Fans will get their first glipmse of the new alien species, the Xindi, a bit earlier than expected.

UPN announced that it plans to premiere "Enterprise" Sept. 10, two weeks earlier than the reported Sept. 24 start, which normally marks the beginning of the new television season.

To lead up to the premiere, UPN announced plans to show double-bills of "Enterprise" episodes on Wednesday nights. It will end Sept. 3 with a repeat of the second season finale, "The Expanse."

The jump, according to one Airlock Alpha source close to UPN, will give "Enterprise" a highly-needed jump against its new genre competition, The WB's "Smallville," which will take over the 8 p.m. Wednesday timeslot on that network. Paramount apparently is banking on the new direction of the series to pull in viewers, and make them less likely to change the channel to watch "Smallville" two weeks later.

In other network news, The Hollywood Reporter is saying that a $100 million pending lawsuit between Viacom and Fox will not affect ongoing negotiations between the two companies on whether UPN affiliates owned by the Fox Television Station Group in major markets will remain UPN affiliates.

Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., feeds to about 20 percent of UPN's nationwide audience. And although Fox has slammed UPN for sliding ratings and loss of advertising revenue, CBS chairman Les Moonves said that negotiations to keep those two affiliates in New York City and Los Angeles UPN stations are moving forward.

"The News Corp. negotiation is going extremely well," Moonves said. We expect to have a (new) deal. We don't expect there to be any problems."

Those two affiliates originally were owned by Chris-Crcaft Industries, which helped Viacom launch UPN back in 1995. When Viacom bought out Chris-Craft's 50 percent stake in the network, it also tried to acquire those two affiliates, but negotiations broke down, and Chris-Craft sold the stations to Fox instead.

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