Episode 18: Rogue Planet

Enterprise encounters a planet that is floating free in space, a "Rogue Planet", and discovers not only that it still has atmosphere and warmth enough to sustain life but that it is also currently being visited by a group of non-native humanoid hunters.


Despite the fact that this represents a "first contact" with a sentient, technologically advanced species, Archer and his crew show more interest in the surveying the planet and observing the humanoids' hunt than in actually learning anything about this new species, its culture, history and society.


While Reed decides to join the "hunt" as an observer ("I won't kill anything, I promise"), Archer permits himself to be seduced by a strange human female who keeps appearing to him. It turns out that the female represents a race of sentient shape shifters that call the rogue planet home and are, in fact, the preferred prey of the alien hunters.


Archer decides he must intercede and, with the help of Dr. Phlox's usual medical magic, provides the shape shifters with a solution that permits them to avoid the hunters' high-tech sensors, thus "evening the playing field" in the annual hunt.


If I told you the following facts about this episode, do you think you could guess who wrote it?

1. The hunters are all male;
2. Hunting is portrayed as a manly sport;
3. Only two females play any kind of role in the episode -- T'Pol, who argues that it would be fruitless for Enterprise to try to stop the hunt of these sentient beings, and the shapeshifter dream-girl in her jammies, who reaches into Archer's mind for his ideal woman and then reaches out to Archer for this help because, you know, he's "different" from the nasty hunters;
4. Archer and Reed engage in a macho game of one-upmanship over who was the more successful Eagle Scout;
5. Tucker admits he knows no poetry except the odd rude limerick;
6. All the male characters tease Archer for having seen a human woman in her jammies;
7. Several male characters immediately translate "human woman in her jammies" into "scantily clad" or "half nude";
8. The writers indulge Archer in a "ha ha, macho hunters, I beat you" scene; and
9. The episode focuses on the manly art of hunting over any truly important aspect of Enterprise's first contact, exploration mission.

If you guessed that our friends Brannon Braga and Rick Berman were the writers of this episode, you were mostly right. Add Chris Black into the mix and you've got the whole writing team.


I have to admit, I am interested in the concept of a mind-reading, shapeshifting race and the possibilities it represents. The ability to read minds (and put what you learn to use, as the shapeshifters did in this episode with regard, for example, to the hunters' tactics) would suggest that the shapeshifters can learn from the minds they read and potentially adapt/adopt what they learn to their own uses. The ability to shift shapes would suggest that the shapeshifters could adapt their physical bodies to build and use any technology they might learn about from the minds they read.


So why are these shapeshifters content to continue an existence that appears to be barely above the level of a non-sentient animal and to permit the hunters to show up once in a while to kill them? Why not learn some technology, adapt it to their use, then defeat the hunters?


"Rogue Planet" fails to engage with this question and ignores completely every other possibility that this first contact creates. It is a man's episode about hunting and male bonding and saving women in their jammies.


"Rogue Planet" is bad Star Trek. Third-season TOS bad. And it comes two-thirds of the way through season one of Enterprise, at the time when the series should be hitting its stride and producing its best shows.