The first season of Enterprise is easily one of the finest packages yet from Paramount Home Entertainment, starting with the metallic-like case outer packaging to the beautiful menus and the bonus content. For starters, there are eight episodes with deleted scenes, text commentaries from Mike and Denise Okuda on two episodes and one audio commentary for the pilot, "Broken Bow," with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. It's nice to see the producers have finally, for whatever reason, given fans something they have been asking for for years: the deleted scenes and bloopers. Granted, some of the movie DVDs have offered these, but the TV shows have not to this degree. Plus, you get the usual amount of talking heads on the production of the show. All great stuff. (The bloopers alone are almost worth the price of admission!)

But let's talk about the show itself. Enterprise was always going to be a bit of a hard sell. First, it was on UPN, a network without 100% coverage throughout the United States. Factor in local sports preemptions and it's hard to say if the core audience was ever truly covered. Also, Enterprise was the first prequel series in Star Trek, something that certain fans found hard to reconcile what with all the continuity problems, i.e. how come Captain Jonathan Archer had never been mentioned in previous shows as a noteworthy historical character? But producers Braga and Berman felt there was a story to be told that fit in the Star Trek universe and, with the right amount of character development, that idea can succeed. According to Braga in one of the bonus features, they achieved this most notably in the episode "Shuttlepod One," an intimate two-hander with Trip and Reed stranded and near death aboard the eponymous ship.

There are some fine episodes in the first season, especially "Cold Front" and "Dear Doctor," and there are some notable guest appearances, such as Deep Space Nine's Rene Auberjonois in "Oasis" and Scott Bakula's Quantum Leap co-star Dean Stockwell in "Detained." We see old friends the Ferengi in "Acquisition," the Klingons in "Sleeping Dogs," plus Andorians and truth-challenged Vulcans in "Shadows of P'Jem."

Season 1 of Enterprise isn't going to be the one to turn you into a fan of the show if you weren't already; that honor will go to Season 4, or possibly 3. But for those who want the whole shebang, or if you missed the show the first time around and only became interested when UPN cancelled the show, then you gotta start here at the beginning. And that's still a very good place to start.

[Tim]