10 Reasons Star Trek Enterprise Deserves A Second Chance
5. Regeneration
As previously mentioned, early seasons of Enterprise struggled to find their tone and bearing and some truly excellent ideas were lost to this. Regeneration is not one of them.
This is an example of tying future events into the past without breaking canon. The Borg, who were 'first' encountered by Starfleet in Q Who? are here able to interact with Archer's crew by means of the bodies frozen after the events of Star Trek First Contact. Not only does that not break canon but it also helps fuel the rumours behind the Hansens' research in Dark Frontier, which occured before Q hurled the Enterprise to System J-25.
The episode is tight and unsettling. The Borg are seemingly unstoppable. They are also fundamentally misunderstood by the characters on screen. They are both vampires and zombies and devoid of all emotion. These are not the creatures of Voyager, those drones who were humanised as the seasons wore on.
These are the drones of The Best of Both Worlds and First Contact. They are here to assimilate first, ask questions later. The audience knows that Enterprise doesn't stand a chance in prolonged conflict. Rather than belabour the point, as all watching would know that Enterprise would survive the events, they episode works toward a natural and nail biting conclusion.
It is a strong entry to the franchise, one that has been previously marked among the very best that Trek has to offer. It took something old and made it new again, something that Enterprise doesn't get nearly enough credit for.