Star Trek: Enterprise's creator, Rick Berman, is happy with fan reaction to the third season of the show, and is also looking forward to a multi-episode arc that will end the season.

Speaking to Ian Spelling at Star Trek: Monthly, Berman said, "The ratings continue to creep up a little bit [and] the sense that we are getting from the fans, through web sites, through people who have called us and through people we know who stay in contact with the fans, is that people seem to be very pleased with the way Season Three is going."

Berman said he found it "gratifying" that the fans appear to be enjoying the evolving storyline of season three. "The idea of a core storyline, a continuing storyline that hopefully doesn't get in the way of the standalone elements of each episode, seems to be something that fans are enjoying," he noted.

Berman discussed some of the upcoming developments for the second half of season three. He mentioned the return of Shran (Jeffrey Combs), who will be showing up in the Delphic Expanse. He also promised the mysterious spheres will be explored: "We have a number of shows coming up that deal with the mythology of the spheres, one of which Manny Coto is writing now. We'll learn a lot more about the spheres."

Berman promised viewers would be seeing more of Gralik, the Xindi-humanoid that helped Archer in "The Shipment". "There's an episode that's being written by Mike Sussman that's a Mission: Impossible type of sting, dealing with our Xindi Humanoid scientist that we've likened to Oppenheimer," Berman revealed.

Berman also spoke of having the season conclude with a ten-episode arc. It is unknown how this arc will be affected by Enterprise's reduction from 26 episodes to 24 this season, as that information was not known when Star Trek: Monthly went to press. At the time, he said, "We've got stories beat out through episode 16 and that will put us into [a] 10-episode march towards the end of the season. And we're already starting to beat out the various things we need to do to take us from there through to the end of Season Three."

When asked about competition with Smallville, which moved to Wednesdays at 8pm eastern time, Berman stated that he didn't think there was a major audience overlap for the two shows. "I could be wrong, but I think that Smallville has a younger - skewed audience than we do," he said. He also mentioned that he would be open to a possible change of time slots for Enterprise. "I would not be opposed to UPN experimenting with other time slots," he said.

For more from Berman on the November sweeps month and the show's ratings, visit Sci Fi Pulse.

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