Dominic Keating talks to David Waldon about the past, present and future of Enterprise.

If the Star Trek empire truly is on the precipice of collapse after more than 35 years, you couldn't tell it form Dominic Keating. On a warm July evening in Hollywood, the British actor is at ease with his present and future. His cheery disposition belies his Enterprise character, the taciturn armoury officer Lt Malcolm Reed. And it definitely doesn't fit into the firestorm that has raged around (t)his series as it enters its third season. In fact, asked bluntly whether Enterprise needed repairs, Keating gives an equally blunt answer.

'Personally, I didn't think that it needed great attention,' he says. 'I watch the show religiously, and I don't think that our show needed any particular revamping or attention. I think we make a good show.'

That being said, Keating has proven to be the good soldier when it comes to Enterprise’s new mission, a trip into the mysterious Delphic Expanse in search of the Xindi, a multi-species race that seeks to destroy Earth and all its inhabitants. It's a story arc filled with danger and action, designed to pump some energy into what many see as a moribund series that needs a ratings injection. But one particular alteration has gotten Keating's attention and has given him insight on a great way to jump-start Enterprise’s popularity.

'Put Jolene Blalock in a very tight cat suit and make her lips look plumper than before,' he says slyly. 'And that's just what we've done.' Yes, not surprisingly, Keating is a big fan of the sexy new look Blalock's character, the Vulcan science officer T'Pol, will display, even if it initially threw him for a loop. 'When I turned up on the first day this season, I actually didn't recognise her, she looked so different in her new costume and her new hairdo,' he says. Other adjustments are a bit more galling, at least to Lt Reed.

Enterprise’s new mission means new crew members - commandos, referred to as MACOs (Military Assault Command Operations), assigned to take on the Xindi by any means necessary. One would think that Reed, who's the closest to pure warrior than anyone else on the regular crew, would be stoked by the new additions. One would think.

'Malcolm is feeling that he's been thrown over or undermined,' Keating says about how he's playing the situation, at least so far. 'Malcolm understands their purpose, but there might be some sense of reticence that his team is not enough. I'm going to give a couple of looks here and there, like "Are these guys really up to it? We have spent two-and-a half years in deep outer space, where these guys have spent only two weeks in Jupiter Moon doing simulation tests on gravity plating and whatever else. Are they really experienced enough to encounter what it is we're going to encounter?"'

The tension that will be obvious in the new episodes of Enterprise has not trickled down onto the real-life actors, according to Keating. What is there is a drive to do the brand proud, in part because of what is potentially on the line. 'There is a determination, certainly in the sense that we've really got to make this work this year. We all want to be locked into the package. But other than that, we are a cost that has been together for two-and-a-half years now, so we have a complicity with one another. There's an ease on set where we don't have to be talking to each other the whole time - a cursory nod of the head. But, still, I have to say that the buoyancy is there, the fun is there.'

The nexus of that buoyancy, says Keating, is none other than Scott Bakula. As Captain Archer, he's in charge of the fictional crew, but the leadership goes further than that. 'He's the head of our team. He is such a great herald and such a great captain, and I mean that way apart from being a Starship captain. And it's great fun going to a set where he walks on and brings everything he brings with him. He's an actor's actor.' Though they had worked together for a year previously, Keating got his first real taste of Bakula's talent and friendship while working on the second-season episode Minefield, in which Reed and Archer attempt to remove a Romulan mine from Enterprise's hull.

'We never really had actually bonded in that way as actors,' says Keating. 'Beyond a cursory exchange on the bridge or in the situation room, we really hadn't done much. I was quite nervous about starting that week with him because I didn't know him that well, and it really bonded us as actors, and consequently as friends. And we've become really good chums since then.'

Keating counts the entire cast as pals; in fact, he lives right around the corner from Connor Trinneer (Commander Tucker) and is often visiting him. Keating says that when it comes to where the actors hang out with each other, 'It's houses, really, now that we've got 'em. It's a beautiful thing. When I became an actor, I resigned myself to rented accommodation for the rest of my days. And, my God [Enterprise] been good to me.'

And that may be the bottom line for Keating. After years of struggling as an actor both in the US and the UK, he realizes what a good thing he and the others have with Enterprise. And he's in no hurry to give it up, willingly or otherwise. Pressed again about his feelings regarding Enterprise's future, whether Trek's popularity can be salvaged, and he remembers a few weeks earlier, when TV Guide placed a 'can this show be saved?' headline on its cover.

'The strange thing about the TV Guide thing is that whenever they put us on their cover and tell us it's our last year, that's their best-selling magazine,' Keating says cheekily. 'When Star Trek is on the front cover of TV Guide, they sell the most. So go figure.'

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And two side boxes:

After more than two years on the crew of Enterprise, has Dominic Keating become used to the extracurricular activity that’s known as the convention circuit? ‘The first ones I did were nerve-racking,’ says Keating. ‘Now I’m in a stride with it.’ Still, hitting the convention stages can count as hazardous duty. ‘Sometimes I wonder if my stories aren’t getting a little tired, and occasionally I wonder, ‘Boy, I’ve really got to work this act up a bit,’ he says with a laugh. ‘So I’m looking for new stories on the set right now just so that I go to every convention, ‘cause the first thing I always ask is, “Who’s heard my schtick before?”’

Keating may have a new story after him most recent convention swing, which took him to Australia for a few weeks this past summer. ‘I met a girl who had me tattooed on her back,’ he recounts. ‘I had had a couple of glasses of the red stuff, so I wasn’t too thrown when I met her. But the following morning when I woke up, I was, like, “Oh my God”’

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Besides such traditions as the Prime Directive (and violating it) and playing fast and loose with the Space-Time continuum, Star Trek has become known as a pretty successful directors’ farm. From Leonard Nimoy to Johathan Frakes to LeVar Burton, Trek actors have used their time in the franchise to make the successful transition to behind the camera. Soon, you can add Dominic Keating to those ranks.

Even before letting Rick Berman and Brannon Braga know what was up, Keating had completed a course at the Los Angeles Film School. And recently he got his first taste of direction by helming a segment of a local public-access show, The Heartbreak Kid, on which Voyager alumni Tim Rus and Roxann Dawson also got their starts.

Next for Keating is a short film, The Big Hand, which will be based on a story told by Scott Bakula about one of his own kids. ‘His boy Will had just learned to tell the time, and it’s a wonderful story about a boy who just got his first watch. Keating will drop this hint: ‘It’s a truly beautiful story with an amazing, only-the-kid-could-say-that ending, all about Time and the passage that we all enjoy therein.’ And not a warp field in sight.