'Broken Bow' Opening Scenes Synopsis

When fans heard that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga had decided to set Enterprise before the Original Series, many were surprised the show would go back so far in time. However, apparently even the retrospective premiese wasn't enough yet for the producers, as the series' pilot episode will open with a flashback to Captain Archer's childhood.

According to sources who read part of an early-May version of the 'Broken Bow' script, the episode's teaser will begin with a young Jonathan Archer building a model starship together with his father. In early May, the script was already in a final version, though minor changes may have been made to the script in the remaining time before shooting started.

Following this opening scene, the episode moves forward to the 'present time' of the series. We see a Klingon crashing through an Oklahoma cornfield, chased by the series' recurring villains, the Suliban. The original Enterprise casting sheet described the Suliban as "a deadly species obsessed with genetic enhancement," while the recent script review said they would be able to change their skeletal structure.

We catch up with Captain Archer in the present time again as he is given orders to return the seriously wounded Klingon to his homeworld. Tension between the humans and the Vulcans arise at this point, as the Vulcan advisors say that he should be euthanised in order to avoid dishonouring the Klingons.

Previously it has been revealed that the humans will disregard this suggestion and bring the Klingon to Qo'noS anyway, thereby creating the very bad relationship with the Klingons that was also seen in the Original Series. Unfortunately, our source was not able to read more of the script, but hopefully information on the large remainder of the opening episode's plot will surface as the Enterprise premiere comes closer.

This source did mention that no Orion slave girls were included in the opening scenes of the episode, despite recent reports suggesting that they would be. In all likelihood, those reports were the result of a misinterpretation, possibly confusing the first scene shot with the first scene shown, and the slave girls will in fact be shown at a later point in the episode. However, a possibility of course also exists that at some point during the final week before shooting producers decided to replace Jonathan Archer's childhood scene with an Orion slave girl scene.

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