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

Deep Space Nine 4x7 "Starship Down"

rating: ***

the story: Aboard the Defiant, the crew suddenly finds itself in a crisis with the Jem'Hadar.

what it's all about: The thing about the Dominion, before the Dominion War officially broke out, is that it just kind of randomly appeared for about four seasons from time to time, and you never really knew what kind of episode it was going to be.  The war itself was hardly inevitable.  For four seasons, then, the Dominion for all intents and purposes was Deep Space Nine's answer to classic foes like the Romulans or Klingons.  They didn't rise to the level of the Borg, as a threat of total annihilation, until the war.  So these four seasons, rather than merely watch things develop, it's actually a chance to see what the Dominion was like when it was providing the occasional problems, like any other hostile force in the franchise.

That is to say, "Starship Down" is almost a kind of "Balance of Terror," or "Sleeping Dogs" (that one's from Enterprise), as much as it is a classic crisis episode, like Next Generation's "Disaster."  That is to say, there are a lot of ways to watch this one, but it really boils down to watching the characters, for the first time this season, as they exist, which is a hallmark of the series, regardless of the matter at hand.  We learn what they think of each other, how they fit in, what they're learning...Basically this is a character piece.  Of course Quark is in the thick of it (antagonizing poor James Cromwell, buried unrecognizable in prosthetics, in his last franchise role before he finally becomes iconic in Star Trek: First Contact about a year later).

But if you really want to consider "Starship Down" in context, it's kind of the third season premiere, "The Search," stripped down to its essential component: the crew facing a real Dominion crisis for the first time, without having to worry about greater ramifications of any kind.  I realize I've been complaining that this season has radically shifted away from the kind of serialized storytelling that was the best thing about the series, but at its best it also manages to tell an episodic story that's  not only relevant to the serialization temporarily shunted to the background, but that still works as episodic material.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The classic trope of the crew dealing with a sudden crisis that pins them down in isolated pockets.
• series - It worked with "Civil Defense" previously, and works again this time.
• character - A nice slice of how all these characters work in conjunction with each other.
• essential - But totally necessary to understand anything else about the series.

notable guest-stars:
James Cromwell
F.J. Rio

The Next Generation 6x17 "Birthright, Part 2"

rating: ****

the story: Worf discovers a colony where Klingons and Romulans live side-by-side.

similar to: "The Enemy" (Next Generation), "Chimera" (Deep Space Nine)

my thoughts: I have long struggled over this episode, and yet now I am recommending it as a Star Trek classic.  So let me explain...

What used to make me so uncomfortable is how fallible Worf comes off, and how unwinnable a situation he comes across in the strange village housing both his people, the Klingons, and their frenemies the Romulans.  "The Enemy" had already demonstrated the depth of his enmity toward Romulans (refusing to help save the life of one), and later in Deep Space Nine's "Change of Heart," his refusal to see the greater picture (which would have sacrificed Dax in the process), all of this amounts to a unique franchise character, one who doesn't conform to the perfect standards Gene Roddenberry envisioned for the future.  It's not that he's Klingon and therefore absolved from the human vision, but that, as perhaps best depicted in "Birthright, Part 2," he has a hard time overcoming the prejudices and attitudes he has formed over a lifetime, and yes, inherited, too.

Which makes him unique, a continuing character study of everything Star Trek sought to demonstrate as having been overcome in the future.  This doesn't mean Worf, ultimately, is a villain.  Far from it.  His struggles make him, if anything, more heroic.  "Birthright, Part 2," again, is where it all comes together.

Lured on the promise of reuniting with his dead father, Worf instead comes face-to-face with something his people won't overcome, despite Klingons finally having made peace with one implacable foe, the Federation, with Worf himself being the living embodiment of that progress.  That doesn't make confronting his shortcomings any less ugly or uncomfortable to watch.  To him, his actions are all about Klingon pride, but the underpinning is his basic intolerance of Romulans, and his unwillingness to reconsider his views.  He may, with every justification, question Romulan motives (Deep Space Nine did a similar story, "Cardassians," about a war orphan forced to choose where to pledge his loyalties, which itself was similar to Next Generation's own "Suddenly Human"), but that doesn't excuse his disgust as he finds out his lovely Klingon beauty also has Romulan blood in her. 

Again, there's a Deep Space Nine episode ("Chimera") where Odo is forced once and all to decide where he stands on the matter of prejudice against his kind (changelings), and this matter can't be discussed without bringing up Data ("The Measure of a Man") or The Doctor (Voyager's "Latent Image"), but just as with the bigotry even Spock faced ("Balance of Terror," for instance) and Enterprise's xenophobes ("Demons"/"Terra Prime"), this is a matter very much relevant to the real world, and Star Trek's exploration of it, in all its forms (Deep Space Nine's "Far Beyond the Stars"), ultimately tends to let the good guys off.  Not this time.  And this is very, very important, because it acknowledges how unsettling this problem really is.  Because it's not just something that happens to the other guy. 

"Birthright, Part 1" featured Data daydreaming, which was a metaphoric acknowledgement that the android needed to continue growing.  I think "Birthright, Part 2" is about Worf struggling to understand that, too.  Something to think about, anyway.

criteria analysis: franchise - series - character - essential (all criteria met)

notable guest-stars:
Alan Scarfe
Jennifer Gatti
Richard Herd
Cristine Rose
James Cromwell

The Next Generation 6x16 "Birthright, Part 1"

rating: ***

the story: Data triggers a dream subroutine as Dr. Bashir examines him, while Worf discovers that his father may still be alive.

similar to: "Projections," "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" (Voyager)

my thoughts: For the longest time, I found it hard to appreciate Deep Space Nine's appearance in "Birthright."  That may be because for the longest time, I didn't appreciate Deep Space Nine's first season, having become a fan during its second and only discovering the first later.  Bashir started out as a brash young upstart, whose enthusiasm usually got him into trouble.  (He matured relatively quickly, rest assured!)  It's equally strange, too, because when I did begin exploring that first season, I had no problem with the frequent Next Generation tie-in, the appearances from the Duras Sisters, Q, and even Lwaxana Troi (who would go on to become a Deep Space Nine staple, and arguably make her best appearances in that series).  No, my problem was Bashir, because he was entirely out of place in Next Generation.  His kind, young Wesley Crusher, had long been absent when he appeared.

But you know what, in hindsight this is an almost magical moment.  There were so many crossover appearances in Star Trek over the years, most of them, originally, characters from the original series, until it became possible to do something else.  Picard made an appearance in Deep Space Nine's first episode.  This was an age, remember, before multiple series running concurrently in a franchise was a thing, before it was even possible, really.  Star Trek got the ball started.  (Never you mind Detective Munch!)  "Birthright, Part 1" is actually historic, when you think about it, without really calling any attention to it, I mean the fans, in the more than twenty years since it first aired.

And Worf visits Deep Space Nine for the first time!  Later, he'd become a regular in Deep Space Nine, and "Birthright, Part 1" marks the first time he ever goes there, before anyone could guess what his future would hold.

Okay, enough geeking out.  In that nonchalant franchise guest-starring act, "Birthright" has that in common with Voyager's "Projections," which was the first time Barclay shows up in that series, with no one particularly pointing out how awesome and serendipitous that is, when he later becomes a recurring character in the series. 

Ah!  I said enough with the geeking!  The actual story features Data dreaming, a subtle build on his character (later revisited in "Phantasms," featuring the famous Troi cake), and one of the niftier appearances of his creator Dr. Soong.  (Daydreaming got Voyager's Doctor in a whole lot more trouble in "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," alas!)  And it features Worf getting the oddly unsettling news that his father Mogh may actually still be alive.  The whole of these parts is less than it should be.  Given that the second part of this story focuses exclusively on Worf, one wonders why Data's was even in the first, but perhaps it's some subtle metaphor I hadn't really considered previously, given how traumatic the second part turns out to be (more in that review), for all involved.

The embarrassment of riches in guest-stars is incredible to look at, and is enough for me to want to watch the episode all over again, not just for Bashir, but to see James Cromwell (buried in alien makeup this time), Cristine Rose (long before she becomes Mama Petrelli in Heroes), Richard Herd (before he becomes Tom Paris's father in Voyager), and even Jennifer Gatti (who later appears in more attractive form as Harry Kim's girlfriend, also in Voyager).

The story continues...

criteria analysis: franchise - series - character - essential

notable guest-stars:
Alexander Siddig (Bashir)
James Cromwell
Cristine Rose
Richard Herd
Jennifer Gatti

The Next Generation 3x11 "The Hunted"

*

Like a lot of Next Generation episodes, Picard and his crew get to demonstrate their superiority over the alien culture of the week, only this time it's a story about war veterans and their inability to integrate back into society.

It's certainly a worthy and continually relevant story, but "The Hunted" is told in the wrong context for it to really matter, the wrong series and in the wrong way.  It's hard to truly care about the guy who's fighting for his rights when we don't know or care about his culture (it's James Cromwell in his first Star Trek appearance representing that culture, by the way), just more random aliens, which I know plenty of fans are perfectly fine with but others would prefer more continuity (which is what later series did on a regular basis).

Yet shockingly, "The Hunted" is still a pretty singular event in franchise lore.  Deep Space Nine told a lot of stories about war, but the Dominion War ended at the end of the series, so there was never a chance to tell the DS9 version of this one.  There were plenty of Bajoran episodes about the effects of the Occupation and holdouts from current political regimes, but nothing quite like this.  Voyager didn't do it, either, or Enterprise.  It's just so surprising.  If I had been in charge of any of these series, it would have been natural to revisit this episode, even if it was a MACO in the fourth season (which never happened) of Enterprise, following the Xindi conflict.

It's a missed opportunity.  "The Hunted" is a placeholder, a competent one, but not a tremendously memorable one.  One of the things that might've redeemed it would have been better casting for the soldier, but even there it's pretty generic, and by budget uninspiring in wardrobe, which was always a problem.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Colm Meaney
James Cromwell

Memory Alpha summary.

Star Trek: First Contact

As it has been since 1996, First Contact is my favorite Star Trek film. (Here’s the official order, for those who like to keep score: 1)First Contact, 2) Star Trek, 3) The Motion Picture, 4) Nemesis, 5) Generations, 6) The Search for Spock, 7) The Voyage Home, 8) The Wrath of Khan, 9) Insurrection, 10) The Undiscovered Country, and 11) The Final Frontier.) Of the whole series to date, it’s the one that most succeeds in simply being a film. I get chills watching it.

It should come as no surprise that most of them come from watching Patrick Stewart in it. As I discussed earlier, clearly the dude was cast in Star Trek because he can act, and it wasn’t the small screen for which he was meant. He was going to be the consummate Star Trek film actor, and by god, in First Contact, he fulfills that potential, from one sequence to the next, working as many levels as he can possibly fit in, against as many actors as possible. Clearly, he meets his match in Alfre Woodard (Lily), and the ready room scene where the two collide over the best course of action against the Borg claiming Picard’s own ship, that’s cinema gold. I don’t care if no one else ever actually agrees with me, that this is literally one of the finest scenes ever caught on film. I don’t care if most critics consider, even after more than twenty years, Patrick Stewart’s part in Star Trek to be an unnecessary and ill-fitting diversion from the stage. They never really appreciated him before. And they still don’t really appreciate him now. Even most filmmakers today hardly recognize the extent of his talent. I like him as Professor X just fine, and Conspiracy Theory is an unexpected delight. But it’s as if, apart from TV work specifically developed for him, no one understands what this guy can do. I consider his Scrooge, which he developed over years of performing a one-man show, to be definitive. Likewise his Ahab (even if the hair was a little dodgy). And yet his one true film highlight comes in the middle of a movie most people will never take seriously enough.

First Contact was the unabashed success of the Next Generation films, and rightly so. It may have been another apparent rip-off of Wrath of Khan, but if so, then it was the one that really got it right. The Borg, especially as embodied by the new Borg Queen (Alice Krige) were lightyears more interesting, compelling, and articulated than Khan, not to mention more relevant. They spoke directly to the character of Picard, both in terms of past experience, and his unwillingness to admit defeat.

This wasn’t like Kirk, cheating no-win scenarios, just because he was the dashing hero. Kirk won his biggest victory by unwittingly sacrificing his closest friend. Picard admitted defeat. It’s in First Contact that the character is completely reinvented, or perhaps brought back to his never-before-seen roots, as a young risk-taker unafraid of consequences, who once lost his heart because he refused to back down from an unwinable fight. Throughout seven seasons on television, he remained mostly a passive figure, content to fall back on his skills at negotiation. He lost a valuable officer in Ro Laren because he refused to take an active role. In the films, he finally accepts that responsibility again, and it’s a revelation. In fact, it’s downright scary. Once he finally opens up, Picard almost isn’t even likeable. You can see, if you want to, the echoes of Nemesis in First Contact, when he slaughters Borg drones without hesitation, even drones that are recently assimilated from his own crew. All the compassion he was shown, even when transformed into the pitiless Locutus in “Best of Both Worlds,” he directs only to Data, perhaps the only being capable of truly understanding the turmoil that is always bubbling beneath the surface. The android has emotions he can turn off in the blink of an eye. The captain probably wishes he did, too.

What you might not get from Picard himself is portrayed aptly by Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell, in his signature Star Trek role), the historic wonder boy who turns out to be all too fallible indeed. In fact, he’s hardly likable at all. So Riker, in his most memorable appearance anywhere in the franchise, learns. Maybe it’s not hard to notice the first officer this time, because the actor behind him, Jonathan Frakes, is also behind the camera. Like Leonard Nimoy before him, Frakes proves adept at directing, finding new and interesting things to do that help illuminate all the strengths, both old and new, of everyone he’s known for years. Where some people see a lot of Alien in this movie, I see familiar things made relevant in new context, which is all any piece of fiction can possibly hope to do. There are no new stories, and there really aren’t any old ones, either. Stories just are, combinations of familiar elements told in unfamiliar ways. If you want to, you can view First Contact as the perfection of a familiar effort, making Star Trek films. This was the eighth one. How often are the best films in any series that deep into the pile? (Okay, okay, so the Harry Potter series has a good shot at that, because there’s a lot of meaty character work to resolve in the final half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and these films have already proven that they’re best when they center on character and the spectacle possible in bringing it out.)

Because the film spends so little time trying to explain things, it works incredibly well, because it’s allowed to just have fun. Riker and Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton, finally sporting pretty much his own eyes), not to mention Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), they still playing the support team, but this time, they’re commanding it, trying to guide the unruly Cochrane into completing his historic mission, the first human warp flight. Worf (Michael Dorn) has his best and most essential appearance of the franchise, too. Viewers who didn’t know he was technically a part of the Deep Space Nine crew when he showed up in the Defiant, the ship that was built to battle the Borg, and put up as much of a fight as he could, in a sequence only sparingly demonstrated, saw an awesome battle and a good reason to bring him back aboard the Enterprise. He and Picard have their most meaningful conversations, or should I say confrontations, the kind of scenes the TV show could never have done, but should have always been happening. To say that Worf was a castrated Klingon on the small screen would have been putting it lightly, but it was also completely indicative almost all of his appearances. First Contact gave him an excuse to cut loose.

Even Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) has at least one good moment, when she summons the Emergency Holographic Program (Robert Picardo, proving that in a short time, at least one aspect of Voyager was already a proven part of franchise lore) to stall some incoming Borg. You get everything you need to know about her, Crusher’s medical and professional sense, in just that one scene. It’s what everything about her had always been trying to say, and there it was. Gates even gets to show off her theatricality, which had always failed before.

We get a couple of minor Starfleet officers to make an impact, too, from the established (Reg Barclay, portrayed to perfection once again by Dwight Schultz, in his only film appearance) to the new (Neal McDonough, making a lasting impression as the short-lived Lt. Hawk, and Michael Horton, as the recurring Lt. Daniels). Picard brings Dixon Hill to the big screen, too, and that works like gangbusters. Ethan Phillips joins Picardo in a Voyager cameo. Anyone who already loathed Neelix must still have enjoyed that one. (Tim Russ, in one of his many pre-Tuvok roles, had sort of started this tradition by appearing in Generations as a bridge officer aboard the Enterprise-B.)

The final act has its own iconic moment, too, when the audience learns the aliens who spotted Cochrane’s flight are actually Vulcans. It’s a huge surprise, a fitting one, and helped set up an entire later series (Enterprise). Jerry Goldsmith’s lush and somber score helps make the film tremendously memorable, hitting the same frenetic notes at the right times as the rest of the movie itself. I need to reference the new uniforms as well. Not since The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan had such a change in wardrobe made such an impact, both on the films they happened in and on the franchise itself. The red jackets Kirk sports for six out of his seven appearances speak about an era just in themselves. The black jackets Picard assumes in First Contact (which are quickly made the standard attire in Deep Space Nine) help bolster the image that this is Star Trek finally embracing the medium of film.

It’s not hard to see how First Contact affected the rest of the Star Trek franchise, from 1996 to 2005, the kind of profound impact that happens surprisingly infrequently. For that reason alone, it earns a place in history. But it is also a darn good film. I would volunteer “great.”