To Boldly Step Forward (Enterprise: Season 1) [1.1]

Part One: No, They're Not Gonna Hold Me Down No More

(Since this ended up being something in the realm of 7000 words once I wrote about every episode of Season 1, you get it split in half so your eyes don't glaze over. I can be kind with my walls of text sometime. The other half of the season will go up tomorrow.)

Okay, so Season 1 of Enterprise. As I write this I am maybe... halfway through it. If I had seen all of it, I'd give you a brief summary of what it was like. (INTRUSION FROM THE FUTURE: Good to great, with some missteps.) Right now, all I can do is set the scene for you. A little Star Trek lore: In the mid-22nd century humanity developed faster-than-light warp engines for travelling into space, and attracted the attention of the Vulcans. You know 'em, those logical people with the pointed ears and the eyebrows. Enterprise is set about 100 years afterward, with rapid technological progress thanks to our alliance with the Vulcans. The story of humanity making first contact with the Vulcans was told in the TNG movie, Star Trek First Contact, and the ending of that made it seem like humanity was about to enter a golden age. It's somewhat golden, but there's a sense of progess being held back. The Vulcans, ever logical and without emotion, simply do not trust the overly emotional and irrational human race, and have been holding back technological advances. Many resent this, but now we have a fancy new spaceship, the NX-01 Enterprise, launching off into the vast unknown as humanity is ready to take its first steps forward into space and explore and learn (and encounter a bunch of tricky shit on the way, as per Star Trek convention). So, then. Here's Season 1 of Enterprise, episode by episode.

These orders come from your future.

Broken Bow: A decent start that sets up what I suppose will be an actual arc for the show that will get revisited (as I write this, one other episode has followed up on it) in the future. NX-01 is not so much ceremoniously launched as it is pushed out the door due to a major emergency involving first contact with the Klingons, of whom a great deal later, and a shapeshifting alien race called the Suliban moving against them. The Suliban are the source of this nebulous arc, the Temporal Cold War, in which they take orders from someone in the future hoping to change the past. Already this is hella interesting, and something that I'm eager to see pecked at in more detail. It creates a neat mirror with the fact that I'm coming to this, the past of Star Trek, from the future of it. In a sense, I'm a temporal agent revisiting the beginning of things. Quite why the past is an immutable thing is beyond us for now, but we have a lovely and diverse crew on the NX-01. One gets the sense that the show is still not yet fully formed (indeed, it's not even called Star Trek yet in the opening credits), and iconic things like universal translation, phasers, photon torpedoes, and transporters are either not around or still in a state of early design. Good, says I. Also Captain Archer has a beagle puppy and this immediately makes him a wonderful man in my book.


Fight Or Flight: After the big feature-length opening, something a little bit more low-key. This one has a focus on Ensign Hoshi Sato, the ship's translator. I quite like her, as a big part of what makes Star Trek great for me is the sense of trying to understand the intricate weirdness of the universe, and translating alien languages is essential to that. Hoshi is a bridge of empathy and understanding, but she's also not quite comfy in a sci-fi adventure story like, say, exploring an abandoned alien ship and finding motherfuckers all wired up in a body horror nightmare. Indeed, everyone basically nopes the fuck off the ship once they see that. These are still tentative steps forward, after all. Hoshi's reluctance shows that there's horror as well as wonder out here in the unknowns of space, and in the end she decides to stick around. To explore, to translate, to be that bridge between the human and the weird. When you put it like that, it's a great episode that puts a good foot forward with the exploration.


Strange New World: A major undercurrent, at least early on, is the fact that the logical Vulcans trust the easily emotional human race about as far as they can throw them. This friction is apparent with the ship's Vulcan sub-commander, T'Pol, who's a fascinating character whose advice manages to both make perfect sense and fly against the very human need, nay the show's need, to poke one's nose where it doesn't belong and understand things better. To that end we have a beautiful uninhabited planet that, though T'Pol suggests casually observing with probes and whatnot, the crew insists on exploring in person. Whoops, there's a psychoactive hurricane and everyone's stuck in a cave hallucinating rock monsters and thinking T'Pol is conspiring with them. The episode itself is fine, but it's the dichotomy between the Vulcan way and the human way which makes things intriguing. When I wrote about Sailor Moon's third season I made a big deal about practicality vs. idealism. This internal conflict is more pragmatism vs. impulsiveness, and here you can see both sides of it rather than it just being a magical trolley problem on a kid's show. It'll come up later, and it gives the show a neat depth and a way to do conflict without selling its own morals out. I like it.


Unexpected: This, on the other hand... only works halfway. Chief Engineer Trip Tucker going over to an unknown alien ship to help them out with their engines is a good idea, especially with how bizarre and weird they make the experience. Their very environment fucks with his head at first, and you get the sense that he's a fish out of water. Several shots from his POV show how disorientating it is on the ship, but he does make a friend. She's a nice alien lady who even shows him this weird bit of tech they have. Hell yeah, it's the secret origin of the holodeck! It sounds like a great episode, and it is until Trip comes back... and discovers he's pregnant. What follows is basically space Junior, and it's just a little too uncomfortable and heteronormative for me to give it a pass. The least good episode so far, but it at least had a strong opening. Oh, and the Klingons are back. I'm going to save my Klingon thoughts for a later episode where they have a greater focus, but they're here. So yeah.


Terra Nova: Maybe this one could have used a touch of darkness to it. Alright, so there's a colony of humans which Earth mysteriously lost contact with 70 or so years ago, and the Enterprise is near the planet where they all vanished so they go to investigate and find... a bunch of Fallout mutants I guess. Except the twist is they're actually all descendants of the colonists, who got fucked by radiation from a space meteor and thought they weren't human anymore. Plot summary doesn't work so well with this, and it's a good enough episode... but the colony was at odds with Earth and thought they were the ones who tried to fuck over the colony. It turns out it was just a radioactive meteor, but I almost would have wanted them to pull the trigger on it. This isn't quite utopia yet. You could have some sort of compelling drama about the worst of humanity. At least it would fit better than in 90's Star Trek. I don't know. Other than that, this is okay.


The Andorian Incident: Hoo boy. You want to talk about Temporal Cold Wars? This one's been forever affected by the future. So we visit a Vulcan monastery, P'Jem, which is under siege by the Andorians. Blue aliens who hold a grudge against Vulcans and are prone to violence. I didn't know that, but I think these guys showed up in the original Star Trek. Anyway, they're easy enough dark mirrors for the resentment humanity holds against Vulcans, and they're convinced this place is hiding secret Vulcan tech to be used against them so they're holding everyone hostage. It's a great little action thriller of trying to evade capture and bust your way out of a hostage situation, but then the end happens. Holy shit, they were RIGHT! This place has a secret underground base for spying on Andorians! Now, when I saw this I immediately thought of the climate of the early aughts. George W Bush, Iraq, WMDs and all that. Except it doesn't fit. This aired on Halloween in 2001, a month and a half after 9/11. It couldn't possibly be read as a metaphor for this at the time it was written/shot/produced, but thanks to time travel it now is, in a way. Temporal shit is a headache.


Breaking The Ice: Something a little less intense now. These folks are explorers and scientists, after all, so even simple stuff like a really big comet is enough to get them excited and want to explore it and study it and whatnot. So that's what we get here, and we get some more of that Vulcan/human animosity with another Vulcan ship close by and Archer feeling like their captain is breathing down their neck. Eventually they're gonna have to bail the comet kids out of a jam, so it's a bit humbling and all that. There's also the subplot of T'Pol's arranged marriage and a breach of trust and whatnot, The title's a cute pun, since this one has a lot of Vulcans and humans doing their very best to try and be friendly and understand each other. It's a fine episode, really.


Civilization: The first few minutes of this are some of the most gratifying ever for me. See, there's this thing in Star Trek called the Prime Directive, which is basically a regulation that says "don't interact with any culture that doesn't have warp technology yet". It sucks. It sucks hard and I'll explain why in a few episodes from now, but it's so satisfying when T'Pol tries to bring up that interacting with this new planet is a big no-no and Archer's like "NO NO NO WE DIDN'T COME OUT HERE JUST TO LAUNCH PROBES AND SHIT, WE'RE GOING THE FUCK DOWN THERE.". As it turns out some other aliens are doing much worse on the planet and mining weapon ore or whatever. There are certain grades to the whole "non-interference" thing. Going down to study a new planet and its culture? Good. Mining weapon ore and making people sick from radiation poisoning? Not so good. This is a great episode though, for twisting those tropes on their head.


Fortunate Son: If there ever was an alien race I expected to see come back in Enterprise, it sure as shit wasn't the Nausicaans. They showed up once or twice in TNG, from what I recall... and yes, they are named after the Miyazaki film. What we've got here, then, is both a fairly standard moral for Star Trek and an interesting look at space culture. The interesting look is how this deals with "boomers", who are like space truckers with older warp engines that can't go very fast. They spend a lot of their time out in space and, as such, get attacked by space pirates a lot. That's where our Nausicaans come in. The whole episode is basically one space trucker who's put in command of his ship after a Nausicaan attack wounded his captain, and how he's got one of them captive now and basically swears bloody revenge against them. He wants to hold his own and show that they won't be intimidated, and his petty revenge comes into contact with Ensign Mayweather of Enterprise, a former boomer himself. In the end, it takes a good talking down of the captain to convince him to stop his scheme, with the logical conclusion of "hey asshole, you're not just endangering your own ship with this bullshit, but the Enterprise too AND every other boomer ship once the Nausicaans get pissed off with us". I could do without the line in the denoument about how the guy's going to be demoted and doing maintenance all the way back; it echoes that cut line from Hell Bent about how aristocrats see honest work as punishment for me. Still, this was real good.


Cold Front: Hey, did you forget about that Temporal Cold war business? The show didn't. Silik, a higher-up Suliban who faced off with Archer in the opening episode, is given one more chance and has a mission to infiltrate the Enterprise. What we get, then, is a little more explanation of this Cold War. One of the Enterprise crewmen, Crewman Daniels, is another Temporal Agent, working for a different faction than the Suliban. Whether or not this faction's motivations are altruistic or not is left up in the air, especially since Silik actually saves the Enterprise from blowing up. This guy comes from 900 years in the future, which is well off from even the latest of Star Trek timelines. The future of the series come back, here and now, to the secret origins to battle. There's a big struggle and Silik gets away, having killed the crewman before we can really learn his motives and whatnot. This is an arc episode and I still don't know the full extent of the arc yet. It's nice that there are layers to this Temporal Cold War, but I'm still in the dark as to what each side wants, or how many more of them there are. I'll find out, I suppose.

Because you needed some weird in your Star Trek post.

Silent Enemy: This, more than anything, is an affirmation for the Enterprise crew. Remember that the Vulcans held back most of their knowledge for the longest time, and there's still the sense that humanity isn't ready to go out and explore the spooky mysteries of space. To that end, we have a titular silent enemy stalking the ship and blasting the everloving fuck out of it, while its shields are too strong to penetrate. There's a real sense of being forced to retreat back home, in fear of whatever this foe is. Silent at first, they eventually communicate by cutting up one of Archer's transmissions to them and telling him "actually we're bad, surrender now". Enterprise proves itself, of course, by finally getting some bigger guns to work and blasting the fuck out of their silent enemies. They skedaddle, but Enterprise has proved themselves capable of standing up and fighting. Like it says at the top. They're not gonna hold me down no more.


Dear Doctor: Oh sweet Jesus. This one starts out endearing enough, but then descends into some sort of fresh hell. What we have is a focus on Dr. Phlox, the Denobulan doctor on board Enterprise. He's dictating a letter to a pal of his, and what we get is narration from his perspective. It's a neat trick, and one that Star Trek did in the past with a classic TNG episode called "Data's Day". Ten year-old leftover gimmicks still sort of work here, and getting things from Phlox's point of view is interesting! As the only other non-human on board besides T'Pol, his perspective on humanity is fun to see. Of course, then we get the crisis. A plague on a planet that ends up actually being some form of natural selection. The dilemma is about helping them out, afraid to give them too much aid lest they be stuck there for ages trying to help them out. Yes, it's just like the Vulcan situation on Earth. Phlox's objections are more akin to flying in the face of evolution and playing God, and in the end Archer lampshades the Prime Directive by saying something to the effect of "Some day there'll be some directive which tells us what we should do in this situation.". I'll just say it. The Prime Directive sucks. I come from Doctor Who fandom. Interfering in a shitty situation in the name of trying to help is what that show's all about. More to the point, every Prime Directive story is the same: some planet full of people is going to die and the ship's crew wants to help but can't. They spend 40 minutes hemming and hawing and going "SHIT. DAMN. THIS SUCKS. IF ONLY WE COULD HELP BUT MMMMM PRIME DIRECTIVE IT'S AGAINST THE RULES" and then in the final 5 minutes they go FUCK IT and help anyway. It's cheap drama. It sucks. This isn't good because of it, and it actively makes Civilization feel off in retrospect.


Sleeping Dogs: AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, I'M GODDAMNED SICK OF KLINGONS TOO. The plot of this episode has a Klingon ship trapped in the atmosphere of a gas giant, and the Enterprise sends a shuttle down to help but a Klingon on board steals it, leaving three of the crew trapped down there. It's not the best episode, and that's because I am sick to death of Klingons. They are, without a doubt, the most one-note Star Trek race. At least TNG did some interesting shit by having them not be at war with the Federation, and then a whole story arc about Klingon politics. That was something, but even that got dull as shit at the end. RRRARRR I'M HONORABLE AND I'M NOT GOING TO LISTEN TO A WORD YOU SAY AND I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU. That's Klingons. I suppose, in a way, for a show all about being empathetic and talking your issues out like Star Trek can be, an enemy that won't listen to words and just wants to shank you is a worthy foe... but to me it's just LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING only as a fucking culture. I'm officially done with Klingons, and this show is going to have to work very hard to make me give a hot goddamn about any episode with them in it from now on.

(Continued in 1.2)