Star Trek - Enterprise - Series 3 - Complete (Slimline Edition) [DVD]

This is third series of Enterprise; it follows on directly from the cliff hanger last episode of series two. Earth having been attacked by a race that they are told are called the "Xindi", Archer and his crew have to search a region of space known as the "Expanse" and locate the people that are threatening the survival of the human race.This series was much darker than any that we have seen previously. Archer identifies that he thought a starship captain has a lot on his shoulders; but now he has the entire fate of the world. It forces him to make decisions that he and his crew are not entirely comfortable with; and as the situation becomes more perilous, he is forced to cross the line again and again. Although he tries to hang on to his compassion, his sense of honour and his humanity, circumstances dictate that his own personal views have to take second place to achieving the goal of saving the future of humanity.I found the story lines utterly believable and fascinating. With the pressure on the crew to keep going despite constant attacks and major damage to the ship, emotions become raw and never far from the surface. The crew bond together even more as this is the only way for them to keep going, despite the losses that they suffer. Binding all of the episodes together with a central arc is not a new idea, but this worked well for this season.The 3 main characters of Archer, T'Pol and Tucker continue to grow and develop, with some superb performances by Bakula, Blalock and Trineer. However, Billingsley as Phlox, Keating as Reid, Parks as Sato and Montgomery as Mayweather all turn in some really excellent performances, showing that the writers were really now starting to give them some strong material to work with.At the end of the season, Archer manages to build an uneasy alliance with three of the five Xindi species; and we can see the idea of a "federation" forming to provide mutual support and prevent similar attacks in the future. In doing this, he saves Earth; but in the process of destroying the Xindi weapon, Enterprise is pushed back in time. The last episode provides another cliff hanger to take us through to the 4th season.As with other box sets, this also has some really great extra material. It provides some insight into how the shows are produced and just what the directors were thinking, as well as some fine glimpses into how the special effects and makeup are created. A really excellent box set.

The third season of Enterprise is roughly equal to the fourth in terms of quality. Granted it lacks the pure fun of episodes like "In a Mirror Darkly" but still gives us wonderful stories. The grim "Twilight", the legendary "Similitude" and "Azanti Prime",and others like the underrated "E2" and "Carpenter Street".Season three is clearly a work in progress moving away from the ponderous plots of season one and two in favor of a season long epic that still works amazingly well even when you know Earth will survive (No Earth No Star Trek).Well produced and well written it serves as a sad reminder of the fact that Star Trek series (excepting the first) always seem to work it out around s3. Early TNG, and DS9 bore almost no resemblance to the polished show to come and even the horrific Voyager got...tolerable around season three.Sadly it wasn't enough coming after Voyager and at a point where the highs of DS9 and Next Gen were fading into the past Enterprise never had enough viewers and by season three was in serious trouble. Cut by two episodes to 24 it was already becoming clear that it was highly unlikely Enterprise would reach it's scheduled finish in May 2008.Far better than Voyager and the first two seasons, just not quite good enough.Enterprise had just twelve months to live but buy this set and remember it for what it was...Extras: As first release, Documentary featurettes, and cast/crew interviews much as all the other trek disks though helped in this case by the fact most of the material was recorded specially for the disks (unlike the previous series regular reuse of material from the time of airing (even as far back as 1987)) also commentaries.This release (as with the others) does away with the hard cases used the first time round in favor of a card case and slimline cases. This is actually somewhat of an improvement since the Enterprise sets were the most over packed of the first run releases.Well worth a lookEnjoy!!!

My wife and I turned out to be huge fans of the Star Trek world after watching TNG season one. Before that, when I was a young boy, everything in the world just stopped when TOS was showing on TV (Black & White at that time in Portugal). Then came DS9 (GREAT) and Voyager (OK, and some times GOOD)! When we knew about Enterprise, the joy was also great (in Portugal we only get to watch this on DVD, after its released). When we got the first season, even though we were hooked on the franchise, just after the fantastic first episode, it felt like a true deception was about to came: and it did! Even though the idea was very good(early days of Human warp space exploration)Braga wasn't able to give us a up to the last ST good shows. The super lame overture sound trek beats every good taste. The redundant stories, week building of characters and so on. If we weren't the Trekies we are and the cast wasn't so good... Then came season two: the first half, same as before; the second half, much better with a promising last episode arc that brought Braga up a few degrees. SEASON 3 came and everything changed: wonderful super arc season, with fast developing plot...what a joy...starring the 5 species Xindi and their doomsday weapon as the villain. New supporting characters within NX-01. A new part of the Universe: The Expanse. The reinforcing of one of the strongest plots within: the future Federation. The overture music was improved (even though not enough). It was up to the best ST arc seasons ever:DS9. The DVD is poor on language options: only English spoken version and English subtitles. Very good special features, though. Let's see what Season Four brings us all, because the third will be hard to beat. And hope they wrapped it good. Maybe there will be a future ST franchise series, if so, please Mr. Bergman, give Ira a call.