[6.4/10] There is character in Star Trek: Discovery; it just gets squeezed out by action, exposition, more action, the obligatory table-setting, and then for a change of pace, a little more action.
I don’t mind a little high octane excitement in my Star Trek. Even the measured dignity of The Next Generation got into fisticuffs and firefights on multiple occasions. It’s a part of the franchise that goes all the way back to Kirk’s double ax handles on unsuspecting baddies.
But in Discovery’s penultimate episode, it feels like the point, rather than a side dish. As we head into the series finale, I care far more about whether everyone’s connections to one another stand than whether our heroes will inevitably overcome the challenge du jour, let alone the season’s overall arc. But there’s just not as much time for it when the show has to move all the pieces around the board so that they’re ready for next week’s installment, and try to keep the audience’s attention amid explosions and rampant random danger, as its number one priority.
I want to see Stamets and Dr. Culbert feel uneasy about Adira going on their first potentially deadly mission, and for Adira to rise to the occasion. But we can't! We have to spend time escaping from a black hole! I want to see Tilly convince Rayner it’s okay to sit in the captain’s chair, but there’s no time to develop that idea because the away team has to get stuck in a fiery exhaust port. God help me, I even want to see Burnham and Book express their regrets to one another, but we can only have a minute of it because they need to get into a fistfight with some random Breen soldiers.
The one story thread in “Lagrange Point” that gets any room to breathe is Saru and T’Rina’s parting. While the charge between the two of them has diminished somewhat since the show finally pulled the trigger on their relationship, there remains something cute about the quaint little couple. And even as the dialogue sounds stilted, the notion that both understand a devotion to service, since it’s part of their mutual admiration society, to T’Rina would only encourage Saru to seek a diplomatic solution in a dangerous situation, is a heartening one.
Even there, though, the time spent with the couple bouncing off one another is limited because we have to spend so much time with Federation potentates laying out the details of the byzantine situation with Discovery, the Progenitor tech, and two Breen factions so that they don’t have to bother explaining it next week. It is nice to see President Rillak again, and I appreciate that amid so many explosions and deadly situations, we do see some true-to-form attempts at a diplomatic solution. But whether it's in the Federation HQ boardroom, or the bridge of Discovery, or even the Breen warship, there’s so much robotic talk that only exists to get the audience up to speed on what’s happening, and it quickly becomes exhausting.
I get that, especially before a finale, you want to make sure everyone at home and on screen is on the same page. But it contributes to the lack of felt humanity that has, frankly, suffused Discovery since the beginning.
What kills me is that we get pieces of it! Or at least attempts at it! I am quietly over the moon for Adira coming into their own with smarts and courage to help save the day. You can see how much the attaboys mean to them, and Blu del Barrio sells it well. Rayner and Tilly’s grumpy/sunshine dynamic really clicks here, and as extra as Tilly’s dialogue is sometimes, her stumbling line-delivery makes her feel like a real person and not just an exposition-delivery mechanism like so many characters here. As corny as it is, I even like the playfulness we get between Book and Burnham once they’ve rushed through their personal issues and are instantly back to flirting for whatever reason.
Little of this is perfect. The same sterile approach to the aesthetic and lines and sometimes the performances, that's become Discovery’s house style, still weighs the show down. But by god, they’re trying! You catch glimpses of looser, more authentically personal interactions that would help make these characters feel real. (It’s part of what elevates Strange New Worlds despite that show spinning off of Discovery.) Instead, it’s crowded out by all the explosions and narrative heavy-machinery that “Lagrange Point” seems more interested in.
At least we get a good old fashioned wacky infiltration mission. The humor here is a bit zany for my tastes, and considering that this is supposedly a perilous mission the good guys might not return from, there’s rarely any sense of real danger. Burnham and company bluff through most situations with ease, and even when they don’t, the overacting Moll doesn’t kill them or otherwise fully neutralize them the way you’d expect. This is, as T’Pring might say, mainly a dose of hijinks. I like hijinks! But it detracts from the seriousness of what you’re pitching to the audience.
So does going to the well of dust-ups and destruction ten times an episode. Everything comes too easy for our heroes anyway in “Lagrange Point”. But even if it hadn't, even if you don’t just know that everything’s going to work out because the plot requires it to, the grand finale of ramming Discovery into the Breen shuttle bay and beaming the crew and the MacGuffin lands with minimal force. We’ve already seen scads of action and explosions in the first half of the episode, and again, the imagery is sterile and unreal, which makes it harder to emotionally invest. Your big honking set pieces won’t have the same impact if you’ve done something similar in scope and peril every ten minutes or so for no particular reason.
“Lagrange Point” still has some charms. Even though it’s inevitable, Michael and Moll being stuck in some liminal space offers an intriguing endgame. Rayner finding the self-assurance to sit in the big chair again exudes a rousing level of confidence to the crew and the audience. His chance to face his Breen tormentor has just as much promise. Him, Saru, Adira, and more having their minor moments of triumph is all a good thing.
Unfortunately, these gems have to be carefully pried out of a dull firmament full of rote descriptions of events seemingly meant to untangle the convoluted narrative knot Discovery has tied for itself and unavailing action meant to nudge a half-asleep audience awake. It’s all largely watchable, but easy to zone out in explosive set pieces and boardroom scenes alike in between those precious moments of character. All I can hope for is that this is a necessary evil to clear the decks for the series’ swan song, and that once this detritus is out of the way, there will be better things to come.
[7.4/10] The Augments arc has had a pretty clear litmus test. It’s fun and enjoyable when it’s the Arik Soong show, and either dull or hammy (or both) when it’s the Malik show. It’s somewhere in between, as usual, when it’s the Archer show. “The Augments” tries to split that difference, giving us a fair amount of Soong and Malik, and a fair amount of Soong and Archer, and comes out pretty muddled, but occasionally enjoyable, as a result.
The episode flags when Enterprise tries to turn this story into a faux-Shakespearean family tragedy with Soong, Malik, and Persis. The whole father-and-son angle never landed as well as it should, and all the monologues and colloquies about the importance of not killing people or about who should be in charge fall flat with cheesy writing and an especially cheesy performance from Malik.
He’s the biggest weak link here, at least in terms of performance-to-screentime ratio. Malik quickly ascends into cartoon supervillainy with his plan to inflict a devastating pathogen on the Klingons with the idea that they’ll blame Earth, go to war, and keep both sides out of their hair. He also murders Persis when she sets Soong free in something that’s supposed to be big and important but mostly just comes off as melodramatic and inevitable.
There’s not much of a point to any of this, but to give the Enterprise something to do and underscore once and for all that Malik is a bad guy. There’s a not so subtle message in this story arc, about how even when nurtured by well-meaning people, anyone with superior abilities starts to think themselves dangerously superior to anyone not of their ken. You can feel the writers groping around for a message in this pretty generic space adventurism, and the closest they can come is the not exactly daring “ubermensches are bad, or at least bad for humans.”
I don’t know what important or daring life lesson that’s supposed to convey (beyond a “hey, think twice before getting your kid laser eye surgery, they might turn into space Hitler!” warning), but it’s mostly set dressing for the more meat and potatoes Star Trek conflict. Malik is racing to a Klingon colony to let loose the aforementioned pathogen, and the Enterprise has to race to get there and thwart him before Khan Jr. can let it loose on an unsuspecting populace.
There’s some legitimate drama and excitement there, but it’s thrown off by the pacing of the episode. Even with a three episode stretch, Enterprise packs too much into the proceedings here. The episode leaps from plot point to plot point, requiring Archer’s starlogs to be the spackle connecting everything, or otherwise not allowing time for particular story threads to unspool naturally.
Oddly enough, the most engrossing parts of “The Augments” are...the parts that don’t actually involve the Augments. It’s more interesting seeing the Enterprise try to rope-a-dope their way through Klingon space without getting detected or destroyed. Archer using the Universal Translator to pose as a Klingon captain and bluff his way through an encounter with another was some nice amusing but high-stakes quick thinking. And when the Enterprise is legitimately detected by a Klingon ship, the Enterprise’s nifty little grappler/nacelle maneuver made for a nice dogfighting set piece.
But the actual confrontations and Augment-based plot stuff can’t help but feel anticlimactic by comparison. Malik launches his pathogen torpedo, and Archer launches a volley of follow-up torpedos that, wouldn’t you know it, manage to destroy Malik’s missile, apparently without any harm to the people down below. It’s a fair enough action sequence, but nothing to write home about.
The same goes for Malik’s last maneuvers, when he chooses to destroy his own ship and siblings rather than be drawn back to jail. There’s some minor emotional quotient to Soong having to cope with all of his “children” dying at once, but the episode doesn't really dwell on it, and Soong himself seems to take it as a mere failed experiment than any great loss when he reacts to it, which weakens its impact. It doesn't help that the rushed pacing makes Malik’s surprise reappearance and killing by Archer lacks the oomph it might otherwise have if the episode actually let the dust settle for a moment.
There’s supposed to be some sort of epiphany here, where Soong looks on his creations with horror and realizes the error of his ways. But “The Augments” gives that tale the short shrift in favor of an unavailing effort to do a miniaturized version of The Wrath of Khan. Say what you will about Khan, but in both his televised and cinematic outings, he had more interesting motivations than Malik’s “I have greater ability and therefore I’m evil” mentality that Enterprise hopes to carry the day with. The fact that Malik never really seems like a person, just a mustache-twirling supervillain, weakens Soong’s change of heart and face turn and sense of loss over his kids.
Honestly, outside of the first episode in the arc, this is something of a waste of Brent Spiner’s talents. It’s tons of fun to see him playing a bad guy, and he’s shown elsewhere that he has the dramatic chops to pull off bigger, more serious moments. But pairing him up so often with the over-the-top theatrical evilness of Malik or the continued “generic leader guy” routine that is the Archer show for those bits of drama dampens things considerably.
Don’t get me started on the cheesy outro, where Enterprise all but constructs a flashing neon sign that says “Soong’s descendents will build Data someday!” It’s a George Lucas-level bit of prequelitis dialogue, and Enterprise has enough of its own prequel problems without needing to borrow the type from Star Wars.
On the whole, the Augments arc was still enjoyable, and as is usually the case for Enterprise, toyed with some interesting ideas and a talented guest star. But also as usual, it couldn’t quite nail down those themes, or parcel out its story well enough to mix the heady thought-provoking flavor of Star Trek with the raucous space-adventuring side of the franchise. Still, it was nice to see Spiner back in the fold, and to see the show drafting off of Star Trek’s continuity a little, rather than flouting it.
[8.3/10] Holy cow -- continuity nod overload! Continuity nod overload! We’ve got a connection to Data’s creator’s ancestor, to Khan, to the Orions, to the Klingons, to the Eugenics wars, to the Augments, and my DS9 is a little rusty, but I think also to Julian Bashir. This is, to be sure, a massive dose of fan service, but I am embarrassed to admit that I am 100% here for it.
It’s just too much fun. This episode still tries to be a little grave and severe like season 3 of the show was at times, but for the most part, the tone is lighter, the situations are more over the top, even silly, in a way that’s enjoyable. There’s moments when it becomes too much for me, like the Orion slaver who totters over when Archer and Soong blast him. But other bits, like a green-skinned Big Show lifting and shaking a totally deadpan T’Pol, are the kind of outsized irreverence that had me in stitches. (I didn’t realize that Big Show followed in The Rock’s footsteps by making the jump from WWE to Star Trek)
Much of that comes from Brent Spiner himself, who is just so much fun playing a Hannibal Lecter-esque bad guy. There’s something very tongue-in-cheek, and more than a little meta, when Spiner’s Soong tells Archer that his crew needs a better sense of humor. Spiner is a delight in that department here, with cutting, oft-sarcastic asides to Archer and others that just make him a joy to watch. It’s easy to default to The Next Generation with comparisons, but in a lot of ways Soong feels like a similar presence to Q here, obviously less in terms of power, but much more in terms of taking the stuffing out of this collection of stuffed shirts.
What’s neat is that Soong isn’t just comic relief here. He is a mad scientist, a sharp-minded escape artist, and in a weird way, an idealist. The show doesn't get into it too deeply, but Soong makes for a solid devil’s advocate on the genetic engineering front. His pitch to Archer that the techniques he pioneered could help enhance humanity and reduce suffering in the world is a superficially compelling one. And when Archer notes that the augments and the Eugenics Wars caused untold suffering (and as Star Trek fans know, would cause more trouble in the future), Soong responds, not unreasonably, that splitting the atom lead to untold death at first, but also powered man’s journeys into space.
His idea that early stumbles shouldn’t keep scientists from pushing for progress makes for an interesting contrast with Archer, who famously has had his own clashes with the Vulcans limiting humanity’s to advance. Soong brings that home to Archer by noting that his controversial techniques could possibly have cured the disease that killed Archer’s dad. In all honesty, most of these discussions are window dressing rather than seriously-addressed topics, but the ideas and arguments, and Spiner’s delivery of them, are all interesting enough to carry the day and feel part and parcel with the sort of ethical debates that are the bread and butter of Star Trek.
That ethical debate becomes a little more relevant when the results of Soong’s experiments have grown up and are out causing a ruckus. Much of the episode focuses on a power struggle among the augments who’ve taken over a Klingon ship. It turns out to be the weakest part of the episode, as none of the augments really know how to act, and the whole Lady MacBeth routine with Persis pitting Malik and Raakin against one another feels pretty cheesy, albeit more like a true Original Series throwback than almost anything else in the series so far.
Still, their schtick is enjoyable enough on its own terms. While the augment crew doing parkour and kung fu to take down Klingons comes off a little hokey, it’s buoyed by the excitement over the fact that they basically look like a troupe of mini-Khans. At the same time, there’s some genuine pathos and even heart to them wanting to rescue and reunite with their “father.” Granted, the show tries to use them to gesture toward how Soong’s line of thinking can easily lead to pernicious ubermensch philosophy, which is particularly dangerous in the hands of genetic supermen, but it’s all too bombastic to take seriously.
What’s kind of odd is that despite the presence of Soong, the misadventures of the augments, and the political implications of the Klingon entanglement, “Borderland” isn’t really about any of those things. At most, it kind of introduces those notions which are likely to take flight later. Instead, it’s mostly focused on the Enterprise going to the titular no-man’s-land between intergalactic territories, and having to rescue the nine members of the crew who get kidnapped by the Orions.
Despite that, sending the unlikely team of Archer and Soong to go rescue them makes for a really fun setpiece. Major kudos owe to the show’s production and costuming team, as the Orion auction house is the sort of grimy, visually diverse milieu we haven’t gotten enough of when exploring “strange new worlds and new civilizations.” The Orions themselves have particularly neat costuming (save the gratuitous but sadly canonical barely-dressed slave girl). There’s an otherness to the Orions, achieved both by casting large guys like Big Show to play them, but also through coming up with unique, almost bondage-themed costumes that are eye-catching and visually signify that we’re not dealing with business as usual here.
The jailbreak and chase that results is also a hell of a fun setpiece. Beyond the raw chaos of these bumpy-headed aliens running around in a panic, you have Soong making a run for it, Archer cleverly thwarting him, and the sort of spills and subterfuge that make this sort of rescue mission a thrill. Add in the fact that the Enterprise is about to be roasted by the Orion ships only to have the augments save the day, and you have another dose of the rolicking, lighter side of action-y Trek I like more than its bland action movie equivalent.
Of course, the end result is a reunion between Soong and his creations, and an escape with more adventures surely in the offing. Spiner is so much fun to watch as Soong because he gets to be the bad guy, and flexes those more colorful acting impulses we almost exclusively got to see in Lore on The Next Generation. But Spiner also imbues him with some truer humanity: his affection for his “children,” his unwillingness to destroy the Enterprise, his seemingly genuine commitment to his perceived altruism in his ideas.
Mixing all of that with a grab bag of continuity connections and species from the franchise’s past makes for an absolute blast of an episode. There’s a certain amount of pandering to all of this, but I’d be lying if I said it did anything than reel me in hook line and sinker.
[7.1/10] “Image in the Sand” is not one of *Deep Space Nine”’s better season premieres. Which is a shame! This is the last one it’ll have! And they’re normally reliably good episodes, as the writers try to start the new season off with a bang.
“Image in the Sand” is more of a hangover. And I like that, in principle. A ton of major things (no pun intended, given Kira’s promotion) happened in “Tears of the Prophets” last season. Spending time to show us the fallout from that, rather than just racing on to the next adventure, is a worthwhile approach, one befitting Deep Space Nine’s character-focused tack and increasing serialization.
But the season 7 premiere gives us three story threads to follow from last season’s dramatics: the first is engrossing and well-done, the second is promising if a little cheesy, and the third is necessary, but frankly kind of bad in a way that surprised me for Deep Space Nine.
Let’s start with the good. Kira is a colonel now! In the three months since Sisko’s departure, she’s firmly stepped into the leadership role for the station. She has the big chair, she interfaces with Starfleet and the Romulans and, of course, her uncharacteristically effusive head of security. And in many ways, this episode is her coming out party. The story establishes her as a force to be reckoned with, not just as a one-time rebel turned officer, but as a capable leader and operator within these various spheres of influences.
I like that a lot! It never struck me when I was watching Deep Space Nine live, but over the course of the series, Kira arguably grows and changes more than any other character on the show. Seeing her go from a recalcitrant and rebellious liaison, to committed member of a mixed-nationality crew, to deserving leader of the whole shebang is one of DS9’s best character arcs.
We see that through her dealings with the always prickly and yet slippery Romulans. The Federation (via a returning Admiral Ross) tells her, rather than asking her, that there will be a Romulan military presence on the station. You can understand both why that would be a reasonable request, given that the Romulans are part of the anti-Dominion alliance now, but also why it would make Kira uneasy given the Romulans’ treacherous history, and why she’d especially bristle at being ordered to accept them by Starfleet.
Except, the Romulan representative, Cretak, seems like a reasonable person. She and Kira have a certain rapport, born of an immediate mutual respect and courteous steeliness. Cretak acknowledges her people’s reputation for arrogance, and doesn't abuse her privileges aboard DS9. She respects Kira’s authority; asks permission for key activities, and even tries a jumja stick! Maybe this will turn out to be one of those trademark Star Trek “Don’t judge a book by its cover” stories!
Sike! No, it turns out the courteous request to set up a Romulan hospital on an uninhabited Bajoran moon is, at best, a side dish, and at worst, an excuse, for Cretak’s allies to put a heap of weapons in place. Here’s Kira (with an assist from Odo), calling Cretak to account, and not taking any shit from Admiral Ross, and generally marking her territory as both the commander of this station and Bajor’s representative.
I suspect we haven't seen the end of this conflict. But between the political interplay, which has long been a highlight of the show, and the chance to see Kira coming into her own in Sisko’s absence, you just love to see it.
What’s slightly less fun is Worf mourning the death of his wife. Or at least, it should be.
That's the odd thing about the second storyline in “Image in the Sand”. I love the idea of taking time to show Worf processing his grief. I was never a huge supporter of the Worf/Fax pairing, but one of the more moving part of their relationship was their tender goodbye and Worf’s characteristic mourning howl. Leaning into that, what this loss means to him, could be fruitful.
Instead, Deep Space Nine...kind of plays it for laughs. Worf wrecks Vic Fontaine’s club after the crooner sings Jadzia’s favorite song, and it leads to jokes about the holographic band threatening to quit and Quark sheepishly handing him a lampshade. Chief O’Brien tries to cheer him up with a bottle of bloodwine with a sitcom-y effort to avoid being instantly shooed away, replete with recollections of Lt. Barclay’s misadventures. The braintrust of Quark, Miles, and Julian trade quips about the situation over a couple of ales.
In principle, I like this storyline. There’s something heartwarming about the idea that Worf’s friends, even Quark, are worried about his mental well-being. The fact that they take his religious beliefs seriously -- that he must win a glorious battle dedicated to Jadzia to get her into Klingon Heaven -- because real or not, they affect him, is touching. And their not only enlisting Martok, but agreeing to go along on a dangerous mission to help Worf and honor Dax is noble. On paper, the story is a solid, even strong one.
The only issue is that for whatever reason, Deep Space Nine plays it for laughs, or at least a sitcom-y “gee whiz” tack, that detracts from the gravity of what Worf is grappling with. The result is an odd dissonance, and I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s because they’re going for the “committed grief” vibe in the third, Sisko-focused section of the episode, and they didn’t want to overload the audience with mourning.
Here too, I appreciate what Deep Space Nine is trying to do. Ben Sisko lost a lot in the season 6 finale. He lost his best friend. He lost his connection to the Prophets. He felt bound to step away from the station that had been his home and sanctuary for six years. Benjamin is in a state of recovery, a grief-ridden haze that's apparently consumed him for the past three months. As with Worf’s story, taking time to let that settle, to make the audience sit with how that must feel, is a good choice. And Avery Brooks sells the hell out of it in his early scenes.
But then, for some strange reason, we get a mystical fetch quest and some overblown melodrama.
I don’t mind the mystical fetch quest so much. Lord knows DS9 has resorted to magic more often of late, but that it’s been there since the beginning. And hey, while to modern eyes, the Cult of the Pah-wraiths is a little too much like the random Sith cultists from The Rise of Skywalker, the notion that a group of violent Bajoran extremists are worshiping the bad guys now that the Celestial Temple is cut off is an interesting concept.
That said, while I want to give room for the show to pay off my trust, I don’t love the idea that reopening the wormhole is more an Indiana Jones-style artifact hunt than a spiritual journey. The idea that Benjamin just has to put together the right clues and find the right trinket to right what went wrong makes this seem a bit too Zelda-esque for my tastes, even if I hope and imagine there will be more to it than that.
(This is where I admit that my memory of DS9’s final season is super fuzzy! I’m looking forward to being surprised all over again.)
The bigger problem, though, is the Sisko family melodrama. Much of it seems pointless. So Benjamin’s mom wasn’t his mom. So what? The dialogue suggests they’re trending toward an answer of “People can make mistakes but still be good and do good, so forgive yourself and keep going, Ben!”, using Joseph Sisko as an example. Again, I want to give the show time to provide answers, but it’s not clear at this juncture why any of this is significant.
Even so, some of it might be forgivable if the acting weren’t so bad. I don’t know what the deal is. Avery Brooks and Brock Peters have both done extraordinary work, including on this very show! Here though, their family revelations play like unconvincing, Twin Peaks-style over-emotiing across the board. The overwrought score doesn’t help, but the whole tone of these moments veer toward the overblown instead of the raw and intimate, and I don’t know why the veteran performers or director chose to go that direction.
Still, the saving grace of Deep Space Nine setting up its final season, and aiming for a more serialized format, is that there’s a chance for the show to provide answers to some of those big questions, and to course correct a little on where Benjamin, Worf, and to a lesser extent Kira are going for here. I can't pretend this is anything but a bit of a bumpy start, but I still trust our own powers that be on the creative team to get us to the right destination.
[8.1/10] Hitting one-hundred episodes is a big deal. The Original Series fell well short. The Animated Series didn’t come close. Enterprise couldn’t quite make it. And four modern Star Trek series ended without even being within spitting distance. So crossing that threshold is a legitimate milestone for Star Trek: Voyager.
What I appreciate about “Timeless” is that it feels sufficiently momentous in light of that achievement. Plenty of episodes of Star Trek, even ones where nominally major things happen, feel a little ho-hum, even when they’re well done. Big catastrophes are pretty much the order of the day in Star Trek, so even a ship- or galaxy-threatening crisis can seem like just another day at the office for our heroes.
But “Timeless” feels like a story worthy of the occasion. For one thing, there’s a celebratory atmosphere to this one. The scene where B’Elanna comes to christen the new quantum slipstream drive, draped in slow motion confetti, with a suitable benediction from Captain Janeway herself, plays like a tribute not only to Voyager’s ostensibly impending journey home, but to the accomplishments of this cast and crew in reaching a point not every television show, let alone Star Trek series, can say they’ve crossed.
For another, the writers (including Trek impresario and reputed shitbag Rick Berman), bust out two of Star Trek’s favorite spicy chestnuts for the occasion: time travel and alternate timelines.
That's part of what makes this one seem like a big deal. You can practically feel the show busting out special things. We open on Voyager buried under a sheet of ice! We see Janeway herself as a frozen corpse in the decaying remains of the ship! We get alternate versions of Chakotay and Harry (with franchise trademark unconvincing old age makeup to boot)! We have a daring mission to save the future by rectifying the past! We get a cameo from Geordi! We jump between one period and another as the tension ratchets up! Sure, those things usually mean a big reset button is hit, but sometimes, that's the price of fun.
And most importantly, this feels big because it’s a chance to go home. Sure, Voyager’s had some of those in the past. But this time, it isn’t a trick or a fleeting wormhole or some other aliens’ tech that they’re asking to borrow. It’s built on the strength of their own ingenuity, the product of all that they've learned while in the Delta Quadrant. Savvy viewers can probably guess that they’re not going to make it to the Alpha Quadrant halfway through the series, but in a landmark episode like this one, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, which adds excitement.
True to form, there is a thrilling technical problem to solve here. When we meet them, fifteen years in the future, Harry and Chakotay (and some rando named Tessa, because why not), have already stolen the Delta Flyer, purloined a Borg temporal node from Starfleet Intelligence, and from there they have to revive The Doctor, dissect the part of Seven’s skull with her ocular transceiver, and send the exact right “phase corrections” at the exact right moment in the past to avert a decade and a half-year-old disaster from happening. Oh, and Captain LaForge is bearing down on them in the process.
Solving technical problems with creativity and dering-do is at the heart of Star Trek. So using the occasion to have our heroes (or the ones who’ve survived fifteen years later at least) deploy all their fancy tech and know-how to save the future, while the rest of them are doing the same to get home in the past, pays suitable tribute to the kinds of adventures that have fueled the series and the franchise.
True-to-form, it’s also a personal story. As much as this is about finding the right frequency to realign the antimatter coagulators through the main deflector dish or what have you, it’s also a story about Harry Kim’s struggles with his choices. Harry’s often seemed like the character most interested in getting home, and so there’s weight in him taking a big risk in order to try to complete their mission that goes horribly awry but leaves him as one of the few still breathing.
The only problem is that poor overmatched Garrett Wang does not have the chops to play the grizzled, regretful rogue who’s older and more haunted by his actions. Honestly, I was impressed with Wang’s acting in the regular timeline. He’s not always the show’s most dynamic performer, but when Tom identifies a problem with the slipstream drive, and he gives a rousing speech about how they can still do this, you believe his enthusiasm and determination, in a way that's almost stirring.
Unfortunately, he’s just not up to the other half of the equation, He can't quite muster the up-to-eleven emoting required to sell someone haunted by survivor’s guilt and frustrated to the point of madness at his inability to fix the past. (The Doctor is, though, so thank heaven for Robert Picardo!) It’s one of the big weaknesses in an otherwise well-conceived episode.
The other problem is to put the focus on Chakotay and his lifeless, disposable love interest. I get what the show’s going for here. There’s an interesting story to be told about Chakotay having made a real connection in the fifteen years since Voyager’s demise and having to reckon with that all being erased if he succeeds. (The Orville, which “Timeless” writer Brannon Braga is involved with, touches on a similar idea.)
But Tessa is such a nothing character. Despite some good outings this season, Robert Beltran is too wooden here to sell the romance. His guest star paramour isn’t much better. And neither of them can quite convey the graveness of the decision or the preciousness of what they’re losing in the process. And that's before you get to a certain ickiness from the implication that Chakotay might be dating a younger Voyager fangirl.
(And hey, as with Picard and Dr. Crusher on TNG, this is more of a tease than anything substantive, but it doesn’t help the Chakotay/Tessa relationship when the show is clearly stoking fans interest in a Janeway/Chakotay romance in the same episode. The suggestion that there might be room for the relationship if they can make it back to the Alpha Quadrant and not have a whole crew depending on them is intriguing. More immediately though, the Captain and her first officer have infinitely more chemistry than Chakotay and Tessa do. That's partly the point, I think. You get the impression that Chakotay is still moved to hear Janeway’s voice on the ship’s last log, which is why he’s willing to throw his current relationship away. But Tessa is such a nothing character that it never feels like a fair fight.)
Still, despite those weaknesses, there’s a sense of importance, novelty, and urgency that carries the day for an exciting installment like “Timeless”. Part of that comes from the clever scripting. The deftest move the writing team (which also includes Trek stalwart Joe Menosky) makes here is to expertly cut between the past and the present.
That helps in the early part of the episode, where the audience is thrown for a loop by what misfortune could have occurred to leave Voyager in such a state, before cutting to a flashback that shows us the build-up to how it happened. The hope and anticipation in the past, matched with the grim resignation of the present, makes for a striking juxtaposition. And even in the middle, the dramatic irony of comparing young Harry’s grand plans to get them home, with older Harry’s grand plans to fix what he broke as a young man, has an impact.
The smart editing also keeps the excitement up in the episode’s final third act. The writers add the usual Star Trek threats in the future, with a destabilizing ship and not enough power to run the various gadgets and a galaxy class starship there to stop our heroes from changing history. So you get the sense of urgency in the future, as this is the good guys’ one big chance to set things right. But theoretically, the past has already happened, so it should be harder to wring tension from it.
Thankfully, the episode smartly cuts between Harry and Doc’s trials and travails in the future, with Janeway and the crew’s attempt to use the sli-pstream drive in the past, making it seem like the events are happening simultaneously. You can't think too hard about it, or as Harry himself suggests, the whole thing might fall apart in a sea of temporal mechanics and predestination paradoxes. But it’s a nice way to present the material in a way that keeps the audience energized and invested. And the smart structure allows the show to give viewers hints at serious events before letting us witness them firsthand.
The alternate timeline idea also lets us see big things the show can't do as a going concern. The ship can crash into the interstellar equivalent of an iceberg and the crew can die. We can hear snippets of what a return to Earth would look like. We can...see the inside of Seven’s skull, I guess.
Alongside the novelty, there’s a poetic twist, in that Harry’s phase corrections sent to the past through Seven are what turn out to send Voyager crashing down in the first place. There is a bitter irony in the fact that the best future Harry can do is not bring Voyager back home, but restore the status quo. The ticking clock feels a little contrived, but it’s a nice way to solve the immediate problem without solving the series’ big problem, and the Doctor giving the one time ensign a pep talk that spurs him to success is a true fist-pump moment.
Despite falling well short of expectations, and the notion that this was their one big chance for the slipstream project to succeed (presumably to avoid Comic Book Guy-style fans like yours truly from asking why they don’t just keep trying), there’s a sense of optimism at the end of “Timeless”. In an act with a certain amount of sacrifice, Harry and Chakotay become Voyager’s guardian angels. The ship is ten years closer to home. And as Janeway herself puts it, the idea of returning to the Alpha Quadrant is starting to feel like a “when” not an “if”.
Voyager’s writers reportedly included the Caretaker’s mate as an out, in case the whole “stranded in the Delta Quadrant” thing didn’t work and they had to retool the show. At a landmark like one-hundred episodes, you could be forgiven for suspecting the show, which has already switched out castmembers and given the ship a Borg makeover, might do something big. Whether that's killing off another character, or letting Harry and Chakotay exit the show, or even bringing everyone home and starting a new adventure, the heightened aura of a round number gives this one an “anything can happen” quality.
Of course, they stay in the Delta Quadrant; the ship and her crew remain intact, and despite all of that, Harry is back to being an ensign. There is a certain entropy to network television in the 1990s -- a fear of changing or bending the premise too much lest it break. But in heightened moments -- season premieres, season finales, and milestones like this one, shows like Voyager still pull out all the stops, and in outings like “Timeless”, deliver something worthy of the billing.
(As a personal aside, the cameo from director LeVar Burton threw me for a loop because I swear I remember a scene where Geordi is on the bridge of Voyager! I wonder if it was just from a featurette on the production or something like that, and I’m mixing things up. Just goes to show how your memories of the shows you watched growing up can be unreliable!)
[8.5/10] I’ve always appreciated that Star Trek is not afraid to ask hard questions. “Nothing Human” is a referendum on the use of Nazi scientific research extracted through horrific experiments on “undesirables”. There are no easy answers to whether it’s ethically right to use knowledge gathered through cruel means to help physicians and patients who had nothing to do with those trespasses. The moral balance of profiting, even intellectually, from past cruelty versus serving the greater good in the here and now is an uneasy one at best. “Nothing Human” doesn’t shy away from the difficulty of those questions; instead, it embraces them.
Showrunner/writer Jeri Taylor contrives a strong situation in which to test their fault lines. B’Elanna’s life is threatened when a giant alien bug attaches itself to her, and the Doctor must resort to recreating a famed exobiologist in holographic form to help solve the medical mystery of how to remove it. Now of course, you have to turn off your brain for some of this. The script offers some fig leaves for why Janeway would bring the bug aboard, and how safety protocols fail, and why none of their usual equipment works on the bug, and why the crew would create a second medical hologram rather than just having the Doctor ingest the info. But in truth, much of the setup feels like a bit of a stretch.
The story we get, though, is worth stretching for. Because the famed exobiologist the Doctor and company summon via holodeck magic turns out to be a Cardassian named Crell Moset, and his mere presence causes a stir on the ship. Dr. Moset is affable, knowledgeable, resourceful, and decorated. (Guest star David Clennon plays him to likable, subtly pernicious perfection.) He is also a member of the species the former Maquis aboard Voyager were fighting to the death, and a participant in the Bajoran Occupation.
That alone would be enough to sustain an episode. B’Elanna doesn’t want the holo-Crell’s help, given who and what he represents. For his part, Crell offers insights along the way that allow The Doctor to make breakthroughs in the case. And Doc not only works perfectly in sync with his new holographic colleague, but gets along with him in a way he hasn’t with anybody since Kes.
Their synchronicity, both personally and professionally, is one of the most interesting aspects of the early part of the episode. The opening comic relief of the episode sees Doc boring everyone with his visual essays. Earlier in the season, even Naomi is exhausted by spending time with him. As much by personality as by his photonic nature, Doc is a man apart.
So imagine the joy of finding a kindred spirit! Doc and Crell bond over being resourceful improvisers who have to make due without the usual implements or support. They finish each other’s medical diagnoses. They bond over breakthroughs made by necessity from situations that forced them to think creatively. They even hum the same arias. After four years of feeling like few people aboard Voyager don’t understand him, let alone befriend him, he finds someone who truly gets him -- who understands what his situation is like and can relate -- in a way he never has before.
That puts a thumb on the scale. If you’re the Doctor, it’s easy to handwave away B’Elanna’s skepticism of a Cardassian doctor as racism that has no place in medicine. (It has shades of Worf’s refusal to donate blood to a Romulan in “The Enemy”.) It’s easy to excuse divergence in the two physicians’ typical approaches as a part of standard cultural differences. It’s easy to write off any questions about his methods on Bajor as the product of a type of field medicine necessity that Doc himself understands all too well, with a cure that saved countless lives no less! If the question is whether this man is a noble healer or a Cardassian butcher, your answer will be biased by whether you like the guy and whether you can relate to him.
Here’s where I pull back the curtain a bit. I’ve been watching Voyager interspersed with episodes of Deep Space Nine that aired around the same time. (Shout out to the Star Trek Chronology Project! Thanks for adding in the animated shows!) And I think it adds a lot to episodes like these.
I’ve seen suggestions that folks not bother interspersing DS9 and Voyager because they don’t really crossover. “Not even the little stuff,” one website warned. And it’s true, to some extent. Janeway and Sisko are in two different quadrants. So things are different than between The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, where you can have Dr. Bashir show up on the Enterprise or Riker calls in a favor from Quark or Captain Picard stroll the bulkheads of Sisko’s station without too much logistical trouble.
The connections between Voyager and Deep Space NIne are more oblique. Tuvok pops up in one of Sisko’s jaunts to the Mirror Universe. The EMH’s creator, Dr. Zimmerman, shows up on DS9 to use Julian as the basis for a new model. Aside from Quark nearly swindling Harry back in “Caretaker”, there’s little in the way of direct interactions between the main characters of the two shows.
But I think weaving the shows together pays dividends in at least two ways. The first is the Maquis. While Voyager always underachieved on this front, seeing Chakotay and B’Elanna’s feelings about the rebel group helps inform the audience’s understanding of them when Sisko has to deal with other members. The two Voyager officers learning about what happened to their brethren in the Alpha Quadrant has a big impact on their mental state and what they have to return to. And it helps explain why, in an episode like “Nothing Human”, B’Elanna is so hard-nosed in her resistance to accepting any help from a Cardassian doctor, even a holographic one.
The second is that the experiences of Deep Space Nine’s Kira Nerys in particular reveals that Cardassians are not a monolith. One of DS9’s favorite hobby horses is Kira harboring great (and justified) resentment against the Cardassians, only to realize they’re as diverse and multifaceted a people as Bajorans are. Yes, they have butchers like Gul Dukat, but also scientists who look down on the oppressive regime, activists who want to reform it, and even aged potentates who become penitents and father figures.
So when an episode like “Nothing Human” comes along, we have context for the atrocities committed during Cardassia’s occupation of Bajor. We understand why Voyager’s Bajoran officer, Ensign Tabor, has such a virulent reaction to Dr. Macet. (I wonder how he felt about Seska!) But at the same time, we have a basis to share The Doctor’s suspicion that Crell may not be so bad just because he’s a Cardassian, and that reflexive rejection of someone’s work and ability to help because of the people they hail from stands in opposition to Federation values.
And then the grisly facts start piling up.
My biggest qualm with “Nothing Human” is that it seems to inadvertently back into a “that racism was right” lesson. But revisiting this one, knowing the twist, I’m especially impressed at how Taylor and company thread in little hints that something’s amiss with Dr. Moset. They build and build, to where a sympathetic EMH can dismiss them in isolation, but as they pile up, he can't deny the horrible picture they begin to paint of his erstwhile genial colleague.
He wants to use “crude” Cardassian instruments rather than laser scalpels, with a plausible story about how the tactile nature of the implement keeps physicians connected to their patients. He doesn’t flinch at the pained cries of the bug he’s dissecting, but reassures The Doctor that it’s only because their test subject is a mere holographic recreation. He proposes a treatment that would save B’Elanna and kill the bug, with fair reasoning that in a life-or-death situation, they have to prioritize the health and wellbeing of Doc’s crewmate.
I love how these little moments pile up throughout the episode. They work as reasons for The Doctor to excuse somebody he’s already inclined to like and agree with. And in hindsight, they also function as Crell’s self-justifications for his cruelty, hinting at a mentality of callousness and cravenness that bears out when the truth is revealed.
That truth is that Crell is the Cardassian equivalent of Joseph Mengele. He experimented on Bajorans because he saw them as subhuman. He forced them into brutal tests that resulted in needless suffering and death. And even if he had a breakthrough, it came at a great ethical and human cost. The path of the Doctor initially denying this, then waffling when there’s conflicting evidence, only to accept the reality, much to his horror, when the facts roll in, is one of the best parts of the episode.
And a lesser show might have stopped there. The Doctor might acknowledge the evil he’s been a party to, delete the hologram, and find another way. Hell, a lesser show might have kept the tug of war simple: do you allow yourself to profit from inhuman experiments for the health of a colleague, or do you stand on moral principle and put that colleague’s life at risk? That alone would be plenty to sustain an episode.
Instead, “Nothing Human” adds wrinkle after wrinkle that makes this situation endlessly complex. What if you’re not dealing with the bastard themself, but a holographic recreation of them who has no memory of the cruel experiments? What if your patient nonetheless refuses any treatment that involves that hologram? What if the patient’s loved one is begging you to do it anyway if it provides you with the best chance to save them? What if a good crewman might resign his commission over it? What if the patient is your chief engineer, and the Captain can't spare them on an already dicey mission lightyears from home? (On that latter point, Enterprise would dig into similar issues in “Similitude”.)
In short, nothing this episode does makes The Doctor’s choice easy. How do you balance all of those issues? How do you decide what to weigh, what to credit, and what to dismiss? What’s the right thing to do when the purely practical and the purely ethical seem to be in conflict, and everything’s gray?
Despite that (commendable!) morass of a thought experiment, I like where Voyager lands, and how it doesn’t skimp on the moral ambiguity at play in all of this.
The Doctor utilizes Crell’s help to save B’Elanna, but puts a check on him. He accepts his counterpart’s expertise, but forcefully steps in to save the alien bug’s life, even if it’s less “efficient” than Crell’s method. And when it’s all over, when there’s no longer an emergency, he deletes Crell’s program and the research that went with it. The Doctor can stomach doing what must be done to save his patient in an unusual situation, but he can't stomach continuing to eat the fruit of this poisoned tree.
In all candor, I don’t necessarily agree with every part of his approach. In my book, at least, it’s better to save the living than to honor the dead. But truth be told, I don’t think that matters. What I appreciate is that this is a tough call, given all the facets and tendrils of the crisis facing The Doctor here, and I believe that he would take this path. That's all that really matters -- acknowledging the complexity, and having a character make a believable choice. (That goes for Janeway too, who’s become far more pragmatic herself since the days of, “Oh no! We can't give the Kazon a hypospray!”)
The final scene leans into those complications as well. Dr. Crell is full of flimsy rationalizations. But he’s also not wrong when he points to the fact that human medical history is far from spotless, and where we draw the line about what research is worthy and what might be tainted is, if not arbitrary, then certainly selective in many cases. What we choose to tolerate and what we refuse to countenance speaks as much to our own personal experiences and needs as any grand moral principles, even if you’re a four-year-old Emergency Medical Hologram.
The Doctor deletes Crell anyway. And you understand it. Maybe it’s meant as an act of moral principle. Maybe he’s become immune to Dr. Moset’s rationalizations and manipulations. Or maybe it’s the EMH’s acceptance of the idea that, right or wrong, he just can't be a party to this anymore. His erstwhile new friend has turned out to be a butcher -- he can't put up with that, even if it would help people.
That is, to my mind, where the best of Star Trek lies -- at the intersection of the moral, the practical, and the personal. I don’t expect our humble writers to have all the answers, especially when real life ethicists and philosophers struggle with them. But in great episodes like “Nothing Human”, I’m glad they’re still asking the tough questions.
(A couple asides here: (1.) When The Doctor started showing his slideshow, I mistakenly thought this was “Latent Image” from later in the season, and was bracing for a very different episode! (2.) As convenient as the EMH’s tricorders and such not working on the bug is, I appreciate our heroes getting to meet an alien that's truly alien once more. The differences in language and physiology from humanoid lifeforms are the kind of thing I could do with more of in Star Trek. And kudos to the effects team for the design of the bug, particularly its internals, which are eerie and gross in a darned impressive way.)
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
"If you call yourself enlightened, then you have to embrace people who are different than you are." - Jonathan Archer
I chuckle silently whenever I hear someone say the world has changed a lot and has largely embraced the LGBTQ+ community and people living with HIV/AIDS. It's easy to say you see no problem when it doesn't directly affect you and you're far removed from it. Yes, there has been some (mostly superficial change), but stigma and discrimination still exists, its just more subtle and insidious in many places, still brutal and life threatening in others. Remember, the United States of America isn't the only country in the world, and it's still (in 2022) very much a danger to live "differently" to the norm in some countries (even in some places in the USA)... and yes, we watch Star Trek in other parts of the world too, so it's relevant. Lol
Sure, it might just be that the episode felt rather personal for me, but I found this one to be an Enterprise winner. I particularly liked that it was obvious they were talking about the stigma against HIV/AIDS and homosexuals. I loved that the dialogue was blunt, to the point and unambiguous rather than overly covert. The juxtaposition with Danobulan sexuality created a good contrast by which to examine how relationships and intimacy may differ culturally. This is the kind of Star Trek I prefer, rather than the purposeless hypersexualised nonsense and weak writing I've seen of Enterpise thus far.
Well done.
[7.5/10] Seventy-five percent of this episode is pretty darn good, if not great. The first part of “Shockwave” gives us a problem that threatens to not only ground the Enterprise, but to halt human deep space exploration for decades. It offers a solution that the characters don’t expect in a sideways sort of way. And then it presents the crew working as a well-oiled machine, taking the lessons they’ve learned over the past twenty-five episodes to win the day and clear their names.
Is that stretch flawless? By no means. The gaping hole at the center of Enterprise continues to be Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer. With a full season of adventures and guises under our belts, it’s safe to say that Bakula cannot convincingly play the brooding layabout, or the romantic lead, or the high-minded explorer, or the amiable good old boy at anything above an “eh, it’s fine” level. That means any episode of this show centered around him is going to playing from a deficit, just like Archer’s beloved water polo team, from the getgo.
But the ideas in “Shockwave” are very good, and even some of the nuts and bolts writing and character decisions are strong. While Bakula doesn't necessarily do a great job at selling Archer’s despondence at having potentially grounded Earth’s space flights for years, the magnitude of the loss shines through. Archer’s “mistake” caused 3,600 souls to lose their lives, and led to the diametrically opposite result that this first mission was supposed to achieve.
The Enterprise’s first mission is to make first contact, to “seek out new life and new civilizations,” and instead, our main characters have seemingly destroyed it. The mission is an effort to prove that humanity is ready to join the interstellar community, and instead, this mistake is poised to make the elders of spaceflight confirm their views of terrans as impulsive and not ready. And worst of all, Archer’s mission is supposed to be a vindication of his father, and a thumb in the eye of the Vulcans who’d held human spaceflight back; instead, he appears to have handed the Vulcans the fodder to say that their reluctance toward both Archers was justified.
And yet, this being not only Star Trek, but a season finale at that, the savvy viewers can probably guess that our heroes weren’t responsible for the “oversight” that led to the decimation of the miners, and that the true culprits probably involves the Suliban and some time travel chicanery. Still, “Shockwave Pt. 1” lingers just long enough on the sense of failure, on the crew planning what they’re going to do after Enterprise, to let the weight of the consequences land, even if we can be reasonably sure that those consequences won’t ever actually come (especially considering that there’s 72 more episodes to get through!)
My favorite of these moments comes from T’Pol, who finds herself in a scene that mirrors the one with her and Archer from “Shadows of P’Jem.” This time, it’s her prompting her Captain to fight for his job, to try to show that there were extentuating circumstances, to convince their respective governments that this journey is worthwhile.
There’s a fatalism to Archer’s position, one that reflects human nature but which is no less wrong, to look at the worst of ourselves when things go wrong and be blind to the best of who we are. T’Pol, having been around humans enough to recognize their irrationality, but also to believe in what we’re capable of, encourages Archer to see all the things he did right, all the value he and the Enterprise brought, over the past ten months.
But it takes a visit from Daniels, the time-traveling crewman from the last major scrap with Silik, to fully convince Archer to snap out of his funk and get back to work. In truth, I didn’t necessarily love this portion of the episode, if only because the show spends a lot of time on Archer feelings out the situation of being thrust back in time when it feels perfunctory to longtime Star Trek fans who are used to hops to the past and future. Still, it’s enough to convince Archer than the explosion was the result of Suliban sabotage, and give him the tools to fix it.
What follows next is Enterprise at its team-work and action-y best. Seeing the crew work together to create a device to detect cloaked Suliban ships, keep the comm on the fritz, and stymie their enemies long enough to complete their mission is outstanding. To boot, the sequences where the main trio sneak onto a Suliban ship, stun grenade the baddies, and nab a series of data disks that prove what really happened is as exciting as all hell. It shows the team learning and growing, taking risks, but being good enough at their jobs as Starfleet officers to make sure they work out.
It’s a hell of a thrillride, except for the fact that it basically ends with a giant tease for part two that grinds the episode to a halt. Silik and his ships surround Enterprise and, per the Future Guy’s instructions, Silik demands that Archer turn himself over to them or they’ll blow up Enterprise and everyone on it. So we get this faux goodbye, where Archer peddles some faux wistful nonsense about believing in the impossible, with awful pacing, that culminates in the Captain being transported to a future that is unexpectedly post-apocalyptic. The whole thing feels like a spiritual rip off of “Best of Both Worlds” with half of the charm and execution.
But in the end, the first half of “Shockwave” represents the strengths and weaknesses of the show. It has some good character growth from T’Pol, some well done ensemble work and action sequences to show what the team in front of and behind the camera can do, and it plays with some very interesting ideas about internalizing guilt and the personal weight of expectation and diplomacy. But it also features some questionable acting from its lead character, and a creaky capper to the episode that only serves to remind the viewer of better Star Trek cliffhangers.
If you’d just cut this one off with ten minutes left or so, you’d have one of the standouts of Star Trek’s first season. But forced to not only tell the immediate story, but squeeze in some extra, overdramatized, timey-wimey nonsense, and focus more on Archer, the cracks in Enterprise’s foundation begin to show.
Still, I have enjoyed this first season of the show. Fan sentiment had me fearing the worst, and rest assured, Enterprise has yet to match the heights of its predecessors. But while the show has plenty of stinkers, it also has plenty of shining moments. As the cast continues to gell, and the interesting ideas in the premise continue to be harvested, I have high hopes as we head into the next season, despite the sour taste “Shockwave” leaves in my mouth.
[7.5/10] I recently read an article about Star Trek Discovery, praising the character of Captain Pike. The author argued that Pike was a much-needed masculine role model after the supposed degradation of men in popular culture. He argued that the manly, decisiveness of Pike was a sorely needed corrective to the deconstructions of masculinity that have been en vogue of late.
As you can probably tell from my tone, I don’t necessarily agree with the premise. Discovery’s Pike is great, but one of the important and useful things pop culture has done in the last couple of decades is pry away at the trappings and expectations of masculinity in our modern era and in our past, and examined the unsettling underbelly of those cultural tropes and pressures.
But then I come to an episode of Enterprise like “Desert Passing”, and it reminds me how much Star Trek in particular has long been a purveyor of notions of different sorts of masculinity, beyond just macho manly man nonsense. Sure, Kirk never found a situation he couldn’t punch or sleep his way out of, but Spock was a dignified alternative, Picard was the picture of dignity and unassuming strength, Sisko carried emotional baggage and was warm with his son, and Voyager had...uh...Tuvok I guess? Well they’re not all winners, but the fact is that Star Trek has often put forward these sorts of role models, who modeled different but no less strong ways to be men to scores of impressionable nerds like yours truly.
And while I have my beefs with Archer as a character, I like how he too fills that role here. He is venerated as a warrior, as a tactician, and legendary freedom fighter here, the sort of Rambo-esque figure who drops in, single-handedly fights an army, and then saves the day. But Archer not only brushes off those sorts of comparisons, but show’s a different sort of caring, wit, endurance, and self-sacrifice that are traits less associated with the sort of image that article’s author wanted to conjure.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a weird Top Gun-esque space lacrosse scene where Archer and Trip go shirtless and knock over their alien competitors. (Which, I guess, at least helps balance out some of the weird cheesecake the show does with T’Pol?) But the focus of the episode is not on Archer as a manly man; it’s on him as a survivor, someone who is giving and kind.
The meat of the episode sees him and Trip tracking their way across an alien desert while they wait for help to arrive. That challenge means you never see Archer throw a punch. You see him give his water to Trip, who’s suffering from heat exhaustion. You see him being smart enough to remember seeing shelter when they arrived, in case they needed it. You see him being resourceful enough to jerry-rig a way to boil some contaminated water to make it potable. And you see him coming up with all sorts of ways to keep Trip awake and engaged so as not to lose his good friend in the throes of a fever.
In short, Archer is someone unbelievably sharp and giving here. He spends none of his time plotting against attackers or showing anger at a semi-betrayal or frustration with his circumstance. He spends all of it figuring out the situation, helping his dear friend, using his wits and his kindness rather than anything more traditionally masculine.
The same goes for the episode’s interesting take on Starfleet and the Enterprise’s role in the interstellar community. I love the fact that Archer and company’s exploits have been bent and twisted out of proportion, to where random freedom fighters on other planets see the Enterprise as powerful allies to the downtrodden who will save and fight for them with the push of a button. That is very much a Captain Kirk mentality: show up some place, decide that you don’t like the way things are run, and so blow the whole society up and remake it the way you’d like it to be.
But “Desert Passing” engages with the way things are more complicated than that. The humanoid who befriends our heroes seems nice and gregarious (and Clancy Brown hamming it up in the role, Harry Mudd-style, is tons of fun). He offers a believable story that tracks with American history, of minority groups being officially and technically granted equality, but facing softer and realer obstacles when hearts and minds and public institutions have to put that into practice. But we also get a countervailing story from the official government of the planet, that Archer’s friend is actually a terrorist, whose allies are attacking cities and peoples. And then we see that same government be curt with T’Pol and harsh with Archer and Trip.
It’s an idea you don’t always see much of in Star Trek. We’re used to planets being essentially unified nation states, where making contact with one group means that they represent the whole. As Hoshi points out, first contact is likely to be trickier than that in most instances, with situations like the one in “Shadows of P’Jem” that suggest our main characters are trifling with complicated internecine struggles that it’s hard to comprehend, let alone interfere with, after an afternoon of getting to know someone or a single distress signal.
While the show once again lays it on thick with a “directive” reference, at the end of the day, Archer decides that discretion is important, that deferring to governments rather than individual starship captains is the right way to go, and that forbearance is the right choice, no matter how uneasy he feels about it. It’s the exact opposite of a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality that you might expect in a more traditionally manly leader, but Archer represents that Star Trek ethos of not just ethical righteousness, but calm deliberation, making hard choices that sometimes lead to a queasy stomach rather than an exciting firefight.
At the end of the day, Archer is worried about the health and well-being of his chief engineer and best friend. He’s worried about the complexities of using the Enterprise’s arsenal to take sides in a war that may be just, but which probably has more nuance to it than can be gleaned from one partisan in a high dudgeon. He is not the innocent-saving, evil-basting cowboy rocking through the galaxy. He is an occasionally supercilious, sometimes cavalier, but ultimately well-intentioned, altruistic, and thoughtful leader. It’s a flavor of masculinity that might not please the anti-feminist sceeders out there, but which is part and parcel with Star Trek’s more nuanced take on what being a man is and can be.
(As an aside, I really liked the production design and directing here. The desert landscapes were beautifully composed, and there were tons of creative shots like Archer and Trip emerging from their sandy hiding place. Certainly the most visually appealing the show’s looked so far!)
[5.1/10] One of my most frequent complaints about The Original Series is that it would have about twenty minutes worth of plot stretched out to a full episode length. The pacing of T.V. shows was different in the 1960s, but even so, you can only try to ruminate on some small amount of incident for so long before the whole thing just becomes boring. With “Rogue Planet”, Enterprise seems to be imitating its primogenitor on that account.
If you’ve watched any amount of Star Trek, you could probably predict the plot of this one in about ten minutes. Archer and company run into a group of alien hunters who are on the titular rogue planet for a sporting excursion. There’s some tension between the groups given T’Pol’s Vulcan vegetarianism that hunting has apparently fallen out of fashion on Earth a century prior, but the whole cultural relativism thing keeps everyone getting along. Then, in a private moment, Archer sees a random beautiful woman who knows his name and who rings a bell in the back of his mind, who’s treated like an apparition or a delusion by both his crewmates and the new alien friends who are sharing their campground with the Starfleet officers.
It doesn't take long to guess that the woman is some manifestation of the planet, asking Archer to help save her from the hunters. This is Star Trek, so despite the headfake of Enterprise’s hallucinogenic spore episode earlier in the season, we can reasonably suspect the woman is more than just a random hallucination from Archer. The episode spends way too long with Archer wrestling with that fact, until the hunters finally admit that she is a “wraith”, a sort of space slug that’s native to the planet and which tries to defend itself by “getting into the head” of the humanoids hunting it.
That’s not exactly groundbreaking, but it’s a neat enough concept to build the episode around. The problem is, Enterprise doesn't reveal that until about 75% of the way through the episode, and doesn't really develop anything beyond that point. There’s the slightest of slight interesting clash between Starfleet’s impulse not to interfere with other cultures’ beliefs and practices and its impulse to protect all sentient life. But we never hit any really pressure points with that. Archer (with the help of Phlox), just treknobabbles his way to having his cake and eating it too, giving the space slugs a treatment that allows them to avoid detection by the hunters.
And that’s it! There’s a predictable mystery as to what the nature of the mysterious woman is. There’s a predictable reveal as to what the conflict between her and the hunters is. And there’s a predictable, all-too-easy solution to the issue that doesn't require any real challenge or sacrifice from our heroes. Enterprise labors over those basic plot points for forty minutes without much, if anything, to show for it.
This is also an Archer-heavy episode, which weakens things in my book. The show once again seems to want to place him in the Kirk role, lusting after vaguely-sketched women from his past on a strange planet (see: “Shore Leave”) with whom he has some faux-meaningful exchange before she disappears forever. “Archer falls in love with a space slug” is an idea just weird enough to work, but this is about the dullest possible execution of that idea.
“Rogue Planet” tries to elevate that interspecies infatuation to the idea of “reaching for the unobtainable.” Archer eventually connects that the woman is the image his mind conjured as a child when his mom used to read him a poem by Yeats. The poem was about a man who caught a fish that turned into a beautiful woman and disappeared, that he then chased for the rest of his life. It’s a thin connection, but there’s a solid enough idea there about continuing to search for meaning and beauty in the universe even when it seems vast and impossible. But the delivery of that message is trite, and stapled to a flat, almost procedurally generated episode.
So what’s good about “Rogue Planet”? Well, while it looks a little silly at times, there’s something kind of cool looking about seeing both the hunters and the away team rolling around with their little laser tag outfits. As usual, T’Pol is a beneficial presence here, with her barely-restrained disdain and cuttingly-worded retorts for the hunters being both amusing and potent, and her skepticism about Archer’s visions being well-founded despite the inevitability of there being more to them than meets the eye. And again, it’s bold, to say the least, to center an episode around the reveal that Archer is trying to romance an alien snail who’s taken the form of his childhood fantasy.
The execution of that premise should just be way more interesting than this is. Archer’s concern for sentient life is admirable, but “Rogue Planet” quickly sheds the intriguing thought of whether Archer would be so apt to help if the slug had taken on the form of a scantily clad man. There’s intriguing notions of adaptation, how both predators and prey evolve to attack or defend themselves through unique methods, that have some juice, and would be seen very differently by the hunters and the hunted, but the episode mainly elides them in favor of Archer going all moony-eyed over his ghost lady.
Lord knows that Star Trek has made a home for any number of unusual romance over the past fifty years, from various men and women falling in love with various forms of artificial intelligence, to women falling for dreamy psychic aliens, to Zephram Cochrane himself learning to love a wild energy being. But those stories all leaned into the strangeness of those setups, exploring them beyond some vague metaphor for continuing to go after the impossible. This is, by contrast, an episode that feels made of spare parts, hardly able to capture your attention with its telegraphed reveals and boring, overstretched escapades.
[7.6/10] I like this episode because it’s basically a hangout, more of a chance to get to know everyone better than a spate of high drama. Sure, there’s a bit of action here. Reed and Mayweather have a ticking clock to finish their work before the sun comes up on the comet, and their shuttle falls through the ice, and there’s a daring (if doomed) claw machine rescue attempt. But none of that really comes into play until the last ten minutes of the episode, and it’s fairly low stakes by Star Trek standards. Instead, this is a low-key episode, as devoted to helping to scaffold the relationships between our characters and their erstwhile allies as it is to any game-changing plot machinations or high intensity conflicts.
That comes down to four scenes in particular, some of which are connected, but many are almost just little vignettes, nominally related to one another, but mostly just small sketches to give us character details.
The most effective, if not the most artful, of these scenes was the one where Archer and the rest of the bridge crew responded to the questions of an Irish elementary school class. It’s a good narrative device for providing exposition, answering queries about food, feces, and fraternization that fans may have been wondering about as well, like the impudent little schoolchildren that we are. But it also gives each of the bridge crew a moment to shine. Archer tries to project statesman-like certainty and assurance, but worries about how it went. Hoshi explicates the challenges of using the universal translator but expressing budding self-confidence. Proud but insecure Trip doesn't want the moppets to think he’s an intergalactic toilet-cleaner. And Dr. Phlox shows himself off as a delightfully nerdy blowhard.
It’s not much, and it’s a little cheesy at times, but again, it does what it sets out to do in a genial fashion. It explains some of the sundry details of Enterprise in a didactic way that’s swallowable given the context, and it gives several members of the cast to have those little character moments that are both fun and endearing.
But my favorite scene in the episode is the one between T’Pol and Trip where the Vulcan seeks her crewmate’s advice on what to do about her wedding. On the one hand, it’s a superb interaction from a character perspective. We see a different side of T’Pol, one who’s worried about her personal life to the point of insomnia and headaches, who’s taking Dr. Phlox’s advice to talk about her problems, and who is trying to balance her responsibilities to her people and her responsibilities to her crew. We also see a different side of Trip, one who is still blustery in his way, but who’s also apologetic and rueful about violating T’Pol’s privacy and who seems genuinely interested in connecting with her as a friend. (Methinks the Captain’s discussion about dating is not a coincidence.
Still, it’s also a great representation of the differences between Western and Eastern views of individualism. Trip represents the Western view of self-determination, being able to direct one’s own life and pursue life, liberty, and happiness. T’Pol represents the Eastern view of community, where one’s responsibility to a greater whole, one’s culture and family, comes before individual pursuits. Enterprise isn’t exactly even-handed in the debate, but it acknowledges both sides of it, which makes T’Pol’s inner turmoil, and eventual choice at the end of the episode to choose the Enterprise over her marriage, a much more meaningful one.
As much as this is, at heart, a T’Pol episode, about her being stuck between those two impulses, it’s also another human/Vulcan diplomatic kerfuffle episode. Archer feels like the Vulcans have had a contingent “looking over his shoulder” at least since the Andorian Incident. But he’s trying to kill them with kindness, hailing and greeting the Vulcan captain, trying to include them in the Enterprise’s expedition, and even inviting him to dinner.
That dining scene is impressively awkward, calling to mind a similarly touch-and-go effort at dinner table detente between humans and Klingons in Star Trek VI. Archer is bending over backwards to try to connect with Captain Vanik, who is begrudgingly polite but as curt and rude as any Vulcan you might expect. The sense of Vulcan arrogance, of seeing humans like the children Archer was just reaching out to, comes through loud and clear, with him not appreciating the good will behind each of these gestures if not the gestures themselves. The scene does a great deal of work to help justify the resentment that Archer and others feel for the Vulcans, showing him trying very hard to accommodate his green-blooded counterpart and getting nothing but dismissals and thinly-veiled insults in return.
That’s what makes the final major scene of the episode so impactful, and the culmination of Archer’s attempt to connect with Vanik and T’Pol’s efforts to connect (in her own distinctly Vulcan way) with Trip. When Archer tries to rescue Reed and Mayweather on his own, rebuffing Vanik’s offers, the echoes of that dinner scene are present. He wants to buck Vanik’s impression of humans as bunglers who need the Vulcans to save their bacon on routine missions. But T’Pol interjects that Vanik expects Archer to reject his help, that they see humans as prideful, but that Archer, being human, can choose to put his crewmen’s lives over his pride. It’s not the most elegant threading of the needle you’ve ever seen, but it’s sound and significant.
So is the closer, where T’Pol sends (through official channels) what’s implied to be her message that she’s staying on the ship, allowing her wedding to be canceled, and getting to know these humans, and their different but potentially liberating customs, a little better. It’s not exactly subtle, but her trying Trip’s pecan pie at the end of the episode is a superb way to symbolize that. And “Breaking the Ice” is a great way for the audience to get to know all of these characters, T’Pol in particular, better in between the galaxy-shaping misadventures which will no doubt provide plenty of fireworks in the episodes to come. Taking this time to let us understand the people in those interstellar firefights, taking a breather where we can just spend time with them as people, makes the biggest blasts and dramatic twists worth caring about.
[7.3/10] This is a tough episode to grade, because it essentially has three parts: a bit of cultural exchange, a zany male pregnancy story, and a diplomatic kerfuffle. I loved the first part, liked the third part, and absolutely abhorred the second part. That speaks to a certain disjointedness in the episode, where it occasionally felt like events sort of careening into one another rather than progressing organically, but enough of the constituent parts were good enough that I still enjoyed the ride.
Let’s talk about the part that I loved: Trip’s contact with the Xyrillians. One of the best things about Star Trek has a franchise is how it looks at the human side of these sort of encounters. On the one hand, this is the Enterprise rendering aid and making connections out in the frontier, but on the other, this is as much, if not more, a story of one individual adjusting to the experience of another culture and way of life, initially hating it and wanting to come home, but eventually feeling comfortable and welcomed in a place, to where he appreciates the experience and how it’s expanded his horizons.
Honestly, you could cut off “Unexpected” at the halfway mark (after Trip first return to the Enterprise), and you’d have a tidy but effective little story to that effect. The show does Trip’s “kid away at summer camp who has a tough first day and wants to come home” routine really well and relatable. I also love the production design and use of effects both practical and technical to convey the alien-ness of Trip’s experience.
The smoke rises in the decompression chamber and he clambors about, complaining about how his lungs are burning. The slowed down, echoey way he experiences speech and the passage of time on the Xyrillian ship is a nicely impressionistic way of convey his “it’s like a fever” transition. And the interiors of the ship itself, wonderfully realizes with oval designs, a back-to-nature aesthetic, and details that seem familiar enough to not require a crazy effects budget, but foreign enough to rattle Trip are nigh-perfect (at least on a network television setting).
Things get even better with Trip’s interactions with Ah'Len. It seems clear in this episode that Trip is meant to fill the Kirk/Riker slot of finding the affections of alien admirers in these journeys. But what I like about his interactions here is that they don’t carry the same womanizing baggage. Sure, Ah’Len falls for Trip a little quickly, but there is, again, that summer camp sense of flirtation and fascination with something outside your experience that makes them both a little more apt to explore and bat eyes at one another.
I think my favorite exchange in the episode comes when Ah’Len and Trip have their hands in the “pebbles”, which grant each some sort of rudimentary telepathy. Trip says, with some surprise, “you find me attractive” and has the hint of a sly smile, and Ah’Len retorts that he likes that she finds him attractive. The romance is necessarily a little quick, but there’s chemistry their, and there interactions are cute and even chastely sensual enough to be endearing in a short amount of time. That first half of the episode is a delightful little journey through Trip’s adjustment from an uncomfortable acclimation to a new environment to joys like the humans’ first interactions with a holodeck and a connection with another soul.
But then, the episode takes a turn, and starts being more about Trip having been accidentally impregnated by those otherwise sweet interactions, and the episode veers into a heap of sub-sitcom-level humor about being pregnant. Trip is suddenly exaggeratedly hormonal, to the point that he’s ludicrously insecure, constantly eating, and freaking out about the safety measures for children in engineering. It’s facepalm-worthy crud, and particularly dispiriting after a fairly decent comic scene of Dr. Phlox, Archer, and T’Pol gently tsk tsking Trip for what they imagine to have been getting a little too close to the Xyrillians amid his brief bit of shore leave.
The best you can say for this part of the episode is that it’s at least a flip of the script from the seemingly innumerable “Counselor Troi is pregnant again!” episodes that The Next Generation would do, even if it devolves into Junior-level comedy. (And Angel would follow in those ignominious footsteps with Cordellia, incidentally). I also suspect, true to my frequent reverse-epiphany experiences watching The Original Series, that this episode was the inspiration for Futurama’s “Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch”, right down to the incidental touch-based pregnancy and romantic row boat ride in the holodeck.
Thankfully, after that bit of unpleasant mishegoss, the show reverts to a meat-and-potatoes Trek conflict -- namely a confrontation with the Klingons. When the effort to track down the Xyrillians in order to figure out what to do with Trip’s pregnancy leads the Enterprise to discover the alien ship’s hitched a secret ride with the Klingons, Archer and T’Pol end up having to talk the characteristically combative Klingons into not blowing them, or the Xyrillians up before they can get an answer.
The banter and negotiation with the Klingon commander are fun, and it’s a nice wrinkle to the first contact story. The fact that Archer tries appealing to general decency, mercy, and harmlessness, to no avail given the Klingon’s pugilistic appetites, is a nice exemplar of how Starfleet is still learning how to get along in this strange new world. And I particularly appreciate how T’Pol proves her usefulness here, exaggerating (which Vulcans are allowed to do, per Spock) in order to retell Archer’s adventures from the premiere in a way that the Klingon commander would be forced to appreciate. Trip appealing to their sense of intrigue and excitement at new technology (right down to an amusing “I can see my house from here” line) is a good finishing touch, showing the essential trio of the show working together to make it work.
It’s hard to know how to weigh each of those parts out. The first half of the episode should almost be its own thing, a neat little representation of acclimating to the ups and downs of first contract. The subsequent pregnancy interlude nearly grinds the episode to a halt with its hackneyed, retrograde humor. But the third part rights the ship, both figuratively and nigh-literally, with some classic Trek diplomacy. All-in-all, “Unexpected” is more of mishmash, but the good parts are worth sticking around through decompression for.
[7.0/10] I often come to Star Trek for the joy of problem solving. In all incarnations, much of the fun of the “strange new worlds and new civilizations” is each new crew facing an array of their own, strange rubik's cubes to figure out how to solve. Using the combination of their wits, their insight, and their technology to leap over whatever the universe is throwing at them is a venerable and above all else, fun mode for the franchise.
And “Strange New World” is part-horror story and part-problem solving. While I like the latter much more than the former, it’s at least something both familiar but novel enough in execution to spice up Enterprise a bit in the early going here. The first half of the episode is about uncovering the mystery of what exactly the threat on this heretofore unknown M-class planet is, and the second half is about how to address it. The show goes a little overboard on the whole haunted mystery and potential sabotage angle at first, but once it becomes a question of how to save everyone from the identified risk, the show becomes much more clever and even humane.
In some ways, the episode feels like a mishmash of different Original Series installments. You have the Vulcan vs. Human jousting while stranded on an alien world of “The Galileo Seven.” You have the ghost story motif of “Catspaw”, and you have the cave-based panic of “The Devil in the Dark” (which gets a subtle nod from Captain Archer). Moreso than other sequel series, Enterprise seems to be borrowing from its 1960s predecessor, and if that’s the tack, the mixing things together is a sound approach to keep it fresh rather than repetitive.
The problem, though, is one I often encountered when watching The Original Series -- namely that I’m apt to side with the Vulcan stick in the mud rather than the ornery human questioning their detached and/or utilitarian judgment. Enterprise recreates the same dynamic that Dr. McCoy and Spock often had with Trip and T’Pol, right down to the southern drawl and recriminations of heartlessness.
I don’t know how to feel about it. To be fair to Enterprise, I think the show wants to bring the audience over the Trip and the rest of the redshirts’ point of view of T’Pol in the first half just so it can flip the script in the second half. You literally see the other crewmen’s hallucinations so that it seems like T’Pol is lying. But it’s also playing on the bias the humans have against the Vulcans, even as T’Pol is explaining why everyone must be mistaken and that their suspicions are motivated by preexisting frustrations between the species.
That’s a bit of a cheat in the first place, but it also makes it hard for the show to win you over to Trip and company’s side when you’re pretty skeptical of their motivations in the first place. Enterprise wants you to buy into the “Vulcans have held things back and may not be able to be trusted” thing, but for longtime viewers (at least Spock-appreciating ones like me), it’s hard to buy into that long enough for the episode to pull off its twist.
It also doesn't help that this episode is full of pretty hammy acting. Trip’s mental breakdown is downright Shatner-esque in its over the top lunacy mode. The rest of the crewmembers aren’t necessarily super convincing in their panic and paranoia either, though Jolene Blalock does a pretty damn solid job of conveying slipping Vulcan stoicism in a difficult situation.
What I do like about the episode is its effort to create that scary mood, and Archer’s solution to the problem. The former is pretty hit or miss. But Mayweather’s ghost story is a lively one, and while frequently overblown, the show’s effort to go full horror movie with unknown creatures moving around in the shadows of the cave is a commendable one. Spookiness is a rarer look for Star Trek, but it works in this context, particularly in one of the first, unexamined worlds that Starfleet encounters.
Archer’s solution to the problem is even better though. Once he realizes, via Dr. Phlox, that there’s a toxin in the local flora that’s creating the hallucination, and the weather prevents them from shuttling down or beaming anyone up, he starts trying to talk Trip out of his psychosis long enough to let T’Pol apply an antidote.
What I like best about this problem-solving is that it has stages. At first, Archer tries to get Trip to realizes that he’s not at his mental best, to just talk some sense into him, with a touching story from their shared history to try to drive it home. It’s a little too much (and frankly, part of what turned me off to the solution used in the last episode), but it doesn't work! Instead, Archer goes to Plan B, which requires leaning into Trip’s paranoid delusions, but coming up with a plausible enough story to convince him to stand down long enough to let T’Pol do her work. The cover story, the use of Vulcan by Hoshi, and the chance to stun him long enough to make it all come together is a smart and tense solution to the problem, in the best Trek tradition.
Granted, the path to get there is a mixed bag at best. But it ultimately plays like an Aesop’s fable in that same Original Series-esque way. On the one hand, you have Trip getting an object lesson in not letting his preconceived notions about Vulcans get in the way of assessing a situation. And on the other, you have an event that lays the groundwork for General Order 1 and the Prime Directive, or at the very least some protocols to help ensure that the Federation doesn't go waltzing into a patch of hallucinogenic poison ivy.
At the end of the day, that’s a big part of what I ask for from episodic Star Trek. What is the problem? How did they solve it? How did it impact the characters? And what did we and they learn? “Strange New World” isn’t the boldest or best rendition of that form, but it’s a solid version of it, and after a shaky intro to the series, I’m glad for it.
[7.3/10] I don’t mind the spiritual elements of Deep Space Nine, but the truth is that we’ve dealt with a lot of them already. Sisko’s uncomfortable with his role as the Emissary? Now he embraces it and wants to make his home on Bajor. Kira is a true believer in the way few others in the main cast are? Now she’s reckoned with her faith and her connection to the Starfleet officers in a pretty thorough fashion. Kai Winn is mercenary in her attitude toward Benjamin? Now (or at least, in her last appearance), she seemed to accept him as an instrument of the Prophets. Are those Prophets honest to goodness gods who prophesize and punish, or are they mere “wormhole aliens” whose effects have rational explanations? Well, whatever you want to term them, they know the future and, as we saw at the end of the Dominion occupation arc, will actively intervene in major events when it suits them.
There’s a few dangling threads out there. The Prophets promised Sisko that they’d extract some penance from him for destroying the Dominion fleet. How their prophecies will play out is an open question. Not every circle has been square. But many of the spiritual mysteries the show started with have been sorted, and the personal issues that fell out of them have been resolved.
In that, “The Reckoning” is something of a relaunch of that part of the show, providing supernatural fodder for the show to chew on between here and the end of the series. There is a new prophecy! And the Prophets, not just the Pah-wraiths, possess people now. And each side has champions locked in a battle to determine the fate of Bajor!
And the truth is I don’t love it. Some of that is the pure aesthetics of it. I’m always inclined to forgive Star Trek for the effects of its eras, but something about a possessed Kira absorbing lightning, a red-eyed Jake speaking in an echo-y voice, mysterious wind blowing at each of them, and the duo shooting orange and blue energy beams at one another comes off as downright silly. I can appreciate the show’s production team trying to represent the larger-than-life epicness of this battle using the tools at their disposal, but it’s hard not to roll your eyes a bit at the cheesiness of it all.
More than that, though, I’m not a fan of the form this new religious element of the show takes. Contrary to popular belief, Star Trek has long had a penchant for the spiritual and the supernatural. (Other writers used to joke about how many of Gene Roddenberry’s stories ended with some kind of god.) But there tends to be something unknowable, inscrutable, even downright weird about the more metaphysical entities Starfleet officers interact with. Their role is often to remind us of how much lies beyond human comprehension, to make us reflect on human existence and ethics, and deepen our appreciation for the countless mysteries of the universe.
The titular reckoning between the uber-Prophet possessing Kira and the demonic Kosst Amojan possessing Jake, is a bog standard good guy vs. bad guy conflict. Star Trek has rarely gone in for that sort of Manichean, good vs. evil-type deal. To the point, with its outsized heroes and villains doing battle with positive and negative energies, “The Reckoning” feels more like Star Wars than Star Trek. And I love Star Wars! But its brand of superpowered battles between light and dark doesn’t necessarily fit well within Star Trek’s general framework, let alone Deep Space Nine’s tendency toward gray areas and more committed moral complexities.
And yet, strangely, I like what comes before the supernatural showdown and what comes after it.
The before is a chance to take stock, and something of a referendum, on all the spiritual elements of the show that have sunk in so far. Dax gets to joke about whether, in Ben’s next vision, he should ask for a dictionary. Quark gets to talk about how the religious fervor is hurting business (and institutes a constant happy hour in response). Julian gets to play the skeptic about the doom and gloom prophecy, while others debate whether the wormhole instability and natural disasters on Bajor are some version of a biblical plague.
Most importantly, Jake gets to talk about how hard it’s been to see his dad incapacitated by such “visions” not once but twice over the last year. There’s a story-related reason for giving him and Benjamin a scene to ahs that out, but even if there weren’t, I’m glad that Deep Space Nine is delving into what all of this must be like for Jake. Whether you believe or not, seeing your last living parent put through the wringer, and almost lose him on multiple occasions because he seems to care about his spiritual duties more than you now and then, would be tough to take. Exploring that, and having Benjamin affirm his connection to his son, is good stuff.
I’m more mixed on what the episode does with Kai Winn. I don’t mind her being a villain, but in her last appearance, she’d seemed to not only accept Sisko’s role as the Emissary in earnest for the first time, but was contrite about the resistance she’d put up in the past. We even got to hear her explain why she thought her form of resistance and suffering was no less meaningful than Kira’s in a way that deepened and softened the character.
Now she’s back to being the stubborn, passive aggressive social-climber she was before. She gripes at Sisko for taking the Bajoran artifact du jour. (And her motives may be impure, but she’s not wrong that he probably should have consulted the Bajoran government before absconding with a recently-discovered archeological relic!) She seems to want to undermine him and supplant him at every turn. This reversion to her velvet-gloved jerk characterization feels like the show back-tracking.
Yet, she may also be the most interesting character in the piece. I think the show means to damn her with her choices and disposition here. But when none other than Kira speculates that after striving her whole life to become the spiritual leader of Bajor, it must be hard for Kai Winn to have to share that role with the Emissary, and an outsider to the faith no less, you sympathize with her. When Kai Winn kneels before the uber-Prophet inhabiting Kira and practically begs to be her servant, and the uber-Prophet just ignores her, it’s quietly devastating.
Imagine living your whole life as a true believer, who could only dream of speaking with your god, only to go unregarded and unheeded when you’re finally face to face with them. Kai Winn is in the running for Star Trek’s greatest villain. (Her only disadvantage is sitting side-by-side with Dukat.) But Heaven help me, I felt for her in that moment. Something like that would be shattering.
That feeling leads to the most clever part of the episode. The turn in the story comes when Jake walks onto the promenade, imbued with the spirit of a Pah-Wraith. Suddenly, Benjamin’s calculus changes. Over the warnings of his officers, he wanted to let this reckoning play out. He’ll evacuate the station to protect civilians and officers alike, but he believes in the Prophets’ plan now, and he won’t stand in their way. Until, suddenly, it’s his son standing there. Especially after their tender scene earlier, you might reasonably expect that he’ll damn Bajor to protect Jake.
Except he doesn’t. “The Reckoning” flips your (or at least my) expectations on their head. You’d expect that it’d be Captain Sisko who’d flood the promenade with chroniton radiation to stop the showdown and save his son. You’d expect the erstwhile Pope of Bajor to let the will of the Prophets play out, and damn the consequences.
And yet, it’s Sisko who trusts that the Prophets would protect his son, that Kira would want to be their vessel, and that this is what’s intended to happen, it’s not his place to stand in their way. He has gone from the man uncomfortable with his role in these outsiders’ religion, to a man embracing their precepts and spirituality. And it’s Kai Winn who deploys the chroniton radiation, prematurely ending the divine battle, regardless of what the prophecy says. Whatever she believes, she cares about her position in this biblical drama more.
The script says as much through Kira, who accuses Kai Winn of not being able to stand that their gods would choose Sisko and disregard her. But I’m also compelled by Winn’s statement that if the Prophets defeat the Pah-wraiths, and indeed usher in a new “golden age” for Bajor, there’d be no need for Kais or Vedeks. Regardless of Benjamin, she’s scratched and clawed and schemed to get where she is. To postpone the arrival of paradise, or even scuttle it entirely, because if it came you’d have to serve rather than lead, is as damning and compelling a motivation for Kai Winn as there could be.
At the same time, there’s something truly wholesome that emerges from this situation between Kira and Odo. Having finally coupled up, they’re adorable together, flirting after a wardroom meeting and nuzzling one another, with Kira acknowledging Odo’s softer side that he keeps from the world. All’s not perfect in paradise though. This prophecy allows Odo to politely cluck his tongue a bit, at why the Prophets are so cryptic, about how if this is so important, they really ought to be more clear. He has a point!
But he tells her that he does believe in something -- her, and it’s one of the sweetest little moments on the show. Odo doesn’t just talk the talk. When push comes to shove, and Kira is being inhabited and put at risk by the Prophet possessing her, he acknowledges it’s what she’d want. She accepted it willingly, and even if Odo loves her, even if he doesn’t buy into the cryptic nature of the Prophets, even though he doesn’t share her beliefs, he respects her and gets her. That’s enough.
Choices like that are why Odo/Kira make so much more sense than Worf/Dax ever have. There are different people in many ways, but there’s a respect and appreciation for where the other is coming from, that seems all but absent from Worf in DS9. There’s lots of series arc-heavy stuff going on in “The Reckoning”, but the part I like best may be how these monumental events also serve to reinforce the bond within a new relationship.
Despite that, “The Reckoning” is, as the Prophets riddle us once more, as much of a beginning as an ending. These two supernatural forces have been unleashed in the world, with little suggestion that they’ve been vanquished or defended for good. Kira the believer is prompted to contemplate the fact that she was chosen by her gods, and had an experience as up close and personal with them as one’s likely to have. And the closing lines of dialogue suggest that we’re officially in uncharted territory, even for gods, to where for all their wisdom, the Prophets don’t know what’s coming next. Who knows when or if the tears of the Prophets will drown the gateway to the temple.
Some of that’s probably necessary. Considering the last major event featured a deus ex machina solution (albeit an earned one), checking in with the Wormhole Aliens, factoring them into the proceedings of the ongoing Dominion war, changing Captain Sisko and Kai Winn’s connections to them leaves the board open for more to come in the show’s final season. But it also flattens and simplifies the inscrutable demigods who affected our heroes’ lives to this point.
Nevertheless, I’m still compelled by those lives, and the impact that the spiritual aspects of the show have on them. More so than arguably any other Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine is concerned with religion, and prophecy, and the divine. But it remains a show focused on its characters, as invested in the people reacting to these supernatural events, as it is in the beings who make them their playthings.
[1.0/10] Some Star Trek episodes feature comedy that falls completely flat. Some Star Trek episodes feature messages or depictions that have aged like milk. “Profit and Lace” is the rare Star Trek episode that does both, and it may be the worst of the lot because of it.
Thanks to Ishka’s shining influence, Grand Nagus Zek has essentially added a clause to the Ferengi constitution that allows women to wear clothes and make profit. As a result, Ferengi society has been thrown into chaos; Brunt has ascended to the role of acting Nagus; and Zek, Ishka, and the Ferengi braintrust aboard the station must work together to restore Zek and ensure that this progress isn’t lost.
There are worse premises for an episode of Deep Space Nine. Ferengi politics have walked the line between loony and serious, but one of the more consistent threads has been the gradual case for women’s rights upon the misogynistic planet. Forcing our Ferengi heroes to band together to cement those rights, in the face of Quark’s recurring foe from the homeworld, has merit to it.
But that’s about where the good times end in “Profit and Lace”. The episode is widely considered one of the all-time worst of the franchise, and it’s not hard to see why. The comedy is broad and atrocious. The sitcom-like realization of the premise is abominable. And the way the episode tries to draw humor from sexual harassment, attempted sexual assault, and gender fluidity lies somewhere between backwards and reprehensible.
The most charitable read of the episode is that it’s a story about Quark fully accepting not just his mother, but feminism, after having to walk a mile in her shoes. When Quark’s ranting effectively gives his mother a heart attack, he’s forced to temporarily become a woman, replete with body modifications and hormones, in order to secure the support of an influential legislator to put Zek back on the throne.
That idea is problematic as hell, but the best version of it would be one that takes the transition seriously, with Quark having epiphanies and bursts of empathy about what it’s like to be on the other side of the double standard. Instead, it’s a loony farce, with the most stock and hacky gags about what women are like, that just makes you want to put your head in your hands.
Part of the problem is that the humor is hackneyed writ large. Even if you could somehow separate out the problematic elements in “Profit and Lace”, the comedy would still be downright bad. The running gag of someone describing Brunt as Grand Nagus only for someone to correct with “acting Grand Nagus” quickly becomes exhausting. Tepid soft drink-based humor about Nilva slinging “sluggo cola” is embarrassing. If last season’s “Ferengi Love Songs” taught us nothing else, it’s that going for broad sitcom energy with the Ferengi is a recipe for disaster.
And yet, I’d tolerate all of that if it could avoid the backward, retrograde humor that “Profit and Lace” deploys in the rest of the hour. Good lord, the gags about the female Quark, dubbed “Lumba” (in another pitiful play on words) are disastrous and ugly. This is the most unfortunate, “estrogen makes you weak and weepy”-style sexist humor to ever make it into Star Trek. Quark frets about walking correctly, about the size of his hips, about wanting a hug from Odo after being emotionally overwhelmed. It’s the worst kind of “Men are from Mars/Women are from Venus” nonsense.
It’s also a wrongheaded betrayal of the trans community. Despite some progressive treatment of Dax and her identity not changing even as her gender does, “Profit and Lace” sets that back fifty years. Between the way Quark’s transition is treated as a source of ridicule and ridiculousness, and Rom harboring some kind of identification with the traditional elements of femininity being treated as an oddity and source of humor, this episode feels downright bigoted in a way that thankfully few episodes of Star Trek do. I’m sympathetic to the idea that norms change, and you have to accept film and television as products of their time, but this kind of depiction was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.
That’s before you get to the laughs the episode tries to wring from sexual harassment and assault. Watching Quark try to use his position as boss to lean on one of the dabo girls to sleep with him is contemptible, but not out of character for Quark. His insinuations are disgusting, but they give him somewhere to go later in the episode, post-transformation. In that light, it could be forgivable. Characters have to start somewhere lacking if you want to watch them grow.
What isn’t forgivable is the humor the show attempts to squeeze from Nilva chasing “Lumba” around the room and trying to have his way with her, despite her obvious protests. What the show plays for yuks is quietly horrifying, and something the show normalizes by treating it as light farce. The fact that the solution to Brunt’s accusations that Lumba is a man is her flashing the assembled is downright embarrassing, And even at the end, when Quark is supposedly more enlightened from his experience and doing right by the dabo girl he harassed earlier, they pivot into a “She actually likes it and Quark hasn’t actually changed” kicker, which undermines and good intentions you could possibly draw from this garbage fire of an episode.
I don’t want to say there’s no way you could draw humor from these scenarios. Unfortunately, they’re regular occurrences in our society, and anything that people can relate to can be a source of humor and catharsis. But it would take a delicate hand, not a sledgehammer covered in clown makeup. The broad, regressive comedy at play here would be bad for any show, but it’s especially damning in a franchise that aspires to be progressive like Star Trek.
What’s extra maddening about this whole catastrophe is that it undermines the good work Deep Space Nine has done to this point. The show’s Ferengi episodes have been a mixed bag to be sure, but along the way, there’s been a quiet but palpable arc of Quark gradually becoming more open-minded in his view of women and gender in general.
From his revulsion-turned-respect for the cross-dressing Pel, to his appreciation for the call of duty felt by his Cardassian paramour/freedom fighter Natima, to the programmatic partnership and eventual affection he develops with the Klingon Grilka, to the deeper understanding and appreciation he develops for his own mother and the good she could do for herself and her people as a woman of business, Quark has steadily become, if not a feminist, then certainly someone who sees the potential and capabilities of his distaff counterparts in a way he didn’t before.
“Profit and Lace” throws all of that out the window for cheap comedy, retrograde sexual politics, and an attempt at another step of “evolution” for Quark that inadvertently erases the progress he’s made and sets him back even further. The arrival of women’s rights on Ferenginar should be an opportunity for the culmination of Quark’s journey; instead it’s a rank embarrassment that practically counts as character assassination, undoing the good work the show has done to date.
This isn’t the first time Star Trek has bungled comedy episodes or gender politics, but few thank sink so low or have so few excuses as “Profit and Lace”.
One of Ira Steven Behr’s first writing credits in Star Trek, TNG’s “Captain’s Holiday” aims for light escapades, only to crash and burn in the process, but the results are harmless. “Elaan of Troyius” from The Original Series is a franchise low, where Kirk slaps a bratty princess into “behaving” and falling in love with him, but you can, at least, semi-write it off as a product of the 1960s. The TOS finale, “Turnabout Intruder”, is infamous for its sexist take on women and has rightfully been ignored in the franchise ever since, but can at least boast an interesting concept and a conclusion for the show’s original run that is fitting, if not exactly great. And “Angel One”, one of The Next Generation’s attempts to comment on current societal norms by flipping them, is a mixed bag at best, but has its heart in the right place.
There’s no such excuse for “Profit and Lace.” It botches its comedy. It butchers its gender politics. It destroys any efforts to do better on topics of sexual harassment and assault, which Star Trek doesn’t have a great record on to begin with.
At best, I think the writers, including showrunner Behr, are trying to do Deep Space Nine’s version of Some Like It Hot, a hilarious cross-dressing comedy that doesn’t fully jive with modern sensibilities, but which has a surprisingly progressive and transgressive streak for a classic film. But it’s not 1959 anymore, and 1998 wasn’t so long ago that these kinds of blindspots can be excused nearly four decades later. “Profit and Lace” earns its place as one of Star Trek’s lowest of low lights, with a unique blend of terrible humor, terrible character work, and terrible messaging that mean it ought to be obliterated from the memories of fans and friends.
Deep Space Nine remains a transcendent show, including its treatment of some topics where the rest of the franchise falters. With episodes like this one, though, well...nobody’s perfect.
[8.8/10] Star Trek has tons of big affecting moments. Spock’s sacrifice, Picard’s torture, Sisko’s loss of his wife, all rend the heart in ways these stories earn. But they’re also massive, critical moments, of extreme duress, life or death, rife with grand gestures. That is its own kind of difficult--to go big and make it convincing--but it’s also easier to modulate big emotions to big moments.
What’s so powerful about “Time’s Orphan” is that it is one of Deep Space Nine’s most affecting episodes, at least in my book, and it does so with moments that are so much smaller. A feral young woman tosses a ball back to her father after much encouragement and much trial and error. A long lost daughter not only allows her mother to brush her hair the way she did when her kiddo was eight years old, but seeks it out. The curmudgeonly, justice-minded constables doesn’t throw the book at the beleaguered parents breaking the law to protect their child, but instead encourages them to finish their task without a moment’s thought.
Maybe these moments did move you. Maybe you were (not unreasonably) distracted by the prehistoric time portal or the convenience of the situation that forces the O’Briens’ hand. But they moved me. The notion of losing the ability to guide your child for a decade of development, only to see her start to regain a measure of it, is heartening. The sense of losing that connection between mother and daughter through a terrible accident, only to find that bit of intimacy anew is touching. And the least outwardly sentimental character on Deep Space Nine showing compassion, and breaking his own rules to help two people in need, is powerful.
These are not grand moments. They are, instead, tiny gestures. Yet, they’re no less potent, no less full of earned emotion, and no less meaningful.
The trick to it all is in the approach that “Time’s Orphan” takes to its plot. Make no mistake, this is one of the more out there high concept premises Deep Space Nine has attempted in a while. On an O’Brien family picnic, Molly falls into a time gateway. By the time they’re able to retrieve her, due to the temporal relativism, the girl they bring back has not only aged ten years, but had to fend for herself, alone in the wilderness, for all that time.
Despite the wildness of that premise, I like the story on two fronts. First and foremost, because the episode takes an outlandish setup seriously. To have your kid come back feral, need to adapt to her old existence again, and the toll it would take on a family, is a lot to process. “Time’s Orphan” doesn’t shy away from the impact it has on Miles and Keiko, the challenges for Molly to adjust after so long away, the steady but arduous progress made in habituating her to the basics. Much like Miles’ own recovery from an outsized sci-fi struggle in “Hard Time”, the episode gains strength from exploring what the readjustment would be like for both a child and their parents in this situation with commitment and conviction.
Second, I like this because it’s a family story, something we don’t get enough of on Deep Space Nine. Considering that three main characters are parents, the writers typically find ways to sideline their kids (and in Miles' case, their spouse), since it doesn't fit in with either traditional Trek or the dark edges of the series. So it’s nice to have an episode that acknowledges that part of Miles’ character, that recognizes the hardship of being apart from his wife, that sees him put his duties as a member of Starfleet behind his duties as a father.
To the same end, I like the B-story here, which is simple but sweet. With the O’Briens dealing with Molly, the Worf/Dax family agrees to look after Yoshi while they’re occupied, and it becomes an opportunity for Worf to prove himself as a good father in Dax’s eyes. Now, you just have to go with this one, even more than the wild sci-fi plot in the A-story, because surely several years parenting Alexander outweighs a brief time babysitting someone else's kid. But if you can set that aside, Worf trying to prove himself with a baby is a winning setup.
There’s something inherently endearing about the station’s gruffest resident (give or take Odo) looking after its tiniest tyke. Worf struggling with a crying infant while Dax goes “Are you sure about this?” is sitcom-y stuff, but it’s cute. Him feeling like a failure when Yoshi ends up with a bump on the noggin is sympathetic. And his sense of surprise and pride when the little fella has internalized the Klingon technique Worf used on him, is downright adorable. What can I say? I’m a sucker for the “grumpy dude becomes a good dad” trope. I liked it on TNG, and I like it here.
But Worf’s is the much simpler story. Rehabilitating a child who’s been unintentionally abandoned for years is much trickier, and none of it would work without a stellar performance from Michelle Krusiec as the older Molly. It would be so easy for someone playing a feral child, unable to fully vocalize and more wild and stunted in her development, to devolve into something that seems ridiculous. Instead, Krusiec fully commits to the role, creating a version of Molly who is believable in her animalistic movements, convincing in her fear and distress, and heart-rending in the moments where she reestablishes a connection to her parents. It would be a challenging performance under any circumstances, and that doesn’t stop the actress from nailing it.
The performance is also tricky because, like The Babadook, the story in “Time’s Orphan” also works as a sci-fi abstraction of the challenges involved in raising a child with special needs. The stirring moments of progress, the dispiriting setbacks, the challenging outbursts, and the pitfalls of a system that isn’t built to handle those who fall outside the norm, all give this story a little extra impact in how Miles and Keiko try to look out for their daughter’s interests, despite all the bumps along the way.
Some of those bumps are pretty big. If I have a significant complaint, it’s that at about the two-thirds mark, a plot that’s moved at a very measured pace suddenly kicks into overdrive. Molly lashes out and wounds a patron of Quark’s; the Federation wants to evaluate her at a facility she may never return from; Keiko and Miles steal her away and aim to send her back to the time and environment she knows. It’s all very sudden, and unlike the painstaking and open-hearted parenting we get to see as the O’Briens slowly bring Molly along, you can practically feel the creative team realize they’re running out of time and need to get this one to the finish line.
But I like what it comes down to. While I wish the choice had more time to breathe, Keiko and Miles deciding that they’d rather parted from their daughter forever than be with her and see her suffer in a cage of one kind or another is the kind of self-sacrificing parental act that moves the heart and stirs the soul. Sure, it’s a little convenient that when they do, older Molly sends her younger self back to the present, restoring the status quo. But I still feel the power of the O’Briens losing someone they love most in order to protect her, and poetically, regaining them through their putting her needs before theirs.
Seeing Miles and Keiko reunited with the Molly they know in the end is reassuring, and the little one’s drawing that matches her older counterpart’s is a nice touch to show that the young woman they came to know over the past week lives on. But the emotional high point of the episode comes when that young woman says three simple words: “Molly loves you.”
It may not have the energy of Kirk yelling into the ether when his son is killed, or the punch of Lal telling Data “Thank you for my life” before she shuts down forever. The moment is simpler, shorter, more understated. Sometimes, though, it’s the small, down-to-earth nature of those moments, that makes them hit as harder, or harder, as any more grandiose wallop in the Star Trek pantheon.
[5.8/10] I can’t say it’s impossible to craft a character who becomes vitally important to your main players in forty-four minutes. It is, after all, the lifeblood of Star Trek. Some guest character arrives, forges connections with our heroes, only to inevitably have to depart for some reason, imparting some key meaning or lesson before they do. It’s hard to imagine the franchise without that particular story shape.
But it’s also hard! Characters need time to develop, to form connections, to see their relationships evolve. That takes time, and even in the more serialized later seasons of Deep Space Nine, time is a luxury that isn’t always available.
So I admire all-star writer Ronald D. Moore swinging for the fences with “The Sound of Her Voice”, an episode about Sisko, Bashir, and O’Brien each forging a deep, personal connection with Lisa Cusak, a Starfleet captain stranded on a faraway planet whom the Defiant crew must race against time to rescue. The wrinkle is that they bond with Captain Cusak entirely “over the phone”, without being able to see or interact with her otherwise.
It’s a cool concept. Particularly in an age where many people have strong friendships with individuals they mainly (or exclusively) know online, there’s something prescient about trying to depict those types of connections forming without people being able to meet face to face. The choice never to show Cusak conversing on screen necessarily brings the writing to the fore and puts the audience and the regular characters behind the same veil with respect to Lisa. This is a challenge, and a unique high-concept sort of story, both the sorts of things I like to see this series tackle.
The problem is that the conversations we here are never convincing enough to make up for the fact that, between a B-story and final act with a race-to-the-finish and a series of eulogies, we only get maybe half an episode’s worth of back-and-forths between Captain Cusak and our heroes. The dialogue would have to be downright extraordinary to make up for that fact, and it gives me no pleasure to say that it’s middling at best.
Lisa talks to Sisko about his relationship with Kassidy Yates. She talks to Bashir about his haughtiness and ignoring others when consumed with his work. She talks to O’Brien about his sense of distance from his friends due to the constant precariousness of war.
These are all worthy topics! Benjamin’s relationship with Kassidy has, frankly, been underserved since they got back together, so examining what it means to him could be really rewarding. How Julian relates to his colleagues now that his out as a genetically enhanced augment has likewise received scant exploration outside of a couple of episodes, so it’s nice to see that brought to the fore as well. And working through what a return to war means to a veteran like O’Brien could be poignant and revealing.
What all these topics have in common, however, is that they have too much depth to try to explore in seven minutes or so a piece.
Even then, the rush job might work if it felt like Captain Cusak had some unique insight or real rapport with this trio of officers. Instead, she mostly offers trite truisms and banal cliches. Some of her answers were so stock, so hollow, that I thought she might have just been manipulating Sisko, Bashir, and O’Brien with empty bromides that told them what they wanted to hear.
You knew there was going to be some twist when they found her, and I was 50/50 on whether it would turn out that she was dead by the time they could reach her (tragic!) or that she would turn out to be a Founder who staged this whole thing to manipulate/capture the Defiant crew (devious!). I suppose they already pulled off the latter trick with Odo and “Kira” in the cave, but the fact that these supposed deep conversations that result in fast-forming bonds could plausibly double as a secret agent deceiving our heroes with cheap platitudes doesn’t speak well of the conversations.
Speaking of cliches, the B-story sees Quark wrapped up in a hacky, sitcom-level plot involving Odo. The Constable is still persnickety with his enforcement of Quark’s minor infractions, so the resident bartender hatches a plan to distract Odo with considerations of his one month anniversary with Kira in order to be able to conduct his “business” undisturbed.
It is the most tepid comic setup, with Quark’s protestations about Odo needing to recognize the milestone, and the inevitable conflict when Odo moves his date night to a different day than the one Quark was planning to make his criminal exchange, both coming off broad and hackneyed. Jake is a useless appendage in the story, becoming little more than a prop for Quark to deliver exposition to. This could have been a real waste in an episode already pressed for time.
But somehow, against all odds, its ending becomes the best thing in the whole episode. Quark’s lament that he supported Odo through his rough patch when pining for Kira, and still gets the business from the local security chief, is sympathetic. Quark really was there for Odo during the worst of things with Kira, and he’s not wrong to resent the way he’s treated like a criminal rather than an ally.
And the fact that Odo surreptitiously hears Quark’s complaints while hiding in preparation to bust him, and takes it to heart, is even better. The script signposts his thought process a bit too much, but it’s still downright sweet that Odo chooses to reschedule his date to not only keep Quark away from his own prying eyes, but give the Ferengi the sense of having finally gotten one over on the Changeling. My read on the pair is that Odo and Quark are, unbeknownst to themselves, the best of friends, and Odo making an active choice to support his friend, against his duties and his most deeply held law and order principles, reveals the depth of their friendship in a touching way.
If only the A-story ended up that touching! They try. Moore and company have the good sense to at least feature Benjamin, Julian, and Miles having vulnerable, personal conversations with Cusak, to communicate that the three of them have let their guard down. The actual dialogue isn’t great, and sometimes they even seem out of character, but the intentions are good.
I’m particularly a fan of her conversation with Chief O’Brien. His confession about thinking war wouldn’t be so bad this time, only to still feel the precariousness of his situation, in a way that leads him to isolate from those closest to him, is heartbreaking. I don’t love his discussion of not wanting to talk to ship’s counselors and thinking you should be able to just talk to friends, but it (a.) reflects real life feelings from folks like Miles, so his sentiments have the ring of truth and (b.) Cusak validates his feelings but wraps him back around to counselors being his best option if he’s going to close himself off for others.
And I’ll say this much -- if there’s one thing that almost makes this all-but-doomed endeavor work, it’s the vocal performance from guest star Debra Wilson as Captain Cusak. She knows how to bring the character to life through performance alone -- teasing Julian, nudging Miles, relating to Sisko -- in a way that helps balance out the inevitable shorthand that comes from trying to tell such an expansive character story in such a compressed time frame.
The twist is that when they actually find her, she’s already been dead for three years, and their conversation was only able to happen due to some time dilation from the latest funky energy field. The reveal is pretty weak. There’s only a slight difference between her dying from regular old hypoxia in real time, so it feels like a pointless attempt to add a sci-fi element that doesn’t strongly affect the thrust of the story. In theory, there’s some poetry in the fact that not only was the Defiant too late, but it was always destined to be too late, which doesn’t diminish Lisa’s connection with the crew. But it’s pretty thin gruel.
Still, it’s better than the elaborate toasts the main trio of people she spoke with gives at their post facto funeral for her. Sisko, Bashir, and O’Brien all give loving tributes to Cusak, that fail on two fronts. For one, the speeches are on-the-nose with the character-specific epiphanies and takeaways to the point of artlessness, which saps them of their emotional power. For another, the fleeting interactions the audience has seen don’t support the glowing, loving terms in which the three men eulogize their fallen comrade. Try as it might, “The Sound of Her Voice” simply doesn’t earn that.
It’s a hard thing to earn in less than an hour! Building a single deep bond among a pair of characters in the usual Star Trek runtime is a challenge. Building three in the same stretch is a herculean task, if not something outright impossible. The notion of a stranger who becomes a close confidante through conversation alone is a compelling one, but despite a noble attempt, “The Sound of Her Voice” ultimately falls on deaf ears.
[3.6/10] I firmly believe that any actor can be used well. Some have greater range and greater talents than others, but if you find a director who knows how to get the best out of them, and a project that suits their strengths, any performer can do great work.
So while I’ve groused repeatedly about Robert Beltran’s prowess, or lack thereof, as an actor, there’s no reason he couldn’t be an asset to Voyager. Yes, he’s a little subdued and flat in his performances, but if you use that to make him a no-nonsense officer, one whose directness and lack of expression serves his devotion to duty, it could work. Chakotay often works best as a sort of disciplinarian, standing firm with subordinates and insisting that they follow orders or fulfill their duty.
“Unforgettable” is not that kind of story. It is, instead, one not only founded on romance, but on a romance between two characters the audience has never met before, that must click nigh-instantly for the story to work. And by god, Beltran is just not up to it.
Neither is Virginia Madsen, who guest stars as Kellin, a member of a species called the Ramora who, through a quirk of biology, fade in the memories of those they interact with, I’ll confess that I don’t know much of Madsen’s work. I enjoyed her voice acting in the D.C. Animated Universe well enough, but the truth is that I haven't seen enough of her filmography to make any broad statements about her talents. Unfortunately, she too is downright awful here, and between her and Beltran, “Unforgettable” is dead on arrival.
The premise is that Kellin is a Ramoran “tracer”, i.e. a bounty hunter. With some undercooked world-building, she explains that due to the Ramoran’s “leave no trace” philosophy, they don’t allow anyone to leave their communities. Kellin was tasked with bringing in someone who fled, tracked them to Voyager, and fell in love with Chakotay in her time aboard the ship, even knowing he would have no recollection of her once their dalliance ended.
Now she’s fleeing, because she wants to rekindle the relationship with Chakotay, and he’s understandably hesitant about this woman who knows all these intimate details about him, while he effectively knows nothing about her.
With that setup, “Unforgettable” runs into a few plausibility problems, but none that are outside the usual tolerances for soft sci-fi like Star Trek. The idea that the Ramorans’ pheromone can affect any alien life form strains credulity a bit, but is probably fair for Star Trek’s loose approach to biology. The fact that they also have technology that ensures they can’t be tracked or scanned is a bit of a cheat (The Doctor wouldn’t remember her?), but the script puts at least a few fig leaves over the idea. And Chakotay only thinking to make a hard copy record of these events at the end of this episode is a bit convenient, but fits comfortably in the realm of poetic license.
Honestly, though, I appreciate the high concept premise. Star Trek should be a canvas for big ideas and grandiose “What If?”s. The notion of sharing a deep love with someone, but knowing they’ve forgotten you, and you’ll have to start over again, is an interesting set of emotions to explore. In the same way, meeting a stranger who makes outrageous claims and has a sense of familiarity with you that’s both alluring and overwhelming is an equally interesting experience to explore.
These just aren’t the performers to do either with. Beltran and Madsen are independently less-than-great in their roles, and together, they have all the sparks of a pair of boiled carrots. I don’t know why the Voyager creative team keeps trying to cast Chakotay as a romantic lead. Sure, he’s handsome, but he’s always so stolid, so subdued, that it’s hard to sense anything remotely approaching passion from him. (Which is, why, I think his understated courtly romance with Janeway works better than any of the explicit love stories the writers throw him into.)
Madsen’s no better here. She too is flat and unconvincing in all of their scenes together and beyond. As with Beltran, every line read she offers seems dry and desultory. The diminished nature of the performances are out of sync with the passionate, emotionally layered nature of the story. But it also means that, for much of its runtime, “Unforgettable” is just plain boring, with long, languid scenes that sap all the energy from the piece and from the viewer.
Now I want to be fair to Beltran. At about the halfway mark of the episode, Kellin comes to Chakotay’s quarters with a big, “I left my people for you; am I chasing after something unreachable here?” speech. And while Beltran’s delivery of the line is as monotone as ever, he does some great nonverbal acting with his eyes in particular, giving the sense of someone emotionally overwhelmed who doesn’t want to let it out. It’s damn good work.
But it’s also too little too late. There’s a high degree of difficulty to a story like “Unforgettable”, because you need your main couple to have nigh-instant, smoldering chemistry with one another to make it work. Kellin has to look at Chakotay with the knowing, longing look of a lover who’d give up everything for the object of her affections. Chakotay has to be reluctant at first but drawn to Kellin in a way he can’t explain, like his body knows what his mind forgot. And when they do come together, it has to have the comfort and catharsis of two people who seem meant to be together.
That’s a lot to ask of any two actors, especially when you only have forty-four minutes in which to pull it off. That Madsen and Beltran aren’t up to it is no sin. Hell, even the fact that they’re pretty terrible is forgivable under the circumstances. But the writers and producers deserve blame for putting them in that position, centering Chakotay in a plot Beltran is unsuited for and casting Madsen in a role she’s not up to. The choice makes them, the episode, and the show look bad.
It also completely neuters the ending. The conclusion of “Unforgettable” is supposed to be tragic in its poetry, with a tracer using an Men in Black-style memory erasing device on Kellin. Now Chakotay’s the one in love, and Kellin’s the one who’s forgotten. And with her mind wiped, she’s not willing to try again.
You can see the bitter irony the show’s going for with that choice. But with a romance that has all the passion of gluten free wonder bread, the loss of their relationship feels like, well, no great loss. Again, in fairness, that’s a recurring problem with Star Trek, that (hot take alert) goes all the way back to “City on the Edge of Forever” from The Original Series. Guest characters aren’t going to join the cast, so any new love interests must be disposed of by the end of the hour. That means the writers have to go into overdrive to sell the tragedy of the loss of a relationship that viewers have only seen for less than an hour. It rarely works out. (See TNG’s “Half a Life” for one of the few times it does.)
The unfortunate result is that we get more labored attempts from Beltran to make Chakotay seem furious, or crestfallen, and again, the performance weakens the noble efforts here. The point seems to be delivered in Neelix’s closing speech: that love is mysterious, not a formula, and that’s part of what makes it so profound. But it’s thin gruel after forty-four minutes of dullness.
Outside of the rare cast departure like Kes, for most shows, chances are that your cast is going to be set from the beginning. The core group of performers are going to have to carry your series come hell or high water. That means learning how to write stories that align with what they do well, that take advantage of their natural talents, and minimize their faults. Whatever his limitations, Beltran’s rarely seen stories are parts that do that for him in Voyager. And while he’s far from my favorite actor on the show, I have some sympathy for the guy as an actor. Because in episodes like “Unforgettable”, the writers and producers are doing him no favors.
(As an aside, I don’t like to write about “Here’s what I would have done instead” because I think that’s an unfair way to review film and television. But halfway through the episode, I thought the turn in the narrative would be that Kellin did visit Voyager in the past and was forgotten, but that this second visit is all just another ruse to try to catch the Ramoran fugitive hiding out on Voyager, and she thought that using her knowledge of Chakotay’s personality to romance him would help get her closer to collaring the culprit. That would at least be a semi-neat twist, and could help account for some of the forced and unsuccessful attempts at chemistry between Madsen and Beltran.)