First, Earth has no defenses? The whole attack seems pointless, useless. Maybe someone can explain it to me. Later we have this Xindi council meeting every episode. I've bee having Legion of Doom flashbacks. Then, to create a biological bomb, the need more about humans. Why didn't they do that when they killed a few billion? While I enjoy the Trp/T'Pol side story, is Trip that traumatized he still can't sleep? I'm beginning to question if he's even fit for duty. I'm new, I know, and I've read a lot of posts praising Season 3, but so far I'm not enjoying it too much, and prefer the flawed first too seasons. I'm really wanting to jump to Season 4. When I said favorite in another post, perhaps I spoke too soon.
Keep watching. The second half of the season, where everything comes together and it all pays off, is fantastic. I do agree about the setup, though. I think it would have made more sense if the probe hadn't been a test, but was instead meant to be the attack, but the Xindi rushed the development and the weapon suffered a catastrophic failure after just a few seconds, giving Earth enough time to send Enterprise to investigate. The way it played out, by sending that probe the Xindi basically said "Hey guys, we're totally coming after you!" thereby dooming their plan.
The Xindi likely didn't think that there was anything Earth could do to respond to the test attack, which was nearly true. Two years before the response would have been the slower moving Earth ships of the time, moving at half the Enterprise' speed. They never would have reached Xindi space in time. From the time the weapon appeared, fired and destroyed itself was less than a minute. Earth might well have had defenses. The death of his sister was a major event in his life, plus the Xindi test attack was not just to Earth, but to his home area, where he was raised. Still more, he heading into a war with a Captain who has no training in such. As his close friend, Trip likely knows Archer's limitations better than anyone.
Season 3's awful. The season long arc is poor and at least with seasons one and two there's more variety, even if not that much of it is good. Season 4's pretty good though !
Get used to it! Earth never has defences in Star Trek. Spoilers! Spoiler: why The Xindi are a pawn in the Temporal Cold War, and being manipulated by their gods, the Sphere Builders. The first attack was launched ASAP at the Sphere Builders' request to destabilize Earth's future timelines - specifically to alter the outcome of a battle between the Federation and the Sphere Builders 500 years into the future. The Xindi do not know they are being used, their reverence for their gods is blinding them - or most of them, anyway. Because the Xindi are fractious, with different factions working independently. The episode makes it clear the ones operating in Detroit were sent there against the Council's knowledge. That would be the point. He has PTSD, but they need him on this mission. You can skip ahead if you want, aside from "Storm Front" at the start of season 4 and "Home" right after, the events don't come up again as more than a passing reference.
There were certain characters and certain scene in the Xindi arc (aka season 3) that were utterly gripping.
Thanks for the comments. King Daniel Into Darkness, as much as I enjoy your posts, I won't look at the spoiler. For now! I'll trust you guys for now and see what happens. Still, it seems a bit goofy and rushed. I saw a post somewhere saying it would have worked better with the Romulans, and I think I agree. As for Trip, it's just to get him shirtless so rub-rub with T'Pol. Hoping there's a payoff because I really like Enterprise, the ship, the era, the crew. Just not liking the whole Xindi thing. But hey, at least they're not Suliban! (Wonder how Suliban reproduce...)
I'm glad to finally see that I'm not the only one who feels this way. The Xindi arc was the most moronic thing Star Trek ever did. Although, I do have to give the writers credit for one thing. Trip was an unlikeable, insufferable jackass from day one, and season three managed to make him even worse. THAT takes real talent.
I really struggled to stay with season three. It was tough going and pretty disappointing. Season four really took me by surprise ! It's amongst my favourite seasons of any Trek and really made Enterprise worthwhile.
A lot of the S3 writing is awful - like, high-school-creative-writing-level crap. There are Saturday morning cartoons with more sophisticated dialogue than most of what is heard in the endless Council scenes. And surely none of this is helped by the blindingly obvious fact that the writers don't have the foggiest what'll happen two episodes down the line, so they can't write stuff that'll build to anything. That said, the actors give it their all, there are some pretty good Xindi arc eps in the second half of the season (the better eps in the first half have little to nothing to do with the arc), and the last few episodes do build to a fairly intense, though not memorable, narrative momentum. Sound and fury, signifying that messing with warring temporal factions is not good. Okay. I don't think you'd be missing anything to skip ahead to S4. That said, if you soldier on, there's a fair chance you'll be decently entertained.
Trek is full of things that I cannot buy. At least the Xindi are interresting. Especially towards the end of season 3.
Wasn't the Xindi arc supposedly based on 9-11? Not that it would help 'buying' into the concept that much but... that's what I recall reading at the time.
Yes, but remember this was before season arcs became a standard way to write a TV show. Even the Dominion wars arc was broken up with plenty of stand-alone eps. I don't think S3 contains anything more ridiculous than the other seasons. Problem is, if you are averse to the premises and set-up, it lasts an entire season rather than one episode that can be endured or skipped. For me, the dodgy set-up and the council bickering were minor factors beside the fascination of the spheres and anomalies, and the increasing desperation of the mission.
There are peaks and valleys in ENT S3. Sometimes it was spot on but it other places it dragged. Still, I thought it was an interesting experiment... however were the experiment what they did in season 4 (in place of the Xindi arc) there might have been a few more seasons.
I'm on a sloooow re-watch of ENT. The first and only time I watched it, S3 was my favorite, and was quickly pushed up to the top as my favorite season in all of Trek. Awesome stuff. But then, I guess I'm a fan of high-school-creative-writing-level crap.
Too much of STAR TREK television is a case of "it could've been so much better, but we're OK with what we got," because of the budget. Sometimes, I wish "they" wouldn't be so insistant about putting anything they can just barely afford into a big show like "the whole Xindi thing," and then just have most of it do its stuff in very controlled situations. And even then, like the "Aquatics" they didn't really "do" much, it was just to have them there. Same with the insects. And the CGI nature of both really stood out. The execution suffered alot, I think, because STAR TREK television has never really been set up for the grand, epic sort of stories that they really wanted to tell to draw a larger audience. Sometimes, it would've just been better to contain that appetite. All of that being said, though, the idea itself is cool and I give them an "A" for effort, but it just ended up being kind of adequate and not particularly memorable ...
We interrupt the whole Xindi thing to bring you B&B's versions of Beauty and the Beast, Wild Wild West, 21 Jump Street, The Inner Light, and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. Hey, we got us some Andorians next episode. Take a drink every time Archer gets called a "pink skin".
I loved season 3 because you actually saw some character development. I mean the Archer from Anomaly was very different than the Archer in, say, Damage and we actually got to visit how the Expanse really changed him in Home. I would even say that from Azati Prime to 43 minutes of Zero Hour was some of the most gripping stuff Enterprise ever did.