A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the first two seasons of Enterprise. Now I’d like to finish my discussion of the series. At the beginning of season 3, Archer and crew are off chasing the alien species developing a weapon to destroy Earth, and it’s a season of amazing episodes. I was afraid at first that, due to the topic, the episodes would involve nothing but a lot of action and combat. Especially since a military unit called MACOs was added to the ship. (Doesn’t this remind you of the marines of Deep Space 9?). Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike action and combat, but that’s not what makes Star Trek. As proven by fans’ dislike of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the human element is most important of all. Luckily, as it turned out, there were many episodes focusing on the human element and a great deal of character development, especially in T’Pol and Archer. More about that later.
The series continued to improve in season 4. There were several 2- and 3-part episodes, including a 2-parter entirely in the Mirror, Mirror universe. That was a great episode, even if you didn’t know who to root for, since they were all evil. Season 4 also included an explanation of why some Klingons have forehead ridges and some don’t. Very clever. And it does justice to Worf’s comment in DS9 of not liking to talk about it. Too bad they left that until the very end of Star Trek (not counting the revamp movies).
The last episode was unique. It depicted Enterprise’s last mission six years after the previous episode, leading to the beginning of a rudimentary Federation of Planets. The interesting thing is that it did so through use of the holodeck by Will Riker. I’m not sure why they did it that way, or how I feel about it. Maybe, after premature cancellation, the producers wanted to end it in a significant way and have it come full circle on the Enterprise D. Again, I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I think I would have preferred an episode with just the Enterprise NX-1 crew.
As I mentioned earlier, there was a great deal of character development in this series, more than in any of the others. T’Pol stopped being a reluctant spy and overseer to a Vulcan struggling with her emotions and loyal to a human captain. She even had something of a romance with a member of the crew. Malcomb stopped trying to sacrifice himself at every turn, and Trip…well, I think Trip just grew up.
Archer certainly changed more than any other Star Trek captain. He started out as a naïve idealist and became a pragmatist, willing to do whatever it took to complete his mission. It’s interesting to note here that the two most disturbing episodes in Star Trek history were on Enterprise and Voyager. In both cases, the captain ordered the death of someone on board, not due to anything that person had done, but because of who they were. Of course, Janeway was lost in the Delta Quadrant and Archer was alone in the Expanse trying to save the human race. So, we could explain it by saying Star Trek captains go rogue when out of communication range and in desperate times. Another explanation may simply be that the Star Trek producers were allowing their captains to be more human.
So, a lot has happened in Star Trek history, and Enterprise is a really good series, as long as you stick with it. People who disparage it have probably only seen a few episodes and are comparing it to other Star Trek series they liked. They should be comparing it to other science fiction tv past and present. After all, what’s on the air now to compare? There have, of course, been some good series (my favorites are Babylon 5 and Stargate), but a lot more bad ones. But of all the sf tv ever on the air, there is nothing to compare to Star Trek. Any Star Trek.