To give the writers of Enterprise some minor bit of leniency: There were really weird network rules about the captain not being able to be in the wrong. The conclusion for Dear Doctor had to be changed because from Phlox carrying out the deed behind Archer's back to Archer ultimately agreeing with Phlox. This is going to limit the captain introspection plots you can do. But you can still have the captain struggle with the right thing to do, like Picard did many times in TNG, or question what the right cause of action is. Coming of age had an honest to god investigation into Picard's record. The type of writing where one character is always in the right, no matter what harm they do to others is generally criticized in fan fiction, but somehow Enterprise got away with it. It just baffles the mind.
Well "got away with it" in that it got cancelled about twice as fast as any Star Trek since the original series and killed the TV franchise for years.
EDIT: Specifically 12 years, over a decade of making the property impossible to sell on TV.
"The Captain can't ever be wrong" is a really weird rule to pass, I think. But it still could have been performed better. For example:
The conclusion for Dear Doctor had to be changed because from Phlox carrying out the deed behind Archer's back to Archer ultimately agreeing with Phlox.
Yeah, but that would mean you have to give up on saying the genocide is the right course of action! And can you really blame them for trying to bring attention to the underappreciated view how genocide is necessary for another species to live up to it's genetic potential? And how you shouldn't intervene when people die to plague, lest you stop the evolutionary process weeding out the weak from the strong! I mean, this clearly a world view that will improve peoples lives. Oh, and we clearly need more erotic dog funeral dreams, that is what Trek has been missing.
On hindsight it explains a lot about Phlox's characterization in the Prime Universe which I think is restrained in carrying his lack of empathy to its logical conclusion.
The sane response to such would be to write him as competent. Not throw shade on Starfleet as a whole by them having him as a Captain (Why weren't they back in dock to have the weapons fixed immediately after dropping off the dead klingon? That's what sane Admirals have you do after a shakedown cruise.).
But that might actually take the writers understanding what and how a naval officer should perform.
Something to keep in mind was that this was the third Star Trek show that Berman and Braga had worked on, and they weren't exactly brilliant creative minds to begin with. Most of the best TNG writers had migrated over to DS9, and the work environment on Voyager had driven off most of the rest. Berman was just kind of generally a piece of shit and Braga was a hack who'd had some talent but exhausted his well of creativity long ago. They'd already turned the creation of new episodes of Star Trek into the television equivalent of grinding up leftover meat bits to produce a bland industrial meat product. Voyager was supposed to be a series that would break the mold with a bold new premise, but mostly just rehashed stories that you would have seen on TNG. Enterprise also had a premise that should have opened up new kinds of stories, but didn't (until Season 4) because Berman and Braga didn't know how.
Another thing that's funny, in an episode where they're having trouble understanding the aliens, and could probably use a communications specialist who was the one who actually built the universal translator, they have said person trying to find out what kind of birthday cake Reed would like.
Shouldn't this be a Hoshi episode, where she's at the center of the episode due to trying to make sense of these alien aliens, instead of, you know, calling up Reed's parents like she's Archer's secretary and the boss is too busy to figure out what to get an employee for his birthday?
This week's T'pol is right moment:
HOSHI: I've talked to his sister, his best friend, his Uncle Archie, his two spinster aunts. The most anyone seems to know about his eating habits is that he occasionally eats.
T'POL: Ensign, if you want to know something about Mister Reed perhaps you should ask him.
T'pol must, by mid season 3, feel like she's a strung out babysitter working at one of the worst daycares in the world.
Also, if they're going to have these two plots, have one affect the other. Like SFDebris once suggested, have Hoshi give up because she's too busy working on the real alien problem, and apologize when it's all over, or if you want to flesh out Reed, have her combing through the Starfleet computer for any spyware the aliens left behind, and accidentally discovers a video record of Reed and his dead boyfriend where they're eating his favorite food, and Hoshi now feels awful because she accomplished her little side task, while invading her crewmate's privacy.
It would flesh out both Hoshi, as she's doing her job of trying to save the ship, and who she is in a crisis now that she isn't a scaredy cat, and would flesh out Reed, and why he's not the most social of people because the last time he reached out, he lost someone, and hasn't healed since. And United Earth isn't 24th Century UFP yet, so not everyone is okay with gay people, or if the 22nd century is more progressive, Reed is just having to hide behind professionalism because he isn't good with people, but his family never approved of his spacer boyfriend or whatever.
They never manage to communicate with the clicky noise aliens and basically just have to shrug and go, "well, at least we stopped that before another person had their blood replaced with superglue."
Mulgrew absolutely owns when they write Janeway correctly, with her actions being entirely predictable and consistent with her character.
Bakula is terrible at playing a captain at a base level and Archer is all over the place with only sheer pettiness being a good indicator of what he'll do but they couldn't even keep him consistent from episode to episode. He doesn't have a command presence but his ship is also a strict hierarchy, so he's going to be an absolutely awful leader even before we factor in his petty grievances.
It's not like Bakula is a bad actor, but he was clearly ill-suited for the role. He is just incapable of projecting the sense of authority and certitude that all the preceding actors had managed in his place. None of Shatner's bravado, Stewart's mastery, Brooks' determination, or Mulgrew's crackling madness strength.
You also can't just blame the writing. While it is shit, its shit for everyone. However Trinneer and Keating manage to both give very solid performances of their characters that make you weep for what could have been with a better script. Even in scenes where Trip and Archer are being back-woods racists, Trip is giving the more solid performance.
It's not like Bakula is a bad actor, but he was clearly ill-suited for the role. He is just incapable of projecting the sense of authority and certitude that all the preceding actors had managed in his place. None of Shatner's bravado, Stewart's mastery, Brooks' determination, or Mulgrew's crackling madness strength.
I always had a bit of a vibe that Bakula was never fully confortable with the role, like if he was told during pre-production that Archer was this cool space explorer close to the starfleet ideals and tried to perform him as such, but was always in a state of disbelief at what is character was doing and saying.
I always had a bit of a vibe that Bakula was never fully confortable with the role, like if he was told during pre-production that Archer was this cool space explorer close to the starfleet ideals and tried to perform him as such, but was always in a state of disbelief at what is character was doing and saying.
He becomes rather better once he has to play Archer as a clearly broken man going through the motions as a coping mechanism. Almost as if that was truer to his given circumstances.
He becomes rather better once he has to play Archer as a clearly broken man going through the motions as a coping mechanism. Almost as if that was truer to his given circumstances.
So what you're saying is that he should have played the Captain of The Equinox in Voyager and John Savage who played Captain Ransom in Voyager as the Captain of The Equinox should have played Archer?
So what you're saying is that he should have played the Captain of The Equinox in Voyager and John Savage who played Captain Ransom in Voyager as the Captain of The Equinox should have played Archer?
Ripping the band-aid off and doing Dear Doctor since in production and air date its after Silent Enemy and the episode before Silent Enemy is best done back to back with the finale since it assumes you watched and remembered it.
Ripping the band-aid off and doing Dear Doctor since in production and air date its after Silent Enemy and the episode before Silent Enemy is best done back to back with the finale since it assumes you watched and remembered it.
*Fires a PPG into the ceiling on auto and then brandishes it wildly*
NOBODY BE A HERO, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT BABYLON FIVE IN THIS STAR TREK THREAD
Babylon 5 has a second season episode named Confessions and Lamentations about the spread of a plague among the Markab, the Drafa Plague. Due to a combination of a long incubation time, social stigma against having the disease and its 100% fatality rate, it has begun to ravage the Markab population but nobody wants to admit there is even a problem. Those with the disease or who had been in contact with them continued to travel and spread it rather than suggest that they were immoral enough to have contracted it. Worse still, many have been trying to get as far away from the home planet as possible, since rumors of its existence has convinced them that their homeworld has become immoral. Markab are dying all over the station and they haul in a Markab ship where every single person on board, 203 souls, are long dead. The Markab and potentially the station, are in trouble. Nobody knows if this illness can jump species or even how its spread. It could just be confined to the Markab but it could also potentially infect every single person on the station, where air is heavily recirculated. Sheridan is forced to issue a quarantine of the station.
Things go from bad to worse of course. The Markab ambassador views any caution about the Drafa Plague to be accusations impropriety and sin. He will take his people into self imposed group isolation to seperate themselves from the impure and unclean. Human supremacists and alien vigilante groups form to attack the Markab for bringing the plague to the station, forcing martial law to be declared. The plague jumps to the carrion eating pak'ma'ra (NO CAPS) and soon Franklin's own medical staff are refusing to come into contact with the dying and dead, hindering efforts at a cure. With the help of a Markab doctor that Franklin is friends with allowing himself to be studied from first symptoms to death, they're able to find a cure but the Markab are dead. All Markab, are dead. There exist maybe a scattered few who were off-world and never came into contact with their own species but they're a dead species now and graverobbers begin to immediately strip the planet of its copper wiring, literal and metaphorical. Fortunately, they are able to save the pak'ma'ra but that's merely taking a small win from the jaws of absolute defeat.
Ok, a big win in my opinion but still
I made the mistake of watching B5 in between episodes of Enterprise and man what a mistake that was. This episode is an absolute emotional trainwreck, because the tense thriller about handling a deadly viral outbreak long after its already been circulating is just one level. Don't get me wrong, that level is great. Babylon 5 surpasses...
*looks at all the DS9 fans waiting at their keyboards to pounce*
Babylon 5 surpasses much of Star Trek in several ways. Sure the SFX work is garbage, the props hit or miss, the sets look like and in some cases are, actual plastic sheeting or butcher paper on cement floors, but it absolutely nails several things. Firstly, the acting is on such a different level from Voyager (sorry 4 good characters/actors on it) and Enterprise that it isn't even fair. I feel like I'm stating something so obvious that its insulting you by saying that Bruce Boxleitner and Mira Furlan are better at acting than Scott Bakula.
I know, look at how unfair that is. He's trying his best, poor little guy and here I am bullying him by comparing him to better actors with better characters and with better material to work with. Delenn drops a speech like this every few episodes while the best they could do in Season 1/2 of Enterprise was a speech about a fucking gazelle he once saw. This isn't the captain of a starship, its a little birthday boy giving a report. You wouldn't flunk a kid with glasses would you? Come on, he's just a little guy! Again, the characters are better written, more varied and unique, with well defined characterizations given good dialogue to work with in more tightly written plots. They probably had to have Mayweather's name on a card with "The Black Guy. He Flies." on it. When you read his character bio on Memory Alpha they have to bulk it out by mentioning all the times he piloted someone somewhere.
Also I talk shit on its production values a lot, but they used light more effectively, the direction is generally allowed to do more and the prosthetics actually knock the shit out of most of the TV scifi you will see. They actually went on to do work for Discovery.
Anyway, I'm getting off the beaten track here and you might be wondering: "Athene, why are you bringing this up and can you please put down the PPG?" to which I say: Because this episode shows what you can do with the concept typically used on the fifth episode of most scifi shows and multiple times on Enterprise. Also no, you tried to run last time and this is the PPG of trust. The point is, not only is this a tense, well done virus episode but it has actual themes and gives characters a moment to fully demonstrate who they are, really.
Delenn and Lennier go to provide comfort for the Markab who have sequestered themselves away. They don't know whether the plague is transmittable to Minbari but they don't care. When they open the Markab quarantine, they are alone with four thousand dead Markab, having provided comfort and succor to them in their dying moments, the purest expression of the Minbari religious beliefs.
Garibaldi rescues a Markab man from human supremacists. The beaten man raises his hand for help and Garibaldi takes it, picking him up without hesitation and carrying him to get help.
Sheridan's deep feelings for Delenn are highlighted when she asks permission to go inside the Markab isolation and he worries greatly for her without being able to express what he feels but shows how much he feels it, as they become dearer to each other. They are exploring what they mean to each other and a lot goes unsaid.
Franklin begins his descent into Stim Addiction, which will come to a head...22 episodes later. Babylon 5 loved long arcs and absolutely destroying Franklin. Speaking of destroying Franklin, boy howdy. He's a perfectionist who always has to win and he's facing his own Kobayashi Maru. Get it it? Because its Babylon 5 but...anyway. He not only doesn't save an entire race, but he's going to be pushed further and further as things get worse over the next season and he's already absolutely suffering from severe stress. He loses his mind, rightfully, at his staff refusing to go into the lab with the pak'ma'ra, because all that matters to him is trying to save lives and every time he thinks he's good at it, something knocks him back down to Earth again. To say nothing of the fact that this episode's events are what Earth Force wanted him to do as a xenobiologist during the Earth Minbari war. Its a rich tapestry of fucking with Franklin, is what I'm saying here.
As well, the show uses the Drafa plague to engage in a bit of the old social commentary. The Markab absolutely do not truck with the idea that they might have Drafa. They react with outrage, conspiracy theories, and make the situation far worse than it should ever have been by spreading the disease believing that they, the righteous, will be safe. Maybe those other Sinful Markab will get sick and die, but we'll be fine. Yes, I know what you're yelling at your screen, it was written more as a general purpose metaphor drawing from HIV/AIDs but its a rich and multipurpose metaphor, as the page quote demonstrates. The Markab spread the disease even faster by seperating themselves while telling Sheridan that they will emerge later, and all you sinners will be the ones dead, not them.
It also manages to embody xenophobia and bigotry, as Human and Alien Supremacists target the Markab for violence despite them being the victims of circumstance and annihilation. The episode ends on some humans making Dead Markab jokes and saying it was probably those Vorlons that did it, while Franklin laments that nobody ever learns, tying into Babylon 5's themes of recurrence and the fact that you only win battles, not the war, and the need for eternal vigilance against hate and tyranny.
Anyway, the Star Trek episode is about "Eugenics...Good?" and determining who the most genetically superior species, and therefore deserving of life, in a situation is.
Sorry for that digression, I decided to knock multiple Enterprise episodes along the same themes since there's Dear Doctor and then the INCREDIBLY AWFUL way they died together a season 1 episode to be about GAY SPACE AIDS in Season 2, thus forever altering the original episode in a way that required further discussion.
Also I wanted to get the B5 thoughts out because good god, it shows what you could do at the time and how much better Enterprise could be because TV has gotten better but it didn't have to suck back then either.
The one where he throws a fit because he doesn't understand the concepts of secrecy or doing a favor for an ally, turns the ship around and flies away from the Vulcan cruiser they're supposed to rendezvous with and towards hostiles for like a day, then turns around again but complains that Vulcan ship is hours away and can't help them.
*Fires a PPG into the ceiling on auto and then brandishes it wildly*
NOBODY BE A HERO, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT BABYLON FIVE IN THIS STAR TREK THREAD
Babylon 5 has a second season episode named Confessions and Lamentations about the spread of a plague among the Markab, the Drafa Plague. Due to a combination of a long incubation time, social stigma against having the disease and its 100% fatality rate, it has begun to ravage the Markab population but nobody wants to admit there is even a problem. Those with the disease or who had been in contact with them continued to travel and spread it rather than suggest that they were immoral enough to have contracted it. Worse still, many have been trying to get as far away from the home planet as possible, since rumors of its existence has convinced them that their homeworld has become immoral. Markab are dying all over the station and they haul in a Markab ship where every single person on board, 203 souls, are long dead. The Markab and potentially the station, are in trouble. Nobody knows if this illness can jump species or even how its spread. It could just be confined to the Markab but it could also potentially infect every single person on the station, where air is heavily recirculated. Sheridan is forced to issue a quarantine of the station.
Things go from bad to worse of course. The Markab ambassador views any caution about the Drafa Plague to be accusations impropriety and sin. He will take his people into self imposed group isolation to seperate themselves from the impure and unclean. Human supremacists and alien vigilante groups form to attack the Markab for bringing the plague to the station, forcing martial law to be declared. The plague jumps to the carrion eating pak'ma'ra (NO CAPS) and soon Franklin's own medical staff are refusing to come into contact with the dying and dead, hindering efforts at a cure. With the help of a Markab doctor that Franklin is friends with allowing himself to be studied from first symptoms to death, they're able to find a cure but the Markab are dead. All Markab, are dead. There exist maybe a scattered few who were off-world and never came into contact with their own species but they're a dead species now and graverobbers begin to immediately strip the planet of its copper wiring, literal and metaphorical. Fortunately, they are able to save the pak'ma'ra but that's merely taking a small win from the jaws of absolute defeat.
Ok, a big win in my opinion but still
I made the mistake of watching B5 in between episodes of Enterprise and man what a mistake that was. This episode is an absolute emotional trainwreck, because the tense thriller about handling a deadly viral outbreak long after its already been circulating is just one level. Don't get me wrong, that level is great. Babylon 5 surpasses...
*looks at all the DS9 fans waiting at their keyboards to pounce*
Babylon 5 surpasses much of Star Trek in several ways. Sure the SFX work is garbage, the props hit or miss, the sets look like and in some cases are, actual plastic sheeting or butcher paper on cement floors, but it absolutely nails several things. Firstly, the acting is on such a different level from Voyager (sorry 4 good characters/actors on it) and Enterprise that it isn't even fair. I feel like I'm stating something so obvious that its insulting you by saying that Bruce Boxleitner and Mira Furlan are better at acting than Scott Bakula.
I know, look at how unfair that is. He's trying his best, poor little guy and here I am bullying him by comparing him to better actors with better characters and with better material to work with. Delenn drops a speech like this every few episodes while the best they could do in Season 1/2 of Enterprise was a speech about a fucking gazelle he once saw. This isn't the captain of a starship, its a little birthday boy giving a report. You wouldn't flunk a kid with glasses would you? Come on, he's just a little guy! Again, the characters are better written, more varied and unique, with well defined characterizations given good dialogue to work with in more tightly written plots. They probably had to have Mayweather's name on a card with "The Black Guy. He Flies." on it. When you read his character bio on Memory Alpha they have to bulk it out by mentioning all the times he piloted someone somewhere.
Also I talk shit on its production values a lot, but they used light more effectively, the direction is generally allowed to do more and the prosthetics actually knock the shit out of most of the TV scifi you will see. They actually went on to do work for Discovery.
Anyway, I'm getting off the beaten track here and you might be wondering: "Athene, why are you bringing this up and can you please put down the PPG?" to which I say: Because this episode shows what you can do with the concept typically used on the fifth episode of most scifi shows and multiple times on Enterprise. Also no, you tried to run last time and this is the PPG of trust. The point is, not only is this a tense, well done virus episode but it has actual themes and gives characters a moment to fully demonstrate who they are, really.
Delenn and Lennier go to provide comfort for the Markab who have sequestered themselves away. They don't know whether the plague is transmittable to Minbari but they don't care. When they open the Markab quarantine, they are alone with four thousand dead Markab, having provided comfort and succor to them in their dying moments, the purest expression of the Minbari religious beliefs.
Garibaldi rescues a Markab man from human supremacists. The beaten man raises his hand for help and Garibaldi takes it, picking him up without hesitation and carrying him to get help.
Sheridan's deep feelings for Delenn are highlighted when she asks permission to go inside the Markab isolation and he worries greatly for her without being able to express what he feels but shows how much he feels it, as they become dearer to each other. They are exploring what they mean to each other and a lot goes unsaid.
Franklin begins his descent into Stim Addiction, which will come to a head...22 episodes later. Babylon 5 loved long arcs and absolutely destroying Franklin. Speaking of destroying Franklin, boy howdy. He's a perfectionist who always has to win and he's facing his own Kobayashi Maru. Get it it? Because its Babylon 5 but...anyway. He not only doesn't save an entire race, but he's going to be pushed further and further as things get worse over the next season and he's already absolutely suffering from severe stress. He loses his mind, rightfully, at his staff refusing to go into the lab with the pak'ma'ra, because all that matters to him is trying to save lives and every time he thinks he's good at it, something knocks him back down to Earth again. To say nothing of the fact that this episode's events are what Earth Force wanted him to do as a xenobiologist during the Earth Minbari war. Its a rich tapestry of fucking with Franklin, is what I'm saying here.
As well, the show uses the Drafa plague to engage in a bit of the old social commentary. The Markab absolutely do not truck with the idea that they might have Drafa. They react with outrage, conspiracy theories, and make the situation far worse than it should ever have been by spreading the disease believing that they, the righteous, will be safe. Maybe those other Sinful Markab will get sick and die, but we'll be fine. Yes, I know what you're yelling at your screen, it was written more as a general purpose metaphor drawing from HIV/AIDs but its a rich and multipurpose metaphor, as the page quote demonstrates. The Markab spread the disease even faster by seperating themselves while telling Sheridan that they will emerge later, and all you sinners will be the ones dead, not them.
It also manages to embody xenophobia and bigotry, as Human and Alien Supremacists target the Markab for violence despite them being the victims of circumstance and annihilation. The episode ends on some humans making Dead Markab jokes and saying it was probably those Vorlons that did it, while Franklin laments that nobody ever learns, tying into Babylon 5's themes of recurrence and the fact that you only win battles, not the war, and the need for eternal vigilance against hate and tyranny.
Anyway, the Star Trek episode is about "Eugenics...Good?" and determining who the most genetically superior species, and therefore deserving of life, in a situation is.
Oh boy, does this strike differently these days, as do so many other similar stories. The Markab just denying reality because they've constructed this morality-based worldview is so much more believable in the age of politicized vaccines and face masks than it did to naive little me who was only just somewhat aware of the history with AIDS.
(Since you bring up DS9, boy does the aphasia virus episode seem quaint. "There's a disease spreading and we have no idea how. Should we... do something proactive to stop it?" "Eh, tell Quark to shut down but, like, don't actually make him.")
Mira Furlan channeling being forced to escape her homeland during the Yugoslav Wars and the intense hatred directed at her, is definitely an unfair comparison to an absolutely miscast Scott Bakula channeling who the fuck knows what lol
I love a good B5 digression (just about every time we're in an elevator, my sisters and I start doing G'Kar & Londo's bit and alarm/confuse the hell out of everyone else onboard). I would say to keep bringing them in whenever Enterprise eats shit on a theme/idea that B5 does better, but if you did that we'd have to change the thread name.
