Episode 73: E2 (E-squared)

"E2" is an interesting episode.

Packed with action and some interesting character development (as well as continued excellent performances by Connor Trinneer and, especially, Jolene Blalock), Michael Sussman's "E2" pays homage (to the point of outright copying) to one of the best episodes of TNG ("Yesterday's Enterprise") while providing the inspiration for some of the more interesting aspects of J.J. Abrams' original reboot film Star Trek.

The problem is: the entire plot is predicated upon characters making such stupid decisions that the show just does not work.

I apologize, by the way, that I can't get Blogger to superscript the "2" make that read "E-Squared" like it should.

In the teaser, after the obligatory "Previously on Enterprise" time-wasting nonsense, a now-ancient T'Pol tells a middle-aged Vulcan Star Fleet officer that, since their efforts have failed, the male Vulcan now has no choice but to find Archer.

The show proper begins with Tucker dropping into T'Pol's quarters to find out if she's okay and to offer her his help. Tucker has noticed that T'Pol has been remarkably withdrawn of late and is worried about her. A visibly conflicted T'Pol, however, refuses his offer.

Enterprise, meanwhile, is preparing herself to enter the warp conduit that will allow her to get to the Xindi Council in time. The crew devises a plan to evade the six alien ships that seem to be guarding the entrance to the vortex but, as they are about to put their plan into action, a ship drops out of warp nearby.

To their surprise, it's a Star Fleet vessel... an NX-class ship (Columbia? but it can't be completed yet!)... holy crap, it's Enterprise. Another Enterprise... E2.

The Vulcan captain (Lorian) comes aboard E1 and explains: when Enterprise enters the warp conduit, it will be transported irretrievably 100 years into the past. E2 is, in fact, Archer's Enterprise the has survived the past 100 years in the Expanse and is now crewed by the children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren of Archer's people. Lorian, in fact, is the son of T'Pol and Tucker.

Lorian explains that, after finding themselves 100 years in the past, Archer and his team decided they could not return to Earth for fear of contaminating the timeline and decided, instead, to become a generational ship whose sole purpose is to survive long enough to stop the launch of the first Xindi test weapon. Throughout the previous century, Enterprise has encountered many different species and gained a great deal of new technology while continuously studying how to stop the Xindi.

Problem is, when the time came, Lorian and his crew failed to stop the launch of the test weapon.

As the Archer crew beings to digest this peek into a version of their future, Lorian communicates a plan his mother has devised to use some of the technology E2 has gained to soup E1 up so that it can get to the Xindi Council in time without having to resort to the time-destroying warp conduit. E2 cannot itself be souped up because its plasma injectors are too old to handle the strain.

The only problem is, Lorian does not tell Archer that the elder T'Pol believes their plan will fail and the new technology will destroy E1 rather than getting it to the Council on time.

The elder T'Pol, however, tips E1 off and Archer returns to his plan to use the conduit, hoping to avoid the time-travel problem by learning from E2's experience and adapting some of E2's technology.

Lorian, who turns out to be even more obsessed with the success of the mission (having failed in his own attempt to destroy the Xindi test weapon) thanks Archer, devises a plot to steal E1's almost new plasma injectors for installation in E2 so that E2 and its crew can put his plan into action and appear in front of the Xindi Council.

A space battle ensues in which both E1 and E2 are damaged but Archer's ship eventually prevails, thanks to inventive use of the transporter and a refusal by the E2 crew to kill their own ancestors. A defeated Lorian then agrees to help E1 put the original conduit plan into action.

Young T'Pol pays a visit to her elder self to discuss a problem that has arisen, giving older T'Pol the chance to tell her younger self that the emotions she has freed through her addiction to Trellium will never entirely go away and that she should turn to Tucker for help and support. Star Trek fans who watched Enterprise in 2004 and then watched Abrams' reboot movie in 2010 must have found the scene involving young Spock meeting his elder self eerily reminiscent of this scene in tone and content.

Meanwhile the similarities of "E2"'s plot to "Yesterday's Enterprise" become blazingly obvious in the penultimate scene where E2 sacrifices itself to fight off six alien ships in order to permit E1 to make it safely into the conduit. The visuals are remarkably similar. The plan works and E1 emerges where it should be, when it should be, early, in fact, for Archer's date with the Council.

All in all, it is an entertaining and quite fun episode. Blalock in particular offers an exceptional performance (or, should I say, exceptional performances) as T'Pol the younger and T'Pol the elder.

But there are so many really crazy decisions made, especially by the E2 crew, that the episode can only be described as ridiculous.

Jonathan Archer, who has obsessed about stopping the Xindi assault on Earth for six or more months, who has experienced time travel and its effects on several occasions, who was about to embark on a diplomatic effort to make peace with the Xindi, and who now captains a battered but still serviceable 22nd Century ship is tossed back in time by 100 years and he does what????

He decides to sit tight, to try to survive, to create a generational ship and then to attempt to intervene in the Xindi plans only at the very moment that the test weapon is launched? And his justification for this remarkable decision is because he does not want to contaminate the timeline?

Huh? Are you kidding me?

First, intervening to stop the launch of the Xindi test weapon is, itself, a contamination of the time line. Those events occurred before Enterprise was/is/will be tossed back in time. So the "we don't want to contaminate the time line" argument is shot to pieces even before it is uttered.

Second, with the contamination argument put to bed, a sensible decision would be for Enterprise to proceed immediately to make friendly first contact with the Xindi, who at that point in history must have been either barely pre-warp or, considering they are ahead of humans in the 22nd Century, perhaps warp newbies. Archer had already come to the conclusion that diplomacy was the way --what better way to avoid the disastrous events of the 22nd Century than to ensure that 100 years of friendly relations exist when the subject time period rolls around?

Third, if diplomacy isn't attractive but the contamination argument is still put to bed, why not return to Earth, accelerate human development of warp technology and ensure that humans are never forced to cling to the hated Vulcan apron strings? Earth could be prepared to deal with the Xindi more effectively.

Fourth, if they were intent on waiting but still willing to cause minor contamination, why wouldn't they head to Earth, say, two years ago to warn Star Fleet about the Xindi threat, to work with E1 to defend Florida, etc.?

Fifth, there are many many other options, every one of them making more sense than deciding to hang out in the Expanse for 100 years and hope that your ancestors will be able to sort out the Xindi when the time comes.

In the final scene, once the excitement is over and it seems clear E2 is not going to catch up to them, Archer and T'Pol wonder if E2 had been destroyed or if, now that E1 has avoided the time trap in the conduit, E2 never actually existed, a possibility that apparently no one considered before the big final scene.

Time travel messes up plots. It's a fact.

All of that aside, there are a huge number of other problems with this plot. For example:

1. Where is Daniels? His time cops must have recognized that E2 has moved to a period in history where it doesn't belong. Why haven't they intervened?
2. Why isn't E2 in better shape? With 100 years to repair and develop her and lots of wonderful chances to adopt alien technology, why does E2 still show significant damage from the battle with the Xindi and why is E2 merely a match for E1 when the battle takes place?
3. Lorian establishes early on that E2's plasma injectors are "too old" to handle the adaptations he proposes to make to E1, with her almost new injectors. He says later in the show that it's okay to steal E1's plasma injectors because Tucker will be able to make new ones. So why can't E2's people do the same? They've had 100 years to figure it out. They've made other modifications (improvements to climate controls, creation of a tractor beam). What's the problem?
4. Wouldn't it have been smart for E1 and E2 to exchange warp coils before they split up? I mean, E1 is using an inferior alien coil that limits her speed; if they decided it was more important for E1 to get through than for E2, why not exchange?

Episode 72: The Forgotten

If it weren't for strong performances by Connor Trinneer and Jolene Blalock as characters wrestling with similarly powerful but very different emotional ordeals, "The Forgotten" would be completely forgettable.

It's a bridge episode and, but for some excellent acting, nothing more.

Written by Chris Black and David Goodman, "The Forgotten" sets up Enterprise's desperate trip to the Xindi Council and Archer's impassioned plea for a diplomatic solution to the conflict between the Xindi and the Humans.

Still battling to patch up their battered ship, Archer and his crew meet up with Degra and some of his Xindi colleagues at the rendezvous point where the good Captain gives the Xindi leaders a tour of the evidence he has to support his claims. We finally find out what happened to the three Xindi Reptilians Archer and T'Pol brought back from Earth's past -- their bodies are held in cold storage and their technology stored in a locker -- and we see that the body of the representative of the Sphere People is also stored.

Degra appears convinced and offers to help Archer repair his ship but the other Xindi leaders (an Arboreal and another Primate) are not so certain. Meanwhile, Tucker is forced to deal with his long-contained anger and grief over the death of his sister in the original Xindi attack on Earth and of a valued crew member in a more recent battle. He takes his fury out on Degra in a manner that threatens to jeopardize Archer's efforts to establish trust and it is T'Pol, still battling her own overwhelming emotions in the wake of her Trellium addiction, who has to intervene to calm him down.

When a warp plasma conduit explodes in flames on the ship's saucer section and the resultant fire threatens the warp core itself, Tucker and Reid are forced to take a dangerous space walk to repair it. They are successful but only just. Reid succumbs to the heat of the fire and has to be rushed to Sick Bay for treatment. This is the last straw and Tucker lashes out at Degra one more time -- fortunately for Enterprise's mission, Degra is so guilt-stricken at encountering the devastation his weapon has caused that he takes Tucker's verbal assault as deserved and continues to help.

Degra convinces Archer that he must make a presentation to the Xindi Council soon but, as Degra and his ship prepare to leave, a Xindi Reptilian warship appears. Degra and his crew help defend Enterprise and then, in a surprising show of cooperation and trust, Degra's ship destroys the Reptilian vessel to ensure no reports of the Xindi-Star Fleet detente reach the other Xindi leaders.

There's nothing innovative nor particularly interesting about the main plot. On the other hand, the episode, which moves at a leisurely pace, provides Trinneer and Blalock opportunities to shine as actors. Their roles are not easy: Trinneer must show conflict, grief, guilt and almost impotent fury while maintaining his macho, ol' boy presentation; Blalock must convey the ongoing internal battle between her Vulcan upbringing and her roiling emotions while maintaining a rational public face.

Both provide impressive performances, better than the episode deserves. Far better than the fairly flat, wooden performances offered by just about every other member of the Enterprise crew. Now, that might not be entirely the fault of the actors: other than Tucker and T'Pol (and perhaps Phlox), every other major Star Fleet character is given little emotional range with which to play by the writers -- Archer is intense and often angry, Reid is quiet and seething, Mayweather and Sato almost not present at all.

Randy Oglesby, as Degra, meanwhile, manages to do a nice job of battling through his make-up and prosthetics to convey the internal turmoil overwhelming his character.

Epsiode 71: Damage

Ahh, so that's why T'Pol has been acting so strangely. She is addicted to Trellium D, which strips her of her emotional control!


OK. That works... only, why would a being who is driven by logic and reason, who is trained from birth to be in control, fall so easily out of control?


What flaw does T'Pol possess that makes her so un-Vulcan in her inability to control her drives?


I fear the answer is that T'Pol is a woman and, well, this is B&B's version Star Trek, which doesn't just take place before TOS but also before the 1960s and 1970s, when western society started to make strides (albeit small ones) toward women's equality and the celebration of diversity.


Or... that someone came along after earlier episodes in Season Three which featured T'Pol behaving so unlike any Vulcan before her and said, "Hey, you can't have her do that without some explanation!" And so Phyllis Strong came along and said, "I know, let's make her an addict. That will explain EVERYTHING!"


Strong's "Damage" follows up immediately on the mess left at the end of "Azati Prime". Enterprise is about to be blown to pieces by a Xindi task force and Captain Archer is being tortured by the enemy. Luckily, Archer's efforts to reach Degra are successful, the Xindi ships are called off and Archer is turned over to the Xindi Aquatics for delivery to the Council.


Degra apparently intervenes even further and gets Archer delivered in pod back to Enterprise as she tries to pick up the pieces. Rarely has a Star Fleet ship been battered into a worse condition (the Seleya was in better shape) and the Enterprise crew struggles to put her back together.


As Archer and his ship start to recover, T'Pol falls to pieces and we learn her secret: she's been mainlining Trellium D for months and is now a complete addict, with little or no emotional control left to her.


Tucker delivers to Archer the sobering news that the ship's warp coil is damaged beyond repair and they have no way of replacing it. When an alien ship flies up, asking for help to repair its own damage suffered by way of the spatial anomalies, Archer agrees to help but only in return for the alien's warp coil. The alien captain politely refuses (without warp power, they would be three years away from their home world without sufficient provisions to get home) and goes on his way.


Sato, meanwhile, has discovered a coded message in the computer memory of the pod that delivered Archer, inviting Enterprise to a meeting with Degra in a couple of days at a location some distance away. Without warp drive, Enterprise cannot get there in time.


Over the protests of almost every member of his senior crew, Archer makes the difficult decision to track down the alien ship and take its warp core by force. With Archer leading the boarding party, a struggling T'Pol tries to hold things together well enough to lead Enterprise in its battle with the alien ship. T'Pol's goal: don't lose but also don't win so strongly that the alien ship is crippled and unable to limp to its home.


Archer finally succeeds at stealing the warp coil and justifies his actions to the alien captain by telling him his race's survival depends on the warp coil and, besides, Enterprise put both Trellium D and extra food in their storage rooms.


Meanwhile, T'Pol seeks help from Phlox to try to kick her addiction and the Xindi Council challenges the Sphere People and their actions in helping the Reptilians attempt to build a biological weapon in the past, in direct contravention of the Council's orders.


Once again, this is a well-paced, well-directed episode of science fiction. If we set aside our reservations with regard both to the depiction of T'Pol and the inconsistency of Archer's moral values, "Damage" works well.


I don't understand how Enterprise, in its crippled condition, could find and dominate the alien ship which still had warp power. I don't get why the Enterprise crew appears so willing in some moments to use the transporter liberally and then, in other moments, forget that it exists at all.


And I still can't quite understand how T'Pol, given her addiction, loss of control and new withdrawal symptoms, would accept command of the Enterprise in a battle situation.


And, finally, what's with the Sphere People and the remarkable (yet patronizing) control they seem to exert over the Xindi and over time itself?

Episode 70: Azati Prime

It is episodes like "Azati Prime" that show why I am not a fan of plots that rely on time travel.


I watched the episode and, after Archer was whisked ahead in time by our old friend Daniels then put back into the shuttle bay, I gave up caring what happened. After all, no matter what the Xindi Reptilians did to Archer in their torture chamber, no matter what the six Xindi warships did to Enterprise, Daniels could just sweep in and make it all alright.


The fact that he doesn't makes the story line even sillier.


In this much anticipated episode written by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Manny Coto , Enterprise arrives, at long last, at Azati Prime, the location of the Xindi weapons facility. After determining the location of the facility underwater on the main planet, Archer takes it upon himself to conduct the suicide mission of flying the salvaged Xindi battle shuttle through all the defenses and blowing up the weapon and, with it, the facility.


An emotionally wrought T'Pol tries both anger and tears to convince Archer not to go ("I don't want you to die!" she cries at last) but the Captain is adamant that he will order the deaths of no one else. As Archer steps aboard the pod, he is transported forward to Enterprise J (about 400 years in the future) where Daniels shows him a pivotal battle in a war between the Federation (which includes the Xindi) and the alien race from "Harbinger". This race, Daniels explains, designed the spheres to transform sections of normal space to meet their needs as a prelude to invasion. The Sphere People wants the Xindi to destroy Earth so that humans do not play the pivotal role in the creation of the Federation so that there is no alliance of races to repel the invasion 400 years later.


Got that?


Daniels explains that Archer should talk to the Xindi and negotiate a peace with them since both humans and the Xindi are being used as pawns by the Sphere People. Daniels gives him a Xindi medallion from the future to use as proof of what he is saying.


Daniels further tells Archer that Archer, and Archer alone, MUST survive because the entire history of the future depends on him being alive to help germinate the Federation. ("I don't want you to die!" Daniels might as well have cried at last). Archer, Daniel says, must give up the attack mission and try to negotiate a resolution instead.


Archer refuses and demands to be sent back to his mission. When he arrives at the weapons facility, he finds that the weapon is gone. His pod is captured and he is tortured by the Xindi Reptilians. Meanwhile, the Reptilians, in direct rejection of directions from the Xindi Council, order a task force of ships (six) to destroy Enterprise, which they have spotted hiding behind a planet near the facility.


Archer endures the torture and manages to convince the Reptilians to let him speak to Degra, the weapon designer whom we met in earlier episodes. Then begins the slow process of trying to convince the Xindi Council that they are being used by the Sphere People.


Enterprise, meanwhile, is torn to pieces by the six Xindi ships as the show comes to a close.


A dramatic episode with good pace and some decent acting. It even has some humour that works, woven into the tension, which is the hallmark of the best of Trek.


I have to say, however, I found it a bit hard to take Archer's brooding and moralizing over the requirement that he kill Xindi, considering his willingness to torture and kill with little convincing in earlier episodes and the fact that he is the Captain of the ship that carries Earth's only hope of survival in war with a race that is bent on annihilating the human race and has already murdered 7-million humans in an unprovoked attack.


I also found T'Pol's complete un-Vulcan and unprofessional behavior to be offensive. Not only have the show runners reduced the number of significant female roles in the show to ONE (even all the Xindi appear to be male) but they have now reduced that one female (despite the fact that she represents a historically dignified, stoic, rational and logical race) into the worst stereotype of the weak, emotional, irrational human female. More on this in the next entry.


And then there are all the little flaws that just make you wonder:


1. Enterprise arrives in the Azati system and chooses to hide behind an apparently barren planet for safety purposes, yet fails entirely to scan the entire planet for signs of a Xindi presence. Several hours later, in a pivotal plot point, the rotation of the planet brings the ship into the range of the sensors of a fairly predictably placed Xindi scanning station, leading Archer to have to order the destruction of the station and the death of the three Xindi in it and also leading to the discovery of Enterprise a short time later which, of course, ruins their entire plan;
2. In earlier episodes, we have seen Enterprise easily destroy two Xindi warships in fairly short order so, while it is believable that she might be eventually overwhelmed when faced with six Xindi warships, it's hard to accept that she is so completely overwhelmed so quickly;
3. On a similar subject, how is that, in every other Star Trek space battle, the losing ship blows up after say four or five hits but, in this episode, Enterprise gets hit and hit and hit and hit by enemy fire yet still floats and still operates?
4. Is T'Pol in love with Tucker? In love with Archer? both? Neither? Huh?
5. How is that Mayweather, a seasoned pilot with time to learn the controls of the Xindi battle shuttle (and with Tucker on board to help), slips and slides all over space yet Archer, with an hour to train, flies so smoothly?
6. Why would the Xindi, having challenged Mayweather and Tucker when their battle shuttle first entered the defense perimeter, not continue to track their movements until they left the defense perimeter instead of just letting them ENTER THE WEAPON???
7. How is it that the Reptilian task force, ordered to attack Enterprise before Archer leaves in his battle shuttle, make the trip and begin their attack after Archer makes the same trip (but in the other direction) in what I would guess is a smaller and slower vehicle) and gets captured?
8. And why, oh why, is Daniels the first person to suggest that Archer and his crew reach out to the Xindi to try to negotiate a peaceful resolution? The Xindi apparently have incredible technology compared to Star Fleet, a wide variety and large number of ships that rival Earth's lone Warp 5 vessel and are developing a massive, planet killing weapon that Star Fleet appears incapable of stopping once launched. Why wasn't the first option explored a diplomatic one???


Oh, so many questions.


A NOTE ON TIME TRAVEL
Enterprise involves the outbreak of what is called a Temporal Cold War, with at least three different factions attempting to manipulate events in the 22nd century to accomplish certain goals up to 400 years later.


Daniels represents the Federation faction (Faction One) which purports to be focused on maintaining the right timeline, which involves the Federation lasting forever. Daniels is able to travel though time himself and is able to bring people from one time to another, backwards and forwards.


A mysterious human-esque dude represents Faction Two, which is attempting to use the Suliban to stop both human exploration of space and the development of the Federation, for purposes about which I am not entirely clear. Faction Two does not appear to have the ability to travel through time but can communicate through time. Further, Faction Two's technology has proven useful to the Federation faction to transport people through time.


The Sphere People (Faction Three) are a trans-dimensional race from an unknown time that is attempting to manipulate the Xindi to get them to destroy the human race so that the Federation is not formed and is not in a position in the 26th century to repel the invasion of normal space by the Sphere People. Faction Three can transport people through time as well though it is unclear whether or not members of the Sphere People can, themselves, travel through time.


All three Factions are attempting to use people from the 22nd Century for their own long-term ends yet two out of three Factions can transport people and equipment back and forward through time. Further, it is clear that weapons exist that are capable of destroying entire planets -- we've seen them through Star Trek lore, from the Xindi weapon to the Doomsday Machine of TOS to the red matter drill thing of the Star Trek reboot.


Why wouldn't Daniels just go far enough back in time to destroy the Suliban, the Xindi, the Sphere People before they have developed far enough to pose a threat?


Why wouldn't the Sphere People send a Xindi task force back to Earth of the 19th, 18th, 17th, 16th etc., Century to destroy Earth before it could even resist them?


Why wouldn't the Borg do this?


If Daniels can move Archer anywhere in time, why would he put him back on Enterprise just before the Azati Prime assault? Why not put him back far enough in time that Earth can destroy the Xindi test weapon before it arrives at Earth and kills 7-million people? Why not send Enterprise back to 1922 so that it can attack and destroy the Xindi before any threat is posed?


Time travel sucks the life out of drama and, unless very careful rules are put in place and enforced throughout the narrative, it makes any plot ridiculous.

Episode 69: Hatchery

"Hatchery" is one of those "What's wrong with the Captain" episodes that seems to crop up in every iteration of the Star Trek franchise.


This plot makes its debut in TOS with shows like the awful "Turnabout Intruder" and it runs along fairly simple lines:

• The Captain begins to behave strangely, making decisions that don't make sense and that tend to put the ship and crew in jeopardy;
• The crew is torn between loyalty to their leader (mixed with their military sense of duty) and the growing recognition that something is really really wrong;
• When the crew finally decides to take steps to stop the Captain, the Captain charges them with insubordination/treason and tries to lock them up;
• The crew is forced to resort to desperate measures to stop the madness.

"Hatchery", written by André Bormanis and Michael Sussman, does a decent job with the old plot, creating, if not actual suspense, then real creepiness, and provides some decent action scenes as the story comes to a resolution.


In summary, the plot revolves around the Enterprise's discovery of a Xindi Insectoid ship, crashed on a barren planet. While investigating, the Star Fleet crew find three things of significant interest: an operating and accessible Xindi computer system, which permits them to study language, weapons and tactics; an intact Xindi battle shuttle, complete with particle weapons and torpedoes; and a hatchery, filled with Insectoid eggs that are still viable.


While investigating the hatchery, Archer is sprayed by some sort of acid from one of the eggs but Phlox finds nothing to worry about other than burns (which disappear, by the way, in a single scene).


The other crew members work on bringing back to Enterprise and analyzing the Xindi data and battle shuttle in preparation to resume their sprint to the Xindi weapons facility but Archer becomes more and more obsessed with saving the Xindi eggs, to the point that he is willing to sacrifice a significant portion of Enterprise's anti-matter reserve and a great deal of time in the process.


The anti-matter decision brings open challenge from T'Pol, who is promptly arrested and confined to her quarters under MACO guard. Reid is then removed from duty when he destroys an attacking Xindi ship -- Archer argues that he should have negotiated with the Xindi to arrange the survival of the eggs -- and Major Hayes is made second in command.


When Archer orders Sato to send out a distress call in Xindi Insectoid language as soon as she has figured out enough of their language, thus exposing Enterprise's position and opening her up to attack from potentially dozens of Xindi ships, Tucker has had enough and begins planning and implementing the revolution with T'Pol and Reid. The revolution is successful, Tucker is forced to stun Archer and subsequent medical examinations reveal that the Xindi egg wasn't just burning Archer, it was also injecting him with a hormone that makes him imprint on the hatchery so that he will do anything to protect it and its eggs.


Of course, to appreciate the good in this episode, you have to set aside two major reservations, both of which could have been addressed with a line or two of dialogue but were not.


First, we have established over and over again the mission imperative -- get to the Xindi weapon facility as soon as possible and let nothing distract you from your goal -- yet we begin with Enterprise taking the time to survey what seems to be an uninhabitable planet.


This is easily resolved by the inclusion of some opening lines of dialogue: "Long range sensors have picked up what appears to be a crashed Xindi ship on a planet we are approaching, sir"; "A Xindi warship? The tactical value of investigating is too good to pass up. Plot a course".


Second, Phlox misses the "hormone" that the Xindi egg injected into Archer when he first examines him, dismissing the Xindi spray as a "defense mechanism" that is intended only to burn the skin of the victim, clearly without doing a thorough examination. This makes no sense. The Captain of Earth's only hope is sprayed by something awful by an egg of his mortal enemy and you don't do a thorough examination? You simply assume?


Once again, this could be easily resolved. When Phlox conducts his initial examination of the Captain, he says: "I've done a full examination and find nothing more than the burn". Later, after the Captain has been shot by Tucker, the Doctor says, "This hormone was untraceable by our medical scanners when first injected -- once it began to exert its influence, however, the scanners were able to find it in his body."


Sloppy sloppy sloppy writing. Representative, I worry, of a singular lack of caring on the part of the creative team, especially about these placeholder episodes that don't contribute significantly to the overarching plot but merely serve to fill the 26-episode commitment for the season.


If you put these two major reservations aside, however, "Hatchery" works well. The writers make sure that Archer has what appear to be valid reasons/arguments for protecting the eggs, at least in the early going, and you can see the conflict within the Enterprise senior crew as it becomes more and more clear that Archer's decisions are dangerous.


Once they make their decision to move against the Captain, T'Pol, Tucker and Reid act quickly and with determination and their stealthy approach to overwhelming the MACOs whom Archer has enlisted to serve as his personal army is convincing.


I wonder how the American military (especially the Marines) enjoyed this episode, however, as the MACOs are presented as mindless automatons, incapable of independent thought, uncritically following even Archer's most problematic orders, while the Enterprise crew come across (at least in the end) as analytical thinkers willing to question authority when it's absolutely necessary to do so.


The other reservation that I will express, and this is aimed not specifically at "Hatchery" but at the tendency that has come to light across the arc of this season, is the concern that Enterprise is becoming more and more a men-only club. And a white-men-only club at that.


Mayweather and Sato play only minor, background roles in these mid-season episodes and are not even recruited into the plan to take on the MACOs and overthrow the Captain. Rather than the full participants that they began season one as, Sato and Mayweather have been allowed to fade almost completely from the main plots, assuming roles more at the level of Sulu and Uhura in TOS than the characters from currently racialized communities in later series, such as LaForge, Sisko, Kim and Tuvok.


The fact that TOS was filmed in the 1960s and was seen as revolutionary simply for the fact that it had African American and Asian senior officers on the bridge makes this regression in Enterprise, filmed 35 or more years later, even more problematic.


By mid-third season, the level of diverse representation on Enterprise, whose major characters comprise four white men (Archer, Tucker, Reid and now Major Hayes), a Vulcan woman (T'Pol, who is constantly sexualized and trivialized) and a non-human male (Phlox), has regressed to the 1960s.


Who's to blame for that?

Episode 68: Doctor's Orders

Chris Blacks' "Doctor's Orders" offers a fairly fun but ridiculous story that centres entirely around Dr. Phlox.


When Enterprise encounters a trans-dimensional disturbance that would require an additional 14 days of travel to go around, Archer agrees to undertake a risky plan to permit the ship to travel through the disturbance instead.


Why is the plan risky? Because Dr. Phlox's study of the disturbance tells them that humans who are exposed to the interior of the disturbance for longer than a few minutes will suffer significant, irreparable damage to their neo-cortex and may die. So, in order to permit Enterprise to traverse the disturbance in an hour at Warp 4, Phlox must put the entire crew (with some non-human exceptions)
 into induced comas to protect their neo-cortexes.


Wait, says Tucker, I don't feel that it's safe to engage our warp engines inside the disturbance so we better just shut down the warp core and proceed through the expanse on impulse power. Instead of a one-hour trip, it will be a four day trip (and I checked, these calculations are fairly accurate) but that's still better than two full weeks.


Tucker's fears are based, apparently, on absolutely no research or data but are just a hunch. Archer trusts Tucker's hunches so four-days it is.


Of course, at this point I'm yelling at the screen: "Wait a minute! In "Similitude", when Enterprise was trapped without warp engines in that weird place where magnetic crud was attaching itself to the ship, no one said anything about impulse engines! The crew had to resort to some impressive shuttle-pod rescue. Why are the impulse engines suddenly an option again?"


Sorry. I just had to say it.


So, Archer decides to risk going through the disturbance to save time, relies on scientific data to make the decision to put the entire crew into a coma for the trip, but then decides to sacrifice almost four full days by not risking the use of the warp engines for the trip, based on no data whatsoever.


And why doesn't he consider the risk of putting Enterprise at such significant risk of attack for FOUR FULL DAYS with no crew? Isn't that just a little too much of a risk, considering the importance of their mission?


Think about it, Archer chooses to put Enterprise, Earth's only hope, into a situation for four entire days where almost the entire crew has to be in coma, there is no possibility of taking them out of coma during that period and they are still in enemy space. Sure, humans can't survive in the disturbance but, if a Dinobulan like Phlox can survive, one would think that a variety of other non-human species (such as Xindi reptilians, aquatics, insectizoids or arboreals, to name a few) should face no danger in the disturbance and could choose to attack Enterprise while it is at its most vulnerable.


The episode is fun -- it gives our new doctor the chance to deliver one of Dr. McCoy's favourite lines ("I'm a doctor, not an engineer") and, seeing Phlox chatting away with Porthos, wandering the ship at his leisure, watching a movie on his own, is a quite enjoyable experience -- but it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Its set-up contravenes most of the conventions about this mission into the Delphic Expanse that we've come to know.


Of interest to me is the fact that, on this one occasion at least, Enterprise's generally poor quality of script writing actually benefits them in this episode. After watching Phlox go through training on driving the ship and maintaining the engines, my first reaction to the appearance of T'Pol while the rest of the crew are in coma was: "Hey, why would they train Phlox on all that ship's operation stuff if T'Pol, who is completely capable, is still awake?"


That occurred to me, sure, but I wrote it off at first on the basis that the writing is so poor that they probably just missed that point. I didn't immediately jump to the recognition that T'Pol is also one of Phlox's hallucinations. Her behavior as the show progresses, however, was so ridiculous (and, frankly, insultingly stereotypical) that I wasn't fooled for long.

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.