Enterprise 1x21 "Detained"

rating: ****

the story: Archer learns more about the Suliban in a most unexpected manner.

what it's all about: "Detained" is the last great episode of the season, and it's notable for a number of reasons.  The most superficial is still the most enjoyable: it's the reunion between Scott Bakula and his old Quantum Leap costar Dean Stockwell.  In "Detained" they're enemies, not allies.  The contrast actually helps strengthen the material, not only because it's unexpected but because they still maintain their chemistry, regardless of their relationship. 

But there's more going on.  As roughly sketched in the above summary, "Detained" is actually about the Suliban, Silik's species.  As previously encountered, it's easy to assume that all Suliban are agents of the Temporal Cold War, but "Detained" makes it clear that they aren't.  It's a sobering lesson.  It's not without precedent in the franchise.  Various Romulans have been depicted as sympathetic (the original series classic "Balance of Terror," Next Generation's "The Defector," Voyager's "Eye of the Needle"), and Deep Space Nine went out of its way to do the same with the Cardassians (most memorably in "Duet").  But this episode is still unique. 

"Detained" explains that not all Suliban are engaged in the Temporal Cold War.  It's a lesson that became relevant in the post-9/11 world, where terrorists were seen everywhere, and all Muslims were suspect.  "Suliban" was deliberately fashioned after the Taliban, the corrupt ruling body in Afghanistan, after all.  It's funny that the Temporal Cold War was clearly another echo of the '60s cold war era, and yet it also evoked very contemporary matters.  In hindsight, just as we still live in a world of uncertainty, Afghanistan itself still at war, the idea of a Temporal Cold War, its agents spread out not just through space but time, it seems to have greater meaning now than it did when Enterprise was still producing new episodes.  Fans thought poorly enough about the arc that it ended up being downplayed in later seasons, and outright abandoned at the start of the fourth season (Archer virtually speaking for the fans when he says he's sick of it), thus depriving it of reaching its full potential.  "Detained" is an excellent example of what that might have looked like.  At any rate, it remains one of the best episodes to come from it.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Continues the rich tradition of socially relevant material.
• series - An unexpected entry in the Temporal Cold War arc.
• character - Archer plays well in this crisis.
• essential - In hindsight not just a good episode but an important one.

notable guest-stars:
Dean Stockwell
Christopher Shea

Voyager 5x20 "Think Tank"

rating: ***

the story: Smart guys try to add Seven to their brain trust.

what it's all about: "Spock's Brain" is an episode that instantly tells most fans that the topic is "worst episodes ever," and yet, I don't really subscribe to that line of reasoning.  I think it's an episode that acknowledges one of the most obvious things about the original series, which is that Spock is a valuable asset.  Like Data in Next Generation's "The Most Toys," Spock is, after a fashion, collected in the episode.  That's what happens in "Think Tank," too.  This is the episode where Seven is collected, essentially.

It's also the episode that features one of the most famous guest-stars in franchise history, a fact that somehow has gotten lost over the years.  Seinfeld was so astronomically successful that it ended up killing the idea of the sitcom, and it also killed the further careers of two of its main cast members, Michael Richards (Kramer) and Jason Alexander (George Costanza).  Now, as interesting as it would be to see Michael Richards in Star Trek (Voyager had Andy Dick, after all!), "Think Tank" doesn't feature him, but rather Jason Alexander.

Now, he was extremely successful, in a whole cast who nailed their parts, in embodying the perennially psychotically desperate George Costanza.  Even though he had roles before George, Jason became as typecast as anyone ever has (hello, George Reeves!) and failed in a string of new sitcom roles.  People just couldn't see him as anything but George Costanza.

He doesn't play George in "Think Tank," neither literally or in any way personality.  That's what makes the appearance continually fascinating, because Star Trek fans can kind of boast that they got Jason in one of his attempts to redefine his career.  I mean, they don't, but that's beside the point.  They can.  They should.  That's the point. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - There's a whole tradition behind the idea.
• series - The bounty hunters the smart guys use to corner the ship is one of those ideas that could only happen in Voyager (and also, later, Enterprise).
• character - It's always nice to have someone from the cast (Seven) pointed to in a story as worthy of this sort of thing. 
• essential - It doesn't particularly say something new about the basic idea.

notable guest-stars:
Jason Alexander
Christopher Shea

Deep Space Nine 6x10 "The Magnificent Ferengi"

rating: ***

the story: Quark assembles the least likely commando squad ever.

what it's all about: "Magnificent Ferengi" is an interesting riddle.  On the one hand, it's an episode that might actually help convince reluctant fans to give the Ferengi another shot.  On the other, it may actually be the episode responsible for the dreaded "Ferengi episode" reputation.  What fun!

It's actually a nice culmination of the work Deep Space Nine had put into the Ferengi, tying together pretty much every significant representative of the species the series had introduced over the years, from the Grand Nagus (absent but crucial to the plot) to Ishka (Quark's mum) to Brunt (the evil would-be uber Ferengi) and even Gaila ("the one with the moon"), and even suggesting that the path to the future for even a perennially hopeless culture (in terms of the Federation ideal) wasn't as dim as it sometimes seemed. 

...On the other, the Ferengi were always going to be a hard sell.  These were the guys Next Generation botched so badly in its first season, so badly that even in a whole season filled with creative botches, the introduction of the would-be successors to the Klingons felt like the worst one.  Successors to the Klingons?!?  Surely not!  But at the time, they really did seem like they'd be more menace than punchline (see how one of their number was even set up to be Picard's archnemesis!), until fans actually saw them in action.  Their subsequent appearances in that series were concessions to the obvious conclusion that they hadn't worked out as planned, and so they became intergalactic weasels instead, comically obsessed with prophet and just as comically inept. 

Enter: Quark.  The station's resident bartender was a giant reclamation project, meant to showcase the heretofore unknown nuances of the Ferengi.  Actually, he succeeded so well it was almost impossible for any other Ferengi to measure up to him.  His brother Rom actually devolved into such a buffoon that the only direction left to go with him was actually to turn him away from Ferengi norms.  So it became with Rom's son Nog, too, and each subsequent new Ferengi had to either follow the norms or risk being swallowed by them.  Yeah, I don't know how that was supposed to work, either.

The results can be seen in "Magnificent Ferengi."  The ones trying to be true practitioners of the culture (Brunt, Gaila) have tellingly fallen flat on their faces since last we saw them.  This may be due to the effects of an aging leader (Zek) looking to consider reforms with the encouragement of his relationship to Quark and his family, or because of, you know, the Dominion War.

Speaking of that...Following the epic arc at the start of the season, no real fighting had been seen for three episodes, and then along comes this one, in which the fighters are...the Ferengi.  Who are laughably terrible fighters.  The whole episode is about how terrible they are.  I mean, it's a farce!  In any other context, they're so hilariously inept it would undoubtedly make a classic Star Trek farce (see: "The Trouble with Tribbles," although maybe don't because even the Klingons somehow emerge unscathed from that one).  But the joke almost seems like it's on them.  The whole episode focuses entirely on them, with no other species, much less Starfleet, around, except for a Vorta they accidentally kill and then motorize in order to try and complete negotiations with the Dominion.

It must seem like an epic lost opportunity for fans who have little patience for the Ferengi.  I'm hardly saying this is the only interpretation.  I like the Ferengi.  I think they gave necessary color to the series, and this is a great example of how they did so.  I mean, there were several attempts to lighten up the war ("One Little Ship" a handful of episodes later, "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" in the final season), and I think this was the most successful one.  And it does advance the overall narrative of the Ferengi. 

But it may also be the prototypical "Ferengi episode."

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Whether you consider it a good or bad thing, this is arguably one of the definitive appearances of the Ferengi in Star Trek.
• series - Their development as a species, as depicted in Deep Space Nine, reaches a crucial moment.
• character - Quark, and just about every other Ferengi in the series.
• essential - I think it's a terrific farce, but others may simply consider it a farce.

notable guest-stars:
Jeffrey Combs (Brunt)
Josh Pais (Gaila)
Max Grodenchik (Rom)
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)
Cecily Adams (Ishka)
Chase Masterson (Leeta)
Christopher Shea (Keevan)
Iggy Pop

Deep Space Nine 6x2 "Rocks and Shoals"

rating: ****

the story: Sisko faces a difficult predicament when he and his crew are marooned on the same planet as a contingent of the Dominion, and they're forced to confront the intricacies of the enemy.

what it's all about: First - a litany of episodes, from this series alone, where things are relatively comparable:

"...Nor the Battle to the Strong," "The Ship," "The Siege of AR-558," all dealing with the realities of war.  This is the one that takes place during the initial six-episode arc of the Dominion War.  "Ship" is the most comparable in that it also deals with the Dominion specifically (and even features the origin of the ship Sisko and crew crash on the planet here).  But the episode that most comes to mind is actually "Hippocratic Oath," in which Bashir is forced to try and come up with a cure for the chemical addiction the Founders engineered into the Jem'Hadar.  That's an episode I felt worked somewhat horribly.  The good doctor is called upon to work on the same problem in "Rocks and Shoals," and once again ("To the Death" is another good example) the viewer is asked to take the Jem'Hadar as something other than the enemy, more akin to the nuanced Klingons as they came to be known over the years.

And that's really the story of the episode, a last redemptive look at the foot soldiers of the Dominion, and the complicated nature of "the enemy."  (A b-story has Kira revisiting the thought process she had during the Occupation, and how it compares to life under Dominion rule aboard the station, and so complements the material well.)  There was never a recurring Jem'Hadar character in the series; every episode featured a new one, and so they have the somewhat unique distinction in Deep Space Nine as addressing a species rather than individuals, of whom there were representatives clamoring for respect of just about every iteration, and so illustrate the need to look beyond familiarity even when that seems the only way to make progress.  "Rocks" in fact makes that case most clearly.

For that reason it's possibly the easiest Dominion War episode to recommend to viewers leery of the bulk of the material to see what the series was saying about war, the nature of the enemy, when it might have seemed the war arc glorified or even glamorized something the franchise otherwise tended to condemn.  There are plenty of "stuck with the enemy" episodes across Star Trek where the context is entirely contained in the one story.  This is a great example of seeing that same message put into context.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A good example of Deep Space Nine making a classic Star Trek template its own.
• series - A good example of the best Dominion War storytelling.
• character - Kira gets the nod here for her personal breakthrough.
• essential - All of it combines nicely for a transcendent experience.

notable guest-stars:
Phil Morris
Christopher Shea
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)
Andrew Robinson (Garak)

Enterprise 2x15 "Cease Fire"

***

Perhaps the most curious development of the second season was that Shran only appeared once.  A big part of what helped spark the first season creatively was his initial appearance in "The Andorian Incident" and then return in "Shadows of P'Jem."  It wasn't just that Andorians returned to the franchise for the first time since the original series, but that Shran was a significant new character (portrayed by a significant guest actor, no less, Jeffrey Combs).

His appearances also provided Enterprise with the kind of light continuity that balanced the expectations of fans who'd grown to enjoy that sort of thing in Deep Space Nine (and other genre shows such as Babylon 5) and what Star Trek fans knew from other incarnations.  By the time of the second season with its new approach, the crew stumbling along on its own in uncharted territory, bringing Shran back was a crucial proposition, especially the manner of which he appeared.  "Cease Fire" is less about Shran, actually, and more about Vulcan-Andorian relations, which was ostensibly what the prior episodes centered on, even though Shran stole both of them.

To see him sort of take a back seat to the interspecies conflict is softened a little by the appearance of another veteran guest actor, Suzie Plakson (please don't make me tell you who she's famous for portraying, because it will only make us both look bad).  The whole episode is filled with familiar faces, actually, something that was rare for the second season, with appearances by Admiral Forrest and Soval as well.  In the first season there wasn't much reason to like Soval.  "Cease Fire" is also notable in that it presents a different side of him as well.

Part of the point of the episode is also that Archer unwittingly stumbles into a role that he's destined to fill, and the timing of it is another indication of the deliberate shape of the season.  The events of the previous season have almost become a distant memory.  The second season to this point had avoided the familiar while making subtle moves at some of the more procedural developments later generations would take for granted.  The relationships Archer previously formed now come back in new and important ways.  Soval doesn't trust him.  Shran does.  To put Archer in the middle of them at the negotiating table puts all of them in a new light.  Archer benefits from being able to provide a fresh perspective.  Soval finds this refreshing, especially since he and every other Vulcan (except T'Pol) finds Archer to be the epitome of humanity, young and naive and hopelessly useless.  "Cease Fire" is the first time he is anything but in their eyes.  And for Shran, it's the first time his relationship with Archer truly proves beneficial.

It's not a monumental moment, like "The Andorian Incident," but it's an episode the second season needed, the series needed, and even the franchise benefited from.  You can skip it, but you won't regret paying attention.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Jeffrey Combs
Gary Graham
Christopher Shea
Vaughn Armstrong
Suzie Plakson

Memory Alpha summary.