LeftHandedGuitarist

I don't think that's very credible. Yes, she's a hothead, a Klingon and the duty aboard an isolated ship can cause serious issues, but I don't understand why she's suddenly developing such behavior. Are these really symptoms of a depression? They tried the same with Paris (in that body swap episode where he worked on this 20th century holo car) but that also came totally unexpected. They don't tell these stories well. Her engineering skills are impressive though (but I'm also impressed that they were able to build such a ship in their cargo bay. Who needs a shipyard anyway?)

The B-plot (or is that the A-plot?) with the probe is very mediocre. The guy in their Jules Verne/steampunk diving suits are awful. The flyer is nice, though. I hope that's a vessel that we see more often in future episodes: if we're lucky that vessel could be what the Defiant or at least the runabouts were for DS9.

[6.8/10] I don’t know how to give points for effort. Star Trek: Voyager’s heart is in the right place with an episode like ”Extreme Risk”. Trying to tackle depression and suppressing difficult emotions and survivor’s guilt is admirable. The way they try to personalize the story, through a character whose temperament doesn’t lead viewers to expect depression, is a nice way to dramatize a challenging mental health issue that was stigmatized then and in certain corners, remains stigmatized today. I admire what the creative team is going for here, beyond the usual “neat idea for a story” pat on the back.

But the way they realize that concept is problematic to say the least. Depression is not something that gets fixed in forty-five minutes, and it’s certainly not the kind of thing you can (or should!) just harangue someone into getting over. So my desire to give the show credit for its noble aims is tempered by reservations over how the episode actually treats depression.

Let’s start with the good though. I appreciate the way “Extreme Risk” depicts depression not as someone being very sad, but rather as a sort of emotional numbness. I said that B’Elanna’s disposition doesn’t lend itself to an expectation of depression, but in some ways, she’s the perfect character to explore it with, because her reactions, her frustrations, the things that get a reaction out of her, are well-defined. So when they’re shut down and shut off, it’s easy to notice.

Torres has no qualms about putting Seven in charge of a project. She responds with a simple “no” to a boardroom question rather than trying to come up with a creative solution. She doesn’t snipe with Tom or offer a smart remark about Neelix’s cooking. She doesn’t care about the dream engineering job du jour. She’s meeting expectations but she doesn’t care; she’s just listing through life.

Sometimes the episode underlines that fact a little too hard. (Tom’s speech lays it on a bit thick for my tastes.) But the bigger point is that it’s clear something’s wrong. B’Elanna’s lost interest in the things that used to get her going, from resentments of Borg interlopers to thorny technical problems to the fiery personality that occasionally got her in trouble. In a weird way, it’s the opposite of one of The Original Series’ favorite moves. Just like it always made an impression when the typically stoic Spock was suddenly emotional, it makes an impression when the typically emotional B’Elanna is suddenly stoic.

A great deal of credit belongs to Roxann Dawson. It’s not easy to play someone in a state of emotional inertness and make it compelling. But there are subtleties and layers to her performance, where you can see the numbness wear on her, the disinterest wash over her, the evasions that turn into excuses that turn into self-destruction. Her scene with Neelix in particular is raw and sad in a way little on Voyager is. This is arguably the most challenging script the show’s ever delivered for Dawson, and it puts a lot on her shoulders, but it also results in the actor's best performance to date.

My only big problem with the depiction in the early part of the episode comes in the form of the titular extreme risk. Don’t get me wrong, the orbital skydiving sequence is exciting, and there’s still something novel about seeing Cardassians on Voyager (which turns out to be a clue). But this behavior from B’Elanna -- running dangerous holodeck programs and overriding safety protocols -- is a clear metaphor for self-harm, and I have qualms about the outsized depiction of it.

There’s something to be said for the idea of depicting one of the rationales behind self-harm, of wanting control over something, of wanting to feel something through the morass of depression. But representing it through extreme recreational activities feels off, like the show has to make it action-y and exciting because the alternative might be too real or too mundane for a sci-fi adventure series. There’s something cheap about that.

What isn’t cheap is the Delta Flyer. Okay, maybe it’s a little cheap. But still! I don’t know why, but the Flyer is one of the coolest parts of Voyager. As much as I roll my eyes at Tom Paris’ 24th century hotrod-loving sensibility that seems like a hobby transposed from one of the producers, the notion of Voyager having a signature shuttlecraft, one attuned to the environment and distinctive in its design, is one of those neat little features of the show.

The “space race” against the Malon doesn’t do a whole lot for me, though. At least in “Night”, there was some larger moral point to the species' dickishness. But here, they’re just Saturday morning cartoon bad guys, snarling and throwing waste at our heroes in a race to see who can recover a probe first. They serve no purpose but to impose a standard Star Trek ticking clock, and don’t have much going for them beyond that.

That said, as with the storycrafting from Tuvok’s holoprogram last season, it is nice to see the crew going back and forth about what the Flyer should look and otherwise be like. Tom wanting form and Tuvok wanting function is basic, but it’s a nice excuse for the characters to bounce off of one another, including a disinterested B’Elanna.

Unfortunately, the scene where Chakotay finds her passed out after a risky holodeck test of the Flyer is where the real problems start.

Let’s start with the obvious. If someone is in a state of depression, literally dragging them off from their home and otherwise physically imposing yourself on them in the name of treatment is pretty awful. It’s even worse when you are their supervisor. The scenes where Chakotay forces B’Elanna from her quarters and all but pushes her into the holodeck are uncomfortable.

Likewise, if somebody is depressed because they’re reacting poorly to some kind of trauma, forcing them to relive that trauma is absolutely not the answer! Holy hell! Why is this something we have to explain! Chakotay making B’Elanna confront the dead bodies of the Maquis comrades they lost is horrible, even if it’s B’Elanna’s own program.

I get what Voyager is going for here. The idea, and it’s a laudable one, is that Torres is smarting from the enormity of the Maquis being wiped out in the Dominion conflict, but won’t let herself face those feelings. It’s the latest in a long line of losses she’s suffered over the course of her life, and you can understand how that would leave a mark on her. She’s closing herself off from pain and has, in the process, accidentally closed herself off from all emotion. There’s something to that idea, even if our understanding of whether and how to confront grief and loss has evolved since 1998.

But as with the risky holodeck programs, it’s not just enough for B’Elanna and Chakotay to have a charged but empathetic conversation about this. No, we need overblown drama and fireworks because this is an action-adventure show. Everything is so extreme, and it makes Chakotay look downright cruel in how he tries to get B’Elanna over her issues, in a way that seems more likely to make them worse.

Nevermind the fact that Chakotay isn’t any kind of doctor, let alone a therapist, no matter how many of the usual bromides about found families he spouts. And there’s not one scene of anyone suggesting or insisting that B’Elanna speak to the EMH as a legitimate counselor. And the whole episode, even the better-intentioned parts, have the tone of an after school special, which detracts from the commendable project “Extreme Risk” is aiming for here.

The biggest problem of all, though, is the suggestion that this frankly galling attempt at exposure therapy works on B’Elanna. Suddenly, she's awakened enough to join her colleagues on the Delta Flyer mission to retrieve the probe. Now look, as pure action and problem-solving goes, B’Elanna stepping up and jury-rigging a solution to the disintegrating panel is pretty darn cool. But it feels superfluous, at best, to the real issues she’s facing, and it’s mildly insulting to suggest that Chakotay’s hectoring bullshit gave her the kick in the pants she needed.

I appreciate that the episode at least has the decency to suggest that not everything is fixed immediately, and that it will take some time for B’Elanna to recover emotionally, even if it’s unlikely we’ll actually see that. Star Trek trends toward single-serving stories that restore the status quo. So we don’t really deal with Neelix’s hopelessness, or Chief O’Brien’s suicidal ideation, or Geordi’s Manchurian Candidate experience, or Kirk’s pregnant wife dying ever again. That is the nature of the beast, and you have to accept it if you’re going to appreciate this form of storytelling for what it is.

But it’s outrageous to present the idea that one arguably abusive pep talk from Chakotay is all that B’Elanna needs to get her on the right track. Dealing with depression and other mental illnesses is hard work. As the voice of none other than George Takei would later tell the title character of BoJack Horseman, “Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that's the hard part. But it does get easier.”

Voyager can't or won’t do it everyday. I doubt the show will do it past this episode. I doubt any future outings will see B’Elanna taking advantage of therapy or otherwise dealing with her grief beyond this likely re-traumatizing experience. As noble as “Extreme Risk”’s aims are, the end result leaves me queasy.

And yet, I can't deny that seeing B’Elanna get a bit of relief in the end is heartening. Her desire to eat some banana pancakes, to extract a little of the joy she used to feel as a child, is a familiar one. Depression, and the emotional detachment, is the kind of thing that makes you reach for old comforts and old pleasures, in the hope that they too can jumpstart your happiness -- old comforts like, say, rewatching the Star Trek series you grew up with.

There is catharsis in B’Elanna’s second try at the pancakes, and the smile that washes over her face when she can once again feel the joy she used to get from them. There is nobility in trying to tell a lived-in and committed story of depression. There is hope in seeing one of the most trauma-backstoried characters in Star Trek history seeing a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. I just wish the show did a better job of trying to get her there.

Let's hope that in the future they discover a treatment to cure depression as easily as McCoy cured a patients need for dialysis with a pill.

I get what they were trying to do with B'Elanna's depression, but the episode comes across as disingenuous because there was no lead up to this. B'Elanna's MacGyver moment at the end of the episode was chuckle-worthy bad.

[7.8/10] When I saw in the trailer that Tales of the Empire was going to focus on Morgan Elsbeth, I sighed a little. The character, who debuted on-screen in The Mandalorian and came to prominence in the Ahsoka show. She was something of a big nothing in those shows, coming with that sort of flat blandness that, sadly, pervaded a lot of Dave Filoni’s follow up to Star Wars: Rebels. So to be frank, I was less than enthused at the idea that this rare treat, a Clone Wars-esque follow-up in the format of Tales of the Jedi, was going to focus on a character I didn’t really care about.

Well, kudos to Filoni and company, because this installment made me care about her. Some of that is just the visuals. It’s hard not to see a veritable child, running scared across the arid landscape of Dathomir, her and her mother fleeing from an incarnation of General Grievous who is the most frightening he’s been since Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars, and not feel for them.

The terror of the Separatist attack on the Ngihtsisters’ home base, the trauma of watching your mother cut down by their chief butcher, the panic of running and hiding while killers are on your trail, all give us a strong sense, both in terms of imagery and emotion, of the crucible that Morgan was forged in.

But I also like her brief refuge with the Mountain Clan. I’ll be frank -- I don’t remember much about the mountain clan. I think Savage Opress trained there before he was juiced up by the Nightsisters? But I don't remember exactly, or whether we know the matron and her children from before.

Either way, it works on its own, and that's what matters. After the glimpses we saw in The Clone Wars, and the visit to Dathomir in Jedi: Fallen Order, it’s nice to not only see the planet on screen once more, but to get another peek into its culture. The idea that there are people of this place who are not like the Nightsisters, not like Maul or Savage, who are nonetheless drawn into the depths of this war, add both dimension and tragedy to the fate of the planet and the communities who reside there.

I also appreciate the introduction of Nali, a young member of the Mountain Clan who is presented as a fulcrum between the path of war and vengeance stoked from within Morgan, to the path of peace and patience, preached by the matron. So much of Star Wars comes down to meaningful choices, about whether to give into anger and hatred and seek violent retribution, or whether to center oneself on calmness and redemption and no more than defense. Framing that as not just a choice for the Lukes of the world, but for the ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events like Nali, helps drive the momentousness and universality of these decisions home.

And you see both sides. You understand why Morgan is the way she is and wants to be prepared for the droids to come attacking once more. After what she’s been through, what she’s seen, being prepared for battle is natural. Wanting revenge is natural. The way she tries to prepare her fellow young women with weapons and fighting is understandable, given what she’s lost.

ANd in truth, the matron seems pretty naive. When she tells her daughter not to give into that strain of belligerence, and to trust that they’ll be okay, it sounds like a leader putting their head in the sand. So when the droids do show up, and she destroys them all with a mystical ball of light, it’s a hell of a turn. Her moral, that just because someone doesn’t seek out the fight doesn’t mean they’re unable, is a strong one, in the moral and spiritual tradition of the franchise.

It also sets Morgan on a path of tragedy. This being Star Wars, it’s framed in prophecy and vision into the future. But more in keeping with that ethical and spiritual bent, it says that Morgan has chosen the path to darkness, or more accurately, that it’s been thrust upon her by these devastating circumstances, and the road she walks will be a bleak one from now on. Poor Nali walked that path and was killed for it. We know from other shows that Morgan survives for some time yet, but we also know, from the fates of those who’ve walked a similar path, that it rarely ends well for them. Either way, I didn’t care about her path before, but I do now.

[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.

[7.6/10] I complain a decent amount about Captain Archer and Scott Bakula on this show. I don’t think that Archer is a particularly good character, and I don’t think Bakula is a particularly good performer on Enterprise. But part of my frustration with both is that the show nevertheless seems to want to frame him as the bestest, most important, and most noble captain that Starfleet has ever or will ever see, despite the fact that he makes dumb decisions and weak speeches on a near-weekly basis.

Imagine my surprise then, watching “Hatchery”, an episode that uses that fact as part of its central mystery and reveal. The episode features the crew coming across a titular hatchery of Xindi Insectoid eggs, which Archer goes to great lengths to protect, eventually beyond any point of reason. It reaches a level where the senior staff starts to question Archer’s behavior, and even considers trying to relieve him of duty over it.

I’ll cop to the fact that I pretty much guessed the cause and effect here by midway through the second act. Fairly early in the episode, Archer gets sprayed with a neurotoxin by one of the egg stalks, and once he starts seeming a little erratic and overzealous in wanting to look after the eggs, it’s not too hard to guess that this little spray is messing with his brain and making him overprotective as part of some Xindi insectoid biological defense mechanism. I may not have been able to come up with Dr. Phlox’s “reverse imprinting” idea, but it’s easy enough to piece together the basics.

The trick, though, is that the episode plays nicely coy as to how much this could be the result of some crazy alien chemical messing with Archer’s brain, and how much it may just be Archer’s own stubborn to devotion to high-minded Starfleet principles beyond any and all logic or reason. The latter is a fairly consistent quality in Archer, with him going out of his way not to kill any opponents, or disrupt relations with other species, even when the most pragmatic thing to do would be to make those sorts of sacrifices in the name of protecting his ship and his mission. Sure, it seems crazy to go to such lengths to protect some eggs when you’re days away from finding your enemy’s WMDs, but Archer is consistently that crazy.

“Hatchery” even has him offer pretty convincing excuses for his behavior. When Trip calls him out on the energy and effort they’re expending to keep those eggs alive, Archer responds with an anecdote from the Eugenics Wars. He tells a story of enemies reaching a brief truce to let schoolchildren escape, and suggests that kind of altruism and kindness helps forge common ground between opposing parties. He’s hoping that this gesture will help signal to the Xindi that, contrary to what they’ve been told, humans are not ruthless, remorseless killing machines set to destroy their civilization.

He even offers a fairly decent reason for why he relieved T’Pol of duty and confined her to quarters. Trip notes that this is far from the first time T’Pol has questioned him, but Archer responds, not unreasonably, that here she violated a direct order in front of other members of the crew, and he can’t let that stand. Is it a little extreme? Yes, but there’s a plausible reason for it, and Archer offers it in a traditionally Archer-like way.

That’s the best trick this episode pulls off. As Phlox says at the end, Archer doesn't even realized he’s being influenced by the alien goop to protect the eggs. That results in the show doing a good job of having that particular urge being filtered by Archer’s usual principles and predictions, just stretched into a funhouse mirror objective to protect a pack of insect hatchlings.

Of course, eventually the show has to give up the game and push Archer’s behavior in a direction so crazy that there’s not really any ambiguity to it. The fact that he goes without sleep for days and lets himself become downright filthy in the process is a nice pair of signs that he’s losing his grip. And when he relieves Reed of duty for firing back and destroying an Insectoid ship, you can sort of see hidebound Archer doing that in the name of the sanctity of life, but it’s a little too much, and all but confirms that this is not just the captain chasing his morals at the expense of any practicality as usual.

It leads to a mutiny, which becomes one of the episode’s most exciting setpieces. It’s neat seeing the usual senior staff secretly collaborate with one another to retake the bridge and the ship from Archer, Major Hayes, and the MACOs. The tensions there play with the preexisting friction between Reed and Hayes, and the fact that the military men, with their stricter chain of command, would fall in line behind Archer is a nice touch for making the story work.

Of course, apart from the story, there’s just a certain cool factor to seeing Trip, T’Pol, Phlox, and Reed marauding through the bulkheads and taking out MACOs. The resulting stand-off on the bridge even allows Hoshi and Mayweather (who continue to be seriously underused) to have strong moments on the side of the good guys. Apart from the “what’s really going on with Archer?” question that the episode does well with, the creative team crafts a nicely-paced action finale to show the good guys retaking control.

In the end, Trip stuns Archer with a phase pistol after he lets the creepy little insect babies crawl all over him like he’s their caretaker. Archer gets treatment from Dr. Phlox; Reed and Hayes kinda/sorta talk it out, and that’s all she wrote. The episode cements that Archer is back to being his old self when he’s willing to listen to Trip (and by extension, Phlox), rather than push back on them in a self-assured sort of way.

It’s a noteworthy final beat. In any number of episode of The Original Series, Captain Kirk would be replaced or possessed or otherwise affected by some interloper, and the crew could usually tell it wasn’t really him because of some sort of cruelty or cravenness on the double’s part that was out of character. When Enterprise tries the same trick, it does so in the opposite direction, with an infection that makes him all the more moralistics and focused on raw ethics over pragmatism than usual. That choice makes the turn more ambiguous, and plays nicely on the Archer we know, even if we don’t exactly love him.

[8.5/10] One of the keys to any kind of art is layers. Whether it’s a story, a character, a performance, or a world, the idea that there’s more going on under the surface than what we immediately see, which can then be unveiled or communicated to the viewers as they go, is vital to artistic expression regardless of what form it takes. That’s a principle “Proving Ground” takes to heart, giving us layer after layer of the Andorians’ connection to our heroes, and creating an outstanding outing for Enterprise in the process.

The episode starts with the first layer of the Andorians’ intentions when they approach the Enterprise out of the blue (no pun intended): “We want to help.” At first, Archer is understandably skeptical. The humans and the Andorians haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye in any of their past encounters, even if they’ve reluctantly been on the same side of one conflict or another. T’Pol raises some legitimate (if a bit biased) concerns that the Andorians might be duplicitous, only interested in what suits them.

But Shran (who is back and great as always) makes a good case for why the Andorians would intervene on Earth’s behalf. For one thing, Shran once again owes Archer after he helped prevent a war between Andoria and Vulcan last season, and Shran doesn't like owing debts. For another, it’s plausible that even an Imperialist group like the Andorians would feel for the plight of a people who lose seven million souls in a single attack and be apt to join them in a quest for revenge and glory.

Most of all, he puts forth a self-serving reason why the Androians would be willing to join Enterprise’s crusade -- to help shift the humans to being loyal to them rather than to the Vulcans. Shran deliberately underlines the fact that none of the Vulcans joined the Enterprise’s mission or offered assistance with their mighty fleet, and that T’Pol had to resign her commission to stay with it. This is an opportunity to for the Andorians to supersede their pointy-eared rivals as Earth’s best friend, whether that gets them strategic or resource gains, or just the petty joy of winning the loyalties of the Vulcans’ designated allies out from under them.

The case is plausible enough that when Shran wants to have members of his crew board the Enterprise, help them make repairs, share sensor data between them, and assist in the mission to intercept the Xindi weapons test, it seems fair for Archer to accept, especially when the ship is in rough shape after a particularly serious encounter with an uber-anomaly. The Xindi still just feel like the Evil League of Evil right now, even with the nice touch of Gralik’s sabotage coming to fruition when their prototype is tested, but the test provides a nice excuse for the Enterprise crew and Shran’s crew to pull of a fun, joint operation.

If nothing else, it’s a hoot and a half to see Shran trying to pull of the ruse of being a representative from the “Andorian Mining Consortium” looking for a “rare” mineral called “Archerite.” Jeffrey Coombs nails every part of this episode, but the high point may come when he expertly delivers the layers of that little performance within a performance. Shran needs to come off as affable and harmless, but a harsh reception from the Xindi has him struggling to keep his natural combativeness under wraps while staying in character.

Still, we get glimpses at the Andorians’ character on the Enterprise which suggest there’s yet more to these “wig-heads” than meets the eye. Part of that comes from the B-plot of the episode, which sees Reed and Andorian Lt. Talas working to repair the ship’s tactical systems together, and bonding a bit in the process.

In truth, their trajectory is fairly predictable. They start out not wanting to help one another, find that each is talented at what they do, and eventually develop a professional respect and the beginnings of a personal friendship as they learn they’re more alike than they initially thought. Still, the two characters have good chemistry, and the script strikes the right tone, both of cultural gaps needing to be bridged, and of a common understanding that comes from the hardships of being in a military family and their dedication to their jobs.

Of course, the episode turns that connection on its head when it’s revealed that Talas sabotaged the Enterprise’s sensors so that the Andorians could steal the Xindi weapon for themselves. That adds a whole second layer to everything we’ve seen. Shran’s comments to Archer about wanting to help Earth are all part of a ruse to get in his good graces. Talas’s warming up to Reed was a calculated effort to gain his trust and, more importantly, access to his sensor panel. This uncharacteristic bit of altruism turns into a characteristic bit of opportunism from the Andorians, just like T’Pol predicted.

The show even gives them a good motvation. The Xindi weapon will finally give the Andorians the upper hand in their clashes with the Vulcans, something to motivate their adversaries to lay off the border skirmishes. The episode plays the betrayal for drama nicely, giving us a smart space heist set piece that culminates with Archer being jettisoned in an escape pod. Thankfully (also, conveniently), Archer subscribed to the “trust but verify” mantra, and made similar preparations against Andorian treachery, playing a game of chicken with them over the weapon that ends in it being destroyed, the Andorian ship being hobbled, and the Enterprise able to go on its merry way.

So that’s it, right? Simple story. The Andorians pretended to be good to get something they wanted, but it turns out they’re bad, and our heroes were prepared for it. There’s nothing wrong with that type of story, especially in genre fiction. But good art takes things a layer further, a layer more complicated, a layer more interesting, and that’s exactly what “Proving Ground” does.

Because even though Shran “graciously” refuses Archer’s help, the implication is that he secretly transmits the Andorian ship’s sensor data on the Xindi weapon to the Enterprise. When in contact with his commanding officer, Shran asks if there’s another way and preemptively rejects a commendation. Hell, for all we know Talas genuinely made a connection with Reed, but just did her job the same way Shran did. We learn that the most prominent Andorian on Enterprise is someone who pretended to have good intentions, when he truly had bad intentions (or at least, self-serving intentions), but was following orders and, left to his own devices, would have made good (or at least, better) on those original good intentions.

It adds complexity to the relationship between humans and Andorians and on the relationship between Archer and Shran. One of the best scenes in the episode, and maybe the series, sees Trip asking Shran for the Andorian’s antimatter converters. Shran demures, but expresses sympathy for the loss of Trip’s sister in the attack and empathizes with the quest for vengeance. Trip rebuffs the suggestion, saying that it’s not about revenge; it’s about keeping others from having to suffer the same fate. Shran confides a story of losing his own sibling in battle, and with that shared sort of loss between them, agrees to give Trip the technology.

Maybe it’s all an act. Maybe the tech was fairly pedestrian and it was another part of the scheme to gain the Enterprise’s trust to where the Andorians could complete their mission. But I’d like to think it was genuine, another sign that Shran continues to see potential in these “pink-skins”, enough for him to give them the smallest bits of help along the way. As Archer puts it earlier, he and Shran keep finding themselves doing favors for one another, and Shran replies that it’s how alliance are born. Alliances are never that simple, but built on layers of trust and false starts and personal relationships. Great art, in Star Trek or elsewhere, is built on the same.

If last week's penultimate episode was the show's dramatic peak, this finale is an elegiac send-off, with Mariko's loss really felt by all (and which Jarvis beautifully conveys that throughout). Sanada and (especially) Asano are really in top form throughout, especially during that cliff's climatic conversation. Great series.

One of the most captivating shows of the decade ended with this episode. I can’t sing Shogun enough praise. What an absolute masterpiece.

Maybe they’ll continue it, maybe they won’t. I know I’ll be following the crew to see what they do next.

I won't lie, I actually liked the previous episode more. It was a good ending, but it could have ended a bit further into the future, leaving the rest to our imagination isn't too much of a problem. I could listen to Lady Ochiba's speech for hours, she is magnificent. The conversation between Toranaga and Yabushige was really good too. Thank you for one of the best series of recent times. Here's hoping to see more productions that portray Japanese culture and history in such a high-quality manner...

I secretly wanted Fuji and Anjin to be together, I'm sorry Mariko-sama. (˘･_･˘)

"Why tell a deadman the future?"

I couldn't have asked for a more fitting finale for this "piece of an art" mini-series. The bar was set high. It could've been either like the GoT finale or Breaking Bad finale. So glad they stayed consistent from start to finish. Undoubtedly, this ranks among the greatest miniseries ever produced.

Many people may be dissatisfied with the finale if they expected to watch an all-out war, which contradicts the entire idea of the show.

Interesting twist on the time loop trope.

Another brilliant episode. Doing something right for season 5.

[5.4/10] Sometimes you have to find your Star Trek-related joys around the margins. Having Scott Bakula portray the steely, determined commander has never been Enterprise’s strong suit. Having him become romantically entangled with the latest love interest of the week, or any romance at all for him, has not been its strong suit. This episode is full of both, which means that the good parts come in those blessed few scenes when neither Archer, nor the titular Rajiin, are on screen.

This episode is basically a watered down version of “Dear Mrs. Reynolds” from Firefly. Archer and company go down to a local market to buy the formula for Trillium-B, and in the process, come across a bewitching sex worker. Archer goes all Pretty Woman, taking her on the ship as a refugee when she wants to get away so that he can save her. She wanders around, using her super-seduction powers to subdue everyone she runs into, until the crew catches on that she’s a double agent for the Xindi, albeit one who may be coerced.

The upshot of all of this is that much of the episode focuses on Archer’s interactions with Rajiin. That’s most annoying when she plays coy, because Archer is clearly enamored of her, but trying to maintain the dignity of his station, leading to lots of awkward looks and indicating from Bakula. At the same time, actress Nikita Ager does a pretty pitiful Betty Boop/Marilyn Monroe routine through most of this, playing shy and coquettish in a broad, cheesy way.

But then the charms come on, and we’re subjected to scene after scene of Rajiin plying her wiles on anyone and everyone she comes across. Naturally, this is an excuse for the show to put her in any number of barely-there costumes and up the steam factor wherever possible. I’m no prude, and can enjoy a bit of televised passion as much as anyone, but this feels like a transparently exploitative stunt. It’s particularly galling when it leads to what amounts to another unfortunate bit of sexual assault being visited upon T’Pol. (Seriously, why is this show so interested in going back to that well over and over again?)

Contrast that with the opening scene between T’Pol and Trip. The show goes nowhere near as gratuitous with it, but there’s a familiarity and intimacy between the two of them that makes the simple act of a neck massage sexier than all the candle-lit rooms and cavorting astro babes that Enterprise can muster. I also love the fact that Trip is a little anxious about people gossiping and getting the wrong idea about their sessions, but T’Pol basically saying that it’s none of the crew’s business and the two of them shouldn’t care. There’s a maturity to T’Pol that’s always been admirable, and it’s endearing seeing Trip be reassured by it.

I also like the continuing subplot of the Enterprise, chiefly Trip and T’Pol, aiming to make Trillium-B so that they can insulate the ship from the various anomalies in the Delphic Expanse. I have to admit, the Delphic Expanse has been surprisingly tame so far given how it was hyped up, but I appreciate that our heroes still have to at least take steps to protect themselves within it. And again, as good romantic chemistry as Trip and T’Pol have, they also just have good on-screen chemistry generally, making their working out a problem together engaging independent of the other business going on.

The other strong points that “Rajiin” can boast are its little bit of worldbuilding before we lurch into the plot, and an actual confrontation with the Xindi. As to the former, it’s neat to see Archer, Trip, and Reed rumbling around an alien marketplace. There’s a bit of exoticism going on that’s mildly uncomfortable, but for the most part, it’s just interesting to see them roaming around somewhere they’re clearly out of place and having to adjust and barter and deal with aliens who aren’t sporting the usual familiar forehead prosthesis. It adds little to the plot, but the alien chemist going gaga for black pepper helps add a sense of place to this region of space, and is, frankly, just plain fun.

The same is true for the Xindi assault on Enterprise. As I mentioned in my write-up in the last episode, while this show still doesn't feel equipped to do “dark post-9/11 allegory”, it is pretty good at action sequences this season. While Archer’s fight with the alien pimp in the first act is laughable, the final act’s skirmishes with the Xindi boarding party is much more exciting. There’s a borg-like quality to the Reptilian Xinidi, with the way they make an essentially unstoppable march through the ship to retrieve Rajiin giving them some legitimate menace and proving that humans aren’t the only species with space marines. Some of their schtick is cheesy -- like the animated dark throwing goop -- but on the whole, they’re scary enough to pass muster.

Unfortunately, before their arrival we just get more tedious Archer/Rajiin banter, and after we get more of the council of ridiculous looking aliens discussing their evil plan. Archer’s attempts at hard-nosed interrogation always come off more comic than dramatic, and the show’s efforts to cast Rajiin as a victim of circumstance in her own right are equally floundering given the similar limitations of the performer.

Eventually, however, we learn that Rajiin’s purpose was to scan the humans, so that the alliance of Reptilian/Bug-like Xindi can work on a biological weapon, which the primate/human Xindi oppose and want to stick with their original plan to use some other crazy sort of weapon. And the porpoise Xindi are, halfway in between, I guess? The show is trying to go for a continuing threat, and mostly comes off as ridiculous with the usual villain sneers and declarations, but it at least adds some information and complexity to their plot, which is something.

Sometimes, that’s all you get with Enterprise. When the main course is nothing to write home about, you have to sate yourself on the side dishes, and at least those, or their T.V. equivalents in “Raijin”, are worth digging into.

[7.6/10] “Talk less, fight more,” to paraphrase Aaron Burr (or his fictionalized equivalent), is not a bad mantra for Star Trek: Enterprise. Dialogue has never been the show’s strong suit. So as odd as it seems to have a Star Trek show more focused on fisticuffs and fireworks than high-minded meditations on diplomacy and philosophy, it may be playing to *Enterprise*s strengths.

Because the truth is that when you have the crew of Enterprise fighting off a pirate invasion, or trawling through an alien storehouse, or getting into a firefight with an alien ship, Enterprise is pretty enjoyable! I still contend it doesn't especially feel like Star Trek (or at least feels closer to the movie version of Trek that was bigger on excitement and less interested in the sort of thoughtful themes the T.V. series had time for), but it’s something that the show’s editors and effects team and camera crew is good at, which is more than you can say for the show’s script.

That said, however much I might bitch about lines here and there, the show does a good job at keeping the proceedings interesting, even apart from the skirmishes with an alien ship in the anomaly cluster of the Alpha Quadrant (I assume?). As I’ve said in prior write-ups, a lot of Star Trek episodes work best when the crew has clear goals. Here, the episode doesn't skimp on that.

Enterprise’s crew’s mission is clear: recover their lost gear before they run out of gas, track down the alien pirates who stole it; download the Xindi database from those same pirates. It helps add a directness to everything going on, where despite some of the “no, you guys, Enterprise is different now!* stuff, you can appreciate the show having a pretty clear throughline of cause and effect from minute one to minute forty-three.

The big problems are two-fold. For one, the show’s effects are just corny to a viewer in 2019. I try not to judge Enterprise too harshly on that front, anymore than I would judge The Original Series for putting a little dog in a cheap halloween costume and calling it an alien in the 1960s.

Still, willing suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain when you have Archer dealing with an obviously computer generated mid-air coffee spill, or a big lump roaming through the decks and tossing crewman flat on their asses. The idea that the laws of physics don’t work the same way in The Expanse is a novel one, especially when it means the usual warp equations don’t work, but the way the show tries to represent that idea is downright laughable in the modern era.

The other problem is that, apart from a reasonably tight story of the Enterprise crew losing their stuff, getting back, and then getting more still from the people who robbed them, “Anomaly” utterly belabors the point that Archer and everyone else is going to have to break some of their moral codes to get along in the expanse. The conversations between Archer and the captured pirate are completely and totally facepalm-worthy.

We get it, Enterprise! The Expanse calls for a more rough and tumble form of diplomacy than was possible in the rest of the Alpha Quadrant! And Archer in particular might be slipping morally and ethically given the demands of this region of space and his own frustrations over his home planet being attacked. There’s something to be said for the show dramatizing American anger circa 2003, and a sense of being wiling to torture prisoners and do other boundary-violating things that the shining city upon a hill would once shudder to countenance, at least publicly.

But as usual, the show makes that point with thunderous directness, making sure the audience understands in no uncertain terms that Archer is losing his moral compass when he suffocates the pirate for information, and having the same pirate pontificate about how mercy is a losing quality in The Expanse. Both the message of these sequences, and the relation to then-current events, are utterly obvious to the point that these scenes really detract from the episode, and the early part of the season, as a whole.

But when the Enterprise crew is just fighting off a pirate attack? Or spelunking their way through a giant metal sphere hidden in a cloaked part of space? Or having to stay close to the pirate vessel despite an ongoing firefight? That’s all pretty thrilling stuff that “Anomaly” does well. Sure, sometimes the overcharged musical stings and the way everyone seems so dang severe now feel over the top, but the nuts and bolts of these sequences are good, and tied to clear goals, which makes them more propulsive than the rest of the episode.

It’s also nice to see Hoshi getting something to do for the first time in what seems like forever. Between her translating the pirate inventory so that the crew can find their stuff in the sphere, to her recognizing the Xindi markings within it, to the way she’s able to download most of the Xindi database from their pirate pursuers, it’s nice to see a member of what has become the B-team getting a little of the spotlight.

Otherwise, Enterprise still does some very Enterprise things, like gratuitously focusing on a young female corporal while the gang is changing into their evac suits, or putting too fine a point on Trip and T’Pol’s “Vulcan neural pressure treatment” creating sexual tension, or having Scott Bakula play a laughable combination of anger and seriousness that he doesn't really have the gravitas for.

Still, when Enterprise focuses on the mission, and the dogfights and intraship skirmishes that go with it, it’s a better show. That’s not necessarily what I want from Star Trek. A well done interrogation of how proto-Federation morality holds up in a lawless frontier is more my speed (and something that Discovery attempted more than a decade later). But if Enterprise isn’t capable of that, or at least not capable of doing it well, then the least it can do is keep us entertained with more of this nonstop, reasonably tense action.

Interesting choice Michael has made for her Number 1.
Will Saru be back? :thinking:

Arguably better than the season pilot, but still a soup of questionable personalities. Watchable - especially while you’re waiting on other shows.

[7.2/10] Star Trek: Discovery does a better job of telling the audience that a relationship is important than spurring us to feel that importance. Your mileage may vary, of course, but across the series, characters have these soulful conversations about how much they mean to one another, and it’s rare, if not unprecedented, for the show to have earned that emotion through lived-in dynamics and experiences that believably bring two characters closer together.

But Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Saru (Doug Jones) are one of the big exceptions. They’re the two characters on the show who’ve arguably changed the most over the course of the series. Michael went from disgraced mutineer to respected captain. Saru went from a timid, by-the-book stiff to a more open and adventurous officer. And,as is Star Trek tradition, along the way, through hardship and heroism, they went from being mutual skeptics of one another to trusted friends.

Where so many of the friendships in Discovery fall flat, Michael and Saru are among the few who play with the ease and care of genuine confidantes. So an episode like “Under the Twin Moons” comes with the power of (supposedly) being Saru’s last hurrah as a Starfleet officer and, more importantly, his final mission alongside Michael Burnham.

In truth, the mission itself is no great shakes. The latest break in the Progenitor case sees the duo beaming down to the planet of the week, a lost world protected by one of those ancient technological security systems that Captain Kirk and company seemed to run into every third episode. The art direction work is laudable, with some neat designs of the weathered statues and other remnants of the fallen civilization, and a cluttered jungle locale that comes off more real and tactile than most of Discovery’s more sterile environments.

But this largely comes off as video game plotting, even before the show reveals that the Progenitor mission is essentially one massive fetch quest. The sense of skulking around old ruins, avoiding weathered booby traps, and using special abilities to avoid obstacles and find clues will be familiar to anyone who’s played Jedi: Fallen Order from the other half of the marquee sci-fi franchise dichotomy, or even precursors like the Zelda series of games. The challenges the away team faces feel more like perfunctory obstacles than meaningful threats to be overcome.

Still, these obstacles accomplish two things, however conspicuously. For one, they show Saru’s value to Starfleet in his alleged last mission. He shoots down ancient security bots with his quills. He attracts and evades their fire with his superspeed. He detects the hidden code with his ability to detect bioluminescence. And he’s able to use his strength to move a large obelisk back and forth to find the last piece of the puzzle. On a physical basis, it’s not bad having a Kelpian on your side.

More to the point, he also looks out for Michael. There’s a nice low-simmering conflict between them, where Michael wants to save Saru so he can enjoy the bliss of his civilian life with T’Rina, and Saru wants to fulfill his duty as any other officer would and protect his friend. In an episode themed around frayed connections between people, it’s nice to see that tension play out in an organic, selfless way between these two longtime comrades. Their ability to work together to solve problems, figure out puzzles, and most importantly, put their necks out for one another (in some cases literally), does more to honor Saru’s place in the series than all the Kelpien superpowers in the galaxy.

For another, they give Tilly (Mary Wiseman), Adira (Blu del Barrio), and eventually Captain Rayner the chance to do something science-y to help Michael and Saru down on the planet. Granted, their “Why don’t we use an ancient electrio-magnetic pulse?” solution strains credulity a bit, and Rayner’s advice boiling down to “You need to think like an ancient civilization” isn’t that insightful. But it gives a couple of the show’s players something to do, and reveals, however ham handedly, not only Rayner’s facility in the field, but his willingness to help out even when he doesn’t have to.

That's a good thing, since he’s joining the cast as the new first officer (something portended by Callum Keith Rennie’s addition to the opening credits. The dialogue to get him there is clunky, with thudding comments from Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) and Burnham about Rayner being a good man despite some poor choices born of tougher times. But after only a couple of episodes, Rayner is a welcome addition -- a fly in the ointment for a now-cozy crew, bolstered by Rennie’s vividly irascible performance.

While the signposting is a little much, the idea that Burnham does not just want a first officer who’s capable, but one who’ll have the guts to challenge her and her perspective is a good one. That approach puts her in the good company of Captain Picard, among others, and shows a humility and an openness in Michael that's commendable. Her willingness to give someone else a second chance, given what the one she received allowed her to accomplish, speaks well of the still-new Captain, and adds some poetry with Discovery’s first season in its unexpected final one.

On a meta level, this is also an interesting thematic tack for the series. Rayner is coded as conservative, battle-hardened, even sclerotic in a way that clashes with traditional Starfleet principles. The idea that he has a place on the bridge, that his viewpoint is worthwhile, and most notably, that he can be brought into the light of Starfleet’s new dawn, fits with the aspirational tone of Star Trek. It’s worth watching how the character arc, and the ideas and subtext in tow, play out from here.

The same can't be said for Book’s (David Ajala) interactions with Moll (Eve Harlow) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis). The show wants to make some trite yet strained point about bonds between individuals in the already-tortured estrangement between him and Michael. The tired pop psychology from Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz) doesn’t help on that front. But worse yet is the acknowledged unlikely coincidence that Moll is the daughter of Book’s mentor and surrogate father, a contrived familial connection that attempts to gin up through genealogy what the show can't from character-building alone.

Except when it can. The mission may be stock, and the surrounding plot threads may be underbaked, but the goodbye between Michael and Saru is legitimately touching. From Michael nursing Saru through his harrowing transformation, to Saru counseling Michael through good times and bad in her ascent up the ranks, the pair have blossomed into genuine confidantes over the course of the last four seasons. It did not always come easily, but that's what makes their connection now, and the parting poised to strain it, such a poignant, bittersweet moment between two friends.

Who knows if it will stick. Dr. Culbert came back from the dead. Tilly’s back in the fold despite leaving for Starfleet Academy. Saru himself returned to the ship despite ostensibly leaving to become a “great elder” on Kaminar. Discovery doesn’t have a great track record of sticking to major character exits.

For now, at least, Saru gets a swan song not only worthy of what the character, and Doug Jones’ impeccable performance, has meant to the series over the past seven years, but also of what, unassumingly, became one of the series’ strongest relationships. Michael will keep flying. Saru will hopefully enjoy some wedded bliss. But as “Under the Twin Moons” reminds us, they’ve both left a mark on the other that will stay with both of them, wherever they finally end up.

[6.8/10] Enterprise is back and it is dark and edgy, man! We’re in The Delphic Expanse where everything is harsh and weird! The alien species are duplicitous! The ship has a new complement of military guys! Captain Archer is angry and determined!Trip is violent and troubled! T’Pol has a new haircut and costume! The theme song is now jaunty and jazzier! This ain't your father’s Enterprise, pal!

If you can’t tell from my sarcastic italics, I am more than a little skeptical of Enterprise’s efforts at rebranding at the start of its third season. The show wants to turn a corner here, and after 50+ episodes using the original premise, maybe it’s the right time to pivot. Still, as Discovery would learn a decade and a half later, trying to mesh the vision of Star Trek with grimdark prestige brutality isn’t always an easy mix, whether you’re at the start of the Sopranos boom or the end of it.

The season premiere sees the crew at six weeks in the Expanse, and there’s the whiff of the show trying to pull off what Voyager was meant to be. Here are our otherwise high-minded heroes, deposited into a strange region of space they don’t know, without the benefit of being able to call for help whenever they run into trouble. That means new, unknown aliens, more rough-and-tumble encounters, and the way the dynamic of the ship changes when the mission du jour is seek and destroy rather than explore and befriend.

Enterprise just doesn't feel much like Star Trek in the process. Archer and Trip’s crawl through an alien sewer feels like something out of the original Star Wars trilogy. The council of cryptic-speaking, poorly CGI’d bad guys plays like something out of the Star Wars prequels. And the Enterprise deploying a compliment of space marines comes off feeling more like something out of Aliens or even Starship Troopers. Whatever problems I had with Enterprise’s first two seasons, there was something comforting about them because they felt of a piece with the franchise, its rhythms and its bearing, in a way that “The Xindi” just doesn't.

But maybe that’s a good thing. Lord knows that Enterprise didn’t work perfectly in its first couple of seasons. Franchises and art of all stripes need to evolve or risk growing stale. I’d be lying if I said the view of Starfleet or the weekly adventures promised if this is prologue really wowed me or drew me in, but it’s good for the things we like to make us uncomfortable now and then. It’s a sign that a show is taking risks, trying new things, letting the series develop into new directions that force the creators, and the audience, to adapt.

The problem is that Enterprise isn’t very convincing in its new darker and edgier vibe, at least not yet. I don’t want to eliminate the possibility. The show is still early in this new experiment, and as hokey as the Delphic Legion of Doom seems, there’s promise in the notion of a vengeance-seeking Starfleet ship having to cope in a rougher section of space. I don’t want to belabor the point, but the reimagined Battlestar Galactica was basically “darker Star Trek” and totally made it work. The catch is that on early 2000s network television, Enterprise can’t help but feel like a kid putting on his older brother’s clothes and pretending he’s a tough punk. It’s just not convincing yet.

Still, however discordant this opening salvo into the show’s brave new world is, there’s still plenty to like here. However cheesy some of the interactions are, I like Archer and Trip getting trapped in an alien mine and having to sneak and fight their way out. There’s some neat setpieces of them crawling through crap or scaling a plasma shaft, and there was a scenery-chewing charm to their interactions with the proto-Immortan Joe who runs the place.

That foreman/warden of the facility, naturally, doublecrosses our heroes and tries to make them his slaves, necessitating the tactical deployment of Major Hayes and his space marines. As much as the fight that follows doesn't feel like Trek, it’s still cool to see their hand-to-hand combat efficiency, or watching one of their sharpshooters snipe a firing alien from down below. You can still feel the show straining to let you know things are grim and serious know in a way that comes off a bit cornball, but the actual nuts and bolts of the standoff is well-done and exciting from a framing and blocking standpoint.

The episode also does a nice job of expanding the world of the bad guys a little bit. While the council of villains comes off poorly, the Xindi prisoner that Archer interrogates opens up some interesting avenues. We’re so used to planets and peoples being unified in Star Trek to the point that it’s genuinely surprising to learn the Xindi are not just another villainous alien race, but a collection and alliance of different species who jockey for power and have their own internal squabbles.

It feels like a nice fictionalization and figurativization of the United States having to deal with the different tribal alliances and rival groups during the War in Afghanistan, rather than the unified nation state we tend to think of in international conflicts. The notion that Archer and company have a lot to learn in this unfamiliar place, not just a lot of fighting to do, does feel very Trek-y.

Fortunately or unfortunately, not everything has changed on Enterprise. The series has still found new, not especially creative ways to have its female cast disrobe and moan and otherwise endeavor to titillate the nerdlingers in the audience. It’s more bargain basement exploitation when the show gins up reasons for Trip to massage a half-naked T’Pol here.

On the other hand, the scene is a testament to the benefits of genuine chemistry. The show has tried similar (if not entirely as crass) moments between Archer and T’Pol, and the complete lack of chemistry between Bakula and Blalock separately and independently doomed them. Blalock and Trineer have a much better dynamic, and it means that even when you’re facepalming because of the script, the proceedings are at least a little endearing because you can dig the vibe between the two characters on screen.

That’s what we have to hope for in the back half of Enterprise. This cast has settled in over two seasons. The creative team has settled in over two seasons. And the fans have (maybe) settled in over two seasons. As the series charts a new course, we have to hope that the seemingly misaimed efforts to inject the show with post-9/11 darkness can find fertile ground in a show and a crew that know how to do what they do at this point, or at least, what they used to do.

Great start to the season. Good they didn’t hide what IT is and some nice call backs to previous events.

Hopefully it will be a great ride ending this amazing show. :vulcan_salute:

Wow, could be the best season yet!

Wow that was good, one of the better episodes this season. Reminded me of Andor. Really captures the loneliness and the quiet, controlled horror of the empire.

I'm convinced none of you know what 'filler' actually means, this episode was a banger, not the best episode but a certified banger still. Got context for Lady Ochiba, more romance between Blackthorne & Mariko (their chemistry is actually very strong), more behind the scenes politics with the council and a great set up for 'Crimson Sky'. Another great episode!

Fuji's silent reaction shots during the tea negotiation are all gold

[5.2/10] For a while I’ve worried about Enterprise falling into the same pattern that The Original Series did, where the three main characters get all the stories and the rest of the crew, give or take the occasional Scotty episode, have to fend for scraps. It doesn't help that Enterprise, like the 1960s series, relegates the people of color in its cast to being supporting characters most of the time. So I’m inclined to appreciate the installments where Mayweather or Hoshi or Dr. Phlox get the spotlight for an episode.

The problem is that those episodes need to be, you know, good, and “Horizon” pretty much tops out at “boring.” A story with tinny emotions, slack pacing, and a sort of knowingly inessential vibe make Mayweather’s day in the limelight feels like a big waste. The threats here are minor, the personal relationships are stock and weakly-developed, and the conclusion is predictable and rushed.

The premise of the episode sees the Enterprise passing by the freighter owned and operated by Mayweather’s family. Travis asks for a brief leave to visit them, only to learn that his father, who captained the ship, died before word could reach him. What follows is an awkward, semi-presumptuous visit home, where Mayweather is excited to see his old digs and impart what he’s learned, but his brother, Paul, is far less welcoming.

“Horizon” is basically doing a less traumatized version of “Family” from The Next Generation here. Travis’s brother is resentful that his brother left the family trade to go join Starfleet. He is contemptuous of his brother’s vaunted place in the world, and has an implicit inferiority complex while trying to succeed his father in running the freighter. Travis, meanwhile, is conflicted between his desire to help his family and their ship run better and be safer while he’s there, with his own remorse at wondering if he’s abandoned his family and his old crew, and if he even has a place with them anymore.

That’s strong stuff! As befits the product of a writer who would go on to pen scripts for Mad Men, there’s complex familial and generational issues at play. The rub is that the delivery of those ideas, in story, dialogue, and performance, is all facepalm-worthy.

I feel bad for singling out Anthony Montgomery, but he’s just not really up to conveying the complicated emotional situation the episode wants to depict. Granted, the script does him no favors, being riddled with tin-eared dialogue and on-the-nose statements about what everyone’s thinking and feeling. But Montgomery does little in these stretches to suggest he should get this sort of focus more often (not that it stops the show from giving it to Bakula). While he does some nice nonverbal work in the moment where he’s crying in his little crawl space, every time Mayweather’s called upon to actually say a line, it feels like he’s announcing it rather than delivering it.

The other side of the coin is that maybe it’s not Montgomery’s fault, because the same thing happens with every other character on the Horizon, from Mayweather’s brother, to his mom, to his childhood playmate. There’s a stagey atmosphere to all of this, where each of the characters gives performances with the vibe of a high school play. Star Trek isn’t always a den of naturalism, but the hokiness of the line delivery across the board robs the episode of whatever tiny bit of emotional force the script might be able to muster.

That’s part of why the most enjoyable part of “Horizon” is its B-story. It sees Trip arranging a screening of Frankenstein, and he and Archer cajoling T’Pol to come to movie night and see it. It is, without a doubt, a trifle of a subplot, and it yet again teases romance between Archer and T’Pol that I just don’t buy. But it’s fun! Not everything has to be a high stakes outing, and just seeing the Enterprise’s senior staff goof off around an old movie without having to carry all the dramatic weight makes for an entertaining, seven-minute lark.

Still, it ultimately offers a more worthwhile point than the main story does. Maybe this is a cheap thing for a critic to like, but I particularly appreciate how T’Pol pulls out a different interpretation of the film than her colleagues intended. The idea of the story as a rumination on how humans treat those who look and act different from them, something that T’Pol and by extension, other Vulcans could relate to, causes Archer and Trip discomfort, but is a legitimate take.

Beyond the humor of T’Pol preferring a dramatic reading of the original novel or Dr. Phlox nitpicking the medical procedures, there’s some nice irony in the fact that T’Pol’s crewmates wanted her to learn more about humanity through its art, and she did, just not in the direction they were hoping. There’s a statement about the malleability of stories and the way we share them that is as worthwhile as it is pithy.

Were that I could say anything else in the episode was pithy. Back on the Horizon, Travis has predictable friction with his brother, predictable reminiscing and uncertainty with his old friend, and predictable reassurance from his mother. There’s a lot of “Did I ever tell you about the time?” scenes, and a lot of painfully ruminating on the same “You left us! The whole world is leaving us!” issues over and over again. This episode loses the thematic punch of the same topic in “Fortunate Son” by couching it in a tired kitchen sink drama and a barely-there action-y threat. The whole thing ends up dull.

That’s frustrating, because it suggests a lack of care or quality from these sorts of outings that suggests we won’t get many of them. One of the best things about Star Trek is that, from the beginning, the franchise has been about ensembles. It would be nice to see Enterprise taking advantage of that, and featuring other characters more often. But given the middling work and middling results in “Horizon”, that doesn't seem very likely.

Good episode. :thumbsup_tone4:

Did we ever find out what happened to Kolos? Was he able to make a significant impact like he wanted? I don't recall if it's mentioned in Klingon history? Does anyone know? I tend to think not considering what became of the Klingon Empire. Maybe they mention him later in this series... will just have to keep watching and find out.

[9.4/10] I tend to like naturalism in most things, even in stories in outer space. It’s why I found found the original Star Trek difficult to warm to at times, with all of Kirk’s grand pronouncements about this and that, and a certain pulpiness that was always the intent of the show. All else equal, I want the conflict, the characters, and their reactions to feel real, even if the setting or scenario are outlandish.

But by god, somehow the Klingons just bring out my inner cheese. (Surgeon General’s Warning: If you or a loved one start autogenerating dairy products internally, please consult a physician.) There is just something about those growling, shouting, gesticulating aliens that works for me, and turns a tone that might seem over the top elsewhere into something I can absolutely vibe with.

The same goes for courtroom drama episodes for that matter. There’s an artificiality to the setting, one where people are called upon to make big speeches in a structured setting, that lends itself to a certain amount of grandiosity and presentation. Lawyers “act” when making presentations to juries or arguing in front of judges, so it makes sense that actors playing lawyers would, well, act as well.

So when “Judgment” presents a Klingon legal drama, it can be loud and boisterous and grandiose in what it offers the audience, and it goes down as smoothly as a nice slug of bloodwine, even for sticks in the mud like me.

The episode sees Archer brought before a Klingon tribunal and charged with fomenting rebellion. Using a Rashomon type presentation, the courtroom scenes are, in part, a frame story to depict a skirmish between Archer and Klingon named Captain Duras (a name that raises instant suspicion among Next Generation fans). Captain Duras tells his side of the story, a tale of a duplicitous, Klingon-hating, terrorist-helping human who defied the Empire and dishonored a proud warrior. And then Archer tells his side, of his crew rendering aid to a group of beleaguered refugees harassed by the Klingons like the ones we met in “Marauders”, of defending his ship from a Klingon-instigated attack, and of the mercy she showed his enemy despite the opportunity to slay his opponent.

It’s all done well enough, with some cool firefights and explosions. The true set of events are predictable enough, but it’s fun to see the Enterprise through a lying Klingon’s eyes, and the episode adds enough wrinkles and new details to what really happened to make the retelling of the story compelling. It all sets up Archer as someone resourceful, proud, and noble, who not only outflanked a Klingon battle cruiser, but who is willing to sacrifice his own life in order to save a group of people he’s barely met, because it’s the right thing to do.

That’s not the most interesting part of the episode though. It’s fine to see Archer presented as the good captain yet again, but it’s far more fascinating to see another glimpse of the Klingon legal system, to hear about the degradation and change of the Klingon society, and to see the story of one man (er, Klingon man) seeing Archer’s stand as an object lesson for standing up for his principles.

The Courtroom drama part of it is just downright fun. Sure, theoretically Archer could be sentenced to death, but c’mon. The spark of the judge’s weird ball glove gavel, the rabble of the chanting crowd, the tet-a-tet between the defense advocate and the prosecutor are all great texture and great television. There is a certain amount of enjoyable scenery-chewing that goes on when Orak, the mercenary, decorated prosecutor, goes full “j’accuse!” with Archer, and it’s just as fun when Advocate Kolos is roused from his complacency by Archer, and starts using his craftiness to meet Orak head-on.

But what’s even more engrossing is Kolos’s recollection of a more enlightened Klingon society, and his lamenting how much his people have devolved into rank warriorism. I’ve watched literally every other Star Trek series, and outside of a few notable exceptions, I only know Klingons as the proud, revelrous warriors that they’re typically presented as. The idea that there’s other classes of Klingons than the ones the likes of Kirk would likely meet on the interstellar frontier is neat in and of itself.

Even more compelling, though, is the notion that the Klingons were once a diverse set of people who had scientists and teacher and real lawyers, who devolved into an “honor and war above all” corruption that would overtake the culture as a whole. There’s an antiquated sort of species essentialism to Star Trek: all Vulcans are logical, all Klingons are war-like, all Ferengi are greedy. Different stories have subverted these ideas on the margins, but “Judgment” is the first Trek story I can remember to suggest that it didn’t have to be this way, that for Klingons at least, this was a regrettable cultural homogenization, rather than a speciesist inevitability.

Kolos aims to fight against that tide. He tries his hardest for the first time in years, and earns Archer a commuting of his death sentence to life in prison. Inspired by Archer’s example, he publicly questions how far these Klingon courts have fallen in his time, regretting his complacency, challenging the hypocritical sense of honor, and speaking truth to power. It earns him the same trip to the penal colony of Rura Penthe that Archer gets, cementing the ways in which “Judgment” is a spiritual successor to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which dealt similarly with kangaroo courts and hard-won shifts in Klingon society.

In truth, the episode runs out of gas a bit once the setting changes to the frozen prison. The enjoyable Klingon bravado, the heightened reality of the tribunal setting, fade a little into standard Trekian folderol. Still, the convenient rescue is an enjoyable post script to these proceedings, and even better is Kolos resolve to stay and improve his people’s lot.

The show isn’t subtle about it, with Kolos outright stating why he’s had a change of heart, what he means to atone for, and how he’ll have the will to go on. But maybe with these operating Klingon stories, subtlety is overrated. There is something heartening, maybe even stirring, about this cynical man finding reason to believe in something again. Even I would be hard-pressed to ask Enterprise to turn the volume down.

Kolos: says one word
Me: OMG that's J.G. Hertzler!

[5.6/10] For me, the greatest sin of a television show is wasted potential. Some episodes are liable to be great. Some episodes are liable to be terrible. A good many more will vary between “fine” and “pretty good.” As I’ve exhaustively detailed on this website, there’s a ton of reasons for that, some of which are understandable and some of which are maddening. But the most frustrating thing when taking in a story of any stripe, is feeling like somebody had a great idea, or great premise, or sniffed greatness, but then left some of the best possibilities on the table.

“The Crossing” leaves more than the best possibilities on the table. It leaves most of the possibilities on the table. The prospect of non-corporeal beings, touring the human body as a vessel of choice through meatspace, is a thrilling one. As “Return to Tomorrow” from The Original Series showed us, the notion of what beings without bodies do once returned to them can be an illuminating experience for the characters and the audience alike.

But Enterprise dispenses with all of that for a rote pod people story. Instead of any philosophical exploration of what it means to encounter a new form of life or the costs of their form of existence versus ours, “The Crossing” does a cheap spin on a horror tale, with Stepford Smilers and “who’ll be brainwashed next?” questions that don’t amount to much beyond some bargain basement scares.

That wouldn’t be so bad if the show’s would be ghost story were any good. As much as I enjoy Star Trek’s more philosophical side, there’s nothing wrong with just telling a simple, creepy tale in the confines of a spaceship. The problem is that the invasion of the “wisps” is pretty dull, and doesn't make much sense.

Most good stories that involve the supernatural (or the “may as well be supernatural”) have rules for how things have to operate. These rules take the nigh-magical and not only ground it in something the audience can relate to, but make the characters earn their success (or failure) in dealing with it. Here, the rules are all so opaque and nonsensical that it’s hard to invest in any of the problems or solutions.

Are you unsure whether or not a fellow crewman is inhabited by a wisp? Well that’s no problem, because Dr. Phlox just invented a wisp detector! Are you running from a being that can go through walls (which, in fairness, are the episode’s best sequences)? Don’t worry about it! These things that the sensors can’t even really detect are repelled by the alloy in the catwalk for some reason! Is a third of your crew infested with these beings who might have evil intentions? That’s fine! We can just gas them out of the ship without any ill effects to the human beings they’re inhabiting! What about that massive alien ship that you can’t outrun and which is so technologically advanced that it takes over all of your systems? Just blow it up!

I’m used to easy Treknobabble solutions to what ought to be thorny problems, and I’m not a nitpicker, but “The Crossing” takes the cake. It stacks arbitrary implausibility on top of arbitrary implausibility until you wonder if the writers even began to think this whole situation through. I’ll concede that there’s something clever about T’Pol using her psychic abilities and disciplined mind to discern the wisps’ plan after one tries to take her over. But for the most part, the episode introduces a series a big, difficult problem and then comes up with all sorts of convenient answers that don’t pass the smell test.

Some of this would be more tolerable if the episode didn’t feel like it was stretching to fit the required runtime. My compliment for the last episode was that it knew how to evolve its central problem to create new challenges for our heroes to overcome. “The Crossing” does nearly the opposite, giving us the gist of the problem early on and then letting us watch Archer and company tread water for most the episode before figuring out how to solve it. In the meantime, we get a bunch of lifeless scenes of Archer yelling generic missives at his wisp-possessed crewmen and, bafflingly, multiple silly fight scenes starring Dr. Phlox: action star.

The episode also tosses in some weird sexual harassment material with the wisp who possesses Malcolm which is, dare I say, problematic. Either it’s meant to be a source of menace, in which case it feels cheap and especially galling for the show to try to pull that crap using T’Pol as the victim again. Or it’s meant as comedy, which may be even worse. There’s something interesting about a non-corporeal being experiencing sexual curiosity and desire, without understanding human mores, but Enterprise doesn't have the skill to explore that fraught material with any grace or nuance, and the whole thing comes off as uncomfortable for other reasons than what the show seems to be going for.

That’s the cinch to all of “The Crossing.” There’s grand metaphysical questions at play about what it’s like for a being without a body to suddenly find itself able to talk and eat and feel again, and for a human to suddenly experience the world through a different lens. There’s grand ethical questions about whether it’s right for a wisp to do this, and how much leeway to give a species that’s long removed from issues of bodily autonomy. And there’s compelling moral dilemmas about a group of dying lifeforms seeking salvation and how we measure their lives against ours.

But Enterprise just blows them up, literally and figuratively. Gone are the engrossing questions of different forms of life, and in comes a procedural horror story that’s rife with boring interludes and quick fixes. When the series had the chance to tell us a story about the famed “new life and new civilizations” from the once-famous, now-jettisoned intro, it gave us a mostly-fine but uninspired possession story that barely bothered to graze any of the imaginative qualities and curiosity that made Star Trek great.

I can handle bad Star Trek episodes. Hell, I love some of them. What I truly don’t like are episodes like this, that feel like they waste something great to settle for something less.