Enterprise Spoilers Request -- Please tell me what the show has been about.

So, I haven't watched more than one or two episodes of Enterprise in the past two years, so could someone tell me what the show has been about, please?

I was interested in the Temporal Cold War at first, but when we were distracted by the 'Alien Terrorists Attack Florida' plot line, I got bored fast. What ended up happening?
 

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The TCW continues, and the "Alien Terrorists" were apparently all part of one of their plots (building spheres within the Deltic Expanse to somehow "change space" to make it more suitable for them). When Archer & Co. finally learned enough to figure out that bringing down a sphere or two would collapse the field, they developed a plan and executed it, surviving Big Battle by the skin of their teeth, but losing Archer (presumed dead)...

Archer wakes up on Earth, circa 1940-something, with Temporal Agents helping the Nazis, who supplied them with materials to build a Temporal Nexus. Archer (in his Star Fleet uniform) is captured by the Nazis, and brought to the attention of one of the TAs.

Meanwhile, Enterprise returns to Earth, and finds no satellites, and no lunar colonies. Star Fleet frequencies are empty. Joshi picks up radio traffic, so they take a shuttle down to San Fran. They are strafed by zeroes while coming in, and are captured by the Nazis occupying America east of the Missippi shortly after landing.

Archer gets away during a "rebel" attack, and is captured by them. They join forces. Eventually, he gets beamed back to Enterprise, just in the nick of time, saving him from recapture by the Nazis.

Meanwhile, a Sulabahn TA replaces Trip in the Nazi stronghold.

Aboard the Enterprise, the crew is surprised and pleased to see Archer alive, and that TA he's dealt with before (Davis, was it?) shows up, again, dying, and tells him of the great threat, and that he (Archer) was sent here to stop the main TA, who is working with the Nazis to build the Temporal Nexus.

The TA's group, though, spots Enterprise, and contacts them, offering to return Trip and the boomer. Archer agrees to meet them, and the TA seems reasonable... The three return to Enterprise, where Trip is revealed as the Sulabahn TA, working against the other...

So the Enterprise crew finds the base where the Nexis is being built, and with the help of the rebel americans, and the Sulabahn TA, go in and blow it up, recovering Trip (who thinks Archer is the Sulabahn) just before things go BOOM!

Then, Archer and the DEAD Davis (or whatever his name was) are... somewhere... talking about their success (the Timeline has been restored), and Archer tells him to leave him, and the crew of Enterprise, alone! They agree. So now the future should be all nice and restored, if only all the OTHER TAs will leave Archer & Co. alone!
 

I'll try to hit upon the major arc plot points. There are many individual eps that were pretty cool but had no bearing on the overall season arc. See here to get some recaps of the eps like Twilight, Northstar, Similtude & Chosen Realm.

Last season had Enterprise entering the Delphic Expanse to find a race called the Xindi who were duped into destroying Earth (more on this later). The resolution of the attack on Earth that ended season 2 lasted for the entirety of season 3. The Temporal Cold War still had an impact as folks from the future were screwing with the Xindi because they needed someone to destroy the Federation before it got started.

I should quickly note that the Xindi are comprised of 5 different races: Primates, Reptilians (the most aggressive), Sloths, Aquatics and Insectoids. They don't always get along and have to pass all important decisions through a council comprised of the 5 races.

First off, the Expanse is an area surrounded by this cloud that messes with navigation. The Expanse itself was explored by the Vulcans and none of them returned. The only trace was a transmission that looked like it was taken directly from Event Horizon. The Vulcans went bonkers. So they warned Starfleet not to go into the Expanse and would give no aid. T'pol resigned her Vulcan commission and took a field commission aboard Enterprise to help out.

Upon entering the Expanse after shaking some Klingon headhunters they found these huge spheres that were surrounded by cloaking fields. Additionally, the ship had to deal with spatial distortions that would destroy parts of the ship, injure crewmembers and do other bad things. These distortions were pretty random. The crew found a way to insulate the ship using a material called trellium-D. Problem is that the material is poisonus to Vulcans and drives them nutty. As the season continues we learn that T'pol has become (by her own experimention) permanently altered by her contact with the trellium so that she will never be able to fully suppress her emotions again.

So, the Xindi are building this Uberweapon to destroy Earth. Along the way, Archer learns (while compromising some of his morals) that the race who build the Spheres are the ones manpulating the Xindi. Turns out that the Xindi will join the Federation in the future and Humanity are the ones who save the Xindi from the Spherebuilders. The Spherebuilders are slowly changing the Expanse into space that they can inhabit. Hence all the spatial distruptions.

Archer ends up gaining the trust and respect of a few influencial Xindi along the way and tries to use their political power to stop the attack on Earth. It ends up not working as the Reptilians launch the attack. Good prevails in the end, Archer and crew are shot back to 1940's Earth where time traveling aliens have teamed up with the Nazis to conquer Earth. Yay.

Again, there is a ton more to it than just that but it's the overall story of Season 3. Some interesting infighting, a romance between Trip & T'pol, Archer doing whatever it takes to accomplish his mission and other things were pretty neat. Not the best season of Trek ever, not even close to the last 4 seasons of DS9 but it got better as it went along. The final 6 eps were very solid and included some very cool space battles.
 

Wait, why were aliens in World War II? Huh? I mean, if you want to destroy mankind, and you can time travel, just nuke Africa a few million years ago.

Huh?

. . .

Yeah, I . . . um, yeah, I'm still stuck on 'Huh?' as the operable expression here.
 

RangerWickett said:
Wait, why were aliens in World War II? Huh? I mean, if you want to destroy mankind, and you can time travel, just nuke Africa a few million years ago.

Huh?

. . .

Yeah, I . . . um, yeah, I'm still stuck on 'Huh?' as the operable expression here.

Different factions exist in the Temporal Cold War, not all want humanity obliterated. The aliens who came to WW2 Earth might not have had the proper circumstances to carry a continent destroying device back through time to drop on Africa.
 

RangerWickett said:
Wait, why were aliens in World War II? Huh? I mean, if you want to destroy mankind, and you can time travel, just nuke Africa a few million years ago.

Huh?

. . .

Yeah, I . . . um, yeah, I'm still stuck on 'Huh?' as the operable expression here.
Yeah, the last poster had it right.

The time traveling aliens needed to get back to their own time using Earth tech. Plus, their methods of time travel were not perfected. It is explained that their first jump was one-way only.
 

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