4-22. These Are the Voyages...

And so at last, Enterprise's infamous final episode. Will it live down to its reputation?


THE PLOT

It is six years later... and the entire crew is still together, all still at the same posts they've held for roughly a decade now.  Meaning that the story starts with a major plausibility problem. Enterprise is on its way to the signing ceremony for the founding of the Federation, when they receive a message from Shran. He tells Archer that he is calling in the favor he is owed, and will need Enterprise to make a slight diversion in its route.

Shran's child has been kidnapped by some former associates. These criminals believe that he stole something, and are threatening to kill his daughter if he does not return it. Archer agrees to help - but he doesn't count on the high price that will be exacted before this adventure is concluded.

Meanwhile, in the distant future, Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) watches the entire set of events unfold, through the wonders of his Enterprise's holodeck.


CHARACTERS

Capt. Archer: We are told that Archer hates giving speeches. Is that why he's so bad at them? In any case, we see Archer worrying and fussing over this speech in much the same way he worried and fussed over the introduction to his father's biography back in Singularity. He remains a loyal friend, and doesn't even seem to seriously consider rejecting Shran's demand for help. Scott Bakula may have been (understandably) disgruntled about this final episode, but his relaxed performance is actually better than much of the work he's done this season - though I could wish for more of a reaction to some late events.

T'Pol/Trip: In the six years since Terra Prime, they have kept up a neutral working distance. They still work together, but there is no relationship anymore. With reassignment coming up, T'Pol confesses that she is going to miss Trip.  This leads to a nice character moment in which Trip guarantees her that they will not lose touch with each other. With that level of feeling still existing, it seems strange that they would only be having that conversation now, but it does provide one of the episode's better moments.

Shran: Went on to marry Jhamel after the events of The Aenar, and eventually fell in with a criminal crowd after leaving the Imperial Guard. He faked his own death to evade them, which worked for a time. He retains trust in Archer, turning to the "pink-skin" for aid in his hour of need, and the two still work together. There's a sense in the first half of the episode that Shran is probably hiding something... but since Shran disappears from the episode's second half, this never gets any payoff.


THOUGHTS

The above points to one of the biggest problems with These Are the Voyages... There is the groundwork for a decent episode here.  The problems don't come from the basic plot.  A final adventure with Shran, just before attending the founding of the Federation?  Given the limits of a single-episode finale, that's actually not a bad starting premise.  With only one episode to work with, this was never going to be the next All Good Things...  But there's nothing wrong with the central story idea, which had the potential to at least make an enjoyable epilogue.

Then Rick Berman and Brannon Braga added the damn frame.


The story is framed by Riker (Jonathan Frakes) viewing these events in the holodeck while making a difficult decision related to the TNG episode The Pegasus.  The entire story is filtered through his viewpoint. This still didn't have to be disastrous, if the Riker/Troi bits had simply been used as bookends: A short opening scene and a closing scene to act as a button on the franchise would have been fine, had they otherwise left the Enterprise episode to work on its own.

Instead, Riker keeps interrupting the action for filler scenes.  We get pointless scenes of Riker listening to the regulars' confessions while playing the part of "Chef" (who we learn here was something of a counselor to the crew, even though that's never been alluded to in the preceding 97 episodes). Probably a good third of the episode is gobbled up by Riker - leaving inadequate time to properly develop the main story.

The result is inevitable: Dropped threads and abrupt script turns, which gradually sink a potentially decent episode.  There's much build-up to the effect that Shran is hiding something, and this feels in-character for the Andorian. The character's final mention of the episode has Archer implying that he's going to find out Shran's secret and drag it into the light.  But this is never followed up, because Shran disappears from the episode after that scene. 

Also, we are specifically told Shran's enemies cannot go faster than Warp Two.  This is a plot point, one we are given no cause to doubt.  With no explanation, however, they are somehow able to to catch up with Enterprise, and even manage to board the ship. How? Never explained. The aliens are able to do all this to generate an unconvincing crisis that comes out of nowhere, makes no sense, and is resolved (unconvincingly) just a few minutes later.

Add to that the idiocy of setting this story six years after the main series, while at the same time leaving all the characters exactly where they were in Terra Prime.  That's as idiotic as it is unnecessary. If you want a workaround that allows all of these characters to have moved on, but brings them together on the ship, simply throw in a line or two about how they've all been brought back together on their old ship for ceremonial purposes. That would be very plausible - far more so than trying to convince viewers that not a single member of the crew has moved on to anything more in their career (or personal relationships) in a six-year span!

I will say that the kidnapping plot works reasonably well for the first 30 minutes, with the rescue of Shran's daughter being one of the better-directed planetbound action scenes of the season.  Things only truly become dire in the final 15 minutes, when it's clear that the writers are trying to squeeze too much incident into too little time.

Had the Riker material been jettisoned, and the extra time used to flesh out the story, this would likely have been a reasonable final episode.  Speaking for myself, if a "button" was really needed to link Enterprise to the rest of the franchise, I'd have preferred to have seen bookends with an older Archer and T'Pol attending the launch of the TOS Enterprise.You could even have the same melding of the voice-overs (Archer, Kirk, Picard) over the TOS Enterprise in flight. The same thing would be accomplished, without gobbling up a good third of the episode or making the Enterprise regulars guest stars in their own series!

Judged simply as an episode, These Are the Voyages... is very flawed, but far from the worst of the series or even the season.  Judged as a finale, however, it is an almost complete failure, unworthy of the series (let alone the franchise!) it intends to celebrate.


Final Rating: 3/10.

Previous Episode: Terra Prime

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Thoughts on Season Two

PREVIOUSLY, ON ENTERPRISE...

Back when I wrote up my Season One overview, I observed my pleasant surprise at how good much of the series was. It had its flaws, notably an overabundance of generic "filler" episodes and a regular character (Mayweather) who just didn't work. But all the non-Mayweather characters worked, and the first season did a suprisingly decent job of juggling a large ensemble so that each of the non-Mayweather characters got an opportunity to shine and to interact with each other. At the same time, potential was created to explore several arcs and to allow the humans to create a genuine place for themselves in an interstellar community.

It wasn't a brilliant first season, but it was a promising one. At the time, I wrote that it had gone through its shakedown run, done its job in showing that the series had potential, and that what was needed now was for it to raise its game in Season Two.


Well, if the mission was for the series to raise its game for its sophomore season... It failed. Utterly.


CHARACTERS, STAY IN YOUR BOXES!

In every significant respect, Season Two is much worse than Season One. The steps it takes don't advance the series or characters much, and in some cases even undermine development that had already occurred.

Nowhere is this more apparent than by looking at the characters. Prior to the season finale, there is only minimal development of the characters of Archer, Trip, and T'Pol, and no development of any of the supporting characters. Archer shows some progress in dealing with alien species, being less rash and judgmental than in Season One. But that was a direction he was already taking by the end of Season One, and nothing new is added to that until Cogenitor - very late in the season. Trip gets a lot of episodes (too many) around the midseason. But rather than advance his character, these episodes just try to let themselves be carried by his easygoing and likable persona. Nothing new is added to Trip's character until (again) Cogenitor. It's all just coasting.

The supporting cast is treated even worse. In the first season, every character worked except for Mayweather, and every character got a chance to interact with the others. In this season, the characters are all kept in boxes. We no longer see Hoshi practicing her linguistics skills in the mess with Phlox or T'Pol, and gone is the development of a mentor relationship between her and T'Pol, with T'Pol teaching her to control her anxieties. In fact, the two get almost no interaction at all. That Hoshi comes across more strongly than Mayweather is entirely down to Linda Park's performance, as she takes every small moment she's given and does as much with it as possible. In terms of scripting, she's in the same, "Don't use until Christmas" box that Mayweather is kept in.

Reed is not treated much better. After an excellent episode in Minefield, he is mostly sidelined and given no interaction with anyone except for Trip. No Reed/Hoshi, Reed/Phlox, or Reed/random crewmember interactions. For that matter, even the Big Three mostly just interact with each other and sometimes Phlox. They're all kept in their boxes. The creators may open up and play with the Archer, T'Pol, and Trip dolls more often than the others, but there is relatively little sense of them being a cohesive crew - something which was not a problem during Season One!

 

I can only sit here and wonder what happened, that the promising interactions among the regulars have all but ceased in the show's second season, leaving all of the characters flatter as a result.


DIET STORYTELLING: NOW WITH 60% LESS DRAMA!

The season actually starts out promisingly. Shockwave 2 isn't as good as Part One was, but it's still good - and honestly, it's very rare to find a Part 2 of anything that's as good as Part One. Most of the first disc of the DVD set consists of good episodes, and that continues into the second disc. The Minefield/Dead Stop pairing works particularly well, with one episode leading directly into the next, and with good character scenes and good scripts marking both stories.

 

Then it takes a wrong turn. The entire middle portion of the season is made up of one generic standalone episode after another. A few of these are good episodes, and only a couple of episodes are actively bad.  But there are no standouts, and the overall flood of "OK, but ordinary" shows becomes downright soul-sucking after a while. During that midseason patch, it becomes work to move on to the next episode.

Perhaps criticisms from the Continuity Police over Vulcans with their own agendas and too much time-travel scared the writers and producers away from the potentially interesting plot arcs of the Temporal Cold War and the Vulcan/human relations. Instead, we got served a half-season of pap. Nothing in it to make the Continuity Police complain, but nothing in it to make anyone particularly interested in watching more of it either.

LATE IMPROVEMENT

Ironically, the episode that sees things pick up again is probably Stigma, which returns us to the idea of a Vulcan society that has its own agenda, isn't always benevolent, and has become less tolerant of dissenting views than had once been the case. The irony here is that this is the episode that gives T'Pol "Vulcan AIDS" - which should forever change her relationship with the High Command. Instead, T'Pol and her Vulcan AIDS are never even mentioned again, not even in passing by Dr. Phlox, and certainly not by Soval who she meets up with again in the very next episode! I'm not saying that T'Pol should henceforth be defined by her mindmelding disease. But surely it should create repercussions in her relationship with the High Command, and not just be completely forgotten about for the remainder of the season?

Despite that, the episode is a good one, and one which returns Enterprise to its major plot arcs: the Vulcans, the Temporal Cold War, and the Klingons. From here, there are several good episodes, some of them very good. Despite a blip with the wretched Bounty, the season ends with a run of fairly high quality shows. Even without the season finale changing the series' focus, the lift in quality would have made me more optimistic about Season Three. With that change, I find myself actively looking forward to the new season.

The finale is excellent, one of only three great episodes in the season. I like the way the Temporal Cold War is worked into this shift, with Silik being the one to bring the message about the Xindi to Archer. The lead Archer is following comes from an unreliable source. Are the Xindi actually responsible, or is Silik working another agenda? Even if Silik is passing along good information, what price will he exact for helping Archer? And what ramifications might there be for Archer's space battle with the Klingons?


LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE

OK, wish list for Season Three. My Season Two wish list went almost entirely unfulfilled, but I live in hope. For Season Three, I would like to see this change of direction embraced. No easy fixes to the dilemma created in The Expanse. Let the story run a good half-season, even a full season. They have gone into a region of space even the Vulcans and Klingons are afraid of. There is no excuse now not to present some truly alien settings and situations. So DROP THE GENERIC RUNAROUNDS!

 

I do want to see Archer and Trip continuing to feel their anger, and to be a bit more willing to use force. But I don't want "force" to be their default, and where it is their default response I want it to blow up in their faces at least once. I want Archer to have to use his mind, not his ship's upgraded weapons systems, to resolve this situation. We saw that probe in the precredit sequence, right? I don't care if Enterprise now has "photonic torpedoes," they are clearly technologically outclassed. Let that be the default situation - a small fish in a big pond, with the crew having to make allies inside the Expanse in order to survive.

Beyond that, I want to see a return to Season One in terms of character interaction. Let us see Archer, Trip, and T'Pol interacting with the supporting cast, and not just in those cast members' spotlight episodes. Hoshi is a potentially very good character, played by a good actress, who has been inexplicably sidelined.  Do something with her!  And do something new with Mayweather, too. He can't be saving space freighters from pirates within The Expanse, so his spotlight episode will have to have a new plot now, right?

 

It also might be a good idea to introduce some recurring characters among the crew. Season One got a boost from Cutler, even if the actress did leave for another series (and then died young sometime later). Create some new recurring characters, maybe even let us see an episode or two from the viewpoint of one of the average, non-command staff crew members. It's hardly a revolutionary concept for an episode, but it might allow us to see new facets of our regulars.

Most of all, I hope Season Three is as much of an improvement as I've heard is the case. The first season was competent but only occasionally more than that, which made it important for Season Two to be better. Instead, Season Two was much worse than Season One.  I'm not surprised that viewers jumped ship and mostly never came back. I suspect the show had already passed its point of no return with mainstream viewers, and only got two additional seasons because of the Star Trek label.

 

But I don't care about ratings, and I don't even care that much about a long run. The show has two seasons left. It would be very nice if they were two seasons of good television, and not more generic pap.

 

 

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2-22. Cogenitor.

THE PLOT

The Enterprise is investigating a star that will, in the next one to two hundred years, turn into a supernova. They go in as close to the star as they safely can - only to discover that a ship belonging to another species has been able to go substantially closer. They hail that ship, and arrange a meeting with the Vissians.

Everything is friendly. Not "fake friendly," with the aliens hiding some sinister agenda to serve the humans up as soup back home, but genuinely friendly. The Vissians share their Engineering achievements, help Archer to modify Enterprise's sensors to study more of the star's radiation, and the captain, Drennik (Andreas Katsulas), even invites Archer to join him in his shuttlepod on a trip into the star itself. All is set for a technological and cultural exchange that will be of enormous benefit to Starfleet.

When chatting with the Vissians' chief engineer, Trip is disquieted when he meets a member of this race's third gender - the Cogenitor. The two primary genders use Cogenitors only when reproducing. They have no names, they are not taught to read or write, they have only one function. As Trip learns a little more, he becomes convinced that this Cogenitor is being treated essentially as a slave, and determines to interfere. But is his meddling really for the best?


CHARACTERS

Capt. Archer: Takes a palpable joy in meeting a friendly alien species. The scenes between Archer and the Vissian captain were my favorites of the episode. Archer lets the burden of command slip from his shoulders and takes pleasure in good company, fascinating sights, and the experience of briefly taking the helm of a ship that is far more advanced than any he has ever controlled before. It's refreshing to see such a carefree performance from Scott Bakula, whose Archer is frequently a bit stiff when he's not in "action mode." Bakula then very effectively switches from carefree to angry when he returns to learn what Trip has been up to. The about-face, from relaxed to furious, is very well-done, as is the final scene. When Archer is talking about how Trip has "always been impulsive" and how Trip should think more carefully before interfering, he's talking at least as much about himself as about his chief engineer, a sense that's reinforced by the episode's final shot.

Trip: A Trip-centric episode... this one, not about Trip being right and morally superior to the guest stars of the week, but about Trip well and truly putting his foot into it. In fairness to Trip, everything he sees indicates that the Cogenitor is being treated in a subhuman manner. He does confirm that the Cogenitor's intellectual capacity is equal to that of its current "owners" before interfering. Still, he doesn't discuss the actions he is planning with anyone - not T'Pol, not Phlox, not even Hoshi or Reed or Mayweather. He just does it. Inevitably, his attempt to impose his values on this species comes back to bite him in a big way.

T'Pol: Though she recognizes Trip's concerns, she also realizes that first contacts are very tricky and that this particular first contact is a promising one. As such, she does her best to restrain Trip from overstepping his bounds, trying to remind him of the potential Archer sees in developing a relationship with the Vissians. When Trip interferes anyway, T'Pol confronts him. She doesn't react with anger, or even discipline him. She does calmly explain how much Trip has damaged a promising first contact, and then leaves it for the captain to take the next step once he returns

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Laura Interval is Veylo, the Vissians' tactical officer, who develops a strong attraction for Reed. She is interested as Reed shows her Enterprise's security systems, even as she pronounces them "quaint" (which irritates Reed a little). Her real interest is more in spending "intimate time" with Reed - something Reed has no objection to. Interval gives quite a good performance, and her interactions with Dominic Keating are amusing. In the "hot space babe" note, she fills out her uniform very nicely. When she bends over while stepping through the door to look at the phase cannon, Reed takes a long and appreciative look... And so did I.

Guest Star of the Week: G'Kar! I smiled in the teaser, when the Enterprise made contact with the Vissian ship and the voice on the other end was none other than the unmistakably rich tones of Andreas Katsulas. Those who recall my Babylon 5 reviews may remember that G'Kar quickly became my favorite character on the show, with Katsulas' performance that series' consistent standout.  He's just as good here, and while the role is a slight one, his Capain Drennik comes across as both level-headed and likable.  The interplay between the two captains is a joy to watch, and helps to elevate an already very strong episode.


THOUGHTS

Right off the bat, there are several refreshing elements to Cogenitor. Too much of this season has seen the Enterprise's mission of exploration backgrounded to "B"-level action stories, so I always appreciate seeing a return to stories where the exploration is actually the primary goal. An entire subplot is devoted to Archer and the Vissian captain flying the aliens' technologically superior shuttlepod into the star. These scenes are uniformly excellent, as two good actors deliver thoughtful dialogue, intercut with some of the most dazzling visual effects I've seen on broadcast television.

Another welcome element is the return of Enterprise being significantly less technologically advanced than the other race it encounters. In this case, the guest species is more advanced on pretty much every level. They have achieved technological advances that, to Trip, seem impossible - much as our current level of technology would probably seem like a mixture of fantasy and magic to people from, say, 1810.

All of this helps to add layers to an ultimately familiar Trek story. The alien species has values that morally offend one of our regulars - in this instance, Trip instead of Archer - and Trip proceeds to meddle.  The result is a lesson that sometimes it is necessary to respect cultural differences, even when you can't quite understand them. It is easy enough to sympathize with Trip's disquiet at the treatment of the Cogenitor. From what he sees, it is being treated as property - which, indeed, seems to be the case even at the episode's end. Trip's error isn't in what he perceives, but in what action is most appropriate in response to that. There's a time to exert pressure on a government's treatment of a class of its citizens. That time is probably not when making a friendly first contact with them - but it's not hard to understand why Trip felt obliged to act.

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have been massively demonized in Trek fandom. As I've mentioned in these reviews before, I am of the opinion that while they made some mistakes - particularly in just plain making too many hours of Trek, and critically in failing to keep pace with the development of series television past 2000 or so - the brickbats thrown their way are far out of proportion to their actual failings. Whatever missteps they committed, they are both good television writers. This is by far the best episode of Season Two, and I suspect it's not accidental that the writing credits belong to them.


Rating: 10/10.

Previous Episode: The Breach
Next Episode: Regeneration

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1-16. Shuttlepod One

THE PLOT

Trip and Reed are on Shuttlepod One in an asteroid field, to test the shuttle's weapons systems, when a sudden incident puts out their sensor array and communications. Heading back to rendezvous with Enterprise early, they discover no ship... but on one of the larger asteroids, they find debris, clearly from the Enterprise.

Concluding that the ship was destroyed, they pilot the shuttle toward Echo One, so that their short-range distress signal will eventually be picked up by Starfleet and so that the destruction of the Enterprise will be reported back home. But it is not a lifesaving plan. Echo One is weeks away at impulse power; the shuttle has no warp; and they only have enough oxygen to last them a few, short days.


CHARACTERS

Trip: This episode portrays Trip as a determined optimist, to the point of being in denial about the pure desperation of the situation facing them. He actually runs through many of the stages of a terminal patient. He denies that they will die, insisting that the time remaining to them is plenty of time for a ship to encounter them and rescue them. He becomes irrationally angry at Reed for accepting the situation. He bargains with Reed to try to get Reed to stop being fatalistic. He even reaches a sort of depression/acceptance stage, when he attempts to send himself out of the airlock to give Reed more time. We don't really discover much new about Trip (though a cut scene, in the Deleted Scenes menu, fills in more background on Trip's friendship with Archer), but the episode does provide Connor Trinneer the opportunity to sink his teeth into some meaty material, which he does with relish.

Reed: We get far more character information about Reed in this episode. Silent Enemy showed us that Reed wasn't somebody easy to get to know, even by members of his own family. This episode expands on that, as Reed reveals that he has never really gotten close to anyone, because he has never felt very comfortable with other people, and that the crew of the Enterprise are as close as he's ever come to others. We also learn that Reed is a bit of a ladies' man, with several broken relationships in his past, including one girlfriend he and Trip unwittingly had shared.


THOUGHTS

Gah!  After Deep Space 9 rehashes the old (long-debunked) chestnut about humans only using 10% of their brains, now this episode pulls up the whole "hair and nails continue to grow when you're dead" myth.  At this point, I'm wondering whether the writers of 1990's/2000's Trek were intentionally yanking their audiences' chains.

Both a budget saver and a strong character piece, this episode is practically a two-hander between Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating. Given that few (if any) viewers truly believe that Trip and Reed are going to be killed off within the 44 minutes of the show, the real interest is in watching their interactions. This proves to be very entertaining, as we see them bicker with each other, get drunk with each other, and - when a slim chance at survival finally does present itself - pool their abilities to exploit that chance. The characters are likable, the actors are good, and the script is quite competent. As a result, the episode works nicely.

It does feel odd that writers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga came up with an episode that is more than 90% a 2-hander, and then didn't quite have the courage to just stay with the two characters throughout. Berman and Braga either don't trust their writing or their audience - I'm not sure which - and provide a cutaway to the Enterprise immediately after the credits, presumably to assure viewers that the entire regular cast was not blown up off-camera midway through the series' first season. I am sure the approximately 5 minutes spent with Archer and T'Pol debating microsingularities could have been filled quite adequately with Trip and Reed's interaction. And for my money, it would have been more interesting to have waited until the tag to find out what happened (and would only have required a couple of extra lines of dialogue in the final scene).

Still, strong character work and good performances count for a lot. Also, save for the irritant of the pointless cutaways, the script actually is fairly good. One of the issues I have with some of the wholesale Berman/Braga bashing in Trek fandom is that the pair plainly aren't the talentless hacks they're often made out to be. It reminds me a bit of the mindless bashing of producer John Nathan Turner that plagues Doctor Who's fandom. Sure, Bergman and Braga made their share of mistakes, and they had probably grown a little complacent by the time this series came around. But anti-Christs who merit death threats?  No. Before they stayed too long, they probably did the franchise a fair bit of good. Quite frankly, I find that the first season of Enterprise is stacking up quite favorably against the first season Next Generation episodes I've re-watched and reviewed thus far.

In any case, this episode works.  It's not superb, but it gives two of the show's more promising actors some good material and manages to entertain. It's just a shame that, after tackling an episode with a 2-hander concept, Berman & Braga didn't quite have the courage to stick to their guns with the idea.  An unspectacular but solid:


Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: Shadows of P'Jem
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