Enterprise 3x8 "Twilight"

rating: ****

the story: Archer's long-term memory is compromised.

what it's all about: There's only one, flimsy, reason not to love "Twilight," and that's if you're a grump.  Being a grump in this instance means either that you hate "reset button" episodes, or you hate subsequent series chasing after Next Generation's "The Inner Light."  Which itself was chasing after the classic "City on the Edge of Forever."  Basically an episode that sort of exists out of continuity, its events technically never having happened.

So let's get that out of the way, because they're both the same issue.  A "reset button" episode is one where the ending means the characters somehow manage to erase the events of the story from ever happening.  One of the more obvious ones would be Voyager's "Year of Hell," where for two episodes the crew literally spends a whole year with everything going wrong, but by the end of it a solution is found (destroying the time ship that helped make it possible) that means they can relive that same period with a completely different experience.  "City on the Edge of Forever" is the classic episode where McCoy jumps through a time portal and does something that erases reality as he and his colleagues (and viewers) knew it.  Kirk eventually figures out that McCoy saves someone who was supposed to die, and the heartbreaking final moments of the episode see him prevent that from happening, even though Kirk has fallen in love with the woman he has to restrain McCoy from stopping getting run over in the street.

Next Generation's "Inner Light," meanwhile, is a more exotic story.  An alien probe gives Picard the experiences of someone else's lifetime.  The more he settles into it, the sadder it becomes to know that at the end of the episode, walking away from this means that man's life is essentially a tragedy.  Picard gets to resume his life, but he retains all the bittersweet memories he shared and even participated in.  Deep Space Nine's "Inner Light" episode was a deeply personal, poignant experience between Sisko and his son, "The Visitor," in which Jake becomes separated from his father because of an anomaly, and lives the rest of his life trying desperately to reunite with him.  It's routinely listed as one of the best episodes of the franchise.  Voyager's was "Timeless," in which a guilt-ridden Harry Kim, years into the future, tries to rewriter history so that he and Chakotay can get everyone else home, and not crashed on a desolate ice planet a long ways from home. 

So if you have no idea what "Twilight" is, that's its tradition.  But like the episodes from the other series, it's an experience that's deeply intrinsic to Enterprise.  "Visitor" was all about a bond unique to Deep Space Nine, "Timeless" is tied up in Voyager's premise, Picard's particular cerebral nature made "Inner Light" typical of him, and no character no matter how often they followed his tendencies could've sold the impact of "City on the Edge of Forever" quite like Kirk.

"Twilight" is in a lot of ways the Xindi arc in a nutshell.  If you were to skip the rest of the season, this one experience would explain the whole story perfectly.  In a larger sense, it also explains T'Pol's bond not just with Archer but the crew around her, an association that made no logical sense to her at the start of the series, but something she found increasingly hard to walk away from later, despite a number of clear opportunities.  In a sense, it is a "shipper" experience.  If Voyager never came closer than "Resolutions" in exploring the potential of a Janeway/Chakotay relationship, "Twilight" is the ultimate "might have been" between Archer and T'Pol, who otherwise pursued a real, and very complicated, relationship with Trip, notably throughout the Xindi arc.  A lot of fans saw equal potential with an Archer romance, which aside from "Twilight" never materialized.

"Twilight" makes it very clear why their relationship happens, and is a quiet tragedy for T'Pol.  While viewers only experience her explaining events to Archer once, this is something she must do on a routine basis, every time Archer's short memory needs reminding of an increasingly elaborate sequence of events, growing longer with every passing year.  Thanks to the reset button, events do play out differently, and much more happily, as far as the Xindi arc goes, but it's hard not thinking of the experience as being as much about T'Pol's endurance as the outcome of their mission.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Part of a long and prestigious tradition in Star Trek lore.
• series - Yet intrinsically a part of the season narrative.
• character - A bold exploration of both Archer and T'Pol.
• essential - One of those episodes you can very easily recommend as exemplifying the whole series.

notable guest-stars:
Gary Graham (Soval)

Enterprise 1x15 "Shadows of P'Jem"

rating: ****

the story: The Vulcans are upset about the crew's interaction with the Andorians.

what it's all about: Though to this point in the series less serialized than it would be later and certainly less than fans liked at the time and probably less even now, "Shadows of P'Jem" certainly catches Enterprise early in its run with an episode drawing directly from previous material.  It's a direct sequel to the events of "The Andorian Incident."  It also involves the nature of the human-Vulcan relationship as depicted in the pilot episode ("Broken Bow"), representing the first time in the series the Vulcans attempt to cut short the crew's mission. 

One of the things this accomplishes is allowing the growing family of recurring characters to show exactly what they add to the series.  Recurring characters had really only been similar to this, and on a much larger scale, eventually, in Deep Space Nine.  To see Admiral Forrest and Ambassador Soval again is one thing, but we get to see Shran again, too.  It's his relationship with Archer that grows the most over the course of the series.  Word has it that if Enterprise had gotten a fifth season, Shran would've become a regular.  If only!  Here we get to see his love-hate relationship with Archer, his vaguely racist term of affection, "pink skin," becoming a trademark already, a touch that helps add dimension to him.

T'Pol's position with the crew is threatened; her immediate recall is asked for, and only the events of the episode spare her such a fate.  This is usually something that happens in a season finale, so it's nice to see that in this series, such danger can come at any turn, sort of suggesting the later constant volatility of Discovery.

Of course, the whole thing's a further exercise in watching how Archer is put in-between the conflict between Vulcans and Andorians, a precursor to his helping build a lasting coalition between them and other aliens: the Federation.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Seeing relationships evolve between classic aliens like Vulcans and Andorians.
• series - And how our crew helps make that happen.
• character - Specifically Archer, thanks to his relationship with Shran.
• essential - Crucial further development in the overall arc of the series.

notable guest-stars:
Jeffrey Combs (Shran)
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)
Gary Graham (Soval)
Gregory Itzen

Enterprise 1x1/1x2 "Broken Bow"

rating: ****

the story: The budding Starfleet finds itself in a crisis with the Klingons...instigated by participants of the Temporal Cold War.

what it's all about: The pilot of any Star Trek series is almost by definition essential viewing, as it establishes the premise and characters and therefore the context that will set it apart, even when it seems, as even many fans tend to think, it looks like business as usual, a voyage of exploration.  In fact, only one series in the franchise hasn't been one of those voyages, Deep Space Nine, even that one had vast new territory teased in its first episode, the Gamma Quadrant, which would be the source of a lot of later material.  "Broken Bow" immediately established Enterprise as a prequel, first in Star Trek history, insofar as its events are set before the classic adventures of the original series (later, Discovery would become the second, with less than a decade separating it from them). 

Now, a lot of fans, who tended to be upset about just about everything by this point, and had been since about the time Kirk died in Star Trek Generations (though you'd be hard-pressed to find any of them admit that; they're more apt to express "disappointment" in that event, the first stage of fan resentment and then outright disgruntlement), thought that if anything, the timeline ought to be advanced forward.  And "Broken Bow" does that, too, with the Temporal Cold War.  And yet fans rejected that, too, because...I don't know.  I really don't.  I can argue logics all day long here.  I can argue that the very technology that looked futuristic in the '60s was actually in large part in everyday households by 2001.  The cleverest thing Enterprise did was actually to embrace the tech that was still years and years in the future, and how exotic it remains as a concept, even if variations on it had resulted in Star Trek's competition like Stargate: the transporter.  In setting the series at a time when classic Star Trek tech was in its infancy, it allowed a classic franchise fear to meet a point when it was most justified, and it proves a key point in the pilot and throughout the rest of the series. 

And this is probably something that's best appreciated when it's pointed out.  So, too, is the fact that Enterprise actually serves best as a sequel.  Yeah, not as a prequel.  As, first and foremost, it's a follow-up to Star Trek: First Contact.  This was the most successful of the Next Generation movies, and memorably ends with humanity's introduction to the most iconic of Star Trek aliens, the Vulcans.  And yet again, Enterprise serves up a curveball, which predictably irked fans: they didn't become fast friends.  In fact, they didn't much like each other at all.  And again, I don't really see how this tracks; we see humans react with bigotry in the original series, whether in "The Galileo Seven" or "Balance of Terror," which is not even to mention that Spock was apparently the lone Vulcan in Kirk's crew, with only a fleeting reference to an entirely Vulcan crew in another episode. 

So as far as I'm concerned, the logic is more than sound, and bursting with fulfilled (as far as I'm concerned) potential.  We even get to see Cochrane in the pilot (and in the final season, a twist on First Contact's historic moment that creates the Mirror Universe in the two-part "In a Mirror, Darkly").

The rest is adventure and setup.  We meet Archer, T'Pol, Trip (deliberately featured as the three main characters in parallel to Kirk, Spock, and Bones), and the rest of the crew.  Phlox immediately stands out, as he will as the fourth lead, like Scotty, the rest of the series.  We're introduced to "Future Guy" and his minion Silik.  There's also Soval and Forrest, who will have major supporting roles the duration of the series.  And to round all that out, it's also prelude to an enduring conflict with the Klingons.

But yeah, the scene that sticks out most is decon with Trip and T'Pol, which was greeted with outrage.  I don't even know how this happens, except that persistent puritanical regression impulse peculiar to Americans.  The original series is littered with sexual imagery and a shameless ladies man as the lead character, and yet fans became increasingly uncomfortable and embarrassed by this legacy. 

Basically, the first thing you need to overcome in getting into Star Trek is the opinion of other fans.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - See how the legacy of Starfleet begins!
• series - See how the crew launches its voyage!
• character - Aside from Sisko, it's hard to find a main character in Star Trek with their initial motivation spelled out better than Jonathan Archer.
• essential - A fascinating conflux of past, present and future.

notable guest-stars:
John Fleck (Silik)
Gary Graham (Soval)
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)
James Cromwell (Cochrane)
James Horan ("Future Guy")
Thomas Kopache

Enterprise 2x26 "The Expanse"

****

The second season ends with a bang, concluding the crew's efforts to figure out how they fit into the grander scheme by letting them know that they have a long way to go.  This is accomplished by kicking off the Xindi arc with a giant swash of Florida being eradicated, and also the last efforts by Duras to gain revenge on Archer, concluding another arc begun in "Judgment."

In a lot of ways, this is Enterprise being Deep Space Nine, having the series steeped in its own mythology.  Next Generation started this with "Redemption," which also featured Klingons, and certainly "The Best of Both Worlds," still the most famous but not first appearance of the Borg.  Contrary to how much of the preceding season had played out, there's a definite connection to other episodes (another irony of the perception of the season, given that even in the early episodes, there was a link between "Minefield" and "Dead Stop," and Trip references plenty of things we've seen in "Dawn").

Another notable feature of "The Expanse" is its inclusion of the Temporal Cold War arc, which even at this point seems to have been altered from its original conception.  Future Guy makes his last appearance of the series, undeniably aiding Archer, as previously suggested for his motives in "Cold Front" from the first season.  Rather than a black and white, Silik-is-the-bad-guy/Daniels-is-the-good-guy interpretation that some episodes might have argued (notably "Shockwave," which ambiguously ended the first season and began this one), we have reason to believe after "The Expanse" that it benefits plenty of factions for events to play out as they historically did, rather than be altered.

Which in itself suggests that the whole third season could be redefined as the definitive Temporal Cold War story, even though the familiar players from other stories in the arc are mostly absent (Daniels appears a few times).  But that's an argument for another time.

Even if you don't care about that arc, there's plenty to enjoy about the episode.  Trip loses his sister in the attack, which is the last push the season gives him for everything that would come, the material that would truly build his enduring legacy.  The Xindi crisis itself reflects the 9/11 attacks that had just occurred when the series began, marking the first time Star Trek used contemporary events to inspire an ongoing story (unless you count the other Cold War and the Klingons).

If you don't particularly want to watch this one for all the interseries continuity, it can still be enjoyed as a standout Star Trek adventure.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
John Fleck
Vaughn Armstrong
Gary Graham
Daniel Riordan
James Horan
Daniel Riordan

Memory Alpha summary. 

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.

Enterprise 2x1 "Shockwave, Part 2"

*

I love Enterprise.  I quickly became one of its biggest fans and defenders, necessitated by the fact that a lot of fans weren't so keen on it or Star Trek in general at the time.  As time has passed, little has changed about my attitudes concerning the show except possibly in one crucial area.  The Temporal Cold War.

Part of this may be my growing disappointment at how the series abandoned the arc unceremoniously at the start of its fourth and final season, leaving its resolution in a cloud of ambiguity.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I still find the concept to be fascinating, and there is much to recommend it.  Yet its importance and specifically how its use is now reflected years after the fact becomes more problematic the more perspective I try to gain on the series as a whole.  The biggest victim of this changing attitude is the second season premiere, "Shockwave, Part 2."

Following the first season finale, in which the Suliban, agents of the shadowy Future Guy, attempt to sabotage Archer's mission and provoke the Vulcans into withdrawing their crucial support after a disastrous incident at a mining colony, Daniels has whisked Archer away in an attempt to salvage a contaminated timeline.  The problem is that the changes his foes have wrought leave Daniels in a future that has been completely altered.  (Yes, the Temporal Cold War may as a whole be compared to the exceedingly clever two-part Voyager episode "Year of Hell," and it's this episode that makes it most clear.)  

While the crew of the Enterprise attempt to combat invading Suliban forces, Daniels and Archer attempt to get past their bad break, which is made easier by the fact that Daniels was studying time travel when he was in grade school.  It all leads to Archer getting back to his own time and essentially overlooking the dire developments of the previous episode.  

So yes, "Shockwave" attempts to play both ends of the Enterprise story at that point, the Temporal Cold War and Archer's destiny to lead a successful mission and help found the Federation (you know that's his fate because Daniels can't seem to avoid saying so every time he appears).  The problem making an episode like this so early in the series is that it trivializes everything.  Not only is there a distinct lack of consequences, but it also proves how easily the Temporal Cold War can be resolved, no matter how grim the circumstances can get.  It's a far more interesting concept when used by proxy, as the series figures out in later episodes and indeed whole arcs, except when the creators decide to listen to the fans who probably only had "Shockwave" in mind when they decided the whole thing was a giant waste of time.

Daniels is a great character, but he's done no favors in this one.  Silik is similar interesting, except in this one. Seeing a pattern?

"Shockwave," and specifically this part of the story, is a moment that was incredibly important at the time, but its significance is weakened when compared to other developments, especially the speedy resolution.  When an overriding high-concept arc can find any kind of resolution in what most other incarnations of Star Trek had routinely done in season finale and premiere two-part episodes, there's a problem.  It's the "Descent" problem, the story that began Next Generation's final season, where the Borg have been completely neutered.  It would be like Deep Space Nine attempting to resolve Sisko's role as the Emissary in anything but the final episode.

That's why I'm extremely reluctant to recommend "Shockwave" as anything but an episode you might want to watch as part of the series as a whole.  It could so easily have been something of greater significance.  But it's just an extremely awkward moment, a rare moment of true miscalculation for a show that was far better than most fans were willing to admit.  Now that some of them are softening those views, it's important to recognize that there were indeed some problems, and "Shockwave" was one of them.  But don't let this one episode color everything in its mediocre shade.  It's an exception.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Gary Graham
Vaughn Armstrong
Matt Winston
John Fleck
James Horan

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 4x21 "Terra Prime"

****

The conclusion of a short arc that finally acknowledges that not every human was as excited about interstellar communities as the crew of the Enterprise, "Terra Prime" is one of the essential episodes of the series and franchise.

Mayweather's old flame from "Demons" turns into a knotty piece of the mess John Frederick Paxton has made, which Reed's Section 31 connection Harris helps untangle.  But the crux of the episode involves the last best statement on Trip and T'Pol's relationship.

Something that'd been in development since the first season, when Trip formeda crush on the Vulcan officer, and intensified by the bond they shared in the tumultuous third season, Paxton unwittingly brings it to a close by choosing them to demonstrate the extremes of his belief that humans and aliens can't truly get along because they can't mate.  (Well, Spock would beg to differ.)  His machincations result in a baby that dies prematurely.  The aftermath is crushing, one of the most purely emotional moments in franchise history (only Kirk losing both his friend and his son compare).

The episode has a fair bit of action, too, and developments that resonate with the rest of the season and series, including Archer delivering a speech many believe was shockingly missing from the finale, but the presence of that one moment elevates everything, ensuring the Terra Prime Duology a place among Star Trek classics.

Seriously, watch this one.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Gary Graham
Peter Weller
Eric Pierpont
Derek Magyar

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 4x19 "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part 2"

****

The brilliance that was the first part of the Mirror Duology concludes (just in case the title of the episode doesn't explain that already).

In what is essentially a celebration of everything that made the series what it was while having as much fun with franchise lore as possible, Archer and several other members of his Mirror Universe crew don Kirk-era uniforms and battle the rebels who are trying to thwart his plans of seizing control of the Terran Empire, including T'Pol, Soval, and Phlox (this scenario is also ironic, given the events of the Terra Prime Duology that follows).

We see a CGI Gorn this episode (following a CGI Tholian in the previous entry), but the real thrill is watching Archer truly enjoy himself, and how the episode quickly centers itself around Hoshi (making this her lone spotlight of the season, though very welcome) in its conclusion.

It's all ridiculously clever.  One of the more inspired elements is the alternate opening credits for both episodes, which feature an evil version of the clips that are normally featured, and a new theme!

Not without exaggeration, but if the Mirror Duology had occurred earlier in the season, or series, fans might have finally acknowledged the effort put into Enterprise and rewarded it by, y'know, watching.

Absolutely essential.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Gregory Itzen
Gary Graham
Derek Magyar

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 4x9 "Kir'Shara"

***

Like "Awakening," but in different ways, "Kir'Shara" stands out in the Surak Trilogy as potentially a classic episode, particularly for its work with some recurring characters from the series.  Regard it as nearly essential viewing.

For a while, actually, "Kir'Shara" was one of my personal standout episodes from the series.  It is, however, necessary to see the previous two episodes to understand what's going on, and the flaws in the previous entries are part of the overall experience, which means if the first two acts have flaws, so too by extension does "Kir'Shara."

Vulcan intrigue continues as Archer and T'Pol continue their desperate quest to redeem the faithful of the original teachings of Surak.  To further complicate matters, the Andorians arrive on the scene.  Remember that in the first season, Vulcan-Andorian relations were an essential ingredient of the ongoing story of the series.  And as always, the Andorians are represented by Shran, whose importance to Enterprise would've finally been acknowledged in the aborted fifth season, in which he would have been elevated to regular cast status.

In "Kir'Shara," however, Shran has his darkest moment, against another recurring figure, Vulcan ambassador Soval.  In contrast to Shran, Soval had routinely been viewed as a quasi-villain, always getting in Archer's way, the very embodiment of the somewhat cruel nature of the Vulcans that many fans saw the Surak Trilogy as correcting to more closely match later characterizations, notably Spock and his father Sarek.

The highlight of the episode is Shran's interrogation of Soval, reminiscent of Garak's with Odo in the third season of Deep Space Nine ("The Die is Cast"); in hindsight it only loses some of its luster because it is tangential to what leads to the resolution of the story.

As I said in my thoughts on "Awakening," the whole point of the Surak Trilogy, aside from a redemption of sorts for Vulcans in Enterprise, is to set up the menace of the Romulans, which would play out in later episodes, but would also have theoretically have led to a full-blown Romulan War arc, had the series lasted past this season.

If you watch only one episode in this trilogy, "Kir'Shara" would be that episode.  But watch "Awaking," too, and then you might as well include "The Forge," too.  But there are other episodes you need to watch, too, to understand what these stories are really gearing toward.  So half of what this trilogy accomplishes is really only half the story...You may enjoy how that works itself out, or you may consider it a headache you can do without, and that's part of why I cannot fully endorse the whole story.  But it's definitely worth consideration.

In truth, I'm still working on this season myself, so I don't think it's too much a stretch to assume others probably should be doing the same.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Jeffrey Combs
Gary Graham
Robert Foxworth

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 4x8 "Awakening"

***

At this point I'm hesitant to add the full endorsement to the Surak Trilogy, but its borderline status means you probably ought to consider it premium material regardless.

"Awakening" sees T'Pol and Archer enter the heart of Vulcan territory, with Archer harboring Surak's katra (his soul; if you still don't know what I'm talking about, rewatch The Search for Spock).  While they're trying to accomplish the transfer of the katra into the appropriate hands, the rest of the Vulcans are immersed in still deeper political intrigue, embroiled in a crisis that is being manipulated by the Romulans (but more on that in later episodes).

Like most of the season, the Surak Trilogy comes on a little suddenly and abruptly, as if some of the creators were becoming angsty about the future of the series (with good reason, because this was the final season), perhaps even desperate.  If any one of these stories had been strung out over more episodes, or even covered in a single episode, the series might have been in better shape on the other end.  The fourth season is exactly like the first season in a lot of ways.  "Awakening" is itself like a cross between a few first season offerings, such as "Desert Crossing" and "Fusion."

While both Archer and T'Pol are indeed at the center of the story, they're busy experiencing it more than participating in it, which is something the fourth season continually did with the main characters, until the final episodes (ironically enough), with a few exceptions.  As interesting as "Awakening" is, it's emblematic of the flaws that exist in the season, even as it exemplifies what also helped make it work.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Gary Graham
Robert Foxworth

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 4x7 "The Forge"

***

Perhaps the essential three-parter in the fourth season, the Vulcans take center stage in Enterprise for the first time since the first season.

"The Forge" kicks things off in dramatic fashion with a terrorist attack (other than Deep Space Nine, Enterprise is the place to look in Star Trek if you want to look at the franchise's thoughts on this prescient topic, and its conclusions may surprise you) that claims the life of recurring character Admiral Forrest.

The attack draws attention to a group of radical Vulcans with ties to the historical figure of Surak, who came up with all the central tenets of logic that have been overlooked or distorted since his time.  Critics of the show's handling of Vulcans saw this as an opportunity to make amends, though I don't think you need to adhere to that interpretation to enjoy this historic moment.

T'Pol is necessarily at the heart of this story, complicated family connections and such.

As with any multi-part episode, "The Forge" is not much of a complete experience, so you need to keep watching.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong
Gary Graham
Robert Foxworth

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x10 "Cold Fire"

**

Remember "Caretaker"?  This was its sequel.  That's another reason why the second season was such an integral one for the series, because it did a ton of mythology episodes, rushing through a lot of serialized storytelling the network and producers would subsequently veto for the regular format of later seasons.

Here we finally meet the mate of the Caretaker who originally brought our crew into the Delta Quadrant, and typically, the easy answers everyone might have expected are subverted, so that this Caretaker is anything but, an embittered and vengeful being who wants nothing to do with the ship who technically helped solved the problems she left behind.

Oh, and this is the last time we see a significant grouping of Ocampa.  This Caretaker has continued doing what the other one did, but far less benevolently, with a different philosophy entirely.  In fact, "Cold Fire" suggests that the first Caretaker actually did the Ocampa a favor by rebooting their society, because all those skills Kes has been developing can and will be used for evil, very easily, suggesting that the Ocampa are inherently, at least in their social leanings, to villainy (with the same ironic fate as the Kazon, also in the continued spotlight this season).  They would have been more Romulan than Vulcan, if you need a more conventional franchise analogy.

Anyway, of all the potential tickets home, this one may be one of the more depressing failures, especially for any fans who might have been holding out for some simple comfort, some predictable Star Trek happy ending (and that's probably another reason fans started to rebel against the Borg, because that was another Voyager subversion).  The same fans who hated the series for not being depressing enough were the same fans who watched Star Trek for its hopeful message.  (Well, one would hope, anyway.)

"Cold Fire" is a model of contradiction.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Gary Graham

Memory Alpha summary.