PREVIEW: Brent Spiner on ENTERPRISE's "Borderland"

We've got nine photos from this week's episode of ENTERPRISE to share

By Patrick Sauriol     October 25, 2004
Source: UPN

This week's episode of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE features a special guest star well connected to another generation of fans: old yellow eyes, or as he's better known in the credits of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, Brent Spiner.

Spiner is playing Dr. Arik Soong, great-grandfather to Dr. Noonian Soong, the brilliant, eccentric scientist that created Lieutenant Data (who Spiner played for seven seasons and four feature films.) Unlike Data, this character has got an evil streak a parsec wide: it turns out that Soong helped defrost and create a new generation of genetically engineered superman from the Eugenics Wars, a global conflict stated to have occurred in an episode of the 1960s STAR TREK TV series in the 1990s. The best known criminal from the Eugenics Wars was one Khan Noonian Singh, first seen in the TOS episode "Space Seed" and later in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN. Maybe this will reveal it wasn't simply coincidence why Data's creator had the same first name as Khan's middle name.

Spiner is starring in a three-episode arc in ENTERPRISE, the first episode of which, "Borderland", airs this coming Friday. In it Archer is called upon to stop a group of Augments from starting a war between Earth and the Klingon Empire. To do that he enlists the aid of Arik Soong, the man who defrosted the Augments' embryos, and together they head off to the region of space between the Klingons and a new group of aliens, the Orions. Longtime fans of STAR TREK remember that we've twice seen these green-skinned beings but only by way of their beguiling women. "Borderland" will feature the first appearance of Orion Slave Girls to TREK in over three decades as well as finally show us what the male Orions look like.

You can check out our nine photos from "Borderland" to gear yourself up for this week's episode. Click on any of them to see a larger size.

ENTERPRISE's fourth episode of the season airs this Friday at 8 PM.


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