Captain's Blog pt. 5: Enterprise (Overview)

We now get to my favorite Trek series after TOS and TNG. 

It went off the air in 2005, it ended almost twenty years of continuous Trek tv, and almost all of that was overseen by Rick Berman. Roddenberry hand-picked him to work alongside Bob Justman (more on him when we get to the TOS blogs,) but following Justman's departure at the end of the first season and the studio's diminishing Roddenberry's role, Berman began to assume more and more control. After Roddenberry died  in 1991, he was the undisputed caretaker of the Trekverse until 2006, when Paramount executives announced his association with the franchise had come to an end.

Speaking with Star Trek Magazine shortly after that announcement, he said: "I have nothing to be ashamed about. We created 624 hours of television and four feature films and I think we did a hell of a job. I'm amazed that we managed to get 18 years of the kind of work that everyone involved managed to contribute, and it's certainly more than anyone could have asked for."

If he sounds a bit defensive, it's because the last few productions of the Berman era, Enterprise as well as Nemesis, proved very polarizing for Trek fans. Demands that he resign and accusations of ruining the franchise proliferated. Inevitable given both the length of his tenure and the excitability of the Trek fanbase, but give me a break. Berman ruined Trek? That's like saying Jim Shooter ruined Marvel.I hate Nemesis as much as the next guy, but I personally never felt Berman was the guy to hang over it.

As excerpted from "In Defense of Rick Berman," here: "He was our scapegoat... we have used Mr. Berman as a convenient target, just as workers blame CEOs for everyday grievances, (attacking them) for market fluctuations and unpredictable consumer habits."

It probably was time for him to step aside when he did and let others take the franchise in different directions, but to paraphrase Spock from the post-Berman era's Star Trek (2009): "The only emotion I wish to convey is gratitude."

Berman with Michael Piller (more on him in future blogs) and some other guy.

Incidentally, I discovered only today that Berman a) got his start in the movie biz as a production assistant on the Yoko Ono/ John Lennon experimental film Fly, and b) played a bar patron in the last episode of Cheers. It amazes me I never came across either of these tidbits before today, as I am a huge fan / collector-of-trivial-tidbits of both the Beatles and Cheers. Something to look for the next time I watch "One for the Road." And when I find him, I'll edit this post and add a screencap.

Along for most of the Berman-era ride, first as a writer, then producer, and finally co-showrunner for the first three seasons of Enterprise, was Brannon Braga.

The writer or co-writer of an amazing 106 episodes over three series.

By my reckoning, Braga is the second-most important figure of the post-Roddenberry era, which (assuming Roddenberry occupies the apex) means he is arguably the third-from-the-top of the whole Trek pyramid. Arguably is the key word there; I'll try and cover everyone (Harve Bennett, Bob Justman, et al) as much as possible down the line. His writing partner on TNG and DS9 was Ronald D. Moore, but their relationship soured while working on Voyager.Enterprise was Braga's and Berman's baby, and it turned out to be their Trek swan song. Not a bad way to go out.

Manny Coto was the showrunner for season 4, seen here as a Vice-Admiral in the much-maligned Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages..." Reading through Coto's ideas for seasons 5 and 6 of Enterprise is painful; he had some great ideas that will now will never be explored. Unfortunate.

I read an interview with Braga and Berman before the show's premiere that intrigued me with both the show's potential and the sincerity of their convictions, but I actually was rather burnt-out on Trek at the time. I'd caught only an episode or two of Voyager and a handful of episodes from the first and last season of DS9. I'd only seen a third of TNG, for that matter. I was several years out in either direction from watching any TOS episode that crossed my path. I was not the Trek omnivore I am today.

The only things I remember from that interview are that the Suliban (one of a few alien races who appear only in Enterprise) were named after the Taliban and they were so-named before 9-11

and that they wanted to see a Trek show where the characters were in their underwear, both metaphorically and literally. (The idea being first and foremost a more relatable vision of the future, not just to show good-looking folks cavorting in their skivvies.)

Enterprise is distinguished from its Trek siblings in several ways: it's set in the 22nd century, 100 years after the first contact with Vulcans as seen in the movie First Contact and 100 years before the events of TOS; most of the familiar elements (the transporter, the shields, the prime directive, the Federation) are works-in-progress or to-be-discovered; Earth-calendar-dates are used for the Captain's Logs and not stardates; and the Captain has a Beagle.

Well, he's a Rottweiler in the mirror universe of "In a Mirror Darkly," but a Beagle in every other episode. Incidentally, in the 2009 Trek, Scotty mentions a transporter accident featuring "Admiral Archer's Beagle." I'm curious if this was meant to be a literal reference to Porthos, who would have been a hundred years old (several times that in beagle years) in the movie's timeline. Roberto Orci says "Yes." So, apparently humans aren't the only beings living longer in the future - another manifestation of Trek's fabled optimism.

A quick note on that Orci/Porthos link: I am forever amused by people who go back and forth for hours on the mechanics of time travel. I'm as guilty of this myself, but come on, people. For the same reason you don't need to know how Jack Bauer doesn't use the bathroom to enjoy 24, you don't need time travel to square with our contemporary ideas of temporal mechanics. Naturally, there are times when it's important to a story for the writers' time-travel ideas to make a certain degree of internal sense, but "They understand it better/ differently in the future" answers all objections to my satisfaction. (The transporter/ replicator/ shape-shifters present more urgent narrative problems, but we'll get to those when appropriate.)

The show premiered with "Broken Bow"on September 26, 2001. 

"Klingon in a cornfield" can be substituted for "Mirror in the bathroom" when singing along to that classic by the English Beat - try it.

Jonathan Archer with his Dad, working on a spaceship model.

 

It debuted to strong numbers, something that was forever used against it, as the audience kept dropping and rumors of cancellation constantly surrounded it. It was not renewed for a fifth season, and its last episode, "These Are the Voyages..." aired on May 13, 2005. It is perhaps the worst-reviewed finale of any Trek series, at least since "Turnabout Intruder." 

Fans took exception with how the story seemed to be more about Riker's self-growth than anything involving the cast of the show. Personally, I don't mind the Riker/ Troi/ holodeck structure...

but Trip's death was lame.

Some notables appeared as guest stars, among them Brent Spiner, Clancy Brown, Padma Lakshmi, and Steven Schirripa.

Watching Bobby Baccalieri shoot at Nazi Aliens is just fun tv, regardless of how little sense "Stormfront" ultimately makes.

In addition to the likeability of the main cast, Enterprise was bolstered by great recurring characters:

Joanna Cassidy as T'Pol's Mom.

Gary Graham as Soval.

And Jeffrey Combs as Shran.

In general, the updated familiar faces/races of TOS come off pretty well. The Vulcans and Andorians most of all. I think I prefer the silly Gorn (r, below) from "Arena," though, over its CGI counterpart from "In a Mirror Darkly." (l)

 As for what doesn't work...

The Xindi storyline of season 3 is the main offender. It's not terrible, just not terribly interesting. The show's main strengths are its premise and its cast, and both are undermined by a threat that a) is never mentioned anywhere else, so it feels retconned (it'd be like never mentioning World War Two or The Crusades, but on an intergalactic scale) b) is obviously survived, given the show's set-in-the-past set-up, c) relegates the cast to boilerplate reaction-to-generic-threat roles, and d) is perpetrated by rather ridiculous looking aliens. Not so much this insectoid above, but the chaps behind him.

I applaud the non-humanoid aspect of the Xindi, but it's tough to take these guys seriously.

The Sphere Builders never make much sense, conceptually, and their look is far too reminiscent of The Changelings from DS9, a look I didn't like there, either.

The Temporal Cold War storyline comes off a little bit better, but it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Although at least that has an "out" for never being mentioned in subsequent series, i.e. once the threat is removed, the timestream re-sets, etc. Apparently, this storyline was created at the request of the studio, who later issued a similar "request" that the writers wrap it up immediately. Kind of a poetic symmetry to that, given the studio's similarly boneheaded meddling in TOS and TAS. Trek ends up where it began - subverted by the suits.

The Suliban - major players in the Temporal Cold War - are armed and advised by a mysterious humanoid figure, i.e. "Future Guy," whose identity was never revealed.

Very interesting! I don't know how they would have worked this out, but that's a fun idea/ much more satisfying conclusion to the mystery than what we got.

Finally, there is the theme song. Like everyone else, I thought this was a bit of a misstep. The credits themselves are great, perhaps even fantastic; the song... well. Wil Wheaton seized upon it to proclaim that finally, Wesley Crusher wasn't the most hated thing in the Trekverse. (Let us be the judge of that, buddy.) I actually came to appreciate at least the original version. Undeniably cheesy, but I can see what they were trying to do, how it relates to the spirit of the whole enterprise (no pun intended.) The remixed version of season three and four attempts to make the song more palatable, or less cheesy, which succeeds in greatly augmenting its cheesiness.

NEXT: 

My favorite 20(ish) episodes.
(These were removed and replaced by the Enterprise post, December 2021. Head over there for all the fun.) 

Captain's Blog pt. 3: The Animated Series (Episode by Episode) 1 of 2

Nimoy, Kelley, and Shatner recording TAS. There's a lot of 70s in this photo.

Let's jump right in to part one of our episode-by-episode one-stop-shopping for TAS, organized least-to-most favorite. Engage.

22.

PLOT: Spock, Uhura, and Sulu are aboard a shuttlecraft en-route for Starbase 25 to deliver a Stasis Box, a rare artifact of an ancient alien species (The Slavers.) They are attacked by the hostile catlike Kzinti, who want to use the artifact to restore their empire to greatness. The Kzinti are killed when they artifact requests access codes and, failing to get them, self-destructs. (Full overview here)

Larry Niven was visiting Gene Roddenberry's house one afternoon, and Roddenberry suggested he use his short story “The Soft Weapon” as the basis for an episode of TAS. Niven changed the identity of the characters in the original to their analogs in Star Trek, but the characters from the Kzinti ship remained unchanged. DC Fontana adds: "The only thing we couldn't do was make them striped (…) animating the stripes would have been far too expensive, so they were tabby cats without the stripes." Probably good, as the stripes would have just ended up being pink, on account of Hal Sutherland’s colorblindness. (I’m not sure if it was someone else at Filmation who was colorblind or Hal Sutherland, but DC Fontana says Hal Sutherland, so let's go with that.) 

Here we see one of the novelties of TAS, these personal force fields generated by life support belts. Much easier to animate! As well as being much more logical than 20th century spacesuits for 23rd century outer-space work.

It's not a bad idea - and more power to Mr. Niven now and forevermore - but the execution is not great. The weapon never seems all that threatening (or makes much sense), and the animation of the Kzinti is unrealized enough to make a real difference.

Even in last place, I'd still rather watch it than 80% of the tv now or since.

LEGACY: The Kzin have stuck around. There's a planet Kzin in TNG, and the cat-dancer from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was a Kzinrrett. Had Enterprise not been canceled, according to Manny Coto, they would have appeared in the fifth season.

21. 

Marc Daniels directed many episodes of TOS and is among other things co-credited with introducing the three-camera-set-up for sitcoms still in use today.

PLOT: The Enterprise must stop a planet-consuming cloud before it destroys a planet with 82 million Federation folks on it. Once enveloped in said cloud, Spock determines it is an intelligent being and communicates telepathically with it. Upon realizing the planets it consumes are filled with other living beings, it departs the Milky Way for parts unknown. (Full overview here)

Is it just me or is the title to this episode a little too whimsical for its subject matter? It would be not just fine but awesome, however, if it was an exclamation point instead of a question mark.

Spock: Messiah! Spock's mind-meld with the cloud is a bit nuts, but fun. He's mind-melded with robots, alien-rock-monsters, and now nebulous sentient clouds. He should write a book.

LEGACY: A nice return for Bob Wesley, last seen in TOS episode "The Ultimate Computer," now governor of Mantilles, "the most remote planet in the Federation."

The most remote planet in the Federation has a population of 82,000,000? And only one governor? 

20.

Samuel A. Peebles wrote "Where No Man Has Gone Before" for TOS and is credited with talking Roddenberry out of his original idea for Spock, that of his being half-Martian with a reddish complexion and a plate in his stomach through which he consumed energy.

PLOT: While star-charting (an activity Kirk returns to with unintentionally-amusing gusto in the Captain's Log at the end's episode,) the Enterprise comes across a strange alien vessel.

It is unfortunately inhabited by a malevolent entity who beams aboard and takes over the ship. After saying "Obey me!" a hundred times in three minutes. it's tricked into thinking Kirk is going to destroy the ship and flees for its life. As the Enterprise departs, the creature is left to orbit around the star forever, wailing, as Memory-Alpha puts it, "in terrible, endless loneliness."

Endless is right. "Soooooooo loooooonely...." it cries, while the crew calmly look on for what seems an eternity.

LEGACY: Lieutenant Kyle appears here (though voiced by James Doohan and not John Winston) sporting a pretty serious mustache. This influenced Kyle's appearance in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the Fandral-the-Dashing-goutee he's sporting there.

19.

PLOT: Harry Mudd returns; Mudd-esque hijinks ensue.

As well as some non-Mudd-esque hijinks. (Full overview here)

I was prepared to rank this one last, as I'm just not a Harry Mudd fan. Sure, "I, Mudd" of TOS was my favorite thing in the world when I was thirteen, but my appreciation of it hasn't aged well. (I'll still take it over 83% of what's on now or since.) Stephen Kandel wrote both "I, Mudd" and the character's first appearance, the exceptionally creepy "Mudd's Women." This TAS episode is probably the best iteration of the character. And it's not a bad little episode. Watching McCoy and Spock under the influence of the love-drug is pretty amusing, and the weirdness of Mudd's parting remarks ("I just hate to leave you all... all my... loved ones...") stuck with me for days.

"That is an outstandingly stupid idea." - Spock to Kirk. (Great line)

THERE'S A LOT OF LOVE IN THIS ROOM: "Thanks, Jim, it's good to have a friend like you."
"Strange, that's how I feel about you, too. My dear friend Spock..." One wonders if they weren't trying to hint at a different direction for the episode, here.

18.

PLOT: The Vedala, the oldest known spacefarers of the Federation, ask for Kirk and Spock's help in recovering the Soul of Skorr, an ancient religious artifact that could spark an intergalactic holy war. Kirk is chosen to lead a diverse group of aliens for the mission, one of whom steals the artifact in an effort to return his species to their warrior ways.

Full overview here

Not much to say about this one. It's an interesting enough idea, one its writer originally envisioned as a Mission: Impossible episode. When he couldn't get the network interested, he transcribed it for TAS.

"I already have a lot of green memories." - Kirk's response to Lara's suggestion that their hooking up would provide them both with "green memories" in the years to come. One of the few episodes I can think of where Kirk spends most of his time turning down overtures of romance.

This guy, the oddly named M3-Green, a self-proclaimed "coward," gets a lot of good lines, though his voice is a little annoying.

Voice provided by David Gerrold, who wasn't particularly happy with his performance, either. Speaking of:

17.

PLOT: Bem (shorthand for "Bug Eyed Monster" in old sci-fi talk) is an observer from the planet Pandro. Pandronians are colony creatures, i.e. multiple component organisms some of which may be capable of autonomous function. (Say that in your best Data or Geordi voice, please.)

On an away mission to Delta Theta III, to observe the aborigines there, Bem creates several headaches for Kirk and Spock, ultimately getting them locked up by the planet's native lifeforms. At episode's end, he/it/they explain these things were done to better test Kirk's capacities as a commander. Amidst all this, they discover Delta Theta III is under the protection of a god-like creature (voiced by Nichelle Nichols) who chastises them for interfering with her "children" but lets them go in peace. (Full overview here)

This episode's commentary track is a wealth of info. Gerrold relays how his original concept changed several times due to Roddenberry's repeated directive to first insert and then how to properly utilize the god-like creature. Roddenberry had several pet go-tos for Trek, and this "and then, the god-like creature" set-up was one of them. (Down the road, Paramount producers stopped taking his calls, as from the late-70s on, his single idea for every movie was "The crew must go to Dallas 1963 and stop the Kennedy assassination.") But Gerrold was able to accommodate Roddenberry's idea easily enough, and the script for this one is pretty tight. Kirk and Spock in particular have a lot of fun back-and-forth.

Oddly, though, at one point Kirk says, "Why don't you try your... uhh... Vulcan Nerve Pinch?" The line is delivered with the uhh just like that, suggesting our good Captain has forgotten the many times he's seen his first officer use this technique to subdue a foe. 

At one point, Scotty says, "The Loch Ness Monster couldn't get through that." Sometimes I wonder why they bothered putting a uniform on him instead of a kilt, wielding a highland claymore. I love Scotty, don't get me wrong, but in the Museum of Televised Cultural Stereotyping, Montgomery Scott gets a wing all of his own.

You mean there's no Scotchtoberfest?

LEGACY: This is the episode that establishes Kirk's middle name as "Tiberius."

16.

PLOT: Essentially the same story and structure as TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." But it's fun enough to not be redundant, and it furthers the concepts by adding a "Glommer," i.e. a Klingon-designed genetically-engineered "Tribble eater." (Gerrold's original concept had this glommer growing in size like a Tribble until it eventually started eating crew members, but this was judged too much for Saturday morning TV.)

I was amused by Kirk's description of Cyrano Jones as "intergalactic trader and general nuisance." Also, one of the chapter titles: "They Throw Tribbles, Don't They?" Nice.

15. 

Howard Weinstein wrote this when he was only 19. He's been involved in the Trekverse in various capacities ever since.

PLOT: Spock falls ill, and Orion pirates hijack the ship containing the medicine that will save him. Kirk has a mano y mano with the Orion captain on an asteroid and fixes his wagon. Spock is saved.

Some confusion exists around whether or not the Orions, here, are meant to be the same race as appeared in "Journey to Babel" and "The Menagerie" in TOS. Shatner pronounces the pirates as "Ore-ee-on," thus distinguishing them as different from the Oh-rye-ons, they of the green-skinned-scantily-clad-ladies fame. The rest of the cast does, as well. Weinstein maintains he meant them to be the same race as the Orions who appeared in TOS eps just-mentioned. Did Shatner just say it wrong and the rest of the cast went with it? I doubt Bill Reed knew or cared either way. Shatner has had his fair share of stubborn mispronunciations, as captured wonderfully here, so I'll go with Weinstein, here.

14.

PLOT: A species of intelligent plant, led by a clone of a Eugenics Wars-era scientist clones Spock with the intentions of creating a master race. He creates instead a Giant Spock whom he calls "Spock Two."

Let's turn this over to Jeff, author of Into the Dark Dimension who shares my fascination with this concept:

"Giant Spock may be one of my favorite things ever... I still can't get over how they created that character and then, as far as I know, nothing has been done since with him. I mean, it's SPOCK, for God's sake, just giant-size. He'd have the same potential and intellect. Why has that not been important enough to follow up on? 

(on the idea of a Star Trek D&D campaign) "How about Giant Spock nerve-pinching Frost Giants? ... Silliness aside, I like the idea that neither Spock is very troubled by the presence of the other; none of this "am I really me?" bs from Giant Spock. He just looks at it logically. "I am me. Dwelling on the provenance of my memories and experiences is irrelevant and illogical." I would watch or read as much about Giant Spock as they could produce..."

Me, too. Ten Giant Spock's Adventures done in 70s-Marvel-style would be one of my monkey paw wishes. Would he build a giant spaceship? A giant Science Academy? Does Giant Spock undergo pon farr or have a katra? I seriously could riff on this for years. 

Actually, I guess I've already been riffing on it for years.

LEGACY: Interesting to note that Walter Koenig wrote this episode. Koenig, not just a former castmate but also a close personal friend of George Takei's, according to Takei's autobiography To the Stars, would presumably have known Takei's sexual preference decades before Takei officially came out to the world. What are we to make of the ending dialogue, here?

"By the way, Mr. Sulu, any chance of teaching me that body throw? Could come in handy some time."
"I don't know, sir. It isn't just physical, you know. You have to be.. inscrutable."
"Inscrutable? Sulu, you're the most scrutable man I know!"

"Inscrutable" doesn't mean anything akin to "gay," of course, and nor do I at all care whom the guy sleeps with, there's just something wink-wink nudge-nudge about the way both Takei and Shatner deliver these lines, and it even ends with an actual wink (above.) I can't help but wonder if this is an affectionate nod or acknowledgement to his friend's then-verboten lifestyle, coded enough within the boundaries of 1970s television but conspicuous.

All such speculation aside, though... Kirk doesn't know a simple judo move like a body throw? He sure seemed to in "Charlie X" and elsewhere in TOS.

13.

Margaret Armen wrote two of my favorite TOS episodes, "The Paradise Syndrome" and "The Cloud Minders."

PLOT: Kind of a cross between "The Deadly Years" and "Spock's Brain" while foreshadowing the Enterprise episode "Bound." The Enterprise receives a mysterious subspace transmission from Taurus 2 (no, not that Taurus 2, i.e. the one that appears in "The Galileo Seven.") It has a debilitating effect on all male crew members, though, and soon, the men are entranced and eventually begin to age rapidly. Uhura takes control of the ship and assembles an all-female security team to go down to the surface, where she discovers the all-female race there can neither grow old nor die nor have children. They came to the planet long ago but now cannot escape. 

They bring men to them with their siren-like song, (aka a "Loreli"-like song, from Germanic folklore concerning the sirens of the Rhine river) bewitch them, and then consume their life essence to "revitalize." Uhura promises to send a starship to take them elsewhere, and the men are restored to their normal, relatively-non-useless selves.

Before Uhura assumes control of the ship, it is in the hands of a thoroughly besotted Scotty; it is not revealed whether he was inebriated before or during the initial incursion, but of all the crew, he seems more inebriated than bewitched. In one sequence, the Enterprise crawls across the screen for what seems like an eternity while the only audio is Scotty drunkenly singing to himself. It is arguably the definitive wtf moment in all TAS.

In another sequence, the transporters are utilized to restore crew members to their younger selves, and Nurse Chapel says this has never been done before. She must have really not been paying attention in TOS. (The ol' "just use the transporter" trick is used even more prominently in TNG.)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: It's difficult to put yourself into the shoes of another era, and aspects of this story must seem either wildly satirical or terribly offensive to some folks. I can sympathize. But I kind of love  contemporaneous gendered mayhem like this.

12.

PLOT: (Full overview here) McCoy is accused by the people of the planet Dramia of mass genocide committed on a previous visit to the planet. He maintains his innocence, but the Dramians are intent on trying him. While investigating, the Enterprise itself is infected with the same plague they've accused McCoy of unleashing on their world. McCoy realizes the aurora through which ships pass to and from the planet is the cause of the planet, and everyone recovers. The Dramians absolve him of charges.

"Hippocrates would not have approved of lame excuses." - Spock to McCoy.

McCoy with Dramians

At one point, McCoy (I think - I neglected to write down who said it) says "I presume you have antibodies?" I wouldn't be surprised if there was some insane reason why the replicator on-board every Starfleet vessel couldn't reproduce antibodies, but that doesn't mean I have to go with numb with acceptance at the idea.

The writer has only one other credit to his name:

Fascinating.