Archer To Take His Dog Into Space

Space can be hostile. But on his first mission, Captain Jonathan Archer won't have to worry about not finding any friends, as he will be taking man's best friend right with him on the Enterprise.

Sources suggest that Captain Archer will be taking his dog, Porthos, with him on the starship. On Saturday, it was already revealed that Paramount Pictures had registered the name "Porthos" as a trademark, giving it the exclusive right to create products such as action figures and mugs using the characters' name.

Porthos will first be mentioned in the Enterprise pilot, 'Broken Bow,' as two crewmembers talk about the transporter, which has only just been approved to transport life forms. The crewmen are still suspicious, saying that "The Captain won't even use it on his dog." At a later point in the episode, a scene starts out with Archer talking to someone off-screen, and the camera moves to reveal he is talking to Porthos.

The name 'Porthos' comes from the classic Alexandre Dumas novel 'The Three Musketeers,' where it was the name of one of the three musketeers encountered by D'Artagnan. In all likelihood, Archer named his dog after this fictional character.

Even though Archer wouldn't even trust the transporter with his dog, at the end of 'Broken Bow' he will have to place his own life in the hands of this new technology. According to an early May version of the pilot script, in the process of rescuing the Klingon, Archer is left behind in the helix ship of the Suliban. It is at this point that Archer encounters Silik's temporal chamber with the "advance echo" effect. In order to rescue Archer, Enterprise uses a transporter to get their Captain off the ship. This is a very big moment in the episode, as all previous references described the transporter as something that no one actually wanted to be transported with.

As previously reported, 'Broken Bow' will see a lone Klingon crashing on Earth and getting injured shortly after the crash. The Enterprise is assigned the task of taking the Klingon back to his homeworld, against the advice of the Vulcans, who feel this would insult the Klingons' honour. Shortly in the trip, the Klingon is kidnapped by the Suliban, who are after the information possessed by Klingon. Besides the above information, our sources revealed several more info bits about the Enterprise premiere:

• As revealed in the original Series V casting sheet, 'Broken Bow' will feature a homage to the Original Series in the form of Admirals Forrest, Leonard and Williams, named after DeForest Kelley (Leonard 'Bones' McCoy), Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and William Shatner (James T. Kirk). However, the start of the episode also features an Oklahoma farmer who shoots the crashed Klingon with his plasma shotgun. The character is named Farmer Moore, undoubtedly intended as a homage to former TNG and DS9 writer Ronald D. Moore, famous for his many episodes dealing with Klingons.

• The speech given by Zefram Cochrane as the Enterprise departs spacedock for the first time is actually a holographic recording. Cochrane taped the video when they dedicated the facility to develop the Warp 5 Engine, a project he worked on together with Archer's father. The speech includes a lot of the words spoken by Kirk in the classic Original Series introduction.

• After Silik kidnaps the injured Klingon from the Enterprise, the ship backtracks the Klingon's trip to a planet in the Rigel Ten system. They attempt to find his Suliban contact in this system, a member of the species who hasn't engaged in the genetic tampering that the other members of his species recently discovered. The crew discovers that the Klingon was carrying proof that some recent events that pushed the Klingons to the edge of civil war were in fact manipulated by Silik.

  At this point, Silik and other Suliban show up and kill the Suliban informant. This leads to a chase of the Enterprise crew and a narrow escape from the planet. It is during this scene that a couple of the crewmen encounter the butterfly-eating women (who are not, contrary to what was previously rumoured, identified as Orion Slave Girls). In addition, Tucker and T'Pol get contanimated by a spore on the planet, forcing them to go through a decontamination process. This involves them stripping down to next to nothing and applying a form of phosphorous gel to themselves and each other, doing this in a "professional" manner.

'Broken Bow' is scheduled to air on the 26th of September. As usual, please be aware that Paramount has released no official information about the Enterprise pilot yet, and until then all plot info from unofficial sources should be treated as you would any rumour.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!