Date: 16 April 2151
When a civilian critically injures a Klingon on his farm, Starfleet Command decides to return him to his people via the experimental starship Enterprise NX-01. Despite Vulcan objections, Captain Jonathan Archer assembles his crew - but once in space, the grander scale of a massive temporal conflict lends Archer's mission even greater significance.
Summary
The year is 2151, ninety years after humans and Vulcans made first contact as a direct result of Zefram Cochrane's maiden warp speed voyage and thirty-two years after the commissioning of the Warp Five Project, an endeavour to build a warp engine capable of taking a starship to two hundred times the speed of light. Above Earth, the starship Enterprise NX-01 sits in spacedock, just about ready for launch. Whilst her captain, Jonathan Archer, son of the man who made the warp five engine his life's work, inspects his charge, an alien shuttlecraft crashlands in the farmland of Broken Bow, Oklahoma. The alien, seven feet tall with prominent forehead ridges, is being pursued by two further extraterrestrials, who seem to be able to contort their bodies at will, demonstrating the ability to slide underneath doors. The ridged alien dupes his pursuers into entering a storage tower which he duly destroys, incinerating them. Just then, the human owner of the farm arrives on the scene and shoots the alien unconscious.
The alien - whom the Vulcans identify as Klaang, a Klingon courier - is brought to Starfleet Medical, where is placed on life support under the care of the Denobulan Doctor Phlox. The Vulcans are reticent to reveal too much information on how the aliens arrived on Earth undetected, or as to Qo'noS' demands as regards their man - but when Archer arrives, he discovers that the Vulcans want to disconnect Klaang from life support. Ambassador Soval argues that if Klaang is returned alive, he will be disgraced for not having died honourably in battle, but Archer manages to convince the Starfleet brass that Enterprise can ferry the alien home, alive. Admiral Forrest approves the mission, and Archer begins to round up his crew: Phlox, linguist Hoshi Sato, chief engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker, helmsman Travis Mayweather and armoury officer Malcolm Reed. The Vulcans, despite their objections to the mission, provide Starfleet with some starcharts - but they also assign an "observer", Subcommander T'Pol. Archer assigns her as science officer for the duration of the mission.
Enterprise launches amidst much fanfare and sets course for Qo'noS. En route, there are communications problems: the universal translator refuses to lock on to Klaang's dialect and the Klingon is still suffering from neurological problems which make his speech incoherent. Those problems become mere trifles, however, when aliens of the same species that pursued Klaang back on Earth black out Enterprise's power and board her, making off with Klaang. Archer orders an analysis of the faint trail that the aliens - whom Klaang identified as Suliban - left when their ship departed, as well as having Hoshi translate what Klaang said to see if it made any sense. T'Pol protests that as Archer "lost the Klingon", he should return to Earth, claiming that the mission is a completely foolish endeavour. Reacting with hostility, Archer tells the Vulcan in no uncertain terms to "take your Vulcan cynicism and bury it along with your repressed emotions". T'Pol responds that Archer's reaction to the incident is "a perfect example of why your species should remain in its own star system". Furious with the Vulcan's obstinance, Archer orders her to work with Tucker on the sensor analysis. His frustration with T'Pol grows when, after Hoshi identifies the proper noun "Rigel" in Klaang's gibberish, she hesitates to reveal that the Vulcans' analysis of the Klingon's shuttlecraft's flight plan showed that his last destination before Earth was Rigel X. Warning her that the next time she witholds information, she'll be thrown in the ship's brig, Archer has Mayweather set a course for the Rigel system.
Unbeknown to Archer, the Suliban commander Silik has also interrogated Klaang, and has been frustrated in his efforts to extract the truth about what he was doing on Rigel X from him with drugs. Taking matters into his own hands, Silik travels to Rigel with a group of his soldiers. In the trade complex on Rigel X, Archer encounters a Suliban woman named Sarin, who claims that she gave Klaang a message to return to the Klingon High Council: the Cabal, the group of which Silik is a member, has been staging attacks within the Empire in an attempt to make it seem as if one faction is attacking another. Klaang was bringing proof of this to his people. And there's more: Sarin tells the captain that the Suliban aren't acting of their own volition; rather, they're taking orders from the future. They are merely pawns in a Temporal Cold War and they're receiving genetic enhancements in return for their services. Before she can elaborate, Silik's Suliban attack, and although Archer's team manages to escape, Sarin is shot and killed. "Find Klaang," she pleads as the Enterprise crew make their way to the snowstorm-battered roof of the complex. The firefight resumes, and T'Pol is saved from being shot by Archer, who himself is shot in the leg and knocked unconscious. The team reaches the shuttlepod and heads for the ship, with T'Pol assuming command.
When Archer regains consciousness, his leg healed thanks to Phlox's "eel therapy", the Enterprise is under way - but rather than take the ship back to Earth, T'Pol has helped Tucker modify the sensors to track Silik's ship's warp trail. They track the vessel until the trail peters out in the atmosphere of a gas giant, but T'Pol analyses the readings and realises that the trail looks broken because it came from fourteen ships, not just one. The crew have found the Suliban base. Descending into the atmosphere of the gas giant, the ship is accosted by hundreds of Suliban cell-ships, and discovers a massive helix - an aggregate structure comprised of interlinked cells. Snagging a cell ship with the ship's grappler, Archer and Tucker learn how to pilot it and then head for the helix with the intention of rescuing Klaang. They succeed, and Archer sends his chief engineer and the Klingon back to Enterprise, instructing them to come back for him. Exploring the helix, Archer stumbles across the room within which Silik communicates with his master from the future - a room where temporal distortions ripples through the air whenever anyone makes a move, where he is attacked by the Suliban commander. On Enterprise, Tucker argues with T'Pol as to the captain's intentions - T'Pol wants to proceed directly to Qo'noS, but Tucker reminds her that she owes Archer after he saved her life on Rigel. Unable to dock with the helix, the crew are forced to use the newly invented transporter, saving Archer from being vapourised by Silik. Fleeing, the ship heads for Qo'noS and the High Council chamber, where Klaang announces that he is ready to die disgraced for not having died in battle. Instead, the Chancellor slices Klaang's hand open and orders the blood analysed - it contains Sarin's proof that the attacks by individual Houses have been staged.
Upon learning of the Suliban threat, Admiral Forrest orders Archer and his crew to begin their mission to explore space and assigns Enterprise a course. Requesting that both Phlox and T'Pol remain on board for the foreseeable future, Archer settles into his command chair and orders full speed ahead into the unknown.
Review
A great deal rests on the success of the fifth Star Trek television series; no less than the future of the franchise itself. It's difficult to see where the franchise can go from here - this is, after all, a prequel series - but if there is to be a Series VI, then Enterprise must overcome some of the problems which plagued Deep Space Nine (low ratings) and Voyager (sameness, stale plots) swiftly and with authority. Whether these characters, the actors who portray them and the executive producers are up to that task will decide whether Star Trek stands or falls come 2008. After all, no-one seriously doubts that this will be a seven-year series.
So we begin in the year 2151; a curious choice in and of itself, being as it is ten years before the founding of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet Academy. If this series is to last seven years, then we won't witness the actual inaugration of that alliance, which I initially assumed to be the point of the whole endeavour. Starfleet is in existence, however (so some official reference texts will need revising), although it "hasn't been around too long" according to Mr Tucker. This is humanity "crossing a new threshold": the warp five barrier. But the achievement hasn't come without sacrifice. After the euphoria that Zefram Cochrane, Lily Sloane and the crew of the Enterprise-E felt at the conclusion of Star Trek: First Contact, it would seem that a refusal to dance was just a part of the Vulcans' reticence when it came to cultural exchange. They've held us back, frustrated us and generally been a royal pain in the butt.
The starting premise of Enterprise, then, is one of tension - which does, of course, make for good drama. What it also makes for is danger. Already, certain prejudicial elements of the programme are making themselves known via Archer and Tucker's dialogue and rhetoric. From the very opening scene, when a young Jonathan defies his father's authority by calling Ambassador Soval "Ambassador Pointy-Ears", Freudian psychology leaps to the fore. Henry Archer wasn't able to complete his work and see the launch of Enterprise thanks to the obstructive Vulcans, so thirty years later the return of the repressed afflicts his son, most notably in the form of T'Pol. Archer claims at the conclusion of the episode that he's going to have to leave holding grudges and being prejudiced behind, but whether he succeeds or not should be more of a challenge than the conclusion of the pilot suggests. Indeed, from the looks of things as regards Archer's behaviour (particularly the line "Take your Vulcan cynicism and bury it along with your repressed emotions"), it will be.
My first impressions of Archer aren't particularly good. As well as animosity towards Vulcans in general, the scene at Starfleet Medical lends credence to the aliens' view that humanity isn't ready for the stars. Archer's no Picard or Kirk, although he's closer to the latter in terms of gung-ho enthusiasm. I questioned from the start of the episode whether this should be the man Starfleet is trusting with first contacts, particularly after a) he ignores the intricacies of Klingon culture by "imposing his ethical beliefs" (Soval's phrase, which, although condescending, was quite accurate) and b) he tells T'Pol that he's restraining himself from "knocking you on your ass". Boy, is this guy George W Bush in space, or what? It's difficult to hide from the fact that this is an all-American endeavour - the fact screams out at you from the moment that you realise Yuri Gagarin isn't included in the opening title sequence montage of space exploration (whch, by the way, is fabulous).
We're supposed to sympathise with the human members of the crew and view T'Pol as an annoyance, as they do, but aside from one poorly written line when she notes that Vulcan children play with toys more sophisticated than Enterprise's sensors (why would she say that? There's no logic in it), by and large she's right about everything. She's right about stopping Tucker from interfering with the Lorillians in the trade complex, right that the mission is foolish and that the humans will be happy to have her off the ship. Of course, the mission turns out all right, but that's more down to the dynamics of the situation than any judgement of Archer's; it's lucky that he's foolhardy enough to want to 'impose his ethical beliefs', because otherwise no-one would know about the Temporal Cold War, but it wasn't the right decision by Forrest to let the Enterprise go to Qo'noS, and Starfleet should count itself lucky it didn't bring death and destruction down on Earth at the hands of Klingon Birds of Prey.
Leaving those gaping plot holes aside, the episode itself is by and large excellent. For a start, it's very well directed and casted (I particularly like the look of Jolene Blalock - no, not like that - and John Billingsley), tightly scripted and boasts some top drawer effects, particularly as far as the helix and the gas giant sequence go. I also liked the Oklahoma scenes and the explosion of the tower - very professional. As I mentioned, the title sequence is pretty cool as well. It's going to grate on a lot of people's nerves, particularly with its MOR theme tune (even the lyrics of which articulate humanity's impatience - "They're not going to hold me down no more, no, they're not going to change my mind"), but it brought me out in goose bumps as it moved from the schooner Enterprise through Chuck Yeager to Neil Armstrong to the events of First Contact to Enterprise herself pulling away from home. I've got a feeling it'll grow on us; it encapsulates the essence of the show perfectly. It also serves to link us and our time directly to the 2150s. No other show could have had such an opening sequence; can you imagine Russell Watson narrating a Voyager theme? Thought not.
The arc of the show is clearly going to be the Temporal Cold War, which (much like the show as a whole) holds both potential and danger. Potential because of the intricacies which time travel is capable of throwing up; danger because, hey, we've been here before, from "Assignment: Earth" through "Time's Arrow" through "Past Tense" and the endless shinanegans of Voyager's time-hopping. The premise of the show clearly draws its inspiration from Voyager episodes such as "Relativity", which showed us glimpses of the Federation's far future, but we've gone beyond even that time frame here to a conflict which emcompasses the grand sweep of history. The thing that we should be wary of is that where time travel is concerned, there are an infinite number of 'reset buttons' built into the storyline, and that can have exceedingly annoying consequences. Remember "Year of Hell", where a powerful storyline was rendered utterly pointless by no-one remembering their sacrifices for each other come the end of the show? Imagine a seven-year series that ends in that manner. Personally, I don't want to witness that.
Of course, with this series once again in the hands of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga (the latter now more than ever Trek's guiding light), the possibility is there for that to happen. We can but hope that with an honestly new direction for Trek, there will be some attempt to break with the traditions - holograms, transporter accidents, mirror universes - that have made the franchise so stale. Star Trek has been eating itself; with Enterprise, it has the chance to produce a tastier morsel. The potential is certainly there, but for it to be realised, someone has to grab the reins and convince me that here are characters who I can actually like. Until then - the court stands adjourned. |
