4x17 Bound

[4.7/10] This episode plays like it was written by a fourteen-year-old boy. I am no prude, but good lord, did we really need an episode where a bunch of scantily clad Orion slave girls prance around the ship for forty minutes seducing everything in sight? I’m loathe to keep bringing it up, but as neat as it is see Original Series superfan Manny Cotto forging connections with the 1960s series, I wish he would keep the thoughtful moral dilemmas and world-building, and leave behind the barely-there costumes and decades-old attitude about sexuality.

What’s bizarre is that you can tell Cotto (the credited writer and the season 4 showrunner) and company mean for this to be a “girl power” episode, in a very early aughts fashion. The big twist here is that after forty years of people assuming the alluring green ladies were property, it turns out that they use their pheromones to control men of multiple species and cause them to do their bidding. As the Orion captain puts it, we’ve been suffering under a misconception -- the men are the slaves and the women are the masters.

I’m hesitant to slate Cotto and company too hard for the fact that this plays out like a dramatization of an MRA delusion -- that women hold the real power in society given their role in American sexual norms, a canard that the likes of Scott Adams has perpetuated. But even setting that aside, the reveal feels like a tepid, early 2000s attempt to try to retcon a very 1960s bit of unpleasant but par-for-the-course sexism into something meant to be empowering but which turns out to be shallow and vaguely insulting.

Then there’s the parts of the episode that are just gratuitous. There’s a weak but plausible argument for why you have to keep the Orion women in their skimpy slave outfits for the entire reason. But there’s no good reason why you need to include a softcore mini-music video with ludicrous pans other than to give lonely nerds some “idle hands” material as Mayweather puts it. I don’t mind when Star Trek includes some lascivious elements from time to time, but there’s a rank sense of indulgence here that just reeks of pandering. I guess there’s fans who come to Star Trek for that sort of gratification, but Enterprise certainly doesn't need to be tailoring its content for them.

Then there’s just the utter cheesiness of the thing. Whether it's the Orion women playing seductive, or the men on the ship playing smitten, everyone goes very very broad here. There’s not a hint of subtlety in anyone’s performance, to where the male characters are practically biting their knuckles every time one of the Orion women saunters onto the screen. It’s a preteen hooting sort of ingredient to add to the show, and while you can try to write it off as a reaction to the Orion pheromones, it adds to the air of immaturity that suffuses the whole episode.

The closest thing to a subplot in the episode is the fact that Trip is immune to their charms and T’Pol is immune to the competition-repelling effects of their pheromones as well. T’Pol has her Vulcan physiology to thank (it’s striking how many maladies of the week T’Pol is able to avoid because she’s Vulcan -- apparently they’re made of heartier stock than we humans!), but Trip is only able to resist them because of a telepathic link with T’Pol, one that fell into place after they “mated” or “bonded”.

Now let’s be real (on this show that involves alternate dimensions and psychic powers and time travel) -- this makes absolutely no sense. How a psychic link between T’Pol and Trip results into a transmitted physiological resistance to a pheromone is utterly implausible. That said, the idea is kind of sweet. Whether it makes sense or not, it’s a stand-in for the idea that Trip and T’Pol love one another, and that alone is responsible for Trip not succumbing to the same “hummuna hummuna” reaction the other men on the ship have.

The problem is that “Bound” mitigates that sweetness by having Trip acting like a dick to T’Pol for much of the episode. He sidesteps her question about daydreams and needles her about it. When she asks him to stay he again ribs her and provokes her into admitting she wants him back without expressing any of his own feelings. And then he toys with her emotions, acting like he’s unmoved by her plea before admitting that he requested a transfer back three days ago.

The best face you can put on this stuff is that Trip wanted to see stoic Vulcan T’Pol be upfront about her feelings. But it comes off way more like the show wants Trip to be roguish, semi-jerky Han Solo here, and whether it’s the writing or the way that character has aged, it’s just not a good look for him or anyone. I’m glad that the show is (seemingly) finally pulling the trigger on T’Pol and Trip, and I don’t even really mind the “Trip transferred away for about five minutes” storyline. But having Trip be such a jerk about it deters me from rooting for their romance.

The only other subplot of note is the fact that Commander Kelby, aka Mr. “blink and you’ll miss the fact that I was briefly Trip’s replacement” understandably bristles at the return of his predecessor. Naturally, the Orions take advantage of this with some Lady MacBeth-ing, and convince him to disable the Enterprise so that some Orion marauders can come and loot it.

Kelby is barely a character and more of a living obstacle to trip and another rube in the Orions’ game. It’s part and parcel with the cartoony reactions ever person on the ship (save Trip and T’Pol) have to the Orions’ seduction routine. The whole thing is just tiresome, showing all of the nuance and logic of a Pepe Le Pew short. While there’s some tension in even steely Archer being taken in by their chemical lures and nearly throwing everyone to the wolves in the process, the quick fix at the end doesn't really justify all the faux-sexy capering that stretches on for most of the episode’s runtime.

This really does feel like an Original Series episode, and not in a good way. There’s the scantily-clad ladies, the dumb banter at the end of the episode, and the gender mores of the 1960s with little more than a nineties girl power coat of paint on them. Season 4 has largely been a good one, but this is the absolute nadir of it so far -- a chore of an episode that seems misdirected and ill-considered from the jump.