Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Jonathan Archer

That mirror Archer's fate was left fairly ambiguous as he slumped to the floor at the end of In a Mirror, Darkly — maybe he just couldn't handle his champagne — was a deliberate move. As Manny Coto revealed at the Star Trek Las Vegas Convention in 2009, for Enterprise's hypothetical fifth season, discussions were had for a return to the Mirror Universe over four to five episodes as a "mini-series within a series." Brannon Braga also later revealed on Twitter that there was even talk of setting all of season five in the Mirror Universe.

For some, in the third season, Prime Archer already mirrored his otherworldly equivalent all too well. The season's second episode Anomaly contained the extremely controversial airlock torture scene of an Osaarian prisoner. Whilst there were those who defended his actions as those of a desperate captain trying to save billions, others decried it as the complete antithesis to the moral values of Star Trek. It certainly did feel more like how a member of the Terran Empire would have handled the situation.

It wasn't just the fans who were divided over the darker turn taken by Archer in season three's 9/11 allegory. Phlox actor John Billingsley also notably expressed his objections to the airlock torture scene and to aspects of season three in general that, to his mind, strayed from the ethos of Star Trek, and left him feeling "uncomfortable".