4x11 Observer Effect

[9.1/10] If there’s a well-worn trope from The Original Series and beyond, it’s godlike beings examining humanity to see whether we’re a barbarous race too dumb and violent to evolve into higher beings, or a decent, clever species with the capacity for growth. Hell, it’s the animating premise of The Next Generation! Inevitably, there is some sort of test, or trial, or experiment to determine once and for all whether we humans are worthy of the respect or notice of more evolved or powerful lifeforms.

But there’s a reason Star Trek returns to that well so often. It’s a great way to create the sort of moral thought experiments that the franchise thrives on. It’s a venerable means to examine the core characteristics of humanity, and to use advanced species as avatars to debate the good and bad within us. It’s an excuse to question our humble human morality as measured against the oft-callous ethical mores of those more powerful lifeforms, and put both into relief against one another.

That’s what “Observer Effect” accomplishes with its own spin on that time-tested story. A pair of advanced beings are inhabiting Lieutenant Reed and Ensign Mayweather to observe how the crew of the Enterprise responds to a particular challenge. When Trip and Hoshi contract a silicon-based virus, these long-lived beings are present to examine whether Archer and company’s reaction shows intelligent, rational thinking, sufficient for them to be willing to make first contact. It’s a test that, apparently, the Klingons, the Cardassians, and many many other species have failed.

This is putting the cart before the horse, but there’s a Good Omens vibe to this setup. One of the beings is an old pro, and having observed this test for eight-hundred years, he’s rigid about the procedures and skeptical that it’s worth spending much time evaluating these humans. The other is newer, sees a potential in the Enterprise’s response to this crisis, and sees and believes in a brand of compassion and altruism that his counterpart seems reluctant to accept as the natural experiment plays out.

It’s a traditional dramatic diad, but it works here! Like many things in Star Trek, some of the ideas are repurposed or based on archetypes, but they’re durable archetypes that fit into this context. There’s something compelling about these beings who are gradually more and more impressed, or at least intrigued, by the choices the humans make and the things they achieve, until they’re willing to break 10,000 year old rules to help them.

But before that can happen, things have to get bad. What’s particularly striking about “Observer Effect” is that there are effectively no real stakes. All but the most naive Star Trek viewer knows that, by hook or by crook, Trip and Hoshi are going to make it out alive. And yet, we care about their plight for the same reason the superbeings eventually do: because it’s compelling to see people being stoic and brave and comforting one another in the throes of (what they think is) mortal peril, and because we feel for the people trying desperately to save them.

The scenes where Trip and Hoshi are in the thick of the virus’s effects are low-level harrowing, as Hoshi loses her sense and starts trying to break out of the quarantine, while Trip sedates himself and wonders if he’ll ever wake up again. But they’re also an excuse to let us get to know Hoshi a little bit better, learning that she was kicked out of Starfleet for a surreptitious poker game (and, er, breaking her commanding officer’s arm when he tried to stop it). And we learn that Trip, unsurprisingly, was a tinkerer from a young age. These details put us in the shoes of the superbeings, helping us to recognize these guinea pigs as more than that, as human beings with hopes and dreams or, if nothing else, character-revealing backstories.

That said, the superbeings aren’t necessarily interested in whether humans are interesting; they want to know whether we’re smart. And if there’s a major weakness to that premise, it’s that it’s never really clear what the standard for that is supposed to be. It can’t be just killing off anyone with the virus, since the Klingons and Cardassians apparently did that and were judged barbarous for it. Is it figuring out the radiation cure for the virus in time for it to work? If so, that’s a rough standard, since apparently no one in the 800 years the skeptical being has been at this has managed it. It’s left deliberately vague how the Enterprise crew could pass this test, beyond some weird Kobayashi Maru-esque “dealing with a situation in which no matter what you do, you lose someone” idea that doesn't seem to be the point.

But maybe the point is that whatever the being’s standards, they’re too high, or at least testing the wrong thing, since it seems like no one has made it. Instead, the good guy superbeing recognizes the compassion, the empathy in these humans. Archer, Phlox, T’Pol, and others don’t turn their backs on their crewmates. Even when it looks like all is lost, they move heaven and earth to try a cure. Archer risks his own exposure to try to revive Hoshi when their EV suits are too cumbersome for the fine motor skills necessary to do it. He sends Phlox out of sickbay to make sure his doctor survives.

That in and of itself is a pretty standard trope -- that humans are determined and self-sacrificing. But again, it’s a trope for a reason. It strains credulity a bit that no other species in the galaxy in 800 years of tests was willing to be martyrs for their compatriots like this, and there’s a mild perniciousness to the “humans are the specialist creatures in the universe” idea behind it. Still, there is something flattering and vivid to the idea, that seeing this sort of commitment to one’s fellow man is enough to compel the good guy superbeing to see the light (after an Archer speech of course), revive and cure the afflicted crewman, wipe everyone’s memories and reset the status quo.

And better yet, the superbeings turn out to be Organians, the original (or near-original) superbeing testers from The Original Series who founded the peace treaty between humans and Klingons. It’s a nice touch, and an implicit recognition that Enterprise is playing with familiar narratives and character types here.

“Observer Effect” hits some of the expected beats of that narrative type. You have the advanced species that is eventually move by humanity’s plight and potential. You have the human turning the tables, and accusing the godlike creatures of negligence and immorality. And you have the end recognition that there’s some spark to humanity worth saving, or at least not destroying. These ideas are familiar to any longtime Star Trek fan (which you probably are if you’re watching Enterprise), but this episode realizes them well, playing with its sci-fi concepts, characters, and central notions in a way that’s worth of all the stories that came before.