"There is some frisson there, there is a little tension," he said. "There's a good scene between me and Steven Culp, who plays Major Hayes. My instinct as an actor was to play it a bit rudely, but Allan (Kroeker, director of the season premiere 'The Xindi') came over and said, 'You know what? Don't give too many of your cards away just yet — there's a ways to go with this.' I don't think Malcolm's particularly happy in some respects — his ego is allowing him to think that he's been passed over. But I think professionally he understands that they need to be there."

Keating, who says the original shooting script for "Anomaly" included a sexually-tense exchange between Reed and Julia Rose's MACO 'McKenzie' that was eventually taken out, says Malcolm is approaching the presence of the new characters cautiously.

"They have not actually been in the field, and we have had two and a bit years in the field, baby, and there's nothing that can replace that! So I'm playing it with a slight quizzical look in the eye — 'You better be up to it. You look like you're up to it. Your papers say you're up to it. Are you up to it?'"

Cast mate John Billingsley also spoke about the new season, and some of the criticism the show has received.

"Personally I think what I always liked about the Original Series was that they did a Vietnam show, and they did a racism show, at a time when those issues were real hot-button issues in this country," Billingsley said. "The biggest hot-button issue in this country right now is, how much of our freedoms are we willing to set aside for security? I think that's what the show is potentially going to be asked to grapple with, and I hope they do."

The Doctor Phlox actor also told the site that the ENTERPRISE episodes may not be long enough to do the stories justice.

"I think it's unfair and unfortunate that the writers get almost all of the heat for the perceived problems of the show. I think the problem with the show is that there's only 39 or 40 minutes for each episode, which isn't enough time to tell a nuanced story driven by character with multiple layers of meaning." To illustrate, he talked about a pickup scene (one shot after principal photography) he did during the second season: "The director said, 'We have 39 seconds to do this scene.' Which meant that I was basically being asked to spit-out-the-words-as- quickly-as-I-could-so-we-could-get-the- scene-into-39-seconds! That's a problem. And that has nothing to do with the writers. Give us four more minutes! Let us tell a better story!"

For more quotes from the ENTERPRISE cast, check out this page.