3x20 The Forgotten

[8.4/10] I give Enterprise a fair amount of crap about its efforts to tell a post-9/11 story within the confines of the Star Trek universe. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I still don’t feel like this series is generally equipped to capture the moral nuances and complex emotions that stem from an act which irrevocably changed the psyche of our nation. It’s a noble impulse, but darker and edgier isn’t a look this show can really pull off, and the ethical calculations and te psychology of fear and anger of a nation attacked at home by terrorists would be tough topics for any show to tackle, not just one that had trouble telling the usual Trek-y explorer stories.

But credit where credit is due. “The Forgotten” grazes some of the broader implications of the Xindi attack on who and what Starfleet is, but its focus is more about the personal aftermath of such a tragedy. It is about Trip mourning his sister, about him mourning his crewman, about him accepting and confronting the fact that people he cared deeply about are not here anymore because of a senseless act. It’s about a drive to remember those lost, no matter how painful it may be, rather than to simply try to move on and let their names and faces be lost in a sea of images and statistics.

There is power in that. Enterprise is rarely a show I find heartrending, but when Trip breaks down to T’Pol and admits that he cannot escape or elide the unmooring realization that however much he may not want to prioritize his pain over anyone else’s, his sister is gone, and he’ll never see her again, and that hurts deeply.

Trip is not exactly stoic. He is colorful and expressive and amusing as a character. But he’s usually one to take things in stride, offer a quip or vent to whoever’s nearest, and move on. To see him break down like that, to admit his pain and his bitterness and the irrevocability of his loss, has the force of seeing a normally self-assured officer come undone.

It’s one of the strongest moments in the series, and certainly the strongest of this arc. It brings this attempt to capture one of the most fraught times in American history through bombastic space opera back town to Earth, in the thorny efforts of one person to cope with the way an unspeakable and far reaching tragedy has twisted him up personally. It even dovetails nicely with this regrettable T’Pol emotion-through-addiction storyline, where she envies humans for being able to feel such powerful emotions without being overwhelmed by them.

Trip’s reaction isn’t just one of sadness or loss, though, it’s one of anger. Degra is on the ship, trying to probe and potentially cement an alliance with the humans on behalf of the Xindi humanoids and primates. But Trip is, understandably, barely able to restrain himself from confronting the builder of the weapon that killed 7 million people on Earth with the amount of blood on his hands. It would be unthinkable for someone who’s lost what Trip’s lost to have to work with, let alone team with, the people responsible for the death of his sister, no matter how practical it might be.

But I actually appreciate the practicality of this situation. I complained a bit in my last write-up about how easily swayed by Archer’s story and medal the good guy Xindi were. The B-story in “The Forgotten” is devoted to Degra and his primate pal plumbing the depths of Archer’s story, seeing the Reptilian Xindi that Archer caught in the past, the bioweapon, the internal sphere data, and more. It’s not incontrovertible proof or anything, but it’s at least Degra putting Archer’s incredible story through it’s paces, with the primate friend questioning whether there’s any greater basis to believe Archer vs. the Sphere-Builder Woman we met in the last episode.

Sure, some of this is lip-service, and there’s plenty of holes or at least things that are impossible to prove about Archer’s pitch to Degra, but it shows at least some substantiation, which helps set up the choice for Degra to turn on the Reptilians and try to get Archer an audience in front of the council.

Of course, before that can happen, we need another intergalactic dogfight. The episode does well at upping the tension in a more cerebral episode when a Reptilian Xindi ship shows up to cause trouble. “The Forgotten” plays coy about whether this has all been enough to allay Degra’s fears, but the resulting doublecross of the Reptilians makes for a dramatic space battle and a fragile alliance that’s earned, or at least earned enough, by the doublechecking and corroboration that takes place in the B-story.

The A-story needs some heightened tension too, so we see Trip and Malcolm in EV suits on the hull of the ship repairing a plasma leak while the temperature rises. The set piece is nicely paced, with the hitches in that effort coming along nicely, and editing that makes the simple act of opening a panel and turning a lever feel like one of the most dramatic things in the world.

Still, much of that drama comes from the fact that, as another unavailing speech at the top of the episode reveals, eighteen members of the Enterprise crew died in the most recent Xindi attack. There’s a keen awareness of people having given their lives for this mission, and the struggle everyone has to both keep that in mind as a reason for recommitting themselves to the cause these people sacrificed themselves for, and to not let it overtake them or keep them from grieving for the loss.

For Trip, that comes out when Archer orders him to write a bereavement letter to the parents of a young engineer who died in the attack. Trip struggles with for almost all of the episode, dealing with his survivor’s guilt, the blame he wants to place on himself for bringing her onto the crew, and the way that she reminds him of his sister, and forces him to face his grief over her death as well.

It’s a nice device for getting at that pain, even if it ends up in the awkward position of having Trip make someone else’s death about his own, separate loss. Still, the episode generally threads the needle, showing Trip slowly but surely processing his anger and sense of loss, until he ultimately accepts and expresses it, both to T’Pol and to the parents of his fallen crewmate.

It’s the sort of personal story that Enterprise has shown itself more than capable of when it’s firing on all cylinders. It’s a performance from Connor Trineer that we’ve seen shades of before, but which surpasses even his best work from earlier in the series. And it’s an episode about the type of grief and anger that emerged over those who’d been lost in the September 11th attacks that manages to translate those emotions and the complex mourning process into a narrative space, that makes them relatable, recognizable, and eighteen years later, helps us remember.