Details emerge on 'Enterprise' season 4

[Gregg Lengling]

by James Welsh
Warning: This article contains info on upcoming storylines in season four of Star Trek: Enterprise that some readers may wish to avoid. If not, scroll down...









As Enterprise gears up for its fourth season on the air, details are beginning to emerge about what viewers can expect to see.

On the technical front, it has been announced that this season will be shot entirely using high-definition digital video rather than film. The digital picture will be colour-corrected to look like film, but director of photography Marvin Rush told StarTrek.com that his personal preference would be for the HD look to be maintained: "it's just more fidelity," he explained.

Some upcoming storyline details were also announced. Brent Spiner will be appearing over a three-episode arc playing an ancestor of the scientist who created Lt. Cmdr. Data - the android whom Spiner played in Star Trek: The Next Generation. This ancestor, however, does not believe that artificial intelligence is worthwhile and sets about supporting genetic modifications to human beings - in turn leading to a eugenics storyline. New showrunner Manny Coto explained to StarTrek.com:

"Well, it's a very exciting arc. Brent is going to play an ancestor of Dr. Soong, the creator of Data. However, this character is more of a Dr. Frankenstein. He is not a benign individual. He has brought to life 20 embryos from the Eugenics era. So you have Soong who's leading a band of Khan Noonien Singh's, so to speak. He believes that genetic engineering was on the right track! He wants to improve humanity, and he believes that the Eugenics Wars were an aberration, that these individuals are the future of humanity. Of course he's wrong — they get away from him. They get out of control, and it becomes this three-episode saga that's kind of like 'Apocalypse Now' — Enterprise becomes kind of like a ship going up river, trying to find these individuals, with Soong on board."

Also coming up is a civil war on Vulcan. Coto explains: "If you've watched Enterprise and you watched the old series and Next Gen, you know that there's a difference between the Vulcans of our era and the Vulcans of later eras. Our Vulcans lie, our Vulcans are monolithic, our Vulcans are not pacifistic. What we've done is develop an idea: What if an individual appears on Vulcan who is saying to the populace that we have strayed from the teachings of Surak? This individual is like a Martin Luther. And he spawns a Vulcan civil war.

"I'm equating the Vulcan High Command with the Catholic Church, which in medieval times strayed from the teachings of Christianity; similarly, the Vulcan High Command has strayed from the teachings of Surak. This individual wants to bring us back to those teachings, but it causes instability on Vulcan because he's preaching pacifism, he's preaching pure logic, he's preaching a return to the old ways. But, he not only believes in the teachings of Surak, he believes he is Surak. He claims that he possesses Surak's katra. Is that true or isn't it? We'll find out. But what happens is, with the instability on Vulcan, you have the Andorians trying to take advantage, and it threatens to destabilize the entire region. And of course, Enterprise will be stuck in the midst of this turmoil, and by the end of this three-episode arc, we will begin to see Vulcans approaching what they were in the later eras. We'll see the beginnings of a new Vulcan."

Viewers not so pleased with the underlying temporal cold war storyline in the first three seasons may be interested to know that the current plan is for all that to be wrapped up by the second episode of season four.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Come on 24-1 !!!!  This would be nice to see in HD.

[tazman]

Can't wait!

Now if I can just find a local UPN affiliate in one of those unknown select markets that is broadcasting the HD UPN programming via satellite on the Ku-band, I'll be all set.:rolleyes: