To Boldly Step Forward (Enterprise: Season 2) [2.2]

(Continued from 2.1)


Cease Fire: Oh good. MORE Vulcan stuff. Well, they're part of it. This is another step in the Andorian story arc, and we have the same Andorian dude, Commander Shran, who was at P'Jem and showed up in "Shadows Of P'Jem" because he owed Archer a solid. The Andorians and Vulcans are fighting over occupation of a moon in close proximity to their space borders, and Shran has specifically called for Archer to come in and help be a mediator between his people and the Andorians. The Vulcans are here again, of course, back to their default mode of trusting Archer as far as they can throw him as opposed to being portrayed as homophobes again [INTERNAL SCREAMING]. Archer makes an interesting neutral position for Vulcan/Andorian peace talks. He's allied with the Vulcans as a human, of course, but he also understands frustration and animosity with them like the Andorians have. This, of course, leads Shran's second-in-command to betray the peace talks and try to kill Archer and the Vulcan ambassador. She doesn't succeed, and it shows that Andoria has a way to go... but hell, that's what we say about humanity. Shran, in his own way, has been touched by the utopian idealism of humanity, and that leads the peace talks to have some sort of success. This one's okay, I guess. I kind of like the Andorians, they have a good nuance. A hell of a lot more nuance than the goddamned Klingons, I'll give them that.

It's like some sort of... Time War.

Future Tense: Boy howdy. If there ever was a Star Trek episode to come to as a Doctor Who fan, it's this one. Enterprise finds a mysterious space capsule with a dead man inside, but it's obviously from the future. More to the point... it's got biological components to it. "That's not very Doctor Who!", you may be saying. To that I say... THE MOTHERFUCKER IS BIGGER ON THE INSIDE! It's also leaking temporal radiation, which leads to repeated mini time loops while in close proximity of it. Kind of like a chronic hysteresis. (If you're not up to speed on 40 year-old Doctor Who, you may have to Google that one.) Well, the Suliban want it. Also some gargly screechy nonhumanoids called the Thorians who are (presumably) another faction of the Temporal Cold War. I don't have too much to say on this one, believe it or not. The weird quasi-Doctor Who connection, plus the not-so-subtle hints of the traveller having Vulcan and human DNA, haunt this one by the future again... but that's the Temporal Cold War, baby. Shit, I just realized, the capsule dematerializes at the end. My god. If they didn't have Doctor Who on mind when they did this, I'd be very surprised... and I'm fairly sure this would have aired in early 2003. Doctor Who was on its way back. It's always struck me as fascinating that Doctor Who's hiatus and Star Trek's own revival with TNG almost overlap, with only the McCoy years of Doctor Who serving as a time where both were on the air. Wild to think about, but this episode was great.


Canamar: It's fun action Star Trek. You know, the kind of thing everyone loves First Contact for except this doesn't compromise any beloved captains. Archer and Trip get arrested under suspicion of smuggling and get loaded onto an Enolian prisoner transport ship, but then there's a prison break attempt and Archer has to play things cool, working with the alien in charge and pretending to still be a smuggler while also doing his best to keep the situation from going ass-up until Enterprise and the Enolians can show up and save the day. It's a fun bit of performativity from Archer, and there's also a Nausicaan working with the prison break. So yeah. He doesn't do anything other than be a strong guy, but I guess they wanted to use those costumes. There's a strong sense of "guilty until proven innocent" with Enolian law and Archer lets the Enolian dude helping Enterprise have a mouthful once he's back safe and sound on Enterprise. Much like "The Andorian Incident", this episode resonates with knowledge of the early aughts, the War of Terror, and Guantanamo Bay in particular. I'm not sure if the production timeline matches up for that to be a thing on the mind of the people making the episode, but we're haunted by the future again. Either way, a good one.


The Crossing: Aww fuck. I liked this one, but I wanted to like it way more than I actually did. So Enterprise gets pulled into this giant alien ship filled with incorporeal little puffs of swirling light that get dubbed "Wisps". Visually, the interior of their ship is absolutely stunning and evokes memories of V'Ger from Star Trek The Motion Picture for me. The Wisps promise to show anyone who's willing to "cross" (aka, have their selves go non-corporeal while a Wisp inhabits their body) what existence is like as a non-corporeal being of pure thought, and this is expressed as another form of exploration for humanity to take. Like, goddamn. As a concept and a visually evocative image, this is a banger. It should have been one of the best episodes of the season... but then the other 30 minutes or so happen. See, the Wisps don't really understand "consent" so we get this awful scene where a Wisp takes over Reed and then he starts babbling about females to some poor crewwoman on the lift, and then he goes to T'Pol's quarters and asks her to have sex with him. JESUS CHRIST WHAT? If you wanted to explore themes of consent, you had the whole possession angle to go with. This is just really gross... but, as it turns out, the Wisps understand consent just fine. They just don't give a shit and are actively malicious, unable to survive in incorporeal form in our universe and thus needing to forcefully take over the crew's bodies to live on. Presumably, our crew would enjoy a happy few moments of being pure thought before dissipating. This was a bad move. It was such a good concept, and turning reluctance to "cross" from a human/corporeal standpoint to this "HAHAH WE'RE BAD AND WE'RE GONNA TAKE OVER YOUR SHIP BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, FUCK YOOOOOU" shit is awful. Not only is it a dull Body Snatchers rip, but you took something so neat and interesting as a sci-fi concept and ruined it. God. I'm not mad. Just disappointed.


Judgement: What the fuck? After my frustrated screed about not giving a shit about Klingons way back in "Sleeping Dogs"... the show has managed to make me care about a Klingon episode again. "Marauders" isn't really about Klingons and their culture so much as it just so happens to have them as the baddies, but this goes all in on Klingon culture and all that. It also is invoking, of all things, Star Trek VI with a Starfleet captain on trial by the Klingons and being sent to the shitty ice mines of Rura Penthe, just like Kirk and McCoy will in that movie. I'll forgive them the fanservice because this episode actually has shit to say about the same Klingon bullshit that frustrates me so much, that being they're an alien race more interested in killing you than talking anything out. So Archer helped some refugees who fled an annexed Klingon homeworld that had been stripped of its resources by them, despite the refugees being offered aid in exchange for joining the Klingon Empire. HEY FUCKOS, DIRECTLY LYING TO PEOPLE AND STEALING ALL THEIR SHIT? NOT VERY FUCKING HONORABLE!!!!! A Klingon ship gives pursuit, responds to Archer's offer to talk by trying to blow them up (BLOODY TYPICAL), Enterprise outmanuevers and somehow Archer got arrested. This episode's all in media res and whatnot, so just take my word for it that it plays with narrative more interesting than just this summary. The real standout of the episode for me is Archer's defense council, Kolos. Here's a guy who really echoes my own critique of Klingon culture, and offers a fresher perspective. He, like me, finds no goddamned honor whatsoever in blowing up a ship of starving refugees, and lets Archer mount a defense for himself. He, a lawyer and not a warrior, is more interesting in actually fucking talking than just trying to kill his obstacles to death while shouting very fucking loudly about honor. I like this guy, and Archer's human utopian idealism manages to touch him at the end, and he vows to do what he can to make shit better. I like this guy. If there's more Klingons like him, there's hope for one of Star Trek's most iconic alien races yet. Better than making your FUCKING ALIENS SPACE HOMOPHOBES YES I AM STILL MAD ABOUT STIGMA. But not Judgement. Judgement is a very good episode. Now please for the love of God, more nuanced Klingon portrayal like that.


Horizon: A simple but effective one focused on Ensign Mayweather visiting his home ship, the titular Horizon, after the death of his father. The death really hit him hard, and Captain Archer doing his best to help comfort Mayweather is a really sweet and emotional sequence. There's, predictably, some resentment from Mayweather's older brother who's now in command of the Horizon. You can guess the deal and the emotional beats, it's "we boomers fend for ourselves" and "you abandoned your family for Enterprise" and all of that. A tough emotional wringer for Mayweather to go through, but he does it and his expertise ends up saving the Horizon from some alien space pirates. Oh yeah, and this one has a B plot of people wanting T'Pol to come to movie night on Enterprise and watch the original Frankenstein. Though my introverted self is kind of like "guys leave the woman alone and watch your spooky movie alone", I have to say that T'Pol's own personal resonances as a Vulcan, and her expressing how they related to her reading of the movie, was quite nice. It kind of felt like looking into a mirror, you know? Anyway, that's all for this one.


The Breach: Well, this is an odd one, but one that gives me a lot to talk about. It's like someone combined "Dear Doctor" and "Stigma", but instead of it being an ethically bankrupt mess, we actually have a rather deep story about learning from prejudices of the past and trying to be a better person. We have Dr. Phlox again trying to treat the passengers of a ship whose reactor went bad, but the most irradiated member of that crew is an Antaran; a species which was at war with Denobula hundreds of years ago, with resentment and anger still lingering between them. The Antaran would rather die than let himself be treated by a Denobulan, but Archer isn't willing to let a man die for such a foolish reason. Now, this had me on red alert as it was another conflict between Denobulan and human morals like in "Dear Doctor", but thankfully Phlox has a more sympathetic arc here. He was raised on what are basically racist stories about how nasty Antarans are... but he grew up and made up his own mind about them. More to the point, he did his very best to ensure that he didn't teach his children the same. Unlike Stigma and its prejudices still being a widely accepted belief among Vulcans, the episode shows that the old hatred between Antarans and Denobulans is beginning to fade away, as more and more people start thinking for themselves and trying to be the best they can be. In the end, the Antaran thinks the same way, and lets himself be treated. It doesn't solve the racism, but it shows that utopian idealism can open up minds if you just sit down and talk without letting past prejudices cloud your judgement. Oh yeah, and there's a B plot of spelunking that's... okay, I guess. Really, I cared more about the moral stuff than the cave action. Yeah, this was good!


Cogenitor: Oh my good god. I'll start this one a bit differently. I "cheated" upon finishing this episode, and did something I've never done before up to this point. I looked online to see what people thought of it. As it turns out, mostly incredible praise. I can't quite get behind that. This is a very... uneasy episode for me. We have first contact with a bunch of aliens called the Vassians who have a third gender, a "cogenitor" which is used as a surrogate for couples wanting a child, is referred to as "it", and has no purpose or desires in life other than making babies for Vassian couples. (INTRUSION FROM THE FUTURE: In talking to a few pals, I feel I need to add a small case for the defense here: There's some interesting gender stuff to play with under the hood, on reflection, but for me this reading is in spite of both the cogenitor being referred to with the, frankly, dehumanizing pronoun of "it" [which I doubt is by personal choice given the treatment of the cogenitors as sentient babymakers and more like property than persons] and Trip literally saying that there are only two genders for humans. It couldn't be more "open-minded utopian future written by a straight white guy in 2003" if it tried. Still, it managed to positively inspire someone, which just makes me sorry for myself because I can't see it in that light, due to... well, everything after this bracket.) Tucker finds this morally objectionable and wants to teach the cogenitor that there's more to life than that, so he sneaks around and shows the cogenitor all sorts of stuff, teaching them to read and showing them Enterprise and whatnot. This gets him in a great deal of trouble and makes the cogenitor want to stay on Enterprise, but Archer forces them back to the Vassian ship and they eventually kill themselves rather than live a "hollow" life without the grand things Trip taught them were possible. Trip is absolutely chewed out for this by everyone involved, including an absolute mauling by Archer. Now, the stuff I read online suggested Archer is projecting here because he's been an interfering meddler many a time... but I don't really know if I buy it. I really didn't like this. I think it's reductive and it supports that shitty "don't interfere uwu" mentality that leads to all those shit Prime Directive stories, only this time they twist it so the "right" thing has the absolute worst consequences. Far from being a morally complex story, for me it's just dark for its own sake. Hard pass.


Regeneration: I guess I was wrong about "Dead Stop" tying in to the Borg, then, 'cause here they are. Underneath the big action setpiece surface, it crackles with the mythic. I mean, these are the Borg after all. The iconic TNG alien race, the focus of its most famous cliffhanger and one of its movies (whose continuity this episode is slathered in, of course). It may not be part of the Temporal Cold War arc, but the future is haunting the past. The opening is not unlike John Carpenter's The Thing, and I almost wish the entire episode was that. A slow horror movie building to tension, and averting global assimilation at the last minute. Just an isolated bottle episode with maybe a two minute scene with Archer at the end. No, instead the Borg get awoken from hibernation (I assume this is a leftover bunch from the events of First Contact?) and head off into space to tell the Borg of the 22nd century about this cool planet they can assimilate. Archer and company go off to stop them. There's nanomachine assimilation, there's shooty shots, there's Borgs saying that resistance is futile. We also have Archer's determination to save the people who are infected, which is a nice contrast to First Contact making them fucking Moby Dick again. (I have some small grievances with First Contact.) In the end, the future intrusion is only delayed. It's a temporal headache: The "past" (aka the future I've not yet experienced with Enterprise) is safe, and yet the invasion has been delayed until the "future" (aka the past of TNG, with "Q Who" and what's to come). Hurts to think about, huh? I mean, it's perfectly fine. It's not really doing anything particularly interesting with the Borg, apart from making them more of a horror movie monster than the big stompy robot approach (though that still comes in a bit, considering) but it's no fucking Cogenitor either so I'm not going to complain.


First Flight: Okay this was really sweet in its own way. Archer finds out that an old pilot buddy of his died, and we end up with an extended flashback to the early days of them testing warp engines in Starfleet. It's a strange relationship, the one between Archer and Robinson. The Archer of the past is far more by the book, where Robinson is sort of an impulsive type who acts on instinct. You know how this shit goes. The pair of them clash a bit before breaking the rules together, all to prove that the warp engine Archer's dad built can work and to show humanity is ready. Throughout most of Star Trek, the captains have an interesting balance of playing by the rules and being impulsive. Archer has that balance, but he learned to be impulsive from Robinson. You can tell he respected the man, and at the end they name a nebula after him. I find that quite poetic. This one really wasn't bad, and it could have gone a lot worse. At least it implies that the barfight Archer and Robinson engage in wasn't right or anything, unlike a certain other TNG episode I could name... but let's say this was sweet and move on.


The Bounty: Oh boy! Consequences, how fun! At least they're consequences for doing the right thing, so to speak. No, the Klingons aren't too happy about Archer busting out of Rura Penthe, so now there's a bounty on his head and he manages to get his ass kidnapped. Archer being Archer and Star Trek being Star Trek, he manages to both talk his way into a position of trust with his kidnapper and also convince him to help against the Klingons, in his own indirect way. I have to give a special mention to how the Klingons fuck over the bounty hunter; he's only hunting bounties to afford to buy his freighter back from them, but it turns out they scrapped the thing and stripped out every valuable bolt. Better still, he's promised 9000 space bucks if he delivers Archer, but the Klingons only give him 6000 when he hands Archer over to them! Hey! HEY! HEY GUESS WHAT! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU CALL IT WHEN YOU GIVE YOUR WORD YOU'LL PAY SOMEONE SO MUCH IF THEY DO A THING AND THEN PAY THEM LESS AFTER THEY DO IT FOR YOU? IT SURE AS SHIT ISN'T FUCKING HONORABLE!!!!! Oh, and this episode also has a B plot where T'Pol gets a space fever, prematurely enters Vulcan mating season, and wants to bone Dr. Phlox. Seriously, it's 40 minutes of T'Pol actually showing emotion followed by going "ME WANT FUCK". It's... a thing that happens? Enterprise. Honey. Sweetie. I really am just watching the show for fun utopian idealist escapism. I'm not here to get a boner. Please stop trying to titillate me, you're only making things more awkward.

This is the final shot of the episode. Fitting, eh?

The Expanse: OKAY WELL THEY TOOK THAT ADVICE TO HEART! No sex? How about GIANT LASER ATTACKING EARTH AND KILLING 7 MILLION PEOPLE? Shit just got real, as we have a new faction stepping into the Temporal Cold War. I stressed it in the last season finale, but it bears repeating even more: It's not a Cold War if you actually launch an attack on the past. Archer actually gets information from the Suliban and their mysterious shadow leader this time, because even this fuckery is way too much time fuckery for them. Our new pals threatening Star Trek's past from its future are the Xindi, and apparently in the 25th century humanity all but wipes them out... so they've come back to wipe us out first. A very interesting, if not grimdark, condemnation of utopian idealism there. 100 years after Picard, we unambiguously commit genocide against an alien race and they're here to save themselves out of sheer desperation. To stop them (which presumably means blowing their superweapon up early, so I hope Archer and pals have a better idea than going full grimdark), Enterprise needs to go to the titular Delphi Expanse. It's not a pleasant place. It's a place where the laws of physics don't apply and people go insane or something. Bad stuff. Still, they're going. The grimdark has already tainted us though. Tucker had a little sister. We find this out in this episode because she got killed in the Xindi attack, and that gives Tucker a rousing speech to Archer about how they can't play the noninterference card and they have to GIT THEM ALIEN BASTARDS WHAT ATTACKED EARTH. Oh my god. This is a fridging. We have what might as well be an escalation of the human/Klingon war, with a Klingon ship pursuing Enterprise to blow it up and getting blasted by Enterprise. I want to stress that this is an exciting episode with wild implications, and I am looking forward to the cosmic weirdness that awaits in the Expanse... but I also worry. This is more than a battle between Earth and the Xindi, between the past and the future. This is a battle for the heart of Star Trek. The utopian ideal that I love about this show, versus this grimdark war arc where the Bad Aliens have to be blown up before they Blow Us Up first, none of that wussy talking our way out of it involved. I fear for our utopian future, and it's with hesitance that I follow my pal Archer into the Expanse. I'll stick with him through the end of it all... but I hope he doesn't compromise his morals. This is your chance, Enterprise. Show me that hope can win.


And that's that. As I said above, this is a show of extremes. There were more than a few "perfectly fine" ones but both the good and bad were spectacular, in their own way, be they inspiring me or offending me. I mean what I said just above with The Expanse, though; I'm absolutely terrified for what may come. There's a Star Trek arc I haven't visited, the latter years of Deep Space Nine. They had a big extended arc called the Dominion War, and from what I understand it's peak grimdark "there are no heroes" nonsense. Far be it from me to critique your own personal taste if you liked this, but the thought of this doesn't sit right with me. Throwing a redux of it into Enterprise would... lessen my love for the show, I feel. I just have this anxious sense that the second I put this live, one of you who knows what's coming is going to rub their hands in glee and tell me to buckle up. I'm pre-emptively buckling right now, so there's that. I love you, Enterprise. Don't betray me for the grimdark like Sailor Moon did.


FIVE GOOD ONES: "Carbon Creek", "Minefield", "Marauders", "Future Tense", "Judgement"

FIVE BAD ONES: "A Night In Sickbay", "The Communicator", "Stigma", "The Crossing", "Cogenitor"


TO BE CONTINUED...