If "The Andorian Incident" didn't paint the Vulcans in a bad enough light, along comes "Breaking the Ice". It's a wonder any Star Trek fans still watched Enterprise after this one.
Enterprise spots a comet tumbling through space and decides, over T'Pol's inevitable objections (comets are not worth investigating, Vulcan ships never bother with them), to investigate. You see, the good Captain, Trip and their pals are fun-loving human dudes, hurtling through space on a cosmic joy ride, and their Vulcan science officer is nothing more than a wet blanket, nice enough to look at but worthy only of sneers and jokes when she tries to make an intellectual contribution, provide the crew access to her considerable experience and knowledge... do her job.
The treatment of T'Pol throughout the entire first season is emblematic of the sexism and racism that permeates this entire show.
The comet shows signs of containing significant deposits of a mineral (eye-sillium is how it is pronounced on the show) that T'Pol admits Vulcan scientists have been unable to obtain in sufficient quantities to study properly.
Delighted to be a step ahead of the Vulcans, Archer decides to send Reid and Mayweather to the surface of the comet to conduct a drilling operation and obtain core samples.
In the meantime, a Vulcan starship (the Timur) appears nearby, creating a great deal of frustration and resentment in our hero Captain. Archer believes that the Vulcans are spying on the Humans, big-brothering them, and the ship's Captain, Vanik, does little to dispel those feelings. When challenged on why the Timur would suddenly appear there since Vulcans have so little interest in comets, Vanik says something like: "We're not interested in the comet; we're interested in your interest in the comet."
Tucker discovers that the Timur has sent T'Pol a coded message, disguised as a burst of static, and brings it to Captain Archer. Archer's first response isn't, "hmmm, perhaps we should talk to T'Pol about this and find out why she is receiving such a clandestine message", as one might expect from an experienced leader who has worked closely with the subordinate through any number of difficult situations; Archer instead instantly suspects T'Pol of wrongdoing and instructs Tucker to work with Sato to decode and translate the message.
Archer's decision is even more puzzling because T'Pol did absolutely nothing wrong. The message was sent by the Timur to T'Pol and there is apparently no evidence at first that T'Pol even received it. The logical and appropriate response by the Captain would be to approach T'Pol, tell her what they have discovered and request an explanation.
As happens all too often, racism drives Archer's decision-making as Captain of Earth's first ship of first contact and deep space exploration. Yup: with the entire population of Earth to choose from, Star Fleet selects a racist to captain the ship. A racist, sexist, aggressive, bullying xenophobe with a remarkable sense of his own, and his race's, superiority in all things.
So Sato decodes the message, Tucker translates it and then Tucker reads it. And it turns out to be a highly personal letter to T'Pol with absolutely nothing to do with Star Fleet or ship's operations. As Tucker at least has the decency to admit, his reading of the letter represents a significant invasion of T'Pol's privacy.
Which brings up another question: Why would Archer leave it to Tucker to translate and read the letter? Even today, we recognize that personnel issues in the employment context of the kind Archer wants to accuse T'Pol of should not be shared with the employee's colleagues or subordinates. Yet Archer leaves the investigation of what he inappropriately and prematurely concludes is a loyalty/performance issue to another staff member who is subordinate to T'Pol. This puts T'Pol (and Tucker) in a very difficult, uncomfortable position.
Archer's decision is a breach of every rule of privacy in the workplace.
And yet the Vulcans are portrayed by the Enterprise creative team as the cunning, untrustworthy ones.
So Reid and Mayweather head to the ice-covered comet with their explosives and their drilling rig and, well, build a snowman. A Vulcan snowman, in fact. Yes, senior crew are permitted to engage in racist mocking of members of a colleague species.
They set up their charges and blow a big hole in the surface of the comet. Well done. And then Enterprise realizes (as should have been entirely predictable before the mission began) that the explosion caused a change in the rotation of the comet. And that change in rotation will put Reid and Mayweather in significant peril as the dig site becomes exposed to the heat generated by a nearby star, causing the temperatures to which the crew members are exposed to rise quickly and exponentially.
Yep. Our brilliant Human crew, who don't need to listen to their Vulcan science officer nor to anyone else, have missed a significant, easily predictable consequence of their drilling plan and put their crew members into mortal danger.
And then the two crew members make the equally brilliant decision to cut the whole endeavor as close as possible by hanging around at the dig site until just as the rotation brings the star into play. I don't think I need to tell you what happens next.
Well, I guess I should. Mayweather injures his leg, the ice field starts to crack apart and, when they finally make it to the shuttle pod and ignite its thrusters, the resulting heat causes the ice to crack wide open and the shuttle to tumble 18 metres and get stuck.
Facing the imminent death of two of his senior crew, Archer approaches the situation entirely rationally and accepts the help offered by the Vulcan ship which has a tractor beam that would make rescue a certainty when Enterprise's own grappler mechanism will almost certainly fail.
Oh, wait. No he doesn't. This hand-picked Captain of Earth's first interstellar ship of exploration and first contact, this beacon of human perfection, this paragon of human virtue, decides to choose assuaging his own hurt ego over the safety of his crew and puts his ship and his crew members at significant risk by deciding to attempt the rescue himself.
And I mean himself. Or at least, almost entirely by himself. First, Archer kicks his experienced back up helmsman out of the pilot chair so that he, the Captain who has never been seen to pilot this starship before, can personally run the controls to bring Enterprise to a precise position in relation to the crater in the surface of the tumbling asteroid to permit Tucker to fire the grappler with some reasonable expectation of success.
Read that again. The Vulcans offer to help with their advanced technology that virtually assures the rescue of the shuttle pod and its two Star Fleet crew. Archer rejects that help.
Then Archer, who has no real experience piloting the massive ship, personally replaces the backup pilot who, one would expect, has piloted the ship at least as much as Mayweather has since the ship left space dock. Archer then takes on the very delicate task of flying Enterprise into a precise position -- Tucker asks him to move the ship a meter at one point -- so that the grappler can be fired. All while the lives of two members of his senior crew are in significant danger.
And he makes these decisions because his poor little manly ego is bruised by the fact that the he believes the Vulcans are monitoring him and his ship in its explorations?
Is that rational? Does that reflect the decision making one would expect of a Star Fleet captain? THE Star Fleet captain?
Archer only relents after 1) his first rescue attempt fails miserably, 2) the conditions deteriorate even further, 3) Tucker tells him there is little chance of a successful second attempt, and 4) T'Pol tells him that he will disappoint Vanik's smug expectation that Archer would rather let his crew members die than accept help from a smug Vulcan.
Again. Read that again. Captain Paragon only agrees to permit the Vulcans to save the lives of two of his senior crew members rather than let them die when he is convinced that to do so would actually disappoint the Vulcans.
And it is the Vulcans we are supposed to despise in this situation, in this series!
I honestly doubt that the creative team behind the first season of Enterprise actually understood what a repugnant character they have created in Captain Archer. Any thoughtful viewer would watch this episode and think, "What kind of an idiot is this? How could any organization, not to mention the forward-thinking organization named Star Fleet, actually believe that this moron is appropriate to represent the human race and lead Earth's first vessel of deep-space exploration and first contact?"
Archer is exactly the kind of person that Gene Roddenberry believed Humans must leave behind if we are to survive into the future. He is unfit to take his place alongside the other great Star Trek leaders. He represents many of the worst traits of 20th century man and yet the Enterprise creative team chose him/created him to lead this ship.
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