Sci-Fi Storm

Star Trek: Enterprise Season 2 comes out tomorrow, giving the fans more of what they crave now that its off the air. How does it fare? Read More to find out.

Due to time constraints, I wasn’t able to watch as many episodes out of the set as I usually do for a season set, so this is mostly about the extras.

Season 2 of Enterprise doesn’t differ very much from Season 1, story wise – or DVD wise. The season begins with the conclusion to the Season 1 cliffhanger “Shockwave”, and ends with the lead-in to the Season 3-long Xindi story arc with “The Expanse”, and the rest of the episodes pretty much stand alone.

Cast members have pretty much settled in to their roles, and no cast changes have taken place.

Some of the standout episodes include “Carbon Creek”, where what we know of how humans and Vulcans first met may not be correct; “Judgement”, where Captain Archer gets sentence to the Klingon penal colony Rura Penthe, which was seen before in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; and “First Flight”, A look at the NX program prior to building the Enterprise, with guest star Keith Carradine.

Special features include:

Enterprise Moments – Season 2: Bits about filming different episodes, including “Carbon Creek” and “Shockwave, Part II”, and more.

Enterprise Profile: Jolene Blalock

LeVar Burton – Star Trek Director: centers around the making of “First Flight”

Enterprise Secrets: The recreation of the Klingon penal colony Rura Penthe for the episode “Judgement”.

Inside A Night in Sickbay: Behind the scenes of “A Night in Sickbay”, a humorous, character driven story set in sickbay – the “bottle” episode of Season 2 (they call it an “elevator” episode here).

Also include are a photo gallery, outtakes, and a few episodes include deleted scenes, audio commentary, and text commentary. Although I have previous mentioned liking the text commentaries, I think they need to tone them down a bit, make them more transparent, and of variable size – there is no need to obscure a large portion of the screen for 3 words.

The packaging is identical to Season 1 (as I’m sure future releases). The discs are in thin dark blue plastic holders with a heavy tape binder to hold them together. A plastic sleeve slides over them to protect and hold them together with the season number on the sides, and this slips in the “binocular” case. The case doesn’t bear any outward signs of the season number except for a hole on each side through which you can sort of read the season from the plastic sleeve inside, but its pretty dark. I would have liked to see a different color for the disc holders. Again, when you buy it there is a cardboard wrap that identifies the season, but you have to remove it to open the case.

DVD menus are animated, with various Klingon ships doing a flyby, until it zooms on a Bird of Prey and becomes an NX-01-style display. Some of the menu information seems partially obscured, and you have to move the cursor around sometimes just to found out where you can select things.

Plot/Story: Not much different here from Season 1. 2/5

Characters/Acting: No failures, no real improvement given that they were pretty comfortable in the roles in the first season. 3/5

Effects/Visuals: Pretty good imagery and attention to detail. A lot of NASA traditions where used is the episode “First Flight” – from patches, to emblems, to flight station names. 4/5

DVD Extras: Again, they provide a good mix of featurettes that aren’t too long but still informative. 4/5

Overall: Reasonably well done. I expect Season 3 to improve this score. 3/5

Total: 3.2 out of 5, which matches it to the first season evenly.

Conclusion: Second verse same as the first. Season 3, with its season-long arc and changes in character, should score better.