Every reservation T'Pol has about humanity is surely justified with the realisation that the Captain Archer was adjudged a fit and proper person to have final authority over a full load out of anti-matter warheads that would individually BTFO of a large city. He doesn't need a counter-sign to launch these like a skipper on a boomer, he can just go order the launch.
Breaking the Ice is an episode predicated entirely on you forgetting what happened last week on Enterprise. The last scene we saw last week was T'Pol having committed light to medium levels of treason and the episode ending with no denouement, leaving everything unresolved. This week's episode begins with T'Pol being called over by Tucker and Phlox to look at children's drawings of Vulcans and aliens. Honestly, its just nice to finally see an unproblematic depiction of a Vulcan within Enterprise.
THEY EVEN HAVE A SPACE CAT, 17 OUT OF 10
Still though, you would think that what with the interstellar diplomatic incident and mild to moderate treason from last week, they would need to discuss it in some way? Oh well, I'm sure that leaving that up in the air will in no way effect anything in this episode.
Soon the Enterprise is dropping out of warp, because they've discovered a giant comet, immediately named "Archer's Comet" by Captain Archer, in a stunning display of modesty. Most shows tend to play it a bit too safe by only going with references that the audience will recognize, but Enterprise takes the next step: Naming something after the main character. No doubt in 300 years Archer's Comet will probably impact the people of Archer's Moon to the horror of the citizens of the nearby planet of Archer's World, in the Archer System, in the Archer Spiral Arm of the Archer Quadrant.
T'Pol points out that its just a comet, comets are lame, they're absolutely known science and anyone with a warp drive including humans has already grown bored of them. Archer goes "lol, shut up nerd" and says to stay with the Comet. Thanks to Kim Jong Il's child like enthusiasm and Juche Spirit Human Curiosity they immediately prove the Vulcan nerds wrong by finding extremely large deposits of a scientifically interesting chemical that Vulcans have not found in enough quantities to fully study. Take that nerds.
Some time later a Vulcan ship shows up to be absolutely, ridiculously petty to Enterprise and humanity as a whole. We're talking 80s teen movie level of petty asshole behavior.
HOSHI: Captain, I'm detecting a vessel closing on our position. It's Vulcan.
T'POL: The starship Ti'Mur.
ARCHER: Hail them. This is Captain Jonathan Archer of the Starship Enterprise.
VANIK [on viewscreen]: I'm Captain Vanik.
ARCHER: Pleased to meet you.
VANIK [on viewscreen]: You're a long way from Earth, Captain. Are you lost?
ARCHER: Not at all. Just taking a look at this comet.
Yeah man, we're just looking at this comet. Having a little lookie-loo. 95% of the crew aren't doing shit right now because only main characters will be sent to do a survey, but we're just vibing man. The Vulcan will of course peel out on his motorcycle, leaving the crew of the Enterprise covered in mud.
VANIK [on viewscreen]: Our sensors detected it two days ago. We also decided to investigate.
ARCHER: Really? My science officer tells me that Vulcans that Vulcans aren't very interested in comets.
VANIK [on viewscreen]: Actually, it's your interest in the comet that we're investigating.
"What the fuck? Why are they looking at a Comet? Why?"
ARCHER: We plan to send a drilling team to the surface to collect core samples. You're welcome to participate.
VANIK [on viewscreen]: If you have no objection, we'd like to remain here and observe.
ARCHER: Stay as long as you want.
Archer immediately gets paranoid and pulls T'Pol into a meeting demanding to know what the fuck these Vulcans think they're doing.
ARCHER: I'd love to know what they're really doing here. You don't find anything strange about them suddenly showing up?
T'POL: Perhaps they're simply curious.
ARCHER: Curious? That doesn't sound very Vulcan to me.
Ok, lets ignore the fact that your own Vulcan science officer has theorized they're just curious, ok? Just putting one giant pin in that. Let's ignore the fact that again, Vulcans have stronger emotions than humans and they actively work to suppress them. Let's ignore that its a stereotype of Vulcans for them to be science officers and the noblest Vulcan institution is the Vulcan Science Academy. That T'Pol's mom, teaches at! Lets put a giant pin through all of that, and realize, Archer, you clod, you ignaramus, you buffoon, that within living memory the Vulcans made first contact with your people, changing the entire direction of human history and bringing you into an era of prosperity, peace and happiness, because they detected a warp signature while they were cruising through the system and went to go look. You are only here in command of this starship because of Vulcan curiosity. They're explorers and scientists!
RCHER: Curious? That doesn't sound very Vulcan to me. This isn't the first time we've caught them lurking around. Remember three weeks ago, the planetary nebula?
T'POL: That was nothing more than a survey ship.
ARCHER: So why didn't they respond to our hails? Why'd they go to warp when we headed toward them? I'm starting to get the feeling they're looking over our shoulder a little too often.
T'POL: That seems unlikely.
Again, this episode absolutely depends on you forgetting everything that happened last episode, because at this point if the Vulcans did the equivalent of Drone Slap on you by making sure you were always under observation by a Vulcan ship at all times, I probably wouldn't blame them. Not even a year off world and you have brought the Vulcans to the verge of interstellar war. That was just you going sightseeing! You made your Vulcan first officer commit mild to moderate treason!
T'POL: That seems unlikely.
ARCHER: We'll see. Fine. If Vanik is the kind of guy who likes to watch, let him.
Yes, this is said exactly how you imagine. Yes he makes a stupid wry face. Yes there's a reaction shot of T'Pol. It's exactly as hack as it seems.
From here, Enterprise abandons your pitiful A/B Plot structure and goes into A/B/C/D Plot structure because I guess its hard to fill 42 minutes of Star Trek when you're incurious and close minded.
In one plot, we go back to the schoolchildren. They've submitted questions to Enterprise and Archer has hand curated them and in one of the stilted and painful sequences in the show, he makes the command crew answer them. These are all his choices:
What do you eat on a Starship? Apparently Hydroponic vegetables and "Protein Resequencers" for everything else according to Archer.
Is Dating Allowed on Enterprise? Archer wanders way off course on this one talking about limited privacy for sex since most of the crew shares rooms before rambling off into talking about finding deserted corners of the ship to fuck in. He's really uncomfortable and awkward about this as he continually has to remember he's talking to 9 and 10 year olds, but my brother in Christ, you chose the questions. Nobody sprung this on you suddenly, you had control all along and you decided to talk about fucking in relation to a question about dating asked by children.
Archer remembers other people exist as he gets a question about how do you talk to aliens and shoots it over to Hoshi who goes "The Universal Translator but sometimes I have to do it". Thanks Hoshi, they've run out of things for you to do in the first 7 episodes
Archer then remembers he hasn't established dominance over Tucker today, and forwards him a question "When you go to the bathroom where does it go?". Tucker is like "Uh hey, I'm taking a break from my 14 hour days where I often don't get a chance to even eat to talk about poop, can't we talk about something cooler?" and Archer is like "No. Answer the shit question Tucker" as Tucker is forced to explain the waste system before again pointing out he's the chief engineer of the first Warp 5 starship and they're going to think he's the Poop Guy but Archer is unrelenting. Who cares if Tucker is literally keeping them all alive and having to fix dozens of problems a day, ANSWER THE POOP QUESTION TRIP.
The last question is "Are there Germs in Space?" and even though Phlox is annoying as shit, he actually starts talking about really cool stuff about space borne microorganisms including one that lies dormant in space dust and he's starting to talk about an interesting case of his when Archer is like "Yeah we're done here. Bored now. Shut it all off."
This has been 15% of the runtime and it goes fucking nowhere and Archer will enforce it going nowhere. That's all the questions they answer: Food, Poop, Talking, Fucking, Germs. These aren't questions, they're the Troll Gods. Thank you to the few people who get that joke, I do it for you guys.
Speaking of Tucker, he has a subplot where he intercepts a coded message from the Vulcans to T'Pol. He brings it to Archer and they both conclude that it must be some sort of nefarious communique. They get Hoshi to break the Vulcan encryption but she refuses to translate it, making Tucker use the universal translator. Tucker reads it and realizes it was something deeply personal to T'Pol. He refuses to tell Archer what it was, just that it was personal, but he also feels he has to tell T'Pol that they violated her privacy. Archer being Archer goes "Why?" as other peoples feelings are a mere hypothetical to him. He doesn't feel honesty would be the right move here but Tucker says he has to, because he did something really fucked up and even if only for his own sake, he has to be honest. This is definitely the start of the "Tucker is a much better human being than Anthrochauvinist Archer" arc.
Let me explain this theory a bit: Tucker has human empathy but has been hanging out with a bunch of racists who don't respect alien cultures like Archer. Archer has an entire suite of racist attitudes primarily towards Vulcans but also to a lot of other cultures he meets. Tucker's racist sentiments come from ignorance and tend to echo Archer's specifically, namely that Humans have been held back by Vulcans and that the Archer family in particular is hated by Vulcans. However, Tucker is a much better human being than Archer. When has recklessly invaded another persons privacy out of paranoia, he's defensive but feels bad about it. He feels that he needs to tell them and that not doing so would be wrong. Archer views it as something that won't help the two of them and that it should by implication, be kept secret. Tucker very clearly says that he could not live with that.
When Tucker goes to apologize it doesn't go well and T'Pol is naturally furious (for a Vulcan) and asks if he wants to read the rest of her mail while he's at it. He leaves unforgiven but promising to keep it secret. T'Pol however has been having trouble sleeping and has tension headaches. Some personal stuff is effecting her health and Phlox recommends that she confide in someone. T'Pol chooses Tucker to keep the information confined to the same number of people: She has an arranged marriage waiting for her. Either she leaves with the Vulcan ship now or the wedding will be cancelled. She had requested a postponement but the grooms family was insulted that she would put off a wedding to serve on a Human ship. So its fish or cut bait time and she can't decide which she actually wants. Tucker gives her some fair if not culturally sensitive advice: Do what she wants. He doesn't believe in her cultural norms, doesn't agree with arranged marriage (views it as akin to slavery), and pushes his belief in the superiority of human culture, but he says that only she can make this decision.
This is the most empathetic a person has been to a Vulcan the entire show. Trip has a long way to go but he puts her up front: The only person who can tell her what decision she wants to make is her and she has to decide. It ends acrimoniously but as he leaves he suggests that maybe she already knew what answer he would give and its the one she wants. Something that Vulcans have done in the past since emotional decisions are a cultural faux pas but Vulcans tend to seek out logical arguments or strategies for what they want. She has literally been suffering from the cognitive dissonance between what she feels she as a Vulcan must decide and what she actually wants.
Tucker gets better than this, he actually has an arc where by the end he puts his respect for someone else's culture above what he wants, because he doesn't want to put them back into this exact situation. Archer doesn't really change by contrast, he's a flat character except that he has so little characterization besides hate that he's basically an RNG when it comes to predicting his course.
Speaking of Archer, he's losing his fucking mind at the Vulcans being there. Now, with the information that T'Pol is currently trying to make a decision and the Vulcans directly messaged her Ship to Ship, that by implication they're partly there to potentially shuttle T'Pol back in time for her wedding. Archer however thinks that he's the center of the universe and the Vulcans (Are they in the room with us now?) are out to get him. Again, they would have a perfectly valid reason to be out to get him, what with that interstellar incident he caused last week, but they're not. We have multiple explanations for their presence. Archer decides however, while pacing around manically, that the solution to this is inviting the boss over to dinner, the most hackneyed of tropes.
Undiscovered Country this isn't, as its just forcibly inviting a guy who shows up out of social obligation, who isn't even hungry, as you bombard him with increasingly unhinged questions. Its the classic battle of unhinged maniac versus very literal autistic guy, in a winner lose all battle of small talk. There is no universe where forcing a guy who clearly does not want to be there to eat with you as Tucker tries to make small talk and you try to be Racist Columbo would ever work out. It naturally ends with Archer yelling "And one more question WHY ARE YOU SPYING ON MY SHIP!" to which the other captain quite reasonably answers that he's not actually spying on them and that if he were, they wouldn't know. If we remember the Rules of Vulcan Lying, this is just the plain honest truth. He is again, probably just there to maybe pick up T'Pol and maybe observe the Enterprise in operation out of simple curiosity. Maybe not Vanik's, but someone's. He also throws in, before Archer calls for some goons to throw him off the ship, that Arrogance and Inexperience are the enemies of the Enterprise, not Vulcans.
Anyway, Travis Mayweather and Malcolm Reed are in danger of death by comet by the end of the episode. I haven't talked much about their plot because its just two dudes hanging out, having a good time, drilling a comet, making a Snow Vulcan and the writers thinking that a comet has a ton of gravity where you can just park a shuttle and walk around it because its 80 miles across. I cannot stress enough that until they almost die, they are having a blast. Just fully Dudes Rock until they accidentally change the rotation of the comet putting them into direct sunlight, because the writers had seen Deep Impact years earlier and kind of remembered it. They don't get off in time because Travis fell and improbably broke his leg, and it took them too long to get back to the shuttle and now its falling into a newly created chasm. Again, its a 86km wide comet. I was enough of a dumb nerd to actually calculate it out even though there's no point except my own incredulity of this plot point and long standing autism:
YOU BET YOUR ASS I HAD TO FIND OUT EXACTLY
Yeah, not as much danger as the show believes. You could get out and throw a rope at Enterprise. You're in more danger of accidentally going too fast and bouncing across this thing than falling into a crevasse. Anyway, the writers never thought about any of that shit so it has enough gravity to make them in danger. Archer immediately chucks a dude out of his seat to take over the Helm as they use the, big sigh here, grapplers, which are the scifi equivalent of a rope attached to a plunger or dart gun, but its not working. The Vulcan ship however, immediately saw that they were in trouble and offered to assist with their tractor beam. Archer won't have it, by god he'll kill two of his officers before he asks some Vulcan for help. Everyone points out this is fucking insane. T'Pol points out that there's no shame in asking for help and Tucker tries to reason with him by saying that sure Vanik is a jerk but they have better stuff and are offering to help.
T'Pol has to use reverse psychology to tell Archer that being a whiny, prideful little baby is what the Vulcan would expect out of humans and they would be basically be secretly laughing at him the entire time if he refuses their help and gosh, it would totally own the Vulcans to ask for help. Finally convinces Archer to not let his people just fucking die by getting trapped by refreezing ice. I have to stress that it took T'Pol tricking Archer to get him to do the right thing in an emergency and its presented as Archer growing slightly but not actually being wrong, in that the writers assume that it totally would own the Vulcans with facts and logic.
Anyway, the episode ends with T'Pol choosing to stay on the ship and also try some of Tucker's favorite food, because at this point the show assumes that she needs to grow as well by becoming more Human.
Phew that was entirely too long for such a nothing episode, but it had a lot wrong with it and its what a nerd would call "a synecdoche for the entire season" or "This is the exact shit I'm talking about" to everyone else
Archer: I have, with great reluctance, made a rational decision for once!
Vulcan Captain: Tears in their eyes
Archer: Hah, look at them cry. I sure showed them, so much for Vulcan logic!
Vulcan Captain: If even Archer can manage that, humanity's future is far brighter than I feared. Cleans off face.
Vulcan Captain: Sorry about that, that was unbecoming of me.
Vulcan XO: Honestly having met Archer it was a miracle you stayed as composed as you did. When we get back, I'm going to nominate T'pol for a medal.
Archer, and the attitude is associated with him that run throughout the writing, really is the millstone around the shoulders neck isn't he. If better writers understood that he was a problem and used him that way or if he in the attitude is he represents we just gone the other concepts could work really well.
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Tucker reads it and realizes it was something deeply personal to T'Pol. He refuses to tell Archer what it was, just that it was personal, but he also feels he has to tell T'Pol that they violated her privacy. Archer being Archer goes "Why?" as other peoples feelings are a mere hypothetical to him.
I haven't had a chance to mention them yet but the Paramount Plus\Amazon episode descriptions and screencaps are the worst:
They get way worse than this as they make editorial opinions on various events and they get creepy, weird or just plain racist towards the Star Trek universe.
I haven't had a chance to mention them yet but the Paramount Plus\Amazon episode descriptions and screencaps are the worst:
They get way worse than this as they make editorial opinions on various events and they get creepy, weird or just plain racist towards the Star Trek universe.
I haven't looked at the Enterprise ones (because why would I?) but I've been rewatching some Deep Space Nine the last couple days, and some of the episode descriptions give away plot twists. And for "Duet" of all episodes!
I'll be bringing them up when we get to their episodes but they describe some races in very problematic ways and also uh, describe an episode very badly.
I am genuinely weirded out by, like, how wildly hostile to the Vulcans this entire show is. It's been in damn near every episode so far, in one way or another.
I am genuinely weirded out by, like, how wildly hostile to the Vulcans this entire show is. It's been in damn near every episode so far, in one way or another.
I'll be bringing them up when we get to their episodes but they describe some races in very problematic ways and also uh, describe an episode very badly.
What I will say about Enterprise is that myself and my parents watched the first three seasons several years ago, and we actually liked it much better than we thought we would. Obviously there was a lot wrong with it. The anti-Vulcan racism was weird. Archer is a terrible captain and a terrible character. Scott Bakula is not a good actor. The Temporal Cold War plot made no sense. A lot of the early season one episodes weren't great. "Dear Doctor" is a thing(which we deliberately skipped).
Yet there were thing which made the series surprisingly likeable. TNG had three compelling characters(Worf, Picard, and Data) out of a main cast of ~eight. VOY had three and a half(Seven of Nine, the Doctor, B'Elanna, and Tuvok on a good day) out of a main cast of nine.
By contrast, Enterprise had a surprising amount of characters who were compelling or at least interesting to watch. Archer sucked and Mayweather persistently proved to be as flat as a pancake, but Tucker, T'Pol, Hoshi, Reed, and Phlox were all good characters.
I also felt that the first couple seasons ended up in aggregate doing a fairly good job depicting TOS or early TNG style exploration, at least when the writers weren't heading down the Temporal Cold War rabbit hole.
I will admit that Season Three depicted a hamfisted 9/11 analogy, but compared to what NBSG was doing at the same time, where a nuclear genocide which killed 50 billion people and wiped out 99.9999% of the Colonial population was repeatedly and continuously treated as analogous to 9/11, Enterprise's handling of the issue practically comes off as deep and profound.
Again, Star Trek: Enterprise was a deeply flawed show, and it's worth discussing, mocking, and bringing attention to its flaws, but there were elements to it I personally found to be likeable. It's definitely not what was needed to keep Star Trek on the air at the time, although, considering the most successful Sci-Fi series of the post-9/11 moment was NBSG and its grimdarkness, violence, sex, incredibly hamfisted political analogies, and completely incompetent long-term writing, perhaps that was a blessing in disguise for the Star Trek franchise.
The way this show portrays Vulcans makes me wonder if they aren't a stand-in for someone the writer is still shaking their fists at years later. This grudge runs deep.
He doesn't write discharge instructions and so one of his patients didn't know he wasn't going to be able to process normal food for a couple days. What an asshole.
Go to whatever you use for Wikipedia in your stupid future and look up Do Not Resuscitate. You're not only imposing your cultural values onto him, you're imposing your personal values onto him because this subject is pretty complicated.
I hope the medical consultants for Enterprise were paid well because of all the very real medical things that show up on TV (they tend to be very few) I didn't realize "doctor is such an entitled asshole that appropriate discharge instructions weren't written" and "non-medical person expresses blatant stupidity about DNR" would make it into the final product. 11/10 realism.
Damn, I always knew the first two seasons of Enterprise were barely watchable to unwatchable crap, but hearing you break down just how much it sucks lets me appreciate its badness in an entirely new way. (3 is still... flawed, conceptually, but it's more enjoyable at least. 1 and 2 are just the bottom of the barrel)
Enterprise is... bad, but I still weirdly have a little bit of fondness for it for having watched as a kid. Mind you, I was like [checks] 8 at the time so it wasn't exactly the peak of my ability to analyze media, and the few episodes I watched were I think in Season 3 and 4, so I dodged a lot of the worst of it. Also the opening being a banger scored a lot of points with tiny me.
ko-fi.com
