Scott Bakula (Jonathan Archer) yesterday gave a preview of the upcoming Enterprise season.

"A couple of the episodes this year were somewhat spawned out of some thoughts that I had at the end of the first season," Bakula told TrekWeb. "I've said to them, 'You know there's a relationship that I think we could explore more and this is why' and then that spawned an episode. I said to them 'We have something on our ship that we haven't utilised since the pilot' and that just became a big story.

"I had almost a whole episode with Dominic [Keating], which we never really had last year, I've had a whole lot more to do with Jolene [Blalock] this year so we're becoming more comfortable around each other both on and off the set. There's a great episode with Jolene ['Carbon Creek'] where we find out that first contact was not when it's been previously thought."

'A Night in Sickbay' will have some revelations about Doctor Phlox. "We have a huge episode that's in a sense all about my dog. He's the background of an entire episode, but he gets sick so I spend the entire episode in Sickbay with Doctor Phlox. [...] We find out a lot of stuff about him that we may not have wanted to know; like what he does when he's in his off hours - he has things to cut and trim!"

'Minefield' will feature Reed and Archer extensively. "Dominic and I end up out in space and we shot it all against a green screen and it'll be terrific," Bakula enthused. "We're going to be out there on the hull and behind us you'll see the nacelles and just things that they haven't visually done before. There's a moment when a ship materialises behind Dominic when he's on the hull which I think is going to be stunning stuff."

The episode is rumoured to feature the Romulans. "Have I met a Romulan? No, but I’ve come across them," said Bakula. "Their names are bandied about in a couple of episodes and we do encounter them but we don't see them."

Work had just finished on the season's sixth episode, 'Marauders', with 'Dead Stop' also in the can. "We have to have repairs done and we end up on an automated repair station," Bakula said of 'Dead Stop.' "Nobody’s there and it's a pretty interesting show. We just finished an episode where we land to pick up some deuterium and find out that the people on the planet are being basically held prisoner by Klingons who take whatever they like to whenever they like."

He also shared information on 'The Seventh', which will feature a big-name guest star. "We're shooting an episode today that we just started, and Bruce Davis on is going to be the guest star in, and we find out that T'Pol has had a previous career before the Science Directorate." Oscar nominee Bruce Davison appeared in X-Men with Patrick Stewart as Senator Robert Jefferson Kelly. He has previously appeared in a Trek episodeas Jareth in Voyager's 'Remember.'

Enterprise's second year won't shy away from tackling important issues. "We're going to get into some tampering with another society that we accidentally leave something behind in and have to come back to get, so we'll start messing with those issues," he said.

"I was nervous last year about [the episode 'Desert Crossing'] because we had the whole who's right and wrong here - these guys want us to come fight the people in town but we don't really know anything about the people in town - these guys might be the bad guys. But the Suliban internment camp episode I thought that was great. That felt right, talking to internment camps during World War II here in the United States."

Much more from Scott Bakula about Enterprise and Jonathan Archer can be found in the full interview here at TrekWeb.

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