In his third time at the helm of Enterprise, LeVar Burton directs a story where we meet a species with a third sex.

In "Cogenitor," the NX-01 is studying a hypergiant star within a century or two of going supernova, when they encounter a slightly more advanced alien race, the Vissians, doing the same thing. The two crews become fast friends, but the fact that the Vissians are a "tri-gendered" species raises Trip Tucker's curiosity. He meets a nameless individual called a "cogenitor," and is concerned about the way that person is treated by the other two sexes.

Commencing last Tuesday after the holiday, the first four of the seven shooting days were spent on standing ship sets, particularly Engineering, the Mess Hall and Crew Quarters, as well as the Bridge, Ready Room, Armory, Corridors and others. The swing sets built for this episode were fairly simple — an Engineering Anteroom overlooking the Vissian warp core (which will be optically inserted later), and Vissian crew quarters and corridor. Also, the set design team constructed a Vissian "stratopod" resembling a deep-diving bathysphere, which was occupied by Scott Bakula and guest star Andreas Katsulas all day yesterday (Day 7) in scenes where Archer joins the alien captain in travelling deep into the photosphere of the hypergiant.

With this production being relatively confined, there was a lot of second unit photography for previous episodes taking place concurrently. Even though "The Breach" concluded principal photography the Friday prior, right after the three-day weekend Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating and Anthony Montgomery and their stunt-doubles were right back in their climbing gear to do pickup shots on the cavern sets in the soundstage next door. Keating was also stolen away from the current production, along with Linda Park and John Billingsley, to do pickups on "The Crossing" for a few hours over two days, under the direction of visual effects producer Dan Curry.

Katsulas, the "Vissian Captain," should be familiar to Trek fans as the Romulan commander "Tomalak" in four episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (starting with "The Enemy"). Another previously recurring guest star in this cast is F.J. Rio, the "Vissian Engineer," who played Starfleet engineer "Muniz" several times in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (according to IMDB.com, Rio was the first person to speak Spanish in Star Trek); Rio was also "Joleg" in Star Trek: Voyager's "Repentence." The androgynous "Cogenitor" is played by newcomer Becky Wahlstrom, who has been seen in Charmed, among other things.

Although this is Burton's first directorial gig for Enterprise Season Two, he is already lined up for another — just as he is entering post-production on this episode, number 48, he is beginning pre-production on the landmark 50th episode. The actor/director (replacing his visor as Geordi La Forge with a beret) previously helmed "Terra Nova" and "Fortunate Son," as well as numerous episodes of TNG, DS9 and Voyager.

"Cogenitor" was written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga. It is tentatively scheduled to run on April 30.

For more information about the second-season episodes, visit the Synopses and Cast & Crew sections of Production News.

Please note: All production information is subject to change.

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