Episode 50: First Flight

An unremarkable episode that provides background on the development of the Warp 2/3 and later Warp 5 engines and on how Archer and Tucker came to be aboard Enterprise, "First Flight" was written by John Shiban and Chris Black.


The episode begins with Archer receiving that sad news that a colleague, A.G. Robinson, has been killed in a mountain climbing accident. Thrown into a depressive funk, Archer decides to head off alone in a shuttlepod to investigate the possible existence of until-now-hypothetical "dark matter" in a nearby nebula. Tucker offers to accompany him but is rebuffed -- T'Pol successfully insists on accompanying him, however, in order to comply with Star Fleet regulations.


Knowing that Archer is grieving, T'Pol offers him her sympathetic though pointy ear for him to spill all his troubles. Archer complies and recounts the story of his friendly rivalry with the now deceased "A.G." over who got to fly the biggest test flight in human history, a competition Archer lost.


The plot suffers from the fact that the writers try to inject suspense into a story for which we already know the outcome: A.G. survives (at least until the recent accident) and the engine development program is saved in the end.


The episode suffers further from a remarkably poor acting performance by Keith Carradine as "A.G.". I don't know much about his work but Carradine's performance in this episode is wooden and unlikable.


Star Trek suffers because Shiban and Black depict early Star Fleet as a boys-only club (and mostly a white-boys-only) that is filled with hotshots and rule breakers. Again, this presentation of even the beginnings of Star Fleet must have riled the vast majority of Trek fans, who know Star Fleet and the Federation to be a much more diverse, intelligent community. Even in the early 21st Century, our society had advanced past the days of "Top Gun" and should have included a much more varied group of pilots (and other positions) in its presentation of Star Fleet.


There are only two women with roles of any size in this episode: T'Pol, who is reduced to a supportive spouse figure, and Ruby, the heart-breaker cocktail waitress at the local pub who just happens to understand as much about Star Fleet business as the pilots who frequent the establishment. Two stereotypical female roles from which we thought Star Trek had long escaped.


Sure, the fact that Archer, Tucker and Robinson feel it acceptable to steal Star Fleet's only remaining Warp Two prototype and put it at significant risk draws stern punishment from Commodore Forrest but it doesn't seem to have a lasting impact on any of their careers. Archer still gets the Enterprise command and Tucker its Chief Engineer role, ensuring that the good ol' boys, hyper entitled, over-emotional and completely xenophobic, lead Earth's charge into the galaxy.


A very minor quibble: is it a Warp 2 engine? or a Warp 3 engine? The script seems to use these two phrases interchangeably.