselves.

Dawn
During a solo test mission on Shuttlepod One, Trip is attacked by a territorial alien and forced to land on the night side of a moon. As he tries contacting Enterprise, he discovers his alien foe has made an emergency landing nearby. The two contend with each other as an extremely hot sun rises and threatens both their lives.

Stigma
Enterprise visits a planet where an Interspecies Medical Exchange conference is being held. Dr. Phlox tries to obtain research on a terminal disease from the Vulcan contingency, without revealing T'Pol has been infected by it.

Cease Fire
Both the Vulcans and the Andorians make a claim to a small planet and military conflict soon erupts. As the fighting goes on, the Vulcans announce they are willing to discuss cease-fire terms. However, Imperial Guard officer Shran believes only Captain Archer can be trusted to mediate the situation, which drags the Enterprise crew into the tense situation.

Future Tense
The Enterprise crew find a small craft drifting in space and are surprised to find it contains a human corpse. More questions arise when the Suliban and Tholians make claims to the craft. Canamar Archer and Tucker are arrested and placed on a prisoner transport heading for a penal colony, Canamar. They won't have a chance to correct this error as one of inmates plots a takeover of the ship.

The Crossing
Noncorporeal aliens possess the bodies of the Enterprise crew, leading to paranoia and distrust amongst them. Judgment In a Klingon tribunal, Archer stands accused of aiding fugitives of the Empire and faces death if found guilty.

Horizon
Mayweather discovers his father has died and that things on his old home, the E.C.S. Horizon, have greatly changed.

The Breach
When militants take over a world, the Enterprise crew move to evacuate Denobulan geologists that are deep underground. Meanwhile, Phlox has to save a dying Antaran that refuses treatment due to the history of their races.

Cogenitor
The Enterprise crew makes first contact with the Vissians, a species with three genders. Trip meets one of the species' third gender, known as Cogenitor, and learns how badly Vissians treat all Cogenitors. Trip attempts to help the Cogenitor, even though it interferes with Vissian culture.

Regeneration
The remnants of an alien ship and two frozen cybernetic bodies are uncovered in the arctic by a research team. These aliens soon thaw out and flee Earth, taking the research team with them. Starfleet orders Enterprise to find them, but the crew aren't prepared for just how dangerous these aliens really are.

First Flight
Archer tells T'Pol the story of when he and a rival named A.G. Robinson were in competition for breaking the Warp 2 barrier.

Bounty
Archer learns the Klingons have put a price on his head when a Tellarite bounty hunter captures him. As Enterprise pursues, a virus causes T'Pol to go into premature Pon Farr.

The Expanse
An alien race known as the Xindi launch an attack on Earth, causing great casualties and massive damage. As Enterprise heads back home, an unlikely source informs Archer about the Xindi and that their next attack will destroy Earth.

After an averagely received first season, Star Trek Enterprise still boldly goes on exploring science fiction television but can season two make up for the short comings of season one?

With a few standout episodes but far too many average ones, the first season of 'Enterprise' didn't really get the Trekker excited over the prequel series. With arguments about continuation problems and the whole series going against most of Star Trek's well documented fictional history, fans were taking a while to warm up to the series and to be fair, season two didn't do much to elevate the situation.

The main problem with 'Enterprise' is the lack of originality. While this has been a problem with all the modern incarnations of the Star Trek franchise over the main seasons, it has become all the more evident in 'Enterprise'. The original premise for the show opens up so many possible plotlines with fans would want to see and to be fair, were addressed in later seasons to some extent but they should have been implemented from the off. The lack of any real conflict between Star Fleet and the Klingons is the major missing point. The second season should have seen the catalyst for war been ignited, producing an arc that could have run through many a season. Instead we have more of the usual one off episodes about spacial anomalies, strange new viruses and transporter accidents.

Originality might be the major issue of the season but there are still quite a few episodes to enjoy, simply because of the excellent cast. 'Carbon Creek' gives the wonderful Jolene Blalock a chance to shine as we discover the Vulcan's early observations of human behaviour. 'Minefield' adds more depth to Malcolm Reed. 'A Night in Sickbay' is an excellent example of how a 'bottle' show should be made. 'Cease Fire' sees the return of the brilliant Jeffrey Combs as Shran. 'Judgement' takes us back to the Klingon Court last seen in 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'. 'Regeneration' ingenious introduces a Borg threat to the series and 'First Flight' shows you more of Archer's backstory.

Season two is an improvement over the first one but not by much. While there is still a lot to enjoy here, the series doesn't quite meet the same heady heights that The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine or Voyager did, but each of those took their time to come into their own as well.

PICTURE & SOUND

Presented in 16x9 Widescreen with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, 'Star Trek' has never looked so good. The transfer is superb with the picture quality first rate throughout, really showcasing the exception special effects. The sound quality is also fantastic, especially during the fight sequences.

BONUS FEATURES

Audio Commentary
Writers Michael Sussman and Phyllis Strong provide commentary tracks for the episodes 'Dead Stop' and 'Regeneration'. Each of these tracks is very informative and fun, especially the 'Regeneration' one were the pair talk about the reaction towards bringing the Borg into Enterprise.

Text Commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda
While watching the episodes 'Stigma' and 'First Flight' you can switch on the text commentary feature which flashes up interesting facts and trivia about the episode and the series.

Deleted Scenes
Watch deleted or extended scenes from the episodes 'Minefield', 'A Night in Sickbay', 'Dawn', 'Stigma', 'Cease Fire' and 'The Expanse'.

Enterprise Moments: Season Two (19.09 mins)
Executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, writer/producer Michael Sussman, scenic artist Michael Okuda and stars Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, Linda Park, John Billingsley and Anthony Montgomery talk about the second season of 'Enterprise'. The cast and crew talk about their highlights of the second season and discuss episodes 'Carbon Creek', 'Shockwave', 'Dead Stop', 'Vanishing Point', 'First Flight', 'The Catwalk', 'Future Tense', 'Bounty' and 'The Expanse'.

Enterprise Profile: Jolene Blalock (14.56 mins)
Executive Producer Brannon Braga, Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating join Jolene Blalock to talk about T'Pol and the actress's journey into Star Trek. She reveals how she got involved with the series, talking about auditioning, the hectic shooting schedule and the wig. She also talks about the shows look into Vulcan culture and how the show has affected her career.

Levar Burton: Star Trek Director (7.00 mins)
The former 'Next Generation' star talks about going behind the camera, as he takes you behind the scenes of the episode 'First Flight'. He talks about the episode, revealing secrets about casting, the story and the fight sequence.

Enterprise Secrets (4.49 mins)
1st assistant director David Trotti takes you behind the scenes of 'Judgment' and reveals its connection to 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'.

Inside 'A Night in Sickbay' (11.15 mins)
Executive producer Rick Berman, visual effects consultant Ronald B. Moore and stars Scott Bakula and John Billingsley take you behind the scenes of the 'bottle' show. They reveal how this ship based show became much more than just your usual 'bottle' episode, as it became more about character development and comedy that previous shows of this type.

Outtakes (11.10 mins)
Watch a montage of gaffs and mistakes as Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, John Billingsley, Anthony Montgomery and Connor Trinneer get their lines wrong.

Photo Gallery
View behind the scenes and promotional images from Season two of 'Enterprise'.

Shooting 'Future Tense' (17.14 mins)
Director of Photography Marvin Rush takes you behind the scenes of one day's shooting of an 'Enterprise' episode. Here we see rehearsals with the actors and stand ins, outtakes and the shooting of the actual scene.

Star Trek: The Original Series DVD Trailer (1.43 mins)
A preview of the DVD release of the classic series with Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise crew

Borg Invasion Trailer (0.31 mins)
A preview of the new Star Trek attraction in Las Vegas

Easter Eggs: NX-01 Files
Hidden mini-featurettes that reveal little secrets about the second season of Star Trek Enterprise.

OVERALL

Paramount continues to do a stella job with the transfer of the Star Trek franchise onto DVD. With commentary tracks, deleted scenes and comprehensive featurettes, this is a package that all Trekkers will revel in. While a few more commentary tracks on episodes wouldn't have gone a miss and the sets are a little expensive (Shop around), this is still a great package.

DVD

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