Episode 52: The Expanse

As season two of Enterprise drew to a close in the Spring of 2003, the powers that be must have realized that the show was approaching a crisis. It's viewership had dropped to an average below 4 million people per week (down from the opening audience of 12.5 million according to Wikipedia) and several late-season shows had attracted fewer than 3.5 million viewers.


They had driven away most of the core Star Trek fans and, at a time in the arc when most successful shows were starting to build their ratings, Enterprise was failing to catch on.
B&B must have known that they had to do something special to help the show recover. Risks had to be taken.


To their credit, they seem to have latched upon what might have been a successful strategy. Drawing on elements that had helped previous Trek series maintain or even gain viewers, they introduced an intense, long-term story arc and a terrifying new threat: the Xindi. Sure, the Xindi are no match for the Borg when it comes to the inducement of terror but they are pretty good nonetheless.


And the idea of creating the Xindi as a direct and looming threat to the very survival of Earth is a pretty darned good one.


As you can see, I am a lot more positive about "The Expanse" than I was about many of the episodes that preceded it. Well, let me rephrase that: I am a lot more positive about the promise for future episodes that is created in "The Expanse" than I was about what came before it.


Because "The Expanse" doesn't really have a full developed plot of its own. It serves mainly as a launching pad for Season Three and the Xindi campaign.


As a result, "The Expanse" suffers as an individual episode of Star Trek.


There isn't really a plot. There is simply a series of to-be-related events that set the stage for the next season.


An attack on Earth leads to the recall of Enterprise. On the trip home, Archer is kidnapped by the Suliban for the sole purpose of permitting their future-age boss to warn the Enterprise captain of the grave new threat a race called the Xindi pose to both the human race and the timeline. It seems the Xindi are now the tokens of some other faction of the temporal cold war and have been told that Star Fleet is destined to destroy the Xindi if the Xindi don't destroy Earth first.


As it nears Earth, Enterprise comes under attack by a Klingon bird of prey commanded by our old friend Duras but, with the help of several older Star Fleet warp ships sent out to meet it, Enterprise manages to fight off the Klingons and make it to Earth in once piece.


While home, Archer convinces Star Fleet of the Xindi threat and talks Admiral Forrest into permitting him to lead Enterprise to the Delphic Expanse where the Xindi are said to live. The Vulcans warn against undertaking such a dangerous mission on the basis that time travel has been proven impossible by the Vulcan Science Academy so the information Archer has received must be faulty and the Expanse is such a scary scary place. T'Pol is ordered to return to Vulcan for re-assignment once Enterprise's quest is granted.


Meanwhile, Enterprise is refitted with more powerful armour and new "photon torpedoes". It also takes onboard a contingent of trained soldiers to help when and if the Xindi are found. Archer agrees to drop T'Pol off on Vulcan on their way out for the 3-month trip to the Expanse and is delighted when she decides, en route, to resign her commission and stay with Enterprise.


The next commercial break apparently encompasses three months because, when we return, Enterprise has arrived at the barrier to the Expanse. Unfortunately, Duras has come with them. And he's brought friends. Too bad for Duras that the captains of his two escort birds of prey have no honour and prefer to retreat rather than follow Enterprise into the Expanse; even more too bad for Duras that Mayweather knows how to fly Enterprise in a big loop to expose Duras' weak rear shielding to Enterprise's enhanced new weapons.


The episode ends with Duras destroyed and Enterprise entering the Delphic Expanse.


Yes, you're right. B&B packed a lot of stuff into this 42-minute episode.


The Duras sub-plot is included, I think, as an effort to give "The Expanse" a beginning, middle and end and some ongoing suspense. Unfortunately, it fails and is just silly.


Further, it involves Klingons behaving in some pretty unKlingon ways, such as showing fear in the face of the unknown (or showing fear in the face of anything) and backing away from a battle on several occasions.


Further, why would Duras and his pals wait until Enterprise reaches the Expanse before attacking. Their ships are faster and Enterprise has been three months on the journey -- surely they could have caught him before then?


Still, after the insulting garbage Enterprise offered through much of the latter part of the second season, "The Expanse" at least offers some hope for future seasons.


The episode does raise some problematic questions, however:


1. What exactly is Archer's mission? This is never discussed nor made clear. From the fact that Enterprise's defenses and armament are both enhanced, and that a large group of soldiers are taken onboard, it would seem that the mission is a military one. One warp five ship against an entire civilization that has the capability to send a little ship all the way to Earth and kill seven million people in a matter of seconds? I trust we are going to find out that Archer's mission is a diplomatic one, to broker a peace deal with the Xindi so that neither has to wipe out the other.


2. Why is Tucker permitted to take part (as, basically, the third in command) when he is so clearly emotionally unhinged (and dangerously volatile) in light of the death of his sister? "The Expanse" is written (over-written, in fact) to make it clear that, if and when Enterprise finds the Xindi, its Chief Engineer is going to be advocating war (and revenge) at all costs and could be an unstable element in the negotiations.


3. Why would the Suliban not be invited to aid Enterprise in this mission? It is clear that the Suliban future-boss sees the actions of the Xindi as being problematic, and he makes it clear that they are acting on behalf of another faction in the TCW, so why would he not order the Suliban, with their advanced abilities, to support Enterprise in approaching the Xindi?

Episode 51: Bounty

If earlier episodes like "The Crossing" didn't convince Star Trek fans that Enterprise was too sloppy, too insulting, too juvenile to merit watching, "Bounty" must have sealed the deal.

Not surprisingly, the story idea comes from Berman and Braga, with screen writing credits going to Hans Tobeason and Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong. It has already been made abundantly clear that, despite being strong Star Trek fans with at least a wish to remain true to established Trek traditions and history, Sussman and Strong were unwilling or unable to stop B&B from indulging in their most childish fantasies in the stories they created.

"Bounty" is a classic B&B episode filled with plot holes, boys-behaving-badly moments and the hyper-sexualization of T'Pol.

The episode combines two basic story lines: a soft-hearted Tellarite bounty hunter captures Archer with plans to sell him to the Klingons for enough currency to get his awesome freighter out of hoc while an outrageously horny T'Pol, stripped of both her uniform and her emotional control by a microbial organism she picked up on a planet, is trapped in Decon with Phlox.

 I have to admit, I am having a very hard time writing coherently about this episode because it is so remarkably offensive in so many ways. It is quite literally and honestly an insult to Star Trek's core fanbase and not only because of the T'Pol plot. It is quite clear that the five people who contributed to the writing of the script had so little respect for their viewers that they didn't care to ensure their characters behave in a manner consistent with their past behavior and their training, they didn't give a damn whether the plot made any sense and they chose to throw almost 40 years of settled Trek lore out the window, all because they couldn't be bothered to try to do any better.

It was easier to insult us than to take the time and invest the energy to write a good episode.

Even if we accept that we should not expect more from B&B, and we accept that Sussman and Strong could not have forced changes even if they wanted to, I have a hard time accepting that episode director Roxann Dawson should be so willing to indulge them all. Dawson's major contribution to the episode is a series of long, lingering shots that pan slowly up and down T’Pol’s body, pandering to the masturbatory fantasies of some non-exist teenage male viewer -- for the rest of the show, she stitches together a series of uninspired scenes in a plot riddled with holes.

By this time in the series' history (the end of season two), it was abundantly clear that Enterprise was hemorrhaging viewers and was in danger of cancellation. Core ST fans were either long gone or on their way out (I know that I had stopped watching consistently before the end of season one and had given up complete by the time season two rolled to a close) and B&B were desperate for a quick fix.

What was their apparent resolution? Do even more of the things that have driven away most of your viewers in the first place. Be more insulting and more juvenile. Ramp up the sex, degrade your female characters even further and make it clear that you don't give a damn about the established knowledge-base of the franchise and its fans. Don't worry about making things make sense; just throw a bunch of garbage on the screen and hope someone decides it's worth watching.

I'm not going to go into all the plot holes. There are too many to cover (I mean, why is every bounty hunter soft-hearted? how is that the locking mechanism on the Decon chamber can be pried out of the wall and disabled so easily? why would Archer ever agree to be delivered to a Klingon ship, just to help out said bounty hunter when we all know that the Klingons are more than likely to execute him as soon as he steps aboard? where did the bounty hunter get those nifty handcuffs with a hidden chamber for contraband Klingon door-opening technology? why would the Klingons not take further steps to secure a prisoner they know to be dangerous [such as beat him unconscious]? how did the Tellarite manage, by himself, to repair his ship while guarding Archer who has just managed to increase the damage to the engines caused by the attack of the other bounty hunter? etc. etc. etc.).

Let's talk instead about the many instances where "Bounty" manages to make a hash out of well-established Star Trek lore, including the following:

1. The Klingon prison planet is pronounced "Rura Pen-tay", not "Rura Penthay". This is well established in The Undiscovered Country. yet both Archer and the Tellarite pronounce it "Penthay";

2. A Class D planet is a small, barren rock in space with little to no atmosphere. There are many examples of this in Star Trek throughout the years. How is that Archer and the bounty hunter manage to land on the rock and work on the ship without the need of atmospheric suits;

3. The physical strength of Vulcans far out matches that of humans and most other races. T'Pol, in her over-heated condition, would likely kill Phlox when he tries to stop her, not beat him back with a series of slaps (note, this problem is ubiquitous in Enterprise where Archer and his band of merry men consistently win hand-to-hand battles with representatives of alien races which are clearly established as possession physical strength far outstripping that of humans, like Klingons and Vulcans, for example);

4. Klingon warriors are warriors. They are good at what they do. The idea that Archer, a human who has been beaten, stunned and imprisoned, who has had little sleep, little exercise and little actual combat experience, could, upon being brought on board a Klingon ship, escape their prison, overcome a warrior guard (I admit, at least they made it a real fight and Archer has to use the handcuffs as a weapon to win it), take his weapon, learn how to use said weapon, then defeat several other Klingon warriors in a fire fight (hitting two of them in rapid succession in a split second in one scene), then make it to an escape pod and escape, is absolutely ludicrous. I had the same reaction when the revisionist Khan managed to overwhelm an entire platoon of Klingon warriors in that awful second reboot movie; and

5. I’m sorry. A female in Pon Farr? You talk about your revisionist biology. The concept of Pon Farr is introduced in the Original Series episode "Amok Time" wherein it is repeated on several occasions that Pon Farr affects Vulcan males. The Star Trek Concordance, published in the 1970s, confirms this. Further, in The Search for Spock, Saavik mentions again that Pon Farr affects Vulcan males. Later ST series confirm this fact, with only Vulcan males experiencing Pon Farr. Then along come B&B, with their juvenile need to sexualize T'Pol, to change what is considered established Vulcan biology. Apparently, female Vulcans experience Pon Farr too. What really bothers me about this is that B&B could easily have avoided this problem and shown some respect for Star Trek lore either by having Phlox establish that it is the microbial organism that is affecting T'Pol's body chemistry and causing her emotional behaviour (without even mentioning Pon Farr) or by having T'Pol admit to Phlox at the end that she must have been lying, in her heated state, when she tried to excuse her behavoiur by blaming it on Pon Farr, since Pon Farr only applies to males.

Is it too much to ask that they at least try to bring us intelligent plots that are respectful both of us as viewers and of Star Trek lore that has been so well established?

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.

Episode 49: "Regeneration"

Okay, let’s talk about the Borg.

The Enterprise episode “Regeneration”, written by Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong, is part horror story, part history lesson, part morality tale about the consequences of actions on future events and part silliness. But, for better or worse, it introduces the Borg to the Enterprise series.

From what I understand, the Borg were introduced in a TNG episode entitled “Q Who”. In this episode, an entity with god-like powers (“Q”) shows his frustration with Captain Picard and his mostly human crew by tossing them across the galaxy, many light years beyond Star Fleet’s farthest exploration, to get a taste of an enemy more powerful than anything Star Fleet has ever faced: the tenacious, fast-adapting, technologically enhanced hive-minded race that calls itself “the Borg”.

The only thing that saves Enterprise during this encounter is the fact that Picard, realising his ship is no match for the Borg vessel that pursues it, asks Q for help. Q snaps his fingers and returns Enterprise to its original position in space, which is, for the time being at least, a safe distance from the Borg.

If I am not mistaken, this Q-fuelled encounter results in the Borg taking an interest in the human race and changing the direction of its campaign of assimilation toward Earth.

It is important to note, the writers of “Q Who” were very careful to ensure Trek-history continuity by making it clear that the Borg would not and could not have been known to Star Fleet in Captain Kirk’s era – the Borg were, at that time, too far away.

Then comes the TNG film First Contact which is, in my opinion, by far the best of the TNG movies. In First Contact, Picard’s Enterprise intervenes in a Borg assault on Earth itself and then pursues a Borg sphere as it travels back in time to 2063 in an attempt to interfere with Zephram Cochrane’s fabled first warp flight. Enterprise destroys the Borg ship in the process.

“Regeneration” picks up what Sussman and Strong apparently felt was a loose thread left by First Contact in order to be able to introduce a Borg episode to the Enterprise lineup. Remember, Enterprise is set 88 years after First Contact and 115 years before Captain Kirk and TOS.

Sussman and Strong ask the question: what happened to the Borg sphere after it was destroyed by Picard’s Enterprise? Viewers of First Contact probably interpreted the visual clues provided in that movie to mean that the Borg cube blew into a million tiny fragments and any Borg drones left aboard were blasted to smithereens as well.

S&S, however, posit that large portions of the vessel, as well as two drones, actually managed to make it through the explosion intact, only to fall through Earth’s atmosphere and crash land (still somewhat intact) in the high Arctic. There, according to the “Regeneration” story, the Borg debris remained unnoticed and untouched until discovered in approximately 2151 when it is discovered and investigated by a team of human scientists.

In their DVD commentary, S&S explain that Brannon Braga gave them the green light to write “Regeneration” and even dictated to them that the first movement of the story should be an homage to earlier horror films with similar plots: scientists discover some sort of beast frozen solid in the ice, decide to thaw it out, then are unprepared when it behaves in a horrifying but completely predictable beast-like way.

The interesting thing is, in “Regeneration”, this horror movie approach works very well. The fact that the viewer knows a great deal more about the beasts that the scientists have found than the scientists themselves only adds to the suspense.

In fact, taken on its own, “Regeneration” is an effective, entertaining and dramatic episode of Enterprise. The horror-film opening leads into a tense plot where Archer’s Enterprise is ordered to intercept the fleeing Borg drones and rescue the scientists whom, Star Fleet believes, the two drones have kidnapped.

But, as Star Trek, there are real problems with the episode, many of which were discussed almost ad nauseum online as soon as the episode was aired. S&S discuss some of the reservations raised by fans in their DVD commentary.

The biggest issue that S&S discuss is the complaint that, if Star Fleet already has photographs and scans of Borg drones in Archer’s time (and they do get plenty of opportunities to collect data on both the Borg’s bodies and their practices), how come the Borg come as such a surprise to Picard when he first encounters them and how come Star Fleet is not better prepared when they have 200+ years’ warning?

I don’t buy S&S’s explanation that, with all the races Star Fleet encounters over the two-plus centuries between Archer’s encounter with the Borg and Picard’s voyages (including any number of races that combine flesh with machine), it’s likely Star Fleet simply wouldn’t have made the connection. And, in those two centuries, the urgency was probably lost.

There are a multitude of reasons why this argument doesn’t wash but the main one that pops into my head is: Data. The android would have made the connection almost instantly simply by scanning his database and connecting common traits.

But let’s not go down that rabbit hole at this point. I have other concerns to discuss with regard to “Regeneration” that are more self-contained within the episode itself:

Defeating Borg Nano-probes

Based on the fact that the two Borg drones that landed in Earth’s Arctic lie frozen and inactive for 88 years before thawing and coming back to life, we must assume that the nano-probes inside those two drones must also have been inactive for that period. Certainly, it is only when the bodies begin to thaw that the nano-probes become active and start to regenerate the bodies and repair the technology. So, nano-probes can be frozen and their work to transform a host body can be delayed at least by freezing the host body. Hmmm…

That contradicts directly the evidence we get in First Contact. In that film, we see Borg drones working quite comfortably, without the use of pressure suits, in the cold of space. Now, from what I understand, space is very cold. When unmitigated by heat from a star, the temperature in space is -270.45 Celsius, -454.81 Fahrenheit. I’ve never been to the Arctic but I do know that it is never that cold. Yet, in the cold of space, the Borg drones do not freeze and, from what I can see, their nano-probes do not stop working.

If that problem can somehow be explained away and freezing a host body can stop the nano-probes as well, why doesn’t Phlox simply freeze people who are infected? This would give him more time to work out a resolution to the problem. One of the scientists even suggests this course of action but, at the point that he does, the threat has not yet been recognised so his suggestion is ignored.

Further, how is it that no other Star Fleet medical officer who has studied the Borg problem has not come up with the solution of bombarding the host body with Omicron radiation to kill off the nano-probes? Phlox discovers this solution in a matter of hours. Are you telling me Dr. Crusher (TNG) or “Joe the Holographic Doctor” (Voyager) couldn’t have come up with this in the years they had to study the problem? And wasn’t it that same Omicron radiation that Tucker had to get a shot to withstand in an earlier episode of Enterprise (“Cogenitor”)?

Technological Development

In their commentary, S&S explain that the two Borg drones steal a transport from Earth and take along all of the debris from their original sphere. They then use their own technology to upgrade the transport’s drive, defensive and weapons systems, adding technology as well from other ships they encounter and defeat along the way.

This is not made at all clear in the episode itself, to be honest. Be that as it may, it still sticks out that the Borg drones enhance the transport in fits and starts – increasing its speed in stages, for example. This makes no sense. If they have the technology from their own ship, the improvement should be significant as soon as they incorporate their own stuff.

Adaptation

These Borg come from Picard’s time. They were part of a hive mind. Members of their hive have been exposed to Star Fleet hand weapons that are significantly more powerful than the phase pistols of Archer’s Enterprise. Yet the 22^nd century phase pistols (both original and as adapted by Reid) manage to kill numerous Borg before the drones adapt. Does that mean the Borg defences re-set themselves to the lowest level at some point after each encounter? Is that not completely ridiculous?

And how come the Borg on Enterprise adapt so quickly to the weapons they face yet the Borg on their own ship don’t adapt to Reid’s improved weapons nearly as quickly?

And don’t Reid and his crewman helper specifically take out phase rifles to adapt after their experiments prove successful? And don’t they have at least some time to adapt as many weapons as they can before the Borg arrive? So how come 1) none of the Enterprise crew are equipped with adapted phase rifles in their attempt to ward off the Borg boarding party and 2) Archer and Reid carry adapted phase pistols with them onto the Borg ship?

Further, if Reid is able to come up with a way to make their hand weapons significantly more powerful in the 10 minutes he has available to him in this episode, why didn’t he do it earlier? Like after the first time their weapons proved ineffective against any enemy?

Vulcan psychology

In “Regeneration”, T’Pol advocates the killing of the two Borg who are originally onboard Enterprise and the complete destruction of the Borg vessel (and all aboard it) at the end of the show. Apparently, she has come to the conclusion that, once infected and assimilated, Borg drones are irredeemable and dangerous. She’s right, of course, though Seven of Nine might argue with her.

S&S, in their DVD commentary, state that T’Pol is behaving logically in making this argument and point to the behaviour of the first Vulcan, Spock, for confirmation. The problem is, the Spock to whom S&S refer is the Spock of “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, TOS’s second pilot, where both the character and Vulcan philosophy were still basically unformed.

I’m not sure what Star Trek fandom has done to explain Spock’s emotional behaviour in “The Cage” or his cold-blooded behaviour in “Where No Man” but the Spock who emerges throughout the first season of TOS would not have jumped so quickly to the termination conclusion.

An intensely non-violent man from an intensely non-violent culture, Spock argues on several occasions in favour of finding peaceful solutions over violent ones, of valuing life in all its forms over killing a threat just to be free of it.

S&S’s comment on this point makes me wonder: is it possible that the creators of Enterprise chose the Spock of “The Cage” and “Where no man” as the model for their Vulcans? Would they defend their depiction of Vulcans as being cunning, aggressive and violent on that basis? That it matches the Spock of those earliest of TOS episodes?

Episode 48: Cogenitor

It's almost like someone finally sat Brannon Braga and Rick Berman down and said: "You're doing it all wrong -- you've got to do something about this crew and especially Commander Tucker."

B&B wrote this episode and, since I have been liberal in my criticism of them in the past, I should be liberal in my praise of them now. "Cogenitor" is an extremely difficult episode to watch (I turned it off three times in frustration) but, in the end, they finally have Archer take a stand.

While exploring a spectacular space phenomenon, Enterprise encounters the Vissians, a much more advanced race who are also on a mission of exploration. The Vissians are extremely welcoming and soon the crews begin to mix and exchange both culture and technology. Archer and the Vissian captain become fast friends and decide to take a three-day trip together in a special Vissian pod capable of penetrating a star, leaving T'Pol in charge of Enterprise.

Meanwhile, Tucker and Reid are at it again, in true B&B form: Tucker decides he has to interfere in the social structure of the Vissians by secretly reaching out to a member of the race's disempowered third sex (a cogenitor) while Reid becomes sexually involved with the Vissian tactical officer. These two plot lines are almost unbearably juvenile, with Reid checking out the ass of the Vissian officer in one scene and Tucker taking it upon himself to teach a Vissian cogenitor to read and then indoctrinating it in its basic human rights.

I honestly thought, considering the history of the show, that Tucker's efforts would be rewarded, even at the cost of good relations with the Vissians, but B&B surprised me.

As I said at the start, it's like someone told them they had to recognise that their earth-centric, juvenile approach to first contact and relations with other races was driving away viewers by the millions.

When Archer learns about Tucker's actions, he calls him to task and tears a strip off him.


“I did exactly what you’d do captain,” says Tucker in attempting to defend himself.

I nearly fell off my chair when Archer responds, in a rare moment of honesty and self-reflection: “If that’s true, then I’ve done a pretty lousy job setting an example around here," and further, “We’re out here to meet new species, not to tell them what to do.” 

“It’s time you learn to weigh the possible repercussions of your actions…” Archer adds later.

The fact that they later learn that, as a result of Tucker's interference, the cogenitor has committed suicide adds a fine point to the episode.

This is a very interesting look at inter-cultural relations and the concept of what's right. In the human context, Tucker is absolutely right. The cogenitors of the Vissian race are every bit as intelligent and capable as the race's other two sexes and their subjugation is unacceptable from a human stand point. And yes, perhaps Star Fleet and eventually the Federation should attempt to work with the Vissian leadership to emancipate the cogenitors and recognize their equal right to enjoy the benefit of their society.

But Tucker is absolutely wrong to interfere on a one-on-one level, creating expectations in a single cogenitor that are simply not possible in her current world. And Archer finally, actually, truly seems to understand tghat.

Episode 47: The Breach

In the second fairly thoughtful episode in a row, Phlox is forced to confront his own feelings with regard to the centuries old antagonism between his race and the Antarans when confronted with a dying Antaran researcher who refuses help from a Denobulan.

Written by Chris Black and John Shiban, "The Breach" mixes the thoughtful and emotional Phlox plot with the ridiculous story of efforts by members of the Enterprise crew (Tucker, Reid and Mayweather) to rescue a Denobulan team of scientists working deep beneath the surface of a planet that has just ordered all offworlders to leave, on threat of imprisonment or execution.

Black and Shiban do not shy away from the intensity of the emotions that must exist between two races that have been at war (in one way or another) for hundreds of years, each demonizing the other to the point of obsessive loathing, even though no member of either race has seen a member of the other races for more than 100 years. Phlox is convincing in his attempts to overcome the Antaran's loathing while struggling with the racism he himself learned at his grandmother's knee.

It's a well-written, well-acted, well-timed plot that perhaps resolves itself a little too quickly and easily but that can be put down to the challenges of television drama.

The other plot, well, I'm not sure what to say about it. Archer decides to send the three boys down to find and rescue the Denobulan scientists but does not include Phlox, who would be an obvious choice to lead since 1) he is Denobulan and would be most likely to be able to communicate with his fellows, 2) he is a doctor and could have help address any injuries they might have suffered since they went missing and 3) as we find out at the end of the show (in one of the most ridiculous turns in the series so far), Denobulans can climb sheer cliffs without the help of any equipment so Phlox would have been a real asset.

Then you have Tucker and Reid (having left Mayweather behind after he breaks his leg) finallly finding the Denobulan team after two days' of searching, deep beneath the planet's surface and then bullying them into leaving when the scientists do not wish to leave and appear to be so difficult to find and reach that they probably are in no danger anyway.

Nothing like having Tucker shouting at you four seconds after you meet him, then having him threaten to fire a phase pistol up your ass to make you love and trust him.

 Still, if we accept for some reason that Phlox should indeed have stayed aboard ship, the doctor's emotional struggles with his Antaran patient are worth watching.

Episode 46: Horizon

A quiet, introspective episode, "Horizon" has a refreshing focus on character development over action, with the spotlight on Ensign Mayweather.

Written by André Bormanis, "Horizon" follows the helmsman on a visit to his family's cargo ship 

(the Horizon) in the aftermath of his father’s death. While there, Mayweather tries to help his brother (the new captain) and mother (the ship’s engineer) deal with pirates. Meanwhile, Tucker and Archer harass T’Pol into attending Frankenstein movies on board Enterprise.

Although Mayweather does come across as such an idealistic bossy-pants as he interferes with his brother's command, trying to introduce improvements to Horizon's systems without letting his brother know, it is an interesting, emotionally effective story that gives us a better understanding of the lives of the cargo crews that explored deep space ahead of Star Fleet.

Meanwhile, the Frankenstein plot gives us an even better, and more surprising, insight into the way T'Pol feels about her time with her human crewmates. It's almost as if Bormanis were trying to send a message to his fellows on the show's creative team when he introduces the Frankenstein story to Enterprise.

That doesn't mean the episode is without fault. Tucker puts intense pressure on T'Pol to attend the movie and, when she approaches her superior officer to ask him to intervene to stop the coercion, Archer instead turns the situation into a joke and, worse, sexualizes by practically ordering her to attend as his "date",  complete with dinner before hand. Neither of these offenses is addressed in any meaningful way, even if the ending is at least somewhat satisfying.

In a well-written final scene where Tucker, Archer and T'Pol share their responses to the film, Bormanis offers the following bit of dialogue that, I think, serves as something of a critique of Archer and his human crew and their complete lack of suitability for Earth's first deep-space mission.

T’Pol: I thought the protagonist was interesting.

Tucker: Dr. Frankenstien?

T’Pol: No, his creation. From my perspective, this was the story of an individual, persecuted by humans because he was different… In many ways, the film seemed quite prophetic. The reaction of the villagers, for example: it was similar to the reception Vulcans received after landing on Earth.

Archer: I don’t recall anyone greeting the Vulcan ambassador with torches and pitchforks. (laughing)

T’Pol: Nevertheless, many humans reacted with fear and anger.

Archer: They didn’t know what to expect.

T’Pol: I’m going to recommend that Ambassador Soval watch the film… I believe it would help Vulcans who have recently arrived on Earth.

Archer: Maybe inviting her to movie night wasn’t such a great idea.

This conversation successfully brings to the surface a number of issues related, in my opinion, to the failure of the show. It's not only what T'Pol says (which is so remarkably true about the humans with whom she serves), it's the reaction of the other two officers. Tucker and Archer first laugh at her, then defend human (and their own, oft-repeated) immature responses to those different from them, then fail completely to understand what she is trying to say to them, both about her experience on Enterprise and about the response of humans to all those who are different.

In fact, it's as if Archer lacks the intellectual capacity (and the willingness) to try to understand what she is saying to him. It is precisely these limitations that make the true Star Trek fans (intelligent, thoughtful and inclusive) despise Archer and turn their backs on the show.

I wonder if Bormanis did, in fact, intend to write this episode as a warning/critique for his fellow writers and for B&B themselves. Or perhaps I'm giving him too much credit -- maybe he sides with Archer and Tucker in this last conversation and doesn't even understand the subtext he's created.

But it's a very useful and interesting episode none-the-less.