Enterprise (2001 - 2005)

I did an overview of the show years back but wanted to circle back to Enterprise before giving up the blog-ghost. 

I didn't watch while it was on the air. My girlfriend at the time had a subscription to one of the Trek magazines (I believe there were two back then) and I'd read about the goings-on in there. I did catch the one where Archer, Hoshi, and Malcolm mutate into lizards or whatever ("Extinction") on my scraggly-reception TV in North Providence. (Looking at its wiki, I see that must have been September 23, 2003. How time flies.) 

I didn't rank each episode of each season like I did for the other Berman/Braga-era Treks. But here are my least-to-most favorite episodes, five(ish) from each season. 

5.

After finding debris from Enterprise, Lieutenant Reed and Commander Tucker are stranded in a shuttlepod far from help.

This episode is by-the-numbers in some ways, but what sells it are the things we learn about Malcolm. Mainly that he’s unbearably horny all the time under his military demeanor. Humanizes him in a way we didn't see before this episode. It's a good Trip episode, too, but Trip was kind of good from the jump. It took a little more time to get warmed up to Malcolm.

Speaking of Trip, I always felt Connor Trinneer physically resembled George W. Bush a bit. Maybe it was just the accent, which always sounded Texan to me. (Was the character from Florida? I'll defer to the experts on this one.) Anyway, it's fun to read Malcolm as Tony Blair, as a result. But it doesn't make much sense for their characters or the shows, just something I do in my head.

4.

Enterprise finally arrives for shore leave on Risa. While there, the crew experience more than they are later willing to admit.

Apparently there was a lot more to the Captain Archer/ Keyla story that had to get cut out for budget and time. They were trying to tie it into “Detained,” the episode where Trip and Archer are detained by the Tandarans, one of whom is played by Dean Stockwell. I think this is the only Al and Sam onscreen reunion. R.I.P.

Is it any better than something like "Captain's Holiday?" No. But it's much, much better than "Let He Who Is Without Sin". I have spoken. 

3.

A storm traps an away team in a cave on an alien world, and pollen spores cause them to experience psychosis.

The set (both the filmed outdoor portions and the soundstage stuff) is really the attraction here, although the set-up and slow build is really executed well. As some have pointed out there’s that the-crew-goes-nuts parallel with other Trek shows near the beginning of their run (most notably the two “Naked” ones from TOS and TNG). I like this one much more than either of those.

Not much to it, just the sort of thing I'd expect from a show with a premise like this. Every unknown planet encountered from this point on in the characters' lives will be judged against this unnamed M-class planet. 

2.

Doctor Phlox and Captain Archer must decide the fate of two species suffering from an evolutionary pandemic.

Looks like all of the Crewman Cutler episodes are represented here in my countdown. (R.I.P., Kelly Waymire.) The controversial ending/argument for this one has never sat well with my friend Jeff. We both play an online Trek game and I have used this inside knowledge to goad his character (the ship’s doctor) into anti-Phlox tirades. I love crap like that. My own character, by the way, lost a leg as a result of the events of "The Ultimate Computer" and grew up on Argelias, i.e. where they flick the lights instead of applaud and a civilization which has never been the same (ominous rumblings) since the events of "Wolf in the Fold."

Have anything to do with this episode? Nope. I just drive the bus and call out whatever's out the window, folks. All aboard!

Part of my attraction to a show like Enterprise is to watch humanity stumble with huge, evolutionary decisions like this and occasionally not wrap it up to everyone’s liking. Or even ethically. It has a verisimilitude, this. You can see why a Prime Directive must develop. The appeal of the TOS timeline is the more swaggering gunboat diplomacy of that point in Starfleet’s evolution, TNG the more measured, and so on. I suppose that puts Picard depressingly right on target. 

1.

Ensign Sato tries to find out what Lieutenant Reed's favorite food is, while Captain Archer deals with a secretive and aggressive alien first contact.

One of the forging-the-family episodes and another strong Malcolm one, and another note that the series should have struck more often. It resonates well. Lot of mysteries out there, lots of mysteries inside the people you work with everyday, too. My sort of episode, both a and b story. 'Nuff said.

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5.

T’Pol relates the tale of a Vulcan crew stranded on Earth in the 1950s.

I’ve always been of two minds of this episode. But no longer – I’m firmly on its side, and the idea that Vulcans have been visiting (and possibly mating with) humans far longer than the official record. This is probably why Captain Kirk tried the bizarre tack he did to explain Spock's ears in "City on the Edge of Forever," actually, some longstanding suspicion of the scientific community in future eras, "Chinese" being the clumsy attempt of the Captain to remember that one article he read somewhere. This all makes sense in my head and likely nowhere else. 

Did the Vulcans invent velcro? Is all this a fairy tale? Does T'Pol have a sense of humor or is she making friends, cautiously and covertly? I like this kind of thing. Your kilometer efficiency may vary. 

4.

After her first trip through the transporter Ensign Sato finds herself becoming incorporeal, with the crew believing she has perished.

Kind of a cross between “Remember Me” and “The Next Phase” with a strong sprinkling of its own mojo. The slow introduction of the transporter in the series is fun, but it's almost like they don't realize the milestone in human achievement it represents. An episode like this coulld have tied it into someone like Lt. Barclay's (or Dr. McCoy's) transporter room trepidations in later eras. Maybe the series needed someone who was kind of a transporter room mad Gary Mitchell. 

Ah well. You can maybe anything to death and who cares. Great stuff here from Linda Park.

3.

Porthos, the Captain’s beagle, becomes ill from an alien pathogen, and Captain Archer frets in Sickbay waiting for him to recover.

The Captain’s weird ritual with the Kreetassans makes me laugh. I made this meme years ago:

Needless to say it didn't exactly go viral. Beyond these guys, all the stuff in sick bay with Phlox is great. He’s among my favorite characters in all Trek. I don’t know if they ever do anything with the Denobulans anywhere else. I'm baffled by some of the negative reactions to this out there. But hey, I like the "Fair Haven" episodes in VOY and "Sub Rosa" from TNG and many other examples. My Trek antennae are tuned to very specific frequencies on the dial, I guess.

2.

This Roxana Dawson-directed episode was one of the first I saw (out of order, again, and after it ended its run) to hook me on the show. Everything from the garbled Tellarite message that gets things going to the robo-vampire-esque goings-on at the alien station to the end credits of the station auto-repairing itself. I only wish there’d been a TNG episode – or film – where this was followed up on. Or some throwaway line somewhere indicating who built it, etc.

1.

Enterprise charts a course through a trinary star system to investigate a black hole, and the crew find themselves suffering from a condition similar to OCD.

Start to finish fantastic. Phlox’s near-lobotomy of Travis is an escalating highlight, but the whole damn thing is perfect. Is it a bit like other Berman-era episodes, like "One" from VOY? Maybe, but I'd say this one has its own distinct stamp on the concept. You don't want a show like Enterprise to just keep throwing "firsties" in, but the fun way they show the genesis of the "Red Alert" is great. 

The caretakers of the franchise should always add to it or bolster what came before. A good prime directive to follow, from this old Trek-hand from an obsolete sector of the Alpha Quadrant. 

Season Two

Honorable Mentions

and

As for:

Mostly ineligible, but “Anomaly,” “Proving Ground,” and “Doctor’s Orders” all have their moments. But the whole set-up - and the idea of carrying some nineteenth century detachment of a couple dozen space Marines - never makes much sense. A single ship against any kind of threat makes as little sense as the whole Xindi threat and Sphere Builders and Temporal Cold War and all that crap to begin with. 

I do like the idea of non-humanoid characters, but the jump-cut to the floating people in the tank looking in through the window was stupid. Each and every time. And the reptilians were just the same damn thing as the Hirogen or so many other others. 

If any of it is your bag, baby, my bad. Have at it and don't listen to some jerk on the internet. For me I skip the whole Xindi/ Temporal Cold War/ Sphere Builder side of Enterprise the way I skip the whole alien-conspiracy side of The X-Files or any-conspiracy-side of Lost. Once you see what they do with it, why bother with any of it? Too much energy and legwork. And to what purpose? It's not like there's some case law to be established or race to be run or office to be held, here. 

I did re-watch it, though, this year, like I rewatched all Enterprise. Not going to stand up in here and pontificate otherwise had I not done so. Some good stuff here and there, but no change in overall assessment. 

Onto what is generally considered the best season of the show:

I'm afraid there'll be some collective/cluster choices here for some favorites. Hard to separate them out. 

5.

As a gift for negotiating with the Orion Syndicate, Archer receives three Orion Slave Girls, but these "gifts" have their own agenda. Meanwhile, Trip and T'Pol come to terms with the psychic bond that has been created between them.

Kinda slinky, but interesting in a lot of ways and the twist is cool.  This is the closest I’ve seen any series come (not counting that one scene in “The Cage,” of course, or that one with Lou Ferrigno) to giving the Orions a distinctive personality. Of the Berman era ones, I mean, although I don't know how many Orion episodes were actually in the Berman era, all told. Couldn't have been more than a handful. 

Are there no gay MACOs? I suppose pheromones are pheromones and chemical reactions overrule at will. (I'd have introduced a gay posse of characters who were like "Uhh, what the hell, everyone" but as with all my Trek ideas, that train has warped on.) The T’Pol/Trip carve-out worked well, as did the Orion twist. Fodder for follow-up, as uncomfortable as it might make some. More the better! Did the Orion ladies stop enslaving their men? Who will free them?

4.

Archer and Shran engage in mortal combat as Archer tries to unite the Andorians and Tellarites who are being set at each other's throats by a remote-controlled Romulan vessel. The drone is under the control of an Aenar, an offshoot race of the Andorians, held captive by the Romulans. Archer and Shran join forces to rescue the Aenar and stop the Romulan plot.

What a great two-parter, hampered only by the somewhat overdone T’Pol/Trip stuff, and really that stuff isn’t that terrible either. T'Pol would've been more interesting had she played her emotions a tad more under the surface. But the performers had some chemistry and the will-they/won't-they doomed romance angle always propels a show along.  

Shran’s ladyfriend, Archer’s and Sorhan in combat, the captured brother, etc. We've seen it all before. But hey, when it works it works. Season Four was when elements of TOS were brought to the fore to be emphasized and explored more. 

3.

A xenophobic faction of humanity threatens to undermine talks to form a new federation of planets. Their leader threatens to destroy Starfleet Command unless all aliens leave Earth immediately. His bargaining tool is a baby cloned from DNA belonging to Trip and T'Pol.

Colonel Green! I forgot about T’Pol’s and Trip’s baby thing. That’s kinda big, the whole alien hybrid angle in Trek. Worlds are about to change. 

Nathan Samuels is a great bad guy name. No relation to Peter Weller’s ST:ID character, though, right? That seems a waste. Then again, they didn't bring back Colonel Green for that either, did they?

Good twists throughout, worthy subject matter with all the right Trek-feels. Huge fan of these two episodes; some statements could’ve been implied rather than bluntly said but got to really underline and circle some stuff. Really: this whole angle should’ve been the Big Bad in ENT, not the Suliban. Unfortunate to discover in s4. Peter Weller’s paycheck would’ve kept them from going to the well too often, too, or getting creative with it. 

2.

Earth's embassy on Vulcan is partially destroyed by a bomb, killing Admiral Forrest. Archer and T'Pol travel to Vulcan in search of an alleged terrorist group blamed for the explosion, of which T'Pol's mother (T'Les) is a member. Archer and T'Pol find her and learn that Archer is carrying Surak's katra. Archer and T'Pol bring back the Kir'Shara (Surak's artifact) that will lead to vast changes to Vulcan.

Some great guest stars, the most (perhaps only) meaningful appearance of Surak in the entire franchise, and we see the Vulcans become "the Vulcans" in real time. These three episodes -as the next one is, as a lot of s4 ones are - are a gift to TOS fans. 

Some dud moments here and there, but this too is a good example of meeting ENT’s goals. Pity it took until s4. Let's give a shout out to Gary Graham, here, an indelible part of what makes Enterprise great. 

Giving Archer the Surak connection really should have happened in season one and been a core part of the show. Maybe they didn't want to repeat a sort of Emissary/Sisko thing, I don't know. It could have been integrated differently. (I picture Archer returning to his quarters, so to speak, to constantly find Surak watching and analyzing water polo. Logically, of course.) Again, pity we can't swap s1 with s4, but what can ya do.

1.

Andorians threaten war on the Tellarites after apparently being attacked by a Tellarite vessel en route to trade talks. 

I guess you can tell what kind of show I personally was looking for from these season four selections, especially with "Babel One" on top. This is precisely the kind of TOS-Plus I envisioned when I first read about the show in those old magazines aforementioned. Solid stuff, good mesh of concept and materials-at-hand with the bonus of 90s/00s-to-1960s hindsight.

We shouted out to Gary Graham and now let's shout out to Jeffrey Combs. Is Shran the best of his Trek incarnations? Arguably. My personal favorite, anyway, and like the Orions, Enterprise is the only place the Andorians seem interesting to me. The Tellurides, too, I guess. Our cosmic neighborhood as envisioned by the Genes et al. 

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SEASON FOUR

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Basically, all but the Nazi two-parter that opens the season and the blah Soong-saga multi-parter that follows it are honorable mentions. Really strong season.

The "In a Mirror Darkly" two-parter, of course. Fan service that at its time was novel.

Ditto for the Klingon two-parter, with Archer's ladyfriend.

Speaking of the Klingon two-parter, what is with Berman/Braga and splitting the Trek races the way they do? Romulans Vulcans, Andorians, and now Klingons: each gets a "variant group". They go to over-great lengths, here, perhaps, to explain away the evolution of Klingon forehead design, but the episodes are entertaining and cover way more than that. 

Speaking of Archer's ladyfriend (Captain Hernandez of the Columbia) the episode she's introduced ("Home") is quite good, too, even if it's more or less just "Family" from TNG. And I like the Malcolm/Section 31 angle. 

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AND FINALLY

Conventional wisdom is - or used to be, I should say; I can no longer speak as an authority on such things. I can, however, speak as someone who just plunked down $40 for the complete Shatnerverse series of novels. For the second time, even! This is probably early on-set Trek dementia; fire up the neural neutralizer! Maybe the Tantalus field. - the Enterprise theme song was the worst thing to ever happen to the franchise. (Wil Wheaton certainly heavily promoted this idea at one point - gee, wonder why?) Then somewhere along the way I started hearing "Actually I kind of like it" more and more. I don't think this trajectory ever reached the full reversal of opinion that happened to, say, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but it definitely seemed people stopped ragging on the theme song as much, or embraced it in some ironic sense. 

Point I'm driving at: one thing everyone still agrees on is that the last episode is awful. 

Here's some complaints, both the traditional ones and my own additions:

- Riker doesn't sell“Chef.” They played up the offstage character of Chef over the years, but they failed to capitalize on it here. (Also, all the officers have to do KP? Since when? Have we seen /heard this before?) One problem with characters like Chef is: where was he/ what happened to him during all the series' big moments, like "Singularity" or what not? It undermines continuity to introduce-without-introducing a character so pivotal to ship operations like this. 

- Riker and Troi don’t really look like they did in TNG, why did they shove this into that time frame? 

- This is not a sensible thing for Riker to immerse himself in for his decisionmaking; FFS, he has at least a hundred better sequences to ponder just from his time on TNG alone, never mind getting into his backstory on the Pegasus or whatever it was. Are we really supposed to believe this would be the historical example he goes to for guidance? Of course we sometimes don’t appreciate the parable-value of our experiences vs. those of others. But I doubt that’s the takeaway here. 

- The Troi/Riker on set scene is cute/ borderline-lovely, this is where the episode should’ve begun. But notice what I'm saying here! This is not the series finale of the Riker and Troi Show! Brannon/Braga always said it was some kind of love letter to the franchise. If so, it's the kind you burn/ break up over. 

- Trip’s death is as pointless as Jen Lindley’s. This whole thing is stupid. Trip didn’t do this is similar situations prior to this episode. They try to imbue things with a sense of unprecedented danger/ invasion and fail.

- “Reg’ll be furious if I start without him…” Troi says at one point. As in Barclay? WTF?  

- Trip was wrong (“miss her less”) but this is an interesting/ borderline fascinating convo between Archer and T’Pol. But S4 never really played this concept out much, so it feels a little forced.

- The scene at the very end with Riker and Troi is silly. And they even cut off Archer’s speech! And end with Patrick Stewart/ all these Captains – Phwew. Again, I get that it was more than just the one show/ cast saying goodbye, but that’s part of the problem: you exploited the series final episode for this other thing and occasion. It’d be like if the farewell episode of TNG, instead of “All Good Things” was “Assignment: Earth” from TOS. 

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Thanks for reading, friends. Here's some leftover screencaps.

Poor Travis gets his best stuff of the series only in the last five episodes or so.