If Enterprise got off to a good start in its first season, it soon settled into a formula where the crew explored space and met some new races. But there didn't seem to be a whole lot at stake. Fans quickly pointed out that if space was so dangerous, then how come no crewmembers ever paid the ultimate price during their explorations? Did the crew of Enterprise NX-01 have nothing more than a cushy job, with good Starfleet benefits?

Enter the third season of what would now be referred to as Star Trek: Enterprise. With a re-recorded theme tune and the more appropriate name, the producers were obviously heading the ship in a new direction. One other big change remained: The stakes of the show had to be raised before fan interest reached the point of no return.

With current world events always somewhere in the back of any good writer's mind, our fictional crew were given a task that seemed to be larger than they could handle: stop a race called the Xindi before they could launch a weapon cabable of destroying Earth, a planet this new species had discovered to be detrimental to their own future well being. You can draw your own parallels to the U.S. efforts in Iraq — the reasons for going to war, troop levels, cultural disparity, etc. — but they all bear some resemblance or relevance to the Season 3 arc.

Featuring some of the best SFX in Star Trek, great action, high stakes, stops in Detroit ("Carpenter Street"), a planet straight out of the American West ("North Star") and one of the series' crowning achievements ("Twilight"), Season 3 was the best to date.

[Tim]