3x24 Zero Hour

[Dimitris]

Episode No: 076
Air Date: 05.26.2004


Archer puts his life on the line in a risky gambit to intercept the Xindi superweapon and disarm it from within.


Synopsis

Aboard Degra's ship, Archer, Reed and Hoshi work with the Arboreals and Humanoids to chase the Reptilians and stop the Xindi Weapon from decimating Earth. Archer's plan is to board the weapon and try to overload the power systems, but he'll need the help of an ailing Hoshi to read the weapon schematics.

Back in the Delphic Expanse, T'Pol leads the NX-01 in an attempt to obliterate Sphere 41 in hopes of disabling the entire network of Spheres. But the crew's time is limited, as that region of space has a degenerative effect on their bodies, and the furious Sphere-Builders try to tear Enterprise apart.


www.startrek.com

[Dimitris]

03.23.2004
Production Report: Season 3 Reaches "Zero Hour"

Season 3 of Star Trek: Enterprise wrapped last week with "Zero Hour," the finale which will air on May 26.
In keeping with the discretionary nature of this shoot, we are remaining mum on any story details, though obviously the episode will climax the Enterprise crew's efforts to keep the Xindi Superweapon from destroying Earth. We're even keeping the guest cast under wraps for the time being. Expect some surprises.

Allan Kroeker, who has long been the go-to guy for season premieres and finales and other pivotal episodes, was the director on this segment. He last helmed "Azati Prime," along with season opener "The Xindi." Kroeker also directed last year's "The Expanse," as well as "Shockwave, Part I" and "Shockwave, Part II" and others, not to mention "Endgame," "What You Leave Behind" and other notable Star Trek credits.

Production on "Zero Hour" commenced Friday, March 5, for an eight-day shoot that concluded last Tuesday. No second-unit photography involving the principal cast is anticipated, as they are all now on hiatus, though certainly the visual effects and post-production crews will have their hands full until this installment is in the can. The wrap party for the cast and crew took place Thursday night at the White Lotus restaurant/nightclub in Hollywood.

This episode had not only one of the largest guest casts of the series, but one of the largest contingents of stunt players and extras, portraying everything from crewmen to MACOs to Xindi and assorted other aliens. Some of those extras were special guests of the show. Amy Ulen was a contest winner from Seattle visiting on behalf of the local UPN affiliate and radio station KZOK-FM, and she was accompanied by DJ Bob Rivers. Another contest winner was Brian D'Arcy from the Kansas City area, who won the walk-on role in a charity auction by Wired magazine benefiting the Starbright Foundation. The three guests donned NX-01 uniforms and spent a full day last Monday (the 15th) on the Engineering set. Amy will be providing a report of her experiences to STARTREK.COM soon.

As mentioned, "Zero Hour" will conclude the season on the last Wednesday in May.


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[Dimitris]

UPN has premiered the trailer for Star Trek: Enterprise's "Zero Hour", which airs next Wednesday night.

During this episode, written by series creators Rick Berman & Brannon Braga, and directed by veteran Allan Kroeker, who also helmed the season premiere "The Xindi", Archer, Hoshi, Reed and a team of MACOs accompany the Xindi to stop the Reptilians from deploying the weapon against Earth, while T'Pol takes Enterprise to disable a sphere and save the Expanse from the Guardians.

The 20-second promo is available for download online courtesy of StarTrek.com and The Daily Trekker. For those with slower connections, here's a transcript:


UPN WEDNESDAY, THE 'STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE' SEASON FINALE


[Text: 'STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE SEASON FINALE']
[Choral music]
[The letters 'ENTERPRISE' scroll across the screen, containing images.]
T'Pol: "Your world is no longer the only one in jeopardy."

THE FUTURE OF EVERY STAR TREK CAPTAIN, EVERY CREW, EVERY SHIP YOU'VE EVER KNOWN, DEPENDS ON THIS MOMENT...

[An Earth satellite burns in orbit.]
[Archer races through a corridor on the weapon as explosions go off behind him.]
[Daniels and Archer speak on a balcony, with Daniels pointing downward.]
Daniels: "You can't ignore your place in history."
[Archer looks out at a United Federation of Planets facility.]
Archer: "My mission is to save Earth."
[Daniels gestures.]
Daniels: "If you're killed, none of this will happen."

...THE SURVIVAL OF ONE HUMAN.

[Archer is holding a phase pistol.]

T'Pol: "We're not dead yet."
[The 'ENTERPRISE' letters stop scrolling and vanish.]

THE 'STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE SEASON FINALE.


Echoing voices: Season finale.
[Text: 'STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE SEASON FINALE']

The promo online can be viewed in streaming Windows Media or Quicktime format at StarTrek.com or downloaded in DivX format at The Daily Trekker.


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[Dimitris]

Plot Summary:

As the weapon heads toward Earth, Archer asks a weakened Sato to decrypt Degra's schematics to force the Xindi weapon to self-destruct. After telling Reed of his plan to board and disable the weapon, he suddenly finds himself seven years in the future with Daniels, witnessing himself at the founding of the United Federation of Planets. Daniels tells Archer that it is too great a risk for him to be part of the boarding party, but Archer insists that his place in history is saving Earth. His resolve only increases when he and the Xindi on Degra's ship witness the Reptilian destruction of one of Earth's orbital stations.

Meanwhile, T'Pol and Tucker prepare to take Enterprise to disable Sphere 41, though the Guardians have surrounded it with powerful anomalies that Phlox says will kill the entire crew in less then 15 minutes as they approach. Though the crew's skin begins to decay from the anomalies, the ship successfully approaches the sphere and uses the deflector dish to emit a pulse intended to disrupt the sphere's systems. Several Guardians appear on Enterprise, attack the crew and attempt to sabotage engineering, but Tucker is able to compensate from the bridge and the Guardians disappear from the ship as Sphere 41 implodes, destroying the sphere network and the anomalies transforming the Expanse.

The Reptilians attack Degra's ship as it attempts to put Archer's team on the weapon. Unexpectedly, Shran arrives on an Andorian vessel and defends the Xindi, then destroys the Reptilian ship, though not before its commander has followed the humans aboard the weapon. With Reed and the MACOs to defend him, Archer follows Sato's directions to invert the weapon's firing platform and sends them back to safety on Degra's ship, but the Reptilian commander attacks him before he has finished destroying the reactor. The Enterprise captain kills the Reptilian with a charge he detonates remotely, but Degra's ship cannot get a transporter lock on him before the weapon explodes in space, leaving Earth safe.

The surviving Xindi rendezvous with Enterprise, where Reed unhappily tells Tucker that Archer did not survive the destruction of the weapon. While the Aquatic ship transports the damaged Enterprise back to Earth, T'Pol thanks the Xindi for their help and says that she is pleased to hear the Xindi Council plans to reconvene, though the Reptilians have not yet accepted that the Guardians' promises were empty. "Your captain's sacrifice will not be forgotten," one of the Humanoids assures her. Back on Enterprise, Phlox assures her that her skin will recover from the ravages of the anomalies in time, and Porthos, too, will recover in time from the loss of the captain.

Approaching Earth, Sato cannot hail Starfleet, nor any of the orbital platforms, nor the lunar base. When T'Pol sends Mayweather and Tucker in a shuttlepod to San Francisco to find out what has happened, their vessel is shot at by World War II airplanes. On the surface, in a hospital displaying a Nazi flag, a German-speaking doctor shows a burned, unconscious Archer to a Nazi officer. No one can identify his uniform. Then an alien wearing a Nazi uniform steps forward to examine him.

[Dimitris]

Analysis:

If there were any doubts about the worthiness of Enterprise to bear the name Star Trek, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga put them to rest with "Zero Hour", which lands the prequel firmly in classic Trek tradition. I don't mean because we get a glimpse of the founding of the Federation, a battle on a spherical weapon with more than a passing resemblance to a Borg sphere, a bunch of talk about timelines and the coming together of former enemies under the banner of peace. No, I'm talking about EVIL ALIEN NAZIS!

You must forgive me for giggling when, after a near-perfect 50 minutes of television science fiction in which the Xindi arc was wrapped up stylishly in a very First Contact-like manner, the episode ends with the cheesiest of cliffhangers, throwing us back into "Patterns of Force" territory. What in hell are EVIL ALIEN NAZIS doing with U.S. warplanes? What year is it supposed to be on Earth? Did the Aquatics trick us? Was the entire Xindi arc a ruse to distract the crew from the real threat, in the form of the Suliban and time-tampering and a World War II which ended the wrong way? These questions won't be answered until the fall, by which time hopefully I will be able to address them with a straight face.

I mean...this show has been so serious all season. End-of-the-world scenarios, grave moral choices, seeking hope for peace and exploration in a universe filled with distrust and fear, that sort of thing...darker than Deep Space Nine, which was too dark to be considered Star Trek by some fans. And where does it all end up? The captain makes the big sacrifice, the ship takes the great risk, the interdimensional aliens are vanquished, the lethal aliens become allies, the future Federation members come through in a pinch...and there are EVIL ALIEN NAZIS! I'm sorry, I can't help it; I'm not ready to stop giggling.

Before this insane left hook of a cliffhanger, some nice things happen in "Zero Hour." T'Pol tells Trip her age - 66, same as the year the original series went on the air - and admits that it is an intimate act for a Vulcan to confess her age. Later she quotes Trip's concern for her to Phlox, saying that she guesses she's not so tough after all...and she pets poor Porthos, who is resting morosely in Sickbay, unaware, as the audience is, that of course Archer can't be dead because the show has been picked up for a fourth season. Malcolm has some nice moments doing he-man stuff aboard the Xindi weapon while his redshirts fall over railings into a bottomless pit ("No, Luke, I am your father!"), and Hoshi gets to have the tearful breakdown she was denied last week, predictably blaming herself for decrypting the Xindi launch codes and wishing she'd done a better job of killing herself.

But suicide is Archer's job, as he earnestly informs Daniels and then Reed, refusing to allow his tactical officer to peform a task for which he's probably better qualified than the captain and certainly more expendable. That's fine - Janeway would have done the same, and did, in "The Killing Game", which also had EVIL ALIEN NAZIS...oops. I know that this does not sound like a very serious review. Maybe I'm just dizzy from all the cross-cutting, jumping from the weapon to Degra's ship to Enterprise to the sphere-builders' realm to the Reptilian ship to Shran's ship to the Sol system. Maybe I'm giddy to have seen Phlox on the bridge offering critical command advice, which was great, and then to have seen him back in Sickbay providing the comic relief as well in the form of dictating his will and placating his plants. Or maybe I'm in shock, so great is my relief and surprise that the Xindi weapon has not destroyed Earth.

If the idea is to shake the show up, this cliffhanger is sheer brilliance. No one could have seen it coming in a million years, no matter which timeline you were in! And now we're going to have to have an arc in the fall explaining how the timeline got changed, whether it was related to the Xindi threat and the Guardians or completely incidental, whether this all ties back in with Silik and Future Guy or if maybe Captain Kirk saved Edith Keeler and Archer's going to have to find the Guardian of Forever and go back in time and phaser them both before her peace movement lets Hitler take over the world...fine, I guess someone's going to have to phaser me before I manage to get serious. EVIL ALIEN NAZIS!

I shall write an essay wrapping up Enterprise's deeply enjoyable third season in a few days, after I have time to assimilate it all. For now, however, I just want to address Jonathan Archer with a quote by Agent Scully from "Triangle", the X-Files with the evil time-traveling Nazis and the submarine and all the kissing: "Now I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to keep saying, 'There's no place like home.'"



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