Season One of "Enterprise" is a wrap! So far my favorite is "The Andorian Incident" with "Dear Doctor" or "Shadows of P'Jem" a close second; my shark-jumper is "Vox Sola" displacing either "Terra Nova" or "Rogue Planet" from the bottom. However - taken together I like this set better than the first season of any other Trek series excluding the original.

The cast to a person is very talented and their characters have plenty of room to grow. Archer takes too many beatings and he's not much the romantic unless she's a spy (what, one? "Civilization"). T'Pol serves NX-01 competently where Seven superseded Voyager completely. Though it saddens me as an engineer, Tucker was often less understandable than the others. He shouts to express his point ("Shockwave"), whines about his duties ("Unexpected"), and has at least twice come to the point of mutiny. Trip could use a tune-up.

Porthos, cute as ever, changed the least. Hoshi likely changed the most, first being afraid to board an alien ship ("Fight or Flight") and now not being afraid to share an alien bed ("Two Days and Two Nights"). Reed has noticeably loosened up (his tongue perhaps a bum too loose in "Shuttlepod One"), his background illuminated ("Silent Enemy"), he likes to blow things up and frankly he's more inventive than the chief engineer. Mayweather had his moments ("Fortunate Son") but unfortunately he's not much more substantial than one of the ghosts in his famous stories ("Strange New World"). This column objected early that Dr. Phlox could not staff Sickbay all by his lonesome - hence recurring character Ensign Cutler comes to the rescue! (Other great but not-so-recurring guest stars feature in "Fallen Hero," "Acquisition," "Oasis," and "Desert Crossing.")

Known races like the Vulcans ("Breaking The Ice," "Fusion") and the Klingons ("Broken Bow" and "Sleeping Dogs") have fared OK. As "the new villain" however, the Suliban slithered from their promising exposure in the pilot to (at worst) speckled pawns ("Cold Front") in the Temporal Cold War arc or (at best) mistreated interplanetary refugees ("Detained"). The former figures into the finale's cliff-hanger but certainly more entertainment lies in the latter.

And there you have it! Twenty-six hours of introduction to the allies, adversaries and adventures of humanity's first real travels beyond the influence of launch point Earth. A favorite dream throughout history, yet apparently tangled in some time-travel mess which risks making everything we've seen so far obsolete. Such a shame - the best start of a contemporary series, and it might never happen after all.