Episode 67: Harbinger

The quintessential Braga and Berman episode, "Harbinger" is an ode to the juvenile, hyper-masturbatory straight teen male viewer.


Practically without a plot, this episode presents the Enterprise as a moronic version of Degrassi Junior High and her crew as a bunch of testosterone-drunk adolescents. The boys in "Harbinger" are hyper-aggressive, hyper-sexualized and hyper-hetero and the girls are, well, the few "girls" that are permitted to participate in the show are simply there to play adoring, simpering sex-objects for the boys.


If there were any intelligent viewers still watching Enterprise by this point in Season Three, this B&B-written show must have proven the final nail in the coffin.


It starts, as B&B shows so often do, with Tucker performing Vulcan neuro-pressure, this time (surprise surprise) on a half-dressed MACO named Corporal Amanda Cole, an interlude which leads to an incredibly banal make-out scene. That then leads to two scenes that must have had B&B reaching for their box of tissues:
1. an even more banal, frighteningly juvenile scene (which even famed director John Hughes would have refused to include in one of his 80s teen flicks like The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles) in which T'Pol and Tucker play verbal footsie about who is jealous of whom, leading to the Vulcan (yes, folks, she is Vulcan, despite her behaviour throughout much of the series) science officer dropping her robe and jumping the Engineer; and
2. a silly scene (which was as inevitable for a B&B written script as the good-ol'-boys sexualized banter between Tucker and Reid in the mess hall) in which T'Pol and Corporal Cole get together for a semi-nude bout of touching each other.


Meanwhile, the macho competition between Lieutenant Reid and MACO Commander Hayes comes to a boil when Captain Archer (proving himself once again as completely clueless as a leader) orders Reid to cooperate with Hayes' proposal that the MACOs train the Enterprise crew (including Reid's security team) in hand-to-hand combat. The final result of this subplot is an extended brawl between the two supposed professionals which leads to significant injuries to both men and only comes to an end when a Tactical Alert is called.


Again, juvenile and scarily violent. Are these really the kinds of people the Earth would send out on the first mission to explore space and meet alien cultures?


Oh, and the plot. There sort of was one. It doesn't make sense but there was one. As Enterprise cruises along on its way to what it hopes is the location where the Xindi are building their weapon, the sensors pick up a strange phenomenon, which turns out to be a massive, dense cluster of spatial anomalies.


In a complete contradiction of the mission imperative that has been established in earlier (and confirmed in later) episodes -- that Enterprise must get to the weapon facility as soon as possible and nothing will be permitted to slow them down -- Archer orders the ship to investigate the cluster. They spot a tiny ship/pod inside the cluster and put their own ship (and their mission) at significant risk in an effort to pull it out.


Inside the pod is a strange alien who, Phlox tells Archer, is literally disintegrating. It appears that he was placed in the cluster in a pod filled with monitoring equipment so that some distant alien race could study the effects of the anomalies on his body. Without any evidence whatsoever to support him, Archer decides that something fishy is going on and demands that Phlox revive the dying man so that Archer can interrogate him. This leads to several scenes of torture (involving the withholding of much needed pain medication) so that Archer can follow up on his own unexplained, groundless suspicions. What happened to Archer's speech from an earlier episode about humans not wishing to sacrifice all the honourable qualities that make them human as they confront the Xindi?


Why Phlox agrees to participate (even after citing his own much-ballyhooed ethics) we'll never know.


Despite Archer's intense suspicions of the alien, however, the alien is permitted to lie in Sickbay unguarded. And, despite the fact that Phlox avers that the alien is about to die (which he finally does later in the show), the alien suddenly gains enough strength to overpower Phlox and then threaten Enterprise.


A tactical alert is called, interrupting Reid's brawl with Hayes, and the two macho dudes inevitably learn the value of cooperation and respect as they work together to stop the alien's attempt to blow up the warp engines.


The alien is brought back to sickbay, where he finally and bizarrely admits that his race is intently interested in the Xindi/Earth war since, once the Xindi destroy the human race, his race will take over the galaxy.


Yes, I had the same reaction: Huh? Wha? Eh?


The episode is so bereft of story that the teaser is all flashback (much of which is only tangentially related to the episode's story) and we are treated to extended scenes of blah blah blah just to fill time.


Meanwhile, the homo-erotic subtext of the Reid/Hayes story line appears completely lost on the show's creative team while they focus on creating a series of homo-erotic not-so-sub-texts for T'Pol.


If anyone asks me to give them a very quick example to show them why Enterprise failed completely to capture the usually loyal Star Trek fan base, I will show them "Harbinger". It offers evidence of every single moronic, juvenile and offensive creative decision the show runners made in this television series.