Berman & Braga Talk Xindi, Season Three Changes

Star Trek's two executive producers revealed some more of season three's long-promised changes, indicating some of them would be a major departure from the established star Trek formula.

"We really want to push the envelope with the aliens we depict," Enterprise executive producer Brannon Braga told Dan Madsen at the Star Trek Communicator (via TrekWeb). "[We want] to stop getting guys with just bumpy foreheads all the time. With the Xindi, it's not going to be business as usual."

Besides the Xindi, Enterprise's new direction will include a major evolution for Jonathan Archer, and increasing tensions with the Klingons. "One of the things we definitely plan to do is test Archer's moral compass. When he tells Trip in 'The Expanse,' 'We're going to do what it takes,' that's very ambiguous. That's all part of the reason for doing this. The way in which they get through this adventure is going to define them as a crew."

The rift between Earth and the Klingons will widen due to the events in the new season. "This doesn't bode well for humanity's relations with the Klingons," Braga continued. "They are not happy. In fact, the prosecutor in 'Judgment' says that we're lucky they didn't hold our planet responsible for Archer's 'crimes.' I always felt that was an ominous hint at larger things to come."

Finally, in a separate interview Enterprise's other executive producer, Rick Berman, also provided some hints about next season's new storylines. "We have talked about the fact that the laws of physics don't necessarily apply in certain areas of the Delphic Expanse. In the first handful of episodes we're going to start learning why. We're going to start finding out that some of the chaos that exists inside this area of space is perhaps not as random as it may appear."

The first of these new episodes will appear the 24th of September in the form of The Xindi. If you're anxious to find out more before that, the full interviews with Braga and Berman can be found in issue 145 of the Star Trek Communicator, available now. Alternatively, some more excerpts are available at TrekWeb.

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