Trek fans: which season of Star Trek Enterprise is best?

I'm a fan of all the Trek series and am currently watching Enterprise on my DVR. I want to get someone a gift of one season of Star Trek Enterprise; at Amazon they say the third season is best, with its continuing battle to protect Earth from destruction by the Xindi. What do you think? Is this the best season or should I give him the first season instead? He is a fan of the original Star Trek series and the movies, and I don't know if he's watched Enterprise much, but I'm sure he'd like it.

New show runners - should have been given the green light for at least one more season.

The series finale was a bit of a let down (understatement), the but the entire season was excellent. Specifically, I liked the two part mirror universe episodes - the show even gave those episodes a unique opening to show how the Federation evolved in that alternate universe. And I have linked to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl5zw6fGjdA

..and a trailer for the episodes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6imjBmtqyjA

Twilight, the episode in which Archer loses his short-term memory after being infected by some kind of subspace parasite, is one of my favorite episodes from any Trek series.

I also really liked Regeneration, the season one episode with the Borg. Even though it disrupts the overall continuity somewhat, I really like the way it was handled. Carbon Creek from season two is enjoyable as well, and Carpenter Street is likewise a very solid episode.

I'm not the best judge, though; I've seen two of my three picks frequently criticized online for technical problems, continuity errors, and the like, but I don't care--I still like 'em!


One thing that particularly disappointed me about the Xindi, though, is the way the five species referred to one another by utterly mundane descriptions: Aquatics; Arboreals; Reptillians; etc. No other races in the entire Trek universe are so blandly named.

I also didn't like that we humans achieved diplomatic rapport with the most directly human-like race of Xindi. It would have been much more interesting for Archer to make friends with the Aquatics or the Insectoids, but instead the writers went for the boring and obvious choice.

The series is much better than it's commonly credited to be. It's a shame that they ended the series with one of the worst episodes in the history of the franchise!

What, were the writers just too pooped or burned out or ?

I would love to see a motion picture Star Trek Enterprise if they could get all the actors back. This series turned out to be better than my first impression of it. For fans of the original series, this one comes closest, with the added benefits of better special effects and less sexism.

I also liked Twilight. It was just on TV in fact, and that's what prompted my question about which season was best. The graphics of the Earth blowing up and then later the Enterprise were impressive. My son works in the field (CG animation) and I know he'll be interested in seeing these. But I ended up telling him to rent them on Netflix rather than buying--you don't need to watch most of these episodes more than once.

Also the one where they go to a computerized space station for repairs was a good one--at the end, with nobody watching, the blown-up station starts to slowly rebuild itself--that was great!

I think the "newbies in space" feel of the first season is handled very well, but the third season gets wonderfully dark along the way to resolving the Temporal Cold War.

For a new viewer, I would probably not dare to give anything but the first season.