Romulan War

In the first episodes of season five we will see the beginnings of the Romulan War. We will be able to see (as we did in United) the Romulans making their plans and their interactions among themselves, but they will remain unseen to the humans and Vulcans.

There will an episode on Vulcan dealing with the Romulans covertly trying to infiltrate the Vulcan government. T’Pol, and the Vulcans in general, will not know that the infiltrators are actually Romulans, but will think they are a part of a radical Vulcan group, and that T'pol's father may have been part of this group years ago when he died, or did he actually die? (Or is he living elsewhere?).

The Romulans are also angry at humans for attempting to create a coalition (federation). Their anger will finally boil over when the Romulans learn that humans have begun building Starbases, one of which is in what Romulan’s consider to be their space.

At one point, the Enterprise will lead a fleet of aging Starfleet ships (since the new ships are not ready yet), to confront the more advanced Romulans ships, and must find clever ways to defeat them (some atomic weapons may be used as surprise to the Romulans). Starfleet will learn that the Romulans like to play dirty and may make suicide runs, and also will set off antimatter explosions to destroy their own damaged ships in hopes of taking the enemy with them. So can Archer and Starfleet find a way to alleviate this threat?

Cloaking Device

The Romulan cloaking device seen in 'Minefield' will effectively be neutralized. The 22nd century cloaking device is nothing more than a bending holo-image as seen in 'United', it is not the complete cloaking device as seen in TOS and beyond. Archer in the second episode figures out a way to use what they learned about holo-image in 'United' to see through Romulans cloaks. I guess the Romulans will have to re-think there cloak and maybe in 100 years they will have one that will work (see Balance of Terror, TOS season 1).

Recurring Characters

Nurse Angela Vanson:
Nurse Vanson will be the first registered nurse and a non-commissioned officer of Starfleet to have a permanent post on the Enterprise, after someone at Starfleet thought it might be a good idea to have more medical staff.

Angela is young (27 or so) and very beautiful, and when she comes aboard she will quickly come to the attention of the men on Enterprise, who will always be talking about her and feigning illness just so they can go to sickbay. Despite all this, Angela is a very smart and headstrong (and somewhat of an overly emotional person too).

When she first sees Trip she knows she wants him but can see that his attentions lay elsewhere (T'pol). Angela will try some subtle things to gets Trip's attention, which does get noticed buy T'pol, and will cause some awkward situations.

We will also see Angela arguing with Phlox over matters in sickbay, and she will try to confide in Hoshi. The two women will be seen talking in the mess hall discussing relationships, Angela about Trip and Hoshi about Fenton Mudd, but they will also discuss men in general.

Fenton Mudd:
As you might have guessed from the name, Fenton (or 'Fen' as Hoshi calls him) Mudd is the grandfather of Harcourt Fenton Mudd (See TOS). Fenton is a bold, handsome, young (about 35 or so) and brash freelance trader and sometimes con man. He has a weakness for the ladies; he has been married twice and already has three children (that he knows about anyway). Fenton has been infatuated with Hoshi since they met on Risa year and half or so ago.

The two went out for a brief time, but Hoshi was a bit put of be some of Fentons amoral ways and broke it off. Needless to say Hoshi is still very attracted to him (and talks to Angela about how passionate he is), even though there ethics do not quite match. Fenton will be in two scheduled episodes this season and may meet a tragic fate (or will he?) at the end of one of them.


Leroy:
Leroy is a new steward who joins the crew this season. He will work for chef (who will remain unseen), and is very charismatic, friendly and talkative. Leroy will be somewhat of a nuisance to Malcolm, as he is always coming up to Malcolm and is quite a bit 'friendly' with him throughout this season. Malcolm will finds ways to brush Leroy off, but finds that he cannot be mad at Leroy and may even learn to actually get along with him.

Leroy is an 'implied' gay character, which means we will really never know if he is even though his mannerisms may 'imply' that he is. So this will be a mystery that surrounds him and you will have to draw your own conclusions.

Admiral Gardner:
Admiral Gardner is a rough no nonsense type of guy that will not have as good of a relationship with Archer as Admiral Forrest did. Gardner will during the season eventually sympathize with Archer’s plight. Gardner has an ulcer that he will always complain about and will constantly tell Archer that he does not want to make it any bigger. Gardner’s character is very similar to Admiral Hanson from TNG's 'best of both world's'.

Ensign Travis Mayweather

Travis Mayweather has not had a good year at all. 18 months ago his family's ship the Horizon was attacked by unknown aliens. The ship was pillaged and then destroyed killing all 23 crewmembers including Travis's mother and brother! Travis took 2 months off on Earth after that event and on the outside appears to be ok now. The war this season and the death of many Starfleet personal has added to Travis's inner frustration coupled with his family's death.

Indeed Phlox is a bit worried because Travis seems to be too friendly, given the circumstances this is good indication that he is burying a lot of his real feelings. When Phlox tries to approach him on this Travis's becomes rather agitated with him. Near the end of this season Fenton comes on board and it is discovered that there may be a link between Fenton and the Horizons destruction. Mayweather finally reaches a point where he does something that will have tragic consequences and damage his relationship with another crewmember.

Ensign Hoshi Sato

Hoshi had a relationship with Fenton Mudd last year. When the crew meets up with him Hoshi will need to deal with Fenton trying to woo her back. She is quite attracted to him but is turned off by some of his amoral ethics. Later in the season something bad happens to Fenton that will affect her more than she thought it would and will have a big impact on her working relationship with Travis.

Hoshi will also be forced to deal with some bottled up emotions from when she was a prisoner of the Xindi Reptilians from Zero Hour.

Dr Phlox

Phlox will be Phlox mostly this year; however it is not just him in sick bay, he now has to contend with Nurse Vanson, Enterprises first fulltime nurse. Phlox will sometimes feel that he is living with his wives again when he argues with Vanson. If that were not enough, he will have to deal with his own squabbling 'family' members later in the season that will drive him nuts. There will also be quite a few situations that will keep Phlox busy this season.

Lt Malcolm Reed

Malcolm will have much more of an edge to him this season and some frustrations we may not understand at first. He will once again be called upon from his old 'section' that may stir memories of an incident that occurred during a mission he went on a year ago. The other members of this mission may learn something that will never be reported to Starfleet.

Malcolm will also be trying to avoid Leroy, a very charismatic new steward (yes, he works for the unseen chef!). Leroy tends to be a bit over 'friendly' with Malcolm and by the end of the season they will come to an understanding...

Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III

Since Terra Prime:

It took Trip a little while to get over the death of his sister and baby Elizabeth, he has even learned to deal with some of his feeling for T'pol.

He agreed to take the engineering assignment for the 3 new NX ships because he knew that he would still be able to see T'pol since Enterprise had been back and forth to Earth so much recently. Of course, things don't always go as planned when Starfleet sends the Enterprise on deep exploration and what he thought would only be months turned into a whole year.

Season Five:

When Starfleet decides to upgrade the engines on the Enterprise and Columbia to the same warp capacity the new ships were getting, Trip emphatically asks Admiral Gardner to oversee it. This way he will get to spend some much desired time with T’Pol as he will be working on the Enterprise. In the first two episodes the Enterprise has to deal with a Romulan attack and during this attack the Enterprise will be hit hard resulting in the death of the Chief Engineer who replaced Trip.

At the end of the second episode, Trip knows that the 3 new ships will need to be completed soon and feels obligated to help get this done. T'Pol however (prompted by her dreams and feelings) practically begs Trip to stay since they now need a new chief engineer, and most importantly - T'pol says she needs him. Archer also believes that Trip should remain on the Enterprise so Trip agrees to stay. When they return to Earth Archer is able to convince Admiral Gardner to let Trip to remain on Enterprise.

Also during season five the new nurse Angela Vanson, will become somewhat infatuated with Commander Tucker. She can't understand why such a 'hot' guy would go for someone like T'Pol. This will be explored though season five as Nurse Vanson tries to find ways to impress the Commander. T'Pol will notice her efforts, and although lacking in emotion, we can see that she is a little concerned.

Commander Tucker will have a lot to do in this season that will seem him in jeopardy quite a bit.

TnT Notes
The focus on Tnt will be roughly the same as season 4, we are not turning this into a soap opera but at the same time the TnT story is a part of Enterprise.

TnT will intentionally keep their relationship low key not just because most of the main crew know about their relationship, but for professional and political reasons as well.

(So maybe the holodeck in TNG is not accurate on every historical fact especially relationships! Do you document your relationships?)

Commander T'Pol

T'pol has worked hard on trying to control her emotions since Elisabeth's death in Terra Prime. Her relationship with Trip has been rather stable as the events of season 4 have brought them closer together. But their relationship will be put on hold when Trip is asked by Starfleet to oversee the engineering on the 3 new NX ships under construction.

Trip and T'pol come to the understanding that T'pol will visit Trip when she can. This arrangement had worked out for almost a year. Then Starfleet decided to send Enterprise out on deep exploration again, and weeks turned to months. Finally almost a year had passed were T'pol had not seen Trip, almost making her wish that he did not except this assignment.

Luckily both the Enterprise and Columbia were recalled back to Earth so that their engines could be upgraded to warp 5.5, and even luckier for T'pol Trip is asked to oversee this operation (for Trip this is also good, because his hidden agenda is to spend more time with T'pol). This is where our first episode begins.

T'pol will also learn that her father may not have died they way everyone thought he did all those years ago, and we may find out T'pol's Vulcan bloodline may not be as pure as it was assumed to be.

In the first episodes we will see T'pol having interactive dreams with Trip (or so she believes), but T’Pol cannot figure out why. She confronts Trip about her dreams, but he does not know what she is talking about since he has had none. In her dreams Trip tells her he is no longer alive, and the only thing he can remember is dying on duty. These dreams make T'pol more protective of Trip as she does not know when Trip will meet the unknown fate.

So will T'pol find out in time what happened to Trip to cause his death, and hopefully save him (we know it's in TATV of course)? This point will be rather ambiguous (no resolution) for a while as the dreams will stop during some of the season, but may pick up again later on.

We will have to wait and see...

Next Entry:
Commander Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker the Third...

Captain Jonathan Archer

Over the coming week I will be posting Tom's character and relationship developments for the regular and recurring cast.

At the beginning of Series Five we will find Captain Archer basically unchanged. He is still trying to be the model captain, however he will also be fighting personal demons with events from his past and present.

Archer has also had an on again/off again relationship with Captain Hernandez of The Columbia. Something tragic will happen to our lovely Captain Hernandez that will affect Captain Archer more than he is willing to admit...


Also, the morally questionable act that the Captain had to make in season 3 will come back to haunt him to further complicate his already fragile phyche. He will also relive a bad childhood memory when events at the new Warp 7 complex draws close parallels to a similar 'accident' during the Warp 5 project.

The Teaser

As I said in my previous post, this outline was written by Thomas Moore from TrekUnited. It is his vision of how Season 5 of Enterprise can unfold.

The idea is to post a little bit of the outline at time to get your imaginations running.

My grateful thanks to Tom a.k.a. Fleetlord for allowing me to use his outline, and to the members of TrekUnited for their continued support.

Okay, here we go...

Season 5 general plot:
By, Thomas Moore
The story so far...

April 7th 2157.

It’s been over two years since the events of Terra Prime, and our intrepid crew of the Enterprise have had their fair share of adventures, some of which will influence the events to come.

Enterprise and Columbia are still the only warp 5 ships but have been upgraded to warp 5.5, however there are 3 more NX warp 5 ships that are 3 months away from launching.

The Vulcan’s have decided to fully share their warp technology with Earth. So the new warp 7 project, known as the Daedalus Project, has begun on Earth and is expected to be completed by 2163, but there are factions out there who want to put a stop to this...

The Salem Project

In 2155 Starfleet began the Salem Project, it is an ambitious plan to build 5 'Starbases', now almost two years later most of them are almost finished. One of these bases will come under attack which will have dire consequences for the crew of Columbia, and will drive the humans in trying to get assistance from the stonewalling pre-federation species.

The Coalition

Earth is still working on their relationships with other races, and are trying to work through problems both on and off Earth, to build a coalition that would benefit the whole quadrant.

The events of Terra Prime dented that effort in the short run, but within a year Earth was back on top of negotiations.

However, there was a recent event that splintered the races to the point where militarily they wouldn’t help each other (Maybe the Romulans disrupted the coalition as they tried to in ‘United’ – dun, dun, dun daah).

When the Romulans declared war on the humans no other races would be directly involved as these governments had their own problems, and they were also curious to see how well the humans would hold up to this threat. Archer tries to seek help (he even asks the Xindi), but for one reason or another they do not want to be directly involved. However, some members will help Archer even if their governments don’t want to be involved (enter Shran and Sovol).

By the end of season 5 other races will be finally convinced to help the humans and learn how powerful they are when they unite. By the end of the war, the other races will find a new found appreciation for the humans, and trust them as a founding member for the proposed coalition. The process is therefore accelerated and by 2161 the new Federation is born.

As Earth has shown its strength and leadership Starfleet will be based on Earth for the federation military in general, the Academy and the political office.

Around this time the Romulans will have a trade agreement with the Klingons supplying them with some weapons and ships, but the Klingons will not get directly involved in the war. This trade alliance will be broken by Archer with the help of Shran and Kolos, but it seems that 100 years later the Klingons once again traded with the Romulans, and once more it was broken up for unknown reasons.



Next Entry:
Characters and Relationships