This review contains major spoilers

When I first heard that the Xindi, the new bad guys of "Star Trek Enterprise," were going to be split into five species, I thought, "This is pretty damn cool." But, when I watched the first three minutes of Wednesday's season premiere on UPN, I didn't expect we would throw them all in the same scene. I almost felt like I was watching "Brady Bunch" after they threw in the token Asian and token African-American. It was confusing, and I was too busy looking at the unimaginative CGI character of the Xindi cricket than reading what the hell they were saying.

I mean, there are some positive aspects of this episode, but still, there is a lot of work to do, and I hope it doesn't take a whole season to do it.

Picking up six weeks where "The Expanse," the second season finale left off, the NX-01 is on its way through the Delphic Expanse and on their way to a mining colony (yeah, and it was actually dirty ... I was shocked, too) where they heard that there was a Xindi around who might know the coordinates to his home.

They arrive on the planet, cough up some dirty air, and meet one of the most interesting mining foreman I've ever seen. I mean, hell, I thought it was kewl that he was communicating with Enterprise using a microphone ... made me think a little of Chaotica in "Star Trek: Voyager."

Apparently two years in space still can't turn a starship captain into a skeptic, and after meeting the Xindi, who is being held against his will, Capt. Archer (Scott Bakula) and Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer) get captured by the mine foreman. Yeah, I slapped my head, too.

But, the Xindi wants to get out of the mine as much as Archer and Trip do, so he leads them through an old plasma chute, but are captured once again.

In the meantime, Hoshi Sato's (Linda Park) whole line in the episode is a brief chat with the new MACO unit, which includes a familiar face to those who watched the deleted scenes on the "Star Trek Nemesis" DVD ... Steven Culp. Quite interesting, to say the least.

But I have to admit, I really do like having this military unit on board. They are cooler, they don't care about being good little Starfleet officers, and it provides some more realistic military scenes that we would not see otherwise with the small band of security officers that Lt. Reed (Dominic Keating) would've thrown together. The battle in the mine was great, including the sniper ... something you don't see very often on the good guy's side in Star Trek.

Of course, the Xindi dies in the fight, and his dying act, he gives Archer the coordinates he's looking for, and the Enterprise crew find nothing but space dust at the coordinates. Sucks to be them.

There were some interesting techniques that were employed by Allan Kroeker, the director, in this episode, and I'm curious to how much longer they will stand. If we all remember back to the pilot, "Broken Bow," the series looked as if it were going to take an "X-Files" feel with realism, handheld cameras, more "organic" music and the such. But by episode two, all those elements were replaced by the standard fare of basic television production that pretty much has gone by the way side over the last six or seven years.

Well, it seems that we're going back to more handheld cameras in this episode, but what really caught my eye was the hard cuts going into commercial. If you don't know what I mean, a hard cut (at least that's what I've heard them referred to as), is something that makes it look like no one planned when a commercial was going to be inserted. Standard cuts has the "holding breath" music leading into a commercial break with some stunner that makes you want to sit through the commercials to see what happens next. This episode, however, employed the hard cut technique, which means that maybe once or so the music was used leading into a break, but otherwise, it just seems like the director waited for someone to take a breath, and that's where he cut.

It's an interesting technique, and one you see used in "24" on Fox quite a bit, and I like it. It creates more realism, which coupled with the use of handhelds, made it easier for me to suspend my disbelief, and really enjoy the episode. I was taken out of my review mode a couple of times, which really adds points to direction, by the way, because that's one tough thing to do.

I was not happy with the T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) breast scene. I mean, come on. Is a partial breast really going to boost ratings for this show? And you know that's what they were hoping for ... a T'Pol covering her nipples was prominent in many of the promos leading up to tonight's episode.

But overall, I liked the story, and thought it moved well, and liked the dangling ending. I could do without the Xindi meetings and such, because I'd rather watch C-SPAN, but the characters -- especially the mine foreman -- were interesting, and different.

The improved theme song in the opening credits, however? It didn't build my excitement for the show, it made me want to dance. I don't think it's good for UPN to have people say, "You know, dear ... why are we sitting here watching television when we can go out. Get your dancing shoes on!"

::click::

The Xindi
Star Trek Enterprise

Writing: B
Story: B
Acting: A-
Directing: A

Overall: B+

Michael Hinman is the founder and news editor of Airlock Alpha. He is based in Tampa, Fla., and can be reached at michael@airlockalpha.com.

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