Characters in Star Trek

The fans of Star Trek know and have studied a lot of things about the franchise, but I think another look at the characters that've populated its five casts can still break new ground.

Star Trek
(the original series, animated series, the first seven films, and the 2009 reboot)
Starting things off with the first cast and the one that's still the most famous, we have three obviously very prominent main characters in James T. Kirk, Spock, and Leonard "Bones" McCoy.  There's little dispute that these guys received the bulk of the material, very consistently.  Spock is the only character to appear in both the original pilot ("The Cage") and the subsequent Kirk adventures that followed.  While the style of the original episodes is different from the rest of the franchise, in that very rarely was a story built around a character so much as the characters experienced events (though these episodes heavily populate later incarnations as well), with notable exceptions like "Amok Time," the three seasons of the original series plainly utilized memorable personalities in each of the characters, who were all good friends (a point that might need reminding between Spock and McCoy).  Scotty was always the fourth lead, after all being a "miracle worker" who was the direct conduit to the starship Enterprise's inner workings.  Sulu, Chekov and Uhura each had memorable parts to play as well, with Chekov coming in fifth, Sulu sixth and Uhura seventh as far as overall importance goes.  Nothing much changed in the animated series, and by the start of the movies, some of the smaller parts started to expand a little.  Sulu was meant to have his first command in the second film (only George Takei and his supporters will ever be able to properly explain the injustice of William Shatner's implicit veto of that call), but got it in the sixth.  Kirk had a prominent part in the seventh movie, with Chekov and Scotty tagging along for a brief moment.  I think only in the 2009 reboot did the best dynamics truly work themselves out.  Kirk and Spock were left in the spotlight, McCoy stole all of his scenes, Uhura took fourth lead, Scotty fifth (small demotion!), with Chekov and Sulu picking up scraps.

The Next Generation
(including four films)
Launched in much the same vein as the original series, the new batch of characters were nonetheless on fairly equal footing aside from Jean-Luc Picard and Data.  As the series progressed, other characters grew in prominence, notably Worf, though everyone had a chance to shine in some capacity, with a rough breakdown of Riker in fourth, Troi in fifth, La Forge in sixth, Beverly Crusher in seventh, Wesley Crusher in eighth (if he'd stayed on longer than he did, the rank would be higher), Pulaski in ninth, Yar in tenth (she left because of this treatment, by the way).  While Data and Worf received the bulk of personal growth, Picard had a few key moments, notably everything that followed his assimilation by the Borg, including the film First Contact, and Riker and Troi finally completed Star Trek's first successful romance in Nemesis.  On the whole, however, characters remained secondary to their adventures.

Deep Space Nine
Famously the Star Trek with the most in-depth look at its own landscape, including an abundance of supporting characters, this series had a rough start in that regard, though the ones that received the most treatment early on remained the ones who got the most consistent treatment later: Kira Nerys, Odo, and Quark.  Sisko had a strong early push in the first episode, and a strong later push, but it took until the third season for anyone to truly know what to do with him.  It still puts him in a comfortable fourth place, the lowest rank for a captain so far.  In fifth and sixth come Bashir and Dax (including both incarnations), who were both portrayed as young characters early on with much to learn, even if one of them didn't want to admit it (Dax learned better in the second season).  O'Brien was the steady rock DS9 stole from Next Generation, and probably wouldn't begrudge seventh in such a strong cast.  Most of his development was learning to be comfortable in his new setting, and by the end of it, he happily left the station (anyone else ever note the irony of that?).  Jake Sisko comes in ninth for being used sparingly, but still ahead of Worf in tenth, who never truly seemed comfortable.  I could then list the thousands of other characters, and probably start with Dukat in eleventh, Garak in twelfth, Winn in thirteenth, Nog in fourteenth...You see how many characters there were? And they were all important to the story, because the characters were the story.

Voyager
Repeatedly knocked by its vocal detractors as nothing but a poor man's Next Generation, that's extremely hard to defend when you look at it from the vantage point of its characters, who consistently behaved a lot more like Deep Space Nine's.  In fact, Voyager was exactly like DS9 in a starship setting.  The characters were king.  Kathryn Janeway especially.  From the first episode it was clear that she was in command.  The divisions behind her get a little complicated.  Seven of Nine, introduced in the fourth season, will always vie with the subject of one of her most complicated relationships, the Emergency Medical Hologram ("The Doctor" to his friends) for second.  Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres similarly, appropriately, battle for the next spot.  Neelix takes the one after that.  Chakotay, Harry, and Kes fight over the remaining spots.  You see how it's tricky?  Things were always changing on this show.  Chakotay was indisputably in the second spot early on, but in the third season his role became a clear supporting one, as the series began to use the original series approach.  Kes was sporadically important, but left after the third season.  Harry was very clearly a classic Sulu/Chekov/Uhura figure, but he had bigger moments than they've ever gotten.  The characters almost always defined the nature of the problems face in any given episode, even if by definition couldn't have their own stories told, given that home was a long way off.  Seven and Chakotay cheated this rule on a few occasions, and so will always have special designations (and not just because one of them used to be a Borg!), while Kes lived it but didn't get to properly finish her journey (though examining what she actually did accomplish will always be fascinating).  The final episode focuses, naturally, on Janeway.

Enterprise
Taking things that were learned on Deep Space Nine and Voyager and applying it to the original series formula, the most recent new cast was led very deliberately by a trio of characters: Jonathan Archer, Charles "Trip Tucker III, and T'Pol.  Phlox would come in fourth, Reed in fifth, Hoshi in sixth, Mayweather in seventh (Shran in eighth! Soval in ninth! Daniels in tenth! Silik in eleventh! Forrest in twelfth!).  Yes, Mayweather was very clearly cut from the Sulu/Uhura model, but like Harry Kim received a lot more spotlight moments, coming from a mindset that more closely resembles Kira than Chekov.  It's unfortunate that so many fans chose to overlook this about the show, because characters were probably the most important in this series, out of all the incarnations of Star Trek.  They defined exactly what was supposed to be happening, just as in DS9, and they were always in control of the story, even when they were simply reacting to events around them, even moreso than Janeway.  It wasn't just the endless times Archer was said to be helping found the Federation, but how he conducted himself as he did it, the decisions he made, or how T'Pol pioneered friendly Vulcan-human relations (which to the show's credit fits entirely in line with the lack of progress a hundred years later when Spock is still the lone Vulcan in Starfleet), or how Trip embodied real human vulnerability and potential.

For me, how Star Trek uses its characters has always been essential to its success, no matter how it was done.  The grand adventures, big ideas, and alien cultures are fine, but they would mean nothing if I had no connection to them, and that connection comes from the characters.  From James T. Kirk to Charles "Trip" Tucker, the connection has remained strong, even if it hasn't always been possible to give every character their due.  The ones that connect do so strongly, and that has always been the case.  The role of overall characterization has changed and expanded over the years, become ever more integral to each new series and incarnation, and it's important to acknowledge that fact.  It's only fitting that one of the characters who started it all was such a standout element of the 2009 film.  After all, what would Star Trek be without Spock?  And that's really all you need to know.

The Top Ten Star Trek Episodes (1966-2005)

Crafting a new list of Star Trek classics, the cream of the crop, the best of the best, has been something of a personal mission.  My ongoing progress in identifying those classics can be found here, while my ongoing progress on an outline of significance for every episode can be found here.  In a blatant effort to drum up interest for these efforts, I'm skipping ahead a little and presenting my list for the new top ten episodes of the entire franchise, including the original series (TOS), the animated series (TAS), The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine (DS9), Voyager (VOY), and Enterprise (ENT).

Without further adieu:

1. "The Visitor" (DS9 4x3)
One of the most notable aspects of Deep Space Nine (aside from the fact that it's the only series not to be set aboard a starship) is its deep sense of family, highlighted by lead character Benjamin Sisko's relationship with his son Jake, and no episode better illustrates their bond than "The Visitor."  Essentially a flashback episode set several decades into the future, an older Jake (played by franchise veteran Tony Todd) receives an unexpected guest (or in other words a visitor) who's fallen in love with what little writing he's had published.  She's come to try and understand why he quit.  It all has to do with the day he lost his father.  In the present, we find out the exact circumstances that took Ben away from his son (somewhat ironically, aboard the show's ship, introduced a season earlier).  We subsequently learn that father ends up periodically popping in on son (in other words a visitor), because he's become unstuck in time.  Jake is increasingly devastated, and becomes obsessed with trying to end it by rescuing Ben from this endless loop.  Needless to say, he does, but that doesn't diminish the impact; far from it, in fact.  Like all the episodes in the top ten, you don't need to be a fan of Star Trek to love it.  The loveliest thing about "The Visitor" is that it is later echoed in the series finale, "What You Leave Behind," in incredibly subtle ways, leaving fans with the same kind of resonance that exists in the episode and between the two Sisko men who receive powerful reminders of what they mean to each other.

2. "The City on the Edge of Forever" (TOS 1x28)
This one is the classic of all Star Trek classics.  It's basically taken on a life of its own, made a lasting impact on screenwriter Harlan Ellison's career (something he's actually struggled a great deal with over the years), and is arguably the most heartbreaking romance of perennial ladies man James Kirk's life.  So what is it, exactly?  Like a lot of the episodes in the top ten, it involves time travel, specifically through the benefit of the Guardian of Forever, a sentient gateway that inadvertently allows a chemically-affected Dr. McCoy to jump into Earth's past and drastically alter the timeline.  Kirk and Spock quickly make the decision to follow, but arrive earlier, so that they're forced to wait and figure out what exactly he did.  In the meantime, Kirk runs into social worker Edith Keeler, an idealist Spock quickly identifies as having two possible destinies.  She will either die fairly soon or prevent American involvement in WWII.  Well, guess which one it is.  Kirk falls for her, naturally, and realizes at the precise moment what McCoy does, so he gets to make the decision to prevent "Bones" from saving her life.

3. "Far Beyond the Stars" (DS9 6x13)
The best of Star Trek tends to focus on social matters, and there's no more relevant social matter to Deep Space Nine than black Americans, with Avery Brooks as Benjamin Sisko the first black man to lead a Star Trek cast (you only have to listen to one Brooks interview to know how important this is to him).  In this episode, Sisko finds himself in the 1950s as a writer for a science fiction journal.  You don't particularly need to know that the Dominion War is going on in the background, which puts Sisko in the mood for which the Celestial Prophets send him this vision, but that's happening, too.  The majority of "Stars" is about the writer's plight to be treated with the same amount of respect as his white colleagues (there's a nod to the fact that female writers would have had much the same difficulties), which is a struggle that comes to a head when he comes up with the character of Benjamin Sisko, who runs a space station in the future (yes, it's all a little meta, and features all the cast members outside of their usual rubbery masks, for those where such masks apply).  Needless to say, the struggle has an unhappy conclusion, because that's what would have happened at the time, and Sisko is left simply trying to justify his existence.  In a weird sort of way, that's exactly what he needed.

4. "Past Tense, Parts 1 & 2" (DS9 3x11/3x12)
Set a mere twelve years from now, this is another time travel episode, in which members of the DS9 crew end up quartered in "sanctuary districts," basically dumping grounds for the homeless and underprivileged.  At the time these episodes were aired, it was alarmingly reported that some politicians had actually considered something like that.  In our own times, thanks to the Great Recession and Occupy Wall Street, we've been reminded that economic inequality is an ongoing concern.  Here's Star Trek's best statement on the topic.

5. "The Inner Light" (TNG 5x25)
Frequently called The Next Generation's finest hour, it's an unusually quiet meditation even by this show's standards.  Basically our crew encounters a probe that zaps Picard and enables him to experience the final years of a long-dead planet via the life of the very man who created the probe.  At first, Picard is understandably discombobulated, but the more he warms to the world around him, the more he comes to love it and fall naturally into the role bequeathed him.  It doesn't hurt that much of it's what Picard probably would have done if his own circumstances had been the same, which makes "Inner Life" a kind of what-if episode in addition to pure poetry.  The flute he learns to play forms the basis of another episode and relationship later in the series, another touch of continuity that helps put it among the franchise elite.  And yes, Patrick Stewart's son Daniel appears as the son of the man Picard inhabits.

6. "The Measure of a Man" (TNG 2x9)
The finest example of interseries continuity ever attempted in the franchise, Data's rights as an individual are challenged when Starfleet wishes to duplicate him, which would mean disassembling the android, a prospect he and his friends among the crew don't particularly relish.  Not just an early revelation when Next Generation was still trying to find its footing, but long considered a highlight, period, "Measure" is a moment when the problem is internal rather than external, with the characters solely concerned with themselves.  As opposed to "Amok Time," this is a matter of someone's existence being threatened.  Is Data merely a machine?  Much to his dismay, Riker is forced into the role of prosecutor, and in a memorable scene shuts his friend down.  Another episode referenced in later stories, which also doesn't hurt.

7. "Twilight" (ENT 3x8)
Like "The Visitor" in a lot of ways, and also with a fair bit of "Far Beyond the Stars" running through its veins, "Twilight" is a mark that Enterprise needed to hit, especially during the tricky third season, when a thorny arc occupied the entire year, at once trying to revitalize the series and emphasize everything that it had tried to represent from the start.  Archer loses his long-term memory, which proves incredibly tricky for his crew as they're trying to save humanity from the Xindi.  This is the first time during the season where they've taken a moment to let the crisis really soak in, and "Twilight" makes the most of the potential drama.  As events unfold, things don't go so well without Archer in command.  He eventually finds himself, many years in the future, living with T'Pol, who has dedicated her life to caring for him, and painstakingly explaining everything to him, every few hours.  This is equivalent to the dedication between the Siskos, and it resonates deeper than the Xindi arc, and deeper than the series.  It's got another patented reset button waiting at the end, but again, that hardly matters.

8. "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG 3x15)
Almost from the start, Star Trek was a generational affair.  Between the original and second pilots, Spock served two different captains.  In this episode, Next Generation truly reaches maturity, the culmination of a season where everything finally came together for the series headed directly toward the epic "Best of Both Worlds" encounter with the Borg, and the theme of generations that was always present in the title (and the cast's first movie) is emphasized by a return appearance from Tasha Yar, the security chief killed off in the first season when Denise Crosby decided the experience wasn't for her.  In an alternate reality, she's still alive, and this is a problem because Guinan (the sage bartender played by Whoopi Goldberg) is keenly aware even in this life that something's just not right.  Another Enterprise crew has traveled from the past (featuring what should be noted as a female captain), and in order to fix things must travel back and basically sacrifice itself.  Faced with her existential crisis, Yar makes the hard choice to die again, and fill in for the crew's lightened staff, thanks in no small part to a handsome officer she doesn't mind dying with.  (There's a somewhat odd twist to these decisions in later episodes as we learn exactly what happened to her, but I won't spoil that here.)

9. "Balance of Terror" (TOS 1x14)
The Romulans, cousins of the Vulcans, would probably not still fascinate fans quite so much if their debut had not been so compelling.  This is essentially a submarine battle sequence, with Kirk squaring off against an unnamed Romulan counterpart played by the late Mark Lenard (who also memorably portrayed Spock's dad Sarek), both struggling with the ethics of their dilemma, trying desperately to avoid an unnecessary war.  It's not hard to see all this as an allegory of the Cold War, which is a little odd, since the Klingons were also routinely used at the time as surrogate Russians (guess it was just a popular gimmick among the writers), but all the same, a timeless example of what Star Trek could be, right from the beginning.

10. "Distant Origin" (VOY 3x23)
The finest hour of Voyager is also the finest example of the essential Star Trek tradition to seek out new worlds and civilizations, as our lost crew stumbles across an alien species, from whose perspective the majority of the episode is told, that is descended from Earth's own dinosaurs.  It quickly becomes another prototypical allegorical experience, tracking with Galileo's epic struggle against the Catholic Church in the interest of science over religion, since no one wants tradition to be contradicted, and certainly not to be told that they come from some other sentient species' world, many lightyears away from their home.  Some fans grumbled that Voyager ended up doing so many episodes that were similar to what Star Trek had done before, but that was part of the premise, a chance to explore the familiar from an unfamiliar perspective.  "Distant Origin" is the epitome of affirmation to that approach.

The Top Ten of Every Star Trek

Star Trek (1966-1969)
The Animated Series (1973-1974)

1. "The City on the Edge of Forever" (1x28)
2. "Balance of Terror" (1x14)
3. "Mirror, Mirror" (2x4)
4. "The Trouble with Tribbles" (2x15)
5. "Amok Time" (2x1)
6. "Yesteryear" (TAS 1x2)
7. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (1x3)
8. "Plato's Stepchildren" (3x10)
9. "The Menagerie" (1x11/1x12)
10. "Errand of Mercy" (1x26)

The Next Generation (1987-1994)

1. "The Inner Light" (5x25)
2. "The Measure of a Man" (2x9)
3. "Yesterday's Enterprise" (3x15)
4. "Sarek" (3x23)
5. "The Best of Both Worlds" (3x26/4x1)
6. "Tapestry" (6x15)
7. "All Good Things..." (7x25/7x26)
8. "The Defector" (3x10)
9. "Relics" (6x4)
10. "The Drumhead" (4x21)

Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)

1. "The Visitor" (4x3)
2. "Far Beyond the Stars" (6x13)
3. "Past Tense" (3x12/3x13)
4. "Duet" (1x19)
5. "Necessary Evil" (2x8)
6. "What You Leave Behind" (7x25/7x26)
7. "The Search" (3x1/3x2)
8. "Little Green Men" (4x8)
9. "It's Only a Paper Moon" (7x10)
10. "Trials and Tribble-ations" (5x6)

Voyager (1995-2001)

1. "Distant Origin" (3x23)
2. "Latent Image" (5x11)
3. "Death Wish" (2x18)
4. "Living Witness" (4x23)
5. "Endgame" (7x25/7x26)
6. "Timeless" (5x6)
7. "Caretaker" (1x1/1x2)
8. "Tuvix" (2x24)
9. "Worst Case Scenario" (3x25)
10. "Author, Author" (7x20)

Enterprise (2001-2005)

1. "Twilight" (3x8)
2. "These Are the Voyages..." (4x22)
3. "Similitude" (3x10)
4. "In a Mirror, Darkly" (4x18/4x19)
5. "Broken Bow" (1x1/1x2)
6. "Stratagem" (3x14)
7. "Judgment" (2x19)
8. "The Andorian Incident" (1x7)
9. "Demons"/"Terra Prime" (4x20/4x21)
10. "Cold Front" (1x11)

Star Trek: Enterprise Season Four

The fall of 2004 marked the dawn of a whole new era in genre programming, with the debut of Lost, which, at least temporarily, opened the floodgates to networks becoming receptive to wild ideas, bold concepts, and big stories. But wide audiences weren’t flocking to sci-fi, at least not in the traditional sense, at least not outside of cable (where niche fans were gobbling up Stargate and Battlestar Galactica with renewed vigor), and certainly not to Star Trek, which was now seen as a relic. And the only victim left was Enterprise, which had just completed one of the most ambitious franchise seasons ever. The fourth season would be one last-ditch effort to win fans, if not audiences, over again.

4x1 “Storm Front, Part I”
As the first assault, this one was calculated not only to wrap up the Temporal Cold War arc in play since the pilot, but basically to wipe the slate clean, a big story to let fans know that things would really be changing. After a season with the Xindi, the series would once again be recreating itself, and to do so this time would require a massive effort to convince everyone that this time, there would be no mistaking how relevant to the series itself it would be. I’m not saying this to criticize the Xindi season, because unquestionably I consider it the achievement of the series, but for viewers who just kept leaving (as they did during the acclaimed Dominion War arc of Deep Space Nine, which came to define that series) who were looking for one last reason to stay. Because Star Trek fans really were looking for reasons like that, even if they continually got and rebuffed them (weird situation I still will never be able to completely begin to answer - bottom line, Star Trek itself could never be what they ultimately found they were currently looking for). So to conclude something like the Temporal Cold War, which had been a recurring if not entirely focused arc since the beginning, was a decision that basically said, We know you don’t really like this, so give us a moment and we can finally just move on. But as convoluted as it seemed to finish it during WWII, I still contend to this day “Storm Front” did a lot more than it seemed to. Whether it was the intention of the writers or not, the alien manipulating events stands for me as the answer to the riddle of Future Guy, who was the man behind the curtain of the whole thing, and this is as good an explanation for why he would never become directly involved, that everything was really just a lot of people fighting from temporal fronts that basically didn’t really have as much power as they would like others to think. And so someone stranded in his own past, powerless to do a whole lot, sounds like exactly the kind of dilemma Future Guy could have gotten himself in, repeatedly, like Annorax from “Year of Hell.” That in itself, completely fascinating to me, and maybe that’s why it worked for me, exactly as this arc was always presented. I filled in the blanks. But a lot of fans wanted all of it pretty literally and deliberately spelled out. Well, that’s Enterprise in a nutshell, and why this season did what it did, and why, once again, it seemed like “too little, too late.”

4x2 “Storm Front, Part II”
The other big deal about this first multi-part story of the season was that it was also the last appearances of Daniels and Silik, two of the defining recurring characters of the series, with John Fleck, thanks to story circumstances, getting to show his human face for a change. That both characters are dead by the end of the story is pretty accurate as a metaphor, too.

4x3 “Home”
Viewers still waiting patiently for that fresh start might as well consider this the season premiere, because it’s here that everyone really gets a chance to breathe, for the first time since “Azati Prime,” really. Like “Damage” and “The Forgotten” before it (and “Family,” from Next Generation), this is a full-on reflection episode, with Archer getting into full Janeway mode (circa “Night”), questioning every decision he’s made since his mission began, crying on the shoulder, basically, of Erika Hernandez (Ada Maris), which is ironic, because Hernandez happens to represent the future, the next deep space captain, a symbol of his success, no matter what he may be feeling at the moment. The episode also takes a good long reflection on the relationship between Trip and T’Pol, with another of the great endings in franchise lore, as Trip finally realizes how much he cares for the Vulcan, at the worst possible moment. Easily one of my favorite episodes of the series, surpassing the two previous examples of this story from the third season, and setting up the rest of the season, which is another irony, because it’s a rare standalone episode in a season full of multi-part stories. Again, I have to emphasize the worth of an episode like this to a greater appreciation for the series itself, because this is exactly the kind of depth no one ever gave it credit for, even though it had as much of it as any other Star Trek, if not at times more, because this is exactly what fans were clamoring for at the time, because they claimed it was completely absent. The creators actually were listening, and giving the fans exactly what they wanted. But some people just are never satisfied. I know from this kind of frustration. But sometimes obstinance is misplaced, and good things are lost, unappreciated, because of it.

4x4 “Borderland”
Modern fans often accuse Star Trek of looting from one of their favorite memories, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and whether or not they’re always accurate is kind of beside the point. But to suggest that it’s always bad to resemble success is another of those perverse behaviors indigenous to fan culture, which is always looking for signs of weakness. Maybe it was a mistake for Enterprise to begin its glorious quest for redemption by being the first franchise incarnation to directly tap into Wrath of Khan for inspiration, simply for this fact. I don’t know. But once again, I apparently was against the grain in liking the idea, which sees the concept of genetically-enhanced specimens, referred to here as Augments brought back for the first time since “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” in Deep Space Nine, but at a time when calling it controversial in the story doesn’t even begin to cover it. And at the heart of it is an entirely different origin story, with Brent Spiner returning to Star Trek as Arik Soong, the ancestor of the man who created Data. Alec Newman, who made a big for genre immortality in the Dune TV movies, gets to follow in the footsteps of Ricardo Montalban, portraying Malik, the leader of this band of Augments. Also features the first appearance of the Orions in the season. Being the second aliens (after Vulcans) to have been created and leave a significant impact in original series, it was only natural for Orions to feature prominently, finally, in Enterprise.

4x5 “Cold Station 12”
The second act of this story is memorable for me in that Jeremy Lucas, Phlox’s medical colleague, friend, and pen pal, is finally seen, and played by franchise veteran Richard Riehle, making this his welcome, defining role (I always appreciated how the lifespan of Star Trek kept giving actors this kind of opportunity, to say nothing of the scores of individuals who made careers behind the scenes helping to make all of it a cohesive project for decades).

4x6 “The Augments”
Concluding the arc and foreshadowing later developments in the season, the Augments stir some big problems with the Klingons. By the end of it, Soong is thinking of abandoning his work in genetics…in favor of work with robotics!

4x7 “The Forge”
One of the frequent complaints about Enterprise was that its version of Vulcans seemed a lot more emotional than other, very famous examples in the franchise, which certainly must have come like another cardinal sin. So the third multi-part story of the season looked to see why that might possibly have been, finally settling on another famous Vulcan, Surak, and how his teachings and cultural impact might have been working at the time. Kara Zediker assumes the role of T’Pau, a venerated elder when last seen in “Amok Time,” but here a scrappy outsider looking to bring her people back from the edge of political quagmire and back to logical correctness. Robert Foxworth, so memorable in Deep Space Nine in two episodes, makes a return to Star Trek for the proceedings. To help continue to theme of transition in the season, Admiral Forrest is killed off in a terrorist attack, marking the end of another major element of the early seasons (though not the last appearance).

4x8 “The Awakening”
Archer and T’Pol get into the nitty-gritty of the arc in this episode (which, technically speaking, features the first appearance of T’Pau), while the Andorians get into the season picture for the first time.

4x9 “Kir’Shara”
The concluding act sees the best material for both Shran and Soval of the series, as the two engage in a battle of wills that both characters have sort of been waiting for since their debuts, so it’s only natural that it’s between them that they finally find it.

4x10 “Daedalus”
The transporter episode that the creators were probably dying to do since the start, prompted perhaps by the expectations of the fans, but also tying perfectly into both the original Year One aspirations and the new intentions to more properly sync up with the feeling of the original series. And it doesn’t get much more deliberate than the hapless famous visitor who gets into a whole heap of trouble. Yet because a lot of other franchise incarnations did similar stories, it probably seemed less fresh and necessary than it actually was, especially for this particular series. Hapless famous folks and errant gods were the backbone of Gene Roddenberry’s interests in the original series, and much of what I left out in my recaps for it involves these stories.

4x11 “Observer Effect”
This was another such story, but unlike “Daedalus,” it was actually a story Enterprise had already told plenty of times already, except this time, it was with Organians, a known commodity.

4x12 “Babel One”
In a season of multi-part stories, had the series continued, this would probably have become known as the most important one, since it not only involves a lot of important groundwork for Archer’s ability to mediate between eventual founding members of the Federation, but is the first (and ultimately last) major Romulan arc. Tellarites, after “Bounty,” have their most significant Enterprise appearance in this opening act, while Shran pops up again (his increasing presence would have led to a possible ongoing status in the aborted fifth season). Brian Thompson makes another franchise appearance, for the duration of this arc, as the lead Romulan attempting to create a little interstellar war, something that had been hinted at in “Kir’Shara.”

4x13 “United”
The secondary (but apparent primary) purpose of the arc takes center stage as Archer finds himself trying to convince cooler heads to prevail when Shran takes it personally when a Tellarite attack leads to the death of his partner.

4x14 “The Aenar”
After four seasons, we finally get a close look at Andorian culture, a visit to the home world and the revelation of a sub-species (the title folks) even more grossly affected by all that cold weather (why else did you think they were blue, just because it looked cool?), while the first real right between Starfleet and the Romulans finally occurs. With the most famous piece of history from this era looming, the Romulan War, one might have imagined Enterprise, had it run the standard seven seasons, would have come to more closely resemble Deep Space Nine, but this story ends up being the only chance to see what it might have looked like, with the Xindi season ending up like an example of everything it would have never been able to do.

4x15 “Affliction”
For twenty years, Star Trek fans got to wonder just how Klingons went from smooth-headed (original series) to bumpy-headed (The Motion Picture), which was made all the more confusing when they showed up in “Broken Bow” with the modified look. This two-part story finally gave them the answer (though it got about the same reaction as the second Star Wars trilogy, which finally showed just how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader), tying into the events of the Augments trilogy earlier in the season. Intrigued by what they saw, the Klingons thought they could take genetic modification and make a better warrior, with Phlox kidnapped to help the process. As another layer, Trip has decided he can no longer serve on the same ship as T’Pol, at least not without being tortured by unrequited love, so he transfers to the Columbia, commanded by Erika Hernandez. His temporary replacement as chief engineer, Kelby (Derek Magyer), debuts as the final recurring officer of the series. And you’re craving a third layer? Apparently Reed previously worked for Section 31, the shadowy organization previously featured in Deep Space Nine, and Harris (Eric Pierpont, returning once again to Star Trek, and gaining his own signature character at last) would like to have him back. Could you possibly ask for more ambition from the season?

4x16 “Divergence”
As Reed struggles with his conscience, Phlox struggles to aid the Klingons in the unexpected consequences of their new program, and Trip has to make a little emergency repair on his old ship, in the most harrowing circumstances possible. If any story in the season seemed designed to attract as much attention from fans as possible, this one was definitely it, which also demonstrated that the altered version of the attempt to attract the new kind of viewers Star Trek could no longer ignore, it was really working, and being done in much the same way as the third season, if only those viewers could be induced to care. But for a series already in its fourth season, with all the necessary material for why anyone should care about it done when no one cared, even with material that didn’t need knowledge of an entire franchise (but it definitely would not have hurt), it was probably asking too much. Clearly, this was the point where Star Trek was forced to acknowledge that it was a lost cause to rescue this phase of the franchise.

4x17 “Bound”
The big Orion episode, completely inverts everything that fans might have assumed about the species. Might even have been appreciated, if it hadn’t been interpreted as one more attempt by the series to attract attention by juvenile means (it should be noted for the record that no matter how many times material for T’Pol was generated to strengthen her as a character, many viewers were given just as many impressions that she was there to be the babe, even after Seven of Nine the apparent and most blatant attempt to make a series regular fit that role, even though sexuality was a constant feature of Star Trek from the very beginning; it just wasn’t something “serious fans” wanted to think about).

4x18 “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part I”
Like the Klingon arc, this multi-part story was jam-packed with goodies for fans. The Mirror Universe, a famous element of both the original series and Deep Space Nine, returns (with uniquely-fashioned opening credits as a fantastic touch), with an origin once again recalling Star Trek: First Contact, while a lost ship from “The Tholian Web” is revisited, and oh yes, the Gorn are seen for the first time “Arena” (another of the show’s attempts to give modern viewers completely digital aliens, something the franchise had been toying with since Species 8472, but really only became a staple with the Xindi-Aquatics and -Insectoids; this time, however, with a known commodity in play, fans were less pleased with the results, though they seemed fine with the Tholians, seen for the first time). Anyway, we also see Forrest again!

4x19 “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II”
The great twist of this act is that it becomes a Hoshi story, as her mirror counterpart outsmarts everyone and proclaims herself Empress in the surprise ending. Also, Gregory Itzin makes a final franchise appearance.

4x20 “Demons”
In the final multi-part story, which many considered, or would like to have seen as, the true series finale, Peter Weller stars as John Frederick Paxton, who represents not only ties to franchise lore, but also the first reminder since the conflict between Archer and Vulcans that humans themselves weren’t exactly ready to start up the Federation. Harris returns, and Mayweather receives the most attention he’s gotten since the second season in a subplot with an old girlfriend caught up in the middle of this crisis.

4x21 “Terra Prime”
Every other element on this concluding act might as well not exist, because for me it’s really the last exploration of the relationship between Trip and T’Pol, who help advance the cause of the future Federation as Paxton unwittingly proves it’s possible for humans and Vulcans to procreate. But the real impact of this comes from Conner Trinneer’s best acting in the series, as he mourns the death of the controversial offspring that ties everything together, a sort of belated sequel-in-spirit to “Similitude.”

4x22 “These Are the Voyages…”
Part of the uproar (the only true instance of passion from the audience during the entire run of Enterprise) over this series finale was that it robbed the cast of its last spotlight, a funny thing to complain about, since hardly anyone ever admitted to even liking it. But not only did I fail to understand what the big problem was, I reveled in this hour, from the tie-in to a favorite Next Generation episode (“The Pegasus”) to how it tacitly acknowledges that, basically, this became Trip’s show, not Archer’s (almost as if in echo of how Spock became more popular than Kirk). What the creators must have been thinking, as many fans began wondering, isn’t that hard to figure out. They knew that this was the final opportunity for this phase of the franchise to express itself, that they wouldn’t be making anymore movies, that this was the last of the four TV shows to run under this regime. So it had a lot of things to acknowledge, and three of the most generous actors from this generation, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and Brent Spiner (making a voice cameo), all of whom were past series regulars who either reprised their famous roles or variations on them in later incarnations, host the occasion, putting Archer and his crew in a definite historic context, and giving everyone a last chance at a final word, including Shran. Confined to a single hour, it worked extremely well for what it had to do, conclude a series three seasons earlier than what had become the average.

This was the longest of all the recaps (I don’t anticipate any of the films warranting as much space), and probably adds to the idea that I’ve been remarkably indulgent, especially for a lot of Star Treks that were apparent failures, especially the one that finally caused Paramount itself (long and apparently the only entity on the planet ignorant of the fact) to realize a fresh start was needed with the franchise, but I don’t aim to apologize. It was a pretty deliberate move on my part, to spend a lot of time with incarnations that by most accounts didn’t deserve a cursory look, much less an expansive one. I set about the Fan Companion because it was exactly that, a perspective from someone who happened to be a fan of the entire franchise (but not completely so, despite how it might have seemed).

Enterprise for me was so much more than Series V, as it was originally known amidst fan speculations when announced by the studio. It wasn’t just another Star Trek, just as Voyager wasn’t, and Deep Space Nine. I never approached a Star Trek with the expectation and the need to enjoy it, but that’s how I ended up watching each new incarnation. Just as the creators kept learning as they went along, most clearly when revamping Next Generation starting with the third season, which made the next decade and a half of the franchise possible, I watched and saw how the storytelling became a little more sophisticated, a little more nuanced, as the seasons went by. While for some it’s a bit inconceivable to call anything past Jean-Luc Picard, himself a study in advanced sophistication (that was the natural gift of Patrick Stewart), by such terms, I could see Star Trek develop a better and truer idea of itself, of its potential. The franchise always aimed to be more than an episodic adventure. It’s why Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were so memorable in the first place. They weren’t just random people going off on random adventures, but characters populated in stories with an incredible amount of heart, passion, and purpose. In the 1960s, it was necessary to tell these stories a certain way, and with very little faith in this enterprise, the work that was accomplished in three seasons was astonishing. And that it got new opportunities to expand, was beyond reason. That’s what fans should have been reflecting on, maybe, not constantly henpecking. Star Trek became a cash cow, but it never sold out. New incarnations only expanded its horizons, again and again pushing against perceived limitations. When Q said, you’re a pesky thing that’s not worthy of what you’ve been given, it was the creators challenging their fans, who ironically decided to side with Q on that one.

And yet by the end, when “These Are the Voyages…” ended with Kirk, Picard, and Archer reciting the famous mission statement of the franchise, it still somehow rang true.

And to this day, that mission is still continuing.

Star Trek: Enterprise Season Three

“The Expanse” had already prepared fans for what they could expect in the fall of 2003, when Enterprise would take Star Trek for its most sustained serialized storytelling ever, an entire season of a single arc. Deep Space Nine had done direct stretches of six and ten hours, sure, and famously had the most involved writing in franchise history, but this was going to be more ambitious still. Would it be enough to win back the interest of viewers?

3x1 “The Xindi”
The season premiere actually began modestly. Archer and crew barely had any contact with the eponymous foes, actually. Their scenes might have been mistaken for outtakes from a Malon episode from Voyager (and that’s basically what most people seemed to take away from it). But there were a lot of introductions all the same. Xindi Council members played by Rick Worthy, Tucker Smallwood, and Scott MacDonald (Dolim, the only name out of the bunch that would be used regularly, though the others might be called Jannal and Mallora, respectively). Randy Oglesby also debuts as Degra, the builder of the weapon that must be prevented from reaching Earth. Considering that these are the first Xindi seen, and they’re all important ones, this is less than a slow start than a slow build, especially for Degra, who would become one of the signature recurring characters of the series, through the work of a single season. Additionally, Steven Culp (who had, a little less than a year ago, been left out of the final cut of Star Trek Nemesis as the new first officer under Captain Picard) shows up as the lead MACO, Major Hayes, representing the big change of the ship, the presence of military personnel, a first for Star Trek. Daniel Dae Kim appears as another of these commandos, but really, the lack of material he sees in this role leads directly into the biggest role of his life the following season. Don’t make me tell you what that it.

3x2 “Anomaly”
The big discovery of this episode is the first encounter with the mysterious spheres that are scattered throughout the region. It’s the first sign that there’s much more to this arc than simple investigation and confrontation. Like the original Temporal Cold War stories in the early seasons, there’s a lot more going on than is apparent, and it’s this kind of textured storytelling that helps distinguish Enterprise, regardless of whether or not fans appreciate it.

3x4 “Rajiin”
One of the early revisits with the Xindi Council is also a rather patented Star Trek excuse to have some pretty girl scamper around. But like Voyager learned, even the old tricks seemed like magnified sins when the fans were looking for excuses to revolt.

3x5 “Impulse”
Here’s another important piece of the puzzle, another piece of layering, as we learn what kind of dangers exist for T’Pol to stick around this region for too long. Two words: Zombie Vulcans! And that’s pretty much what this one amounts to, and this one, at least, proved to be pretty broadly entertaining, something that was important to the ark but also worked pretty well episodically.

3x6 “Exile”
Where there’s Hoshi, there’s anxiety, so even when she stumbles into an unexpected way of contributing her unique skills to the mission, it proves complicated, when her unique mind attracts a lonely alien with information but a need for leverage. Don’t worry, though. It’s not the last time she gets into this kind of trouble this season.

3x7 “The Shipment”
Here’s when I really started to get into the season, however, when the subtleties really started to come through. Star Trek was always at its best, in any incarnation, when it delved into this territory, dating back to “Balance of Terror.” But I might argue that part of what frustrated fans…was that they liked it a little more clear-cut. They liked to know exactly who the villains were, and they really liked to know who exactly the hero was. When you started out with someone like Kirk, who became something of a folk hero, who and what else were you really going to want? They hated Kirk in The Motion Picture, when his foe was his own doubt. But they loved him in Wrath of Khan, when he tangled with an unmistakable villain. They didn’t care for Deep Space Nine, which had this kind of storytelling all over the place. And they hated the Voyager version of the Borg, which couldn’t leave the most clearly black and white foils alone. Well, here was when Enterprise took what was supposed to be the consummate antagonist of a whole season, and made it sympathetic. It was fantastically brilliant, and pushed the season to its truest and best work.

3x8 “Twilight”
At once a patented Star Trek reboot glimpse of the future (perfected, it may be argued, in “The Visitor” from Deep Space Nine, and “Timeless” from Voyager), and also a study of how important, once again, Archer really is, whether to the mission of the series from the start, or this season specifically. And it’s a terrific glimpse into the depth of T’Pol as well, without ever really drawing attention to it, just a study of her unerring patience, which goes far beyond simple Vulcan logic and sense of duty. And to tease the climax of the arc is a pretty neat trick, too. If “The Shipment” elevates the season, then “Twilight” encapsulates it, and just maybe, exceeds it.

3x9 “North Star”
The only way to follow up entries like that is to circle back to pure Star Trek, which in this case is an improbable visit to a world, right in the middle of all this, that is straight out of the Wild West. And even this gets put right into the context of what’s really important. It’s not hard to imagine what the writing room was like breaking episodes like this, especially for a couple of creators like Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, who were constantly criticized as basically the reason this phase of the franchise came to such an ignominious end. Yet, after Deep Space Nine, you could hardly find any other efforts to capture the essence of what Star Trek had been from the start, not simply aping it (as Enterprise was repeatedly accused of doing) but making it (arguably, and heretically) better than it ever was. I’m not saying that “North Star” is a classic, but like much of the franchise in this period, it was hardly as bad as suggested.

3x10 “Similitude”
Another reason for an episode like “North Star” would be that the creators knew better than the viewers just how dark everything would really become. And this intentional contrast, again, was hardly new in Star Trek. You try doing episodes like “The Shipment,” “Twilight,” and “Similitude” back to back to back, especially with the knowledge of how most of the rest of the episodes to come would hit. “Similitude” was my favorite from this season, and the fact that it revolved around Trip certainly didn’t hurt. Like “Twilight,” it took a step out of ordinary circumstances but imperiling the life of the chief engineer, to the point where a clone is created to provide necessary material to save him. But this clone becomes another Tuvix, someone the crew really doesn’t just want to say goodbye to. It’s a defining, perhaps the defining, episode for Trip, and again draws out from Archer how important keeping the right pieces in place really is. As great as Conner Trinneer is, Scott Bakula conveys a considerable amount of gravity, as he’s forced to make some of his toughest moral calls in the series. Knowing the history between Archer and Trip, as sparingly as it was actually used, adds another layer to everything, too.

3x11 “Carpenter Street”
Daniels pops up as we again are told about the historic consequences of getting things wrong, with a trip to the past (our present, though this isn’t really emphasized, possibly because there’s very little time, and only one hour, to tell this time travel story), and another franchise appearance for Leland Orser, for whom this episode basically serves as something of a thank-you, his version of Vaughn Armstrong finally getting to play a human.

3x12 “Chosen Realm”
This would be the episode that seemed drawn directly from the original series, but it’s more important as another look at the spheres, and the first time Star Trek had done religion directly since Deep Space Nine.

3x13 “Proving Ground”
What might be seen as a convenient excuse (and a somewhat flimsy and unlikely one at that) to bring Shran into the season instead turns into another, perhaps the best of how little the Andorian fits into the typical mold for a beloved recurring character. If anything, this one makes it that much more difficult for fans to have any positive feelings for him, and yet, it’s not just a ploy to demonstrate again how hard it was to form the alliances that would lead to the Federation, but how strong a character Shran really was, how much integrity he was allowed to have, thanks to the trust Jeffrey Combs had already engendered with fans. No other actor could have pulled this performance off.

3x14 “Stratagem”
Like “The Shipment,” like “Twilight,” like “Similitude,” this was an extremely important hour, the one that took an established Xindi, Degra, and turned him into a regular and intriguing presence, as Archer attempts to trick him into betraying his people. The idea of the episode was as much a stratagem as anything else, just an incredibly clever idea that took everything to a still greater level. As I suggested in my ‘Deep Space Nine’ recaps, while I adored that series and all it did for advancing the cause of serialized storytelling in Star Trek, what its extended arcs really lost was a sense of what individual entries were really meant to accomplish, to give them separate and deliberate identities. But what some of the more episodic episodes did on a regular basis, Enterprise learned volumes from, and drew on to accomplish the best hours of its full season arc.

3x15 “Harbinger”
This was the breather episode that pretty much sat back and let viewers and the crew absorb everything that had been going on. Not surprisingly, a lot of the long-simmering threads, which in themselves were never going to cover entire hours, had their biggest spotlights here. Reed’s professional rivalry with Hayes, or the romantic overtones of the complex therapy sessions between T’Pol and Trip (who lost his sister in the original Xindi attack), or sphere builders, who were shortly to emerge, but were seen here and “The Expanse” already, long before their presence would add yet another overt layer to the arc.

3x16 “Doctor’s Orders”
Given that much of what Enterprise did was similar to what Voyager had done for seven seasons, it’s not a surprise that some episodes would overlap pretty obviously, and so as Seven had before him, Phlox attempts to run the ship on his own, and fight his sense of isolation right to the end of it. Given that there was no other reason for the spotlight to fall on him in this particular season, it was as good an episode as any for the good doctor.

3x17 “Hatchery”
Almost the ironic version of “Twilight” and “Similitude,” Archer does an extreme dive into an episodic dilemma, being transformed into the mother figure for some Xindi-Insectoids (ten metaphorical bucks if you can name the other Xindi species). As the only spotlight for that particular species, why not embrace it for what it is?

3x18 “Azati Prime”
Besides, what follows is the season’s version of the Deep Space Nine serialized arcs, beginning here, as Archer apparently reaches his destiny when he sacrifices himself so that the Xindi weapon can be stopped. But since we’re not all that close to the season finale…

3x19 “Damage”
An episode that recalls events from earlier in the season, and anticipates those yet to come, while also being one that simply allows Star Trek to sit back and reflect on a bloody battle just endured. Casey Biggs, familiar as the ill-fated Cardassian Damar, makes an appearance. The Sphere Builders, as we’ll now call them, officially make their entrance.

3x20 “The Forgotten”
While Archer continues the work begun in “Stratagem” by convincing Degra to help his crew stop the Xindi weapon, the effects of “Damage” continue, as those who have fallen so far are given their due.

3x21 “E2”
If the midst of this run, another episode that recalls Star Trek templates, as an alternate version of the crew, its descendents thrown into the past and matching up with their counterparts. Another opportunity to watch Jolene Blalock demonstrate her considerable acting credentials.

3x22 “The Council”
With that entry out of the way, we’re back in the thick of it, with Degra and Archer attempting to sway the rest of the Xindi Council, basically making this a sequel to the season premiere, that episode that seemed like such a random waste of time. More Sphere Builders are seen, too, adding to our knowledge of just what is really going on.

3x23 “Countdown”
Otherwise known as Hoshi’s second big opportunity to get into a lot of trouble thanks to her unique credentials, as Dolim leads to Xindi opposition to the sudden willingness to cooperate with Archer, and contradict the wishes of the Sphere Builders.

3x24 “Zero Hour”
The big finale. You know what happens here. Archer saves the day. Obviously. And yet, the wheels always spinning, he apparently doesn’t get to celebrate, but not in the way it seems: he’s thrown into the past, WWII where an alien peers down at him, along with the Nazis…

Like a lot of Star Trek from around 1994 onward (the point where everyone was finally supposed to embrace the franchise, but instead found lots of excuses to love just about anything else, including: The X-Files, Babylon 5, Xena, Farscape, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate), this breakthrough season came with bad timing. Battlestar Galactica had grabbed all the genre buzz with the first act of the bold revisioning spearheaded by Ronald D. Moore (name sound familiar?), leaving very little for Enterprise, no matter what it did creatively.

To be fair, it didn’t seem like this arc said a whole lot, one way or the other, about what the series had initially set out to do, and even barely a tangential relation to the Temporal Cold War, though I would hardly argue that the Xindi, who had never been heard about before, and therefore would never been seen again, meant little, or were another version of Enterprise telling an irrelevant version of Star Trek history. Rather, all that being said, it was a greater argument for the challenges and chances for heroics that the series had promised from the start, and without resorting to known concepts like the Romulan War. Like the Denobulans, the Xindi ultimately represented a complicated if unknown basis for the Federation, which after all was never really defined in its membership, just as turning back to relatively obscure species like Andorians, Tellarites, and Tholians helped flesh out the foundation.

The incredible work, and amount and quality of it, done for the season should have been a watershed moment for the franchise, but for many, it was “too little, too late,” another oversimplified excuse for fans who were all too ready to wash their hands of a franchise that had failed in all of its ambitions, as indulgent as the studio had been for a complete decade by then, “ready for a break.”

Was it the right call, to ignore the third season of Enterprise? Well, maybe the fourth season held some answers…

Star Trek: Enterprise Season Two

Like every other Star Trek before it, Enterprise spent its second year in apparent ignorance that its original approach wasn’t connecting with fans, which at this point was either really a problem with viewers or really a problem with the creators (isn’t it a little hard to understand, putting it into such stark language?), but probably not both (but then again, probably both). Either way, the season began in 2002, which was notable as also seeing the release of Star Trek Nemesis, the final Next Generation film, to incredible apathy (and some outright vitriol), which helps mark this year as the hammering of the final nail of the coffin in this incarnation of the franchise. History, really, was just repeating itself. The original series probably would have been more of an actual success if it had been able to truly capitalize on that second chance. But it didn’t, and by that point, the third really didn’t matter. Wasn’t that just true of Enterprise, too?

2x1 “Shockwave, Part II”
While Suliban swarm the ship, Archer has to find a way, along with Daniels, to put the timeline back in order, with the first real mention of what the captain is fated to accomplish, establishing the alliance that would lead to the historic Federation. It’s not a lot more than emphasizing what the series has already said in its first season, and maybe that’s a bit why viewers grew impatient. But as a fan, I didn’t really care.

2x2 “Carbon Creek”
Digging into T’Pol’s increasing comfort aboard this human ship, the first regular episode of the season probably has something more important to say, which is to say the revelation that Vulcans had experience on Earth prior to First Contact, a quiet entry that nonetheless speaks volumes. J. Paul Boehmer makes another franchise appearance, and finds yet more mileage from a general persona that at first seemed so easy to interpret. It’s not hard to assume that, if this incarnation of the franchise had continued, he would have eventually become a Star Trek regular, or at the very least have found a recurring role to comfortably nest in.

2x3 “Minefield”
A better contrast than Trip and Reed was Archer and Reed, which is quickly apparent in this episode, which marks the first appearance of Romulans in the series, walking an acknowledged tricky tightrope with Sacred Canon. One of the clear losses of the early cancellation was watching the eventual, historic Romulan War unfold, a latter-day Dominion experience that would no doubt have been…fascinating.

2x4 “Dead Stop”
One of the episodes that landed with even the skeptics, this was also clearly an episodic entry (though one that directly tied into “Minefield”), featuring a mysterious repair station that miraculously appears in space just when the crew needs it to. TV fans who would grow more interested in serialized storytelling (and grow frustrated when it inevitably let them down) were already, with memories of Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine dancing in their heads, far beyond being satisfied with Star Trek being, essentially, what it was, but sometimes, it still worked, even for them.

2x5 “A Night in Sickbay”
One of my favorites, both from the season and the series, was relentlessly ridiculed, because Archer spent the episode “moping about his dog.” Yet that’s not even all it was about, and even when it was about that, it was about so much more, one of the more complex and compelling stories to come out of the franchise. One of the true lost treasures of the series, if not the crown gem, and I’m not just saying that because I really loved Porthos (darn you, Scotty!!!). Also the big spotlight for the Kreetassans, with Vaughn Armstrong making another appearance.

2x6 “Marauders”
Here’s a Klingon episode that no Star trek had done since the original series, Starfleet meddling in Empire affairs, the first fruits of a vicious competition that would dance on and dabble in war for centuries to come. T’Pol debuts a variant white outfit, probably my favorite of the series.

2x7 “The Seventh”
This is an episode that I really need to revisit, because it attempts to cast T’Pol in the kind of role Kira regularly inhabited in Deep Space Nine, and I don’t know how successful it was. I have only vague memories of it, despite having seen it at least twice. Time for another viewing.

2x8 “The Communicator”
Who else but frequently agitated Reed would get to accidentally contaminate a world the crew has just surveyed? Another origin episode, or at least precursor to work other series did.

2x9 “Singularity”
Just in case you haven’t familiarized yourself with this crew yet, here’s a refresher course, a trademark franchise entry that exaggerates the characteristics of everyone so that it’ll be easier to identify them when everything’s comparatively normal. Reed invents the famous Red Alert (if you haven’t seen the episode, you’ll get a laugh at what he intends to call it), Trip obsesses over (of all things) the captain’s chair, Hoshi takes over the galley, Mayweather finds himself the unwitting victim of Phlox, and Archer obsesses over writing an intro to his father’s biography. T’Pol’s the lucky one trying to get everyone right again.

2x10 “Vanishing Point”
Here’s a revisit of two past show spotlights, Hoshi’s anxieties and the alarming nature of those new transporter-abobs.

2x11 “Precious Cargo”
Trip officially starts to take over the season with this episode, which guest stars Padma Lakshmi, who would actually become famous until a few years later. Making his bad luck in this one extremely lucky, as it turns out.

2x12 “The Catwalk”
Here’s a typical episodic entry I wished were a little less typically episodic, starting out with a cool premise of the crew (plus a few visiting aliens, who in typical episodic fashion end up turning rogue) having to take shelter in the unusual place of the warp nacelles. That alone would have made for a good hour, or so I thought.

2x13 “Dawn”
Another Trip episode. So soon? Of course! This time, the engineer takes on the franchise and genre trademark struggle of trying to make good with a hostile alien. In this pre-Universal Translator era, even though Hoshi was set up for it, I think this one and “Precious Cargo” ultimately represented the language divide best.

2x14 “Stigma”
Hyped as the AIDS episode at the time, this is probably just as interesting today as a sequel to “Fusion,” the continuing story of Vulcan intolerance for mind-melding. T’Pol, if it’s possible, is even more uncomfortably caught in the middle this time. Unlike “The Seventh” (or even “Carbon Creek”), this one is firmly rooted in the character as we’ve known her.

2x15 “Cease Fire”
The Andorians, and their enduring feud with Vulcans, return, in this fine spotlight for Shran, as well as Soval, who made far fewer appearances than his sum effect on the series actually represents. Suzie Plakson makes another franchise appearance.

2x16 “Future Tense”
After “Cold Front,” this is easily my favorite Temporal Cold War episode, one that cleverly features the genre staple of repeating time, among many other things, including Tholians, who are cleverly implicated in the recurring series arc.

2x17 “Canamar”
What seems on the surface to be a pretty anonymous episode is actually pretty interesting, when you think about it. Just as Voyager was constantly exploiting its unique premise in episodic ways, here’s Enterprise doing it, with Archer and Trip in the unusual position of being taken prisoner pretty much at random, not as part of some great alien plot, but simply because, in this era, the name “Starfleet” just doesn’t carry the same weight.

2x19 “Judgment”
An episode that on the surface seems to be taking advantage of situations seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (outright stealing them, if you’re not being very generous, which is what most viewers probably were at the time), this one counts, for me, as another of the great Enterprise Klingon entries, managing to create another outstanding role for J.G. Hertzler (who was so memorable as another Klingon, Martok, in Deep Space Nine), while also introducing Duras (Daniel Riordan), ancestor to another famous Klingon in franchise lore, which I just thought was a brilliant idea, especially since the Next Generation variant really had more impact in death than he ever did in person. Here, the part is so much more meaty, and not just because we get a neat version of Rashomon as another facet of the episode. One of my undeniable favorites from the season.

2x20 “Horizon”
Otherwise known as the second attempt to mine Mayweather’s backstory for fruitful material, visiting this time with his family rather than just the Boomer culture he grew into (I was just thinking: I don’t know if it was intentional, this nod to Battlestar Galactica lore, which the new incarnation of that show bucked so memorably when it cast Grace Park as another Boomer entirely). Some viewers, who also complained that he became virtually a cardboard cutout prop, suggested that Anthony Montgomery was a rather wooden actor. This was the only series to have so many complaints about the acting, at least in my experience. Anything to justify all the hating. I never really had a problem with it, at least when I wasn’t thinking about those complaints and watching the supposedly offending performances. But it never really affected my opinions. Enterprise was my second favorite Star Trek, after all, after Deep Space Nine. That probably still keeps some people up at night, whenever I mention it.

2x21 “The Breach”
Otherwise known as the only time Enterprise would do a Denobulan episode, both as the main and supporting plots. I actually prefer the visiting scientists in the subplot. Phlox in the role Neelix and others filled in other Star Treks just didn’t seem as memorable, perhaps precisely because its impact was dulled, ironically, by his countrymen.

2x22 “Cogenitor”
Like “Dear Doctor,” the full impact of this one comes on like a surprise, as Trip pulls his biggest theft of the season, was also royally screwing up first contact with aliens who happen to breed not with two sexes, but three, with the third having the unlucky position of being extremely rare, and so therefore being handled more as a commodity than an individual. Trip doesn’t agree that this is right, but then, is it really his place to judge? Therein lies the rub. Andreas Katsulas, meanwhile, makes good time while he can bonding memorably with Archer.

2x23 “Regeneration”
This would be the violation of Sacred Canon for the season, bringing in the Borg for a genius tie-in with Star Trek: First Contact (and also explaining why the Collective was so obsessed with humanity in the first place), but because technically, We Didn’t Meet Them Until Later, this was a big no-no. Like “Acquisition,” to be enjoyed anyway.

2x24 “First Flight”
A nod to our own triumphs and tragedies in the space program, this is Archer and Trip’s nod to T’Pol’s storytelling in “Carbon Creek” earlier in the season, recounting how they helped save humanity’s warp program, despite massive opposition from the Vulcans, thanks in part to the late A.G. Robinson (Keith Carradine). The kind of episode I really wish the series would have done more of, a more expansive look at the rest of the fleet, and some of its history, with glimpses of faces to go with names that had been mentioned previously, who might have been seen again, if the opportunity had arisen. But the fourth season kind of made up for it, introducing a formidable new addition all its own.

2x25 “Bounty”
Picking up where “Judgment” left off, with Archer trying desperately to elude Klingon authorities, but not in a Tellarite bounty hunter has anything to say about it. Tellarites probably lost the most from the show coming to an end after only four seasons, because they were finally starting to demonstrate a real presence in the final year. There could’ve been so much more.

2x26 “The Expanse”
Everything changes in this season finale, a stark contrast to how the season ended last year, with the Temporal Cold War elements actually serving a practical function, helping to establish an emerging Xindi threat that has already launched a devastating attack on Earth. For the first time, a crew will be asked directly to accomplish what so many Star Trek casts have sort of stumbled into doing: save the world.

Like Deep Space Nine, the season ends with a promise of real change for the third year with the introduction of a new threat. Yet in many ways, perhaps that change was even less necessary. While, in true original series form, the first year was probably stronger, there was a lot of memorable material in the second, which demonstrated a real command of episodic material that supported the serialized ambitions of the series at its heart. It continued to be strange to hear that Star Trek was behind the times, because in many ways, it’s still more sophisticated than anything that has been dubbed its better (except, I’d say, Lost), in most of the modern TV incarnations.

Enterprise suffered most of all, especially in this second season, from the perception that it was low grade Star Trek material, and while this pushed the creators to its best work in the ensuing two seasons, the achievements of this one shouldn’t be dismissed or overlooked, especially “A Night in Sickbay,” “Future Tense,” “Judgment,” and “First Flight,” which stand up to the best material of any franchise incarnation. The show, caught in such a curious crossroads, only got better…

Star Trek: Enterprise Season One

Everyone remembers the fall of 2001. The new millennium wasted little time in making history, and Star Trek had nothing to do with it. Yet that’s also when the fifth live action TV series in franchise history launched, at the time hotly anticipated, at last a moment when all the fans seemed to be buzzing with positive energy again, arguably for the first time since 1993, when Deep Space Nine launched. Yet the enthusiasm, as everyone would soon realize, would be short-lived.

1x1/1x2 “Broken Bow”
Set a hundred years before the original series, the new show was a prequel in a post-Phantom Menace world, two years after the second Star Wars trilogy began, a trilogy that would alienate old fans just as much as Star Trek had been doing for at least the last half decade. It must have seemed like a great idea at the time, like Deep Space Nine after Next Generation, or Voyager after Deep Space Nine, a series that would be the total opposite of what had come before. Instead of being purposefully cut off from everything familiar, this one would be totally immersed in established continuity. Like the Year One stories that would ironically become popular with James Bond and Batman just a few years later, around the time Enterprise, in fact, sputtered out, this show would help establish how everything came to be, less like the origin of Darth Vader, more like how all those wonderful toys came to be. Set at a time when Earth was really starting to capitalize on the events of the popular Star Trek: First Contact (James Cromwell even cameos as Zephram Cochrane), the son of the man who prepares Starfleet’s future with a new warp-five engine, Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) sets out as the first deep-space captain, launching the first of the fleet’s famous line of ships called Enterprise. Together with skeptical Vulcans, represented by reluctant first officer T’Pol (Jolene Blalock), and swarming with Klingons as recognizable foils, the premiere also presents an element of the unfamiliar, a temporal cold war meant to link what viewers would think of as the future with its past, an attempt to cover tracks for those who might share Vulcan tendencies. It’s certainly a bold move, one that links Enterprise both to Voyager and Deep Space Nine in its basic approach, so that recent fans might have some immediate ties to deal with, as well as a clear connection to the original series, which it both anticipates and emulates at every opportunity. It’s a heck of a gamble, anyway. Making their debuts in recurring roles are Vaughn Armstrong (as a human for a change, Admiral Maxwell Forrest), John Fleck (Silik, representing the new alien threat, the Suliban, and the Temporal Cold War in general) Gary Graham (Soval, the Vulcan who oversees this endeavor), and James Horan (as a figure who would be unofficially dubbed Future Guy, the very face of mystery, even though, technically, his face would never be seen).

1x3 “Fight or Flight”
Linguist Hoshi Sato (Linda Park) takes the spotlight in this metaphorical episode that helps the crew, and audiences, take a breath after the pilot and make sure that this is a journey that’s really worth the risk. Hoshi decides that it is.

1x4 “Strange New World”
The transporter, long a staple in the franchise, is still a relatively new gadget, and this episode is all about the anxieties that infest the crew over it, plus a few feelings of mistrust toward that pesky Vulcan first officer. Kellie Waymire makes her debut as Elizabeth Cutler.

1x5 “Unexpected”
Charles “Trip” Tucker III (Conner Trinneer), whom I would consider the series MVP (and not just because he dominates, at least, the second season, and pretty much carries on for the next two as well), finally enters the spotlight, in what would become a trademark sticky situation, with the kind of educated innocence that defined the series, accidentally getting himself pregnant. But of course, this is also the episode that started some fans on the path to rejection, because it’s the first real instance of an apparent contradiction with franchise lore, something that was bound to happen with a premise like this one. What Enterprise would help crystallize was that fans were fickle for reasons that would never in a million years have been important, especially during the three seasons of the original series, which clearly made up most of its rules on the fly. Yet given thirty-five years (at that time), it was now possible to decide Star Trek wasn’t worth watching not because of the quality of the product (this from fans who made the franchise despite an evident decline three years into the experience), but because it was now violating sacred canon (sorry, Sacred Canon). Granted, many fans had been saying for years that Star Trek “ain’t what it used to be,” but some of those fans probably should have realized that they were aligning themselves with some others who happened to despise some of their most sacred hours (i.e. Deep Space Nine, brilliant to some, a snore to others, “not real Star Trek”). Anyway, enough ranting. This may simply not be a point anyone will ever care to concede. After all, even Star Trek( 2009), despite its wild and unbridled and unparalleled success, still had its vehement detractors on these same points. The difference was, it was cool. And Enterprise, its greatest sin, was that it was definitely never cool. Star Trek hadn’t been cool since Picard was assimilated. So imagine trying to convince someone that Trip getting pregnant would reverse all of this. But then imagine just watching this, seeing a great character begin to emerge. At some point, you might realize that none of that stuff really matters. Randy Oglesby, by the way, makes his first appearance in the series this episode.

1x7 “The Andorian Incident”
One of the undeniably awesome things that Enterprise accomplished was making, at least, the Andorians cool. An infrequently seen yet still distinct franchise alien species, the Andorians were the greatest benefactors of this series, even receiving modern gizmos to make their signature antennae move about onscreen. Jeffrey Combs takes on his third iconic Star Trek role as their chief representative, Shran, who would become the most important of the show’s recurring characters, even though he was clearly a bigot, and in doing so, probably helped more than any other feature to illustrate the point of the whole experiment, to demonstrate how the heck the United Federation of Planets formed in all the chaos that would still be apparent in the comparatively far future.

1x8 “Breaking the Ice”
Diplomacy among friends, or at least allies, was a facet of the series that was pretty unique. Starfleet never entirely got along with the Bajorans in Deep Space Nine, but that relationship was a cakewalk compared to humans and Vulcans in Enterprise. This was one of those episodes that was directly focused on that tricky business.

1x10 “Fortunate Son”
Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) was the biggest victim of the show’s attempt to model its character dynamics after the original series, focusing on a trio of characters (Archer, T’Pol, and Trip, like Kirk, Spock, and Bones) rather than attempting to even the flow over an extensive cast (which Deep Space Nine did most successfully among all the series, in addition to a ridiculously large recurring cast, something that no doubt influenced how Voyager attempted to do much the same, but with integrated cast moments in most episodes, to the detriment of a strong yet under-utilized series of guests, who rarely could put in a word edgewise). Humanizing everyone was certainly a priority (which was something Next Generation had tried to do in theory, but preferred an iconic approach, which was what everyone assumed the original series had done intentionally), and Mayweather had one of the most interesting backstories for any character in any series. But he fell victim, ultimately, to Chakotay Syndrome, otherwise known as extreme audience apathy, whenever that backstory was actually tapped into, which started with this episode. Like Andorians, another famous but little-seen species, the Nausicaans, also get some Enterprise love, most notably in this episode. Fans, when they bothered to wonder about the logistics of the show at all, sometimes complained that too many species seen in the show were new. And yet, it’s also clear that the familiar ones Enterprise actually used were all underdeveloped. Everyone knew what a Klingon, Vulcan, or Romulan was well before this show came around, and Klingons and Romulans had gotten a lot of attention in other incarnations of Star Trek. But it wasn’t until Enterprise that Vulcan society was explored in any meaningful way, without the crutch of supporting a single, if very well known, character. In short, it was like watching Worf in Next Generation starting with the third season, rather than the first two. There’s a reason why the creators behind this show came to prominence in that same historic franchise moment. It’s just, the fans never really bothered to think beyond the prejudices they had been forming the last few years. Again, put all that aside, and what do you get from an episode like “Fortunate Son”? Probably something else entirely.

1x11 “Cold Front”
And what do you get from the series itself, after an episode that seemed designed to separate the fans from the irritated viewers? The second Temporal Cold War entry, introducing the enigmatic Daniels (Matt Winston), the opposite number of Silik, who has probably his best work of the series in this one, as both agents try to convince Archer that they’re the one to trust. This episode, more than any of the preceding entries, really helped make me a fan of the show. This was true confidence. The creators knew exactly what they were doing, even if their detractors were already starting to voice doubt.

1x13 “Dear Doctor”
Phlox (John Billingsley), who along with Trip really helped distinguish this cast for me, and who represented the new alien species the Denobulans in the crew, helps dramatize the painful learning curve needed to establish the famed Prime Directive, in the process butting heads with Archer with more force than any Vulcan has managed to this point. Probably the most successful “origin” episode, simply because it does so in such an unexpected manner. Also perhaps the first instance where Scott Bakula gets to portray Frustrated Archer, which is the form those who had started turning against the show liked to take as example that this was, pun intended, a failed enterprise, because Bakula was the first famous actor to assume any regular role in a Star Trek (true, Avery Brooks had actually been the series lead in A Man Called Hawk before taking on Benjamin Sisko, but even I have still never seen any of his work in that role), he bore an extreme amount of scrutiny. Were that this alone might have explained how spectacularly the show failed, relatively speaking. The episode also marks the first reference to Jeremy Lucas, Phlox’s friend and colleague, who wouldn’t actually be seen until the fourth season.

1x14 “Sleeping Dogs”
You’d think that just about every Klingon story possible would have been done in Star Trek at this point, since Klingons had already been featured prominently in every other incarnation, but Enterprise demonstrates again that it has its own tricks to pull, doing a Klingon episode that really, hardly uses Klingons at all. Vaughn Armstrong, an actor who has already done about a thousand alien faces in the franchise, appears as one of them, even though this is the series where he’s finally gotten to show his own. And he’s got other faces yet.

1x15 “Shadows of P’Jem”
Even with its at times heavily serialized nature, something Deep Space Nine rarely did was directly acknowledge the events of a previous episode, yet here was Enterprise, doing exactly that, in this sequel to “The Andorian Incident,” with Shran making his second appearance.

1x16 “Shuttlepod One”
Trip bonds with tactical officer Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating), a perennial cold fish who finally warms up, ironically, when the pair seem doomed to find an unhappy final resting place in the vacuum of space. What might have come off as a duplication of similar stories between O’Brien and Bashir feels completely natural, in part because Trinneer and Keating have such great chemistry together. Trip and Reed aren’t so much opposites as equally driven. You should just see how the chief engineer handles his engine room (which, by the way, is at last as distinctive and memorable as Ops in Deep Space Nine).

1x17 “Fusion”
When fans wanted to debate the stark contrast of Vulcans as depicted in Enterprise and those seen in any other incarnation, they probably should start with the treatment of the familiar Vulcan mind-meld, which here is handled like the cardinal sin, something that gets T’Pol into considerable trouble, and only gets worse for her next season.

1x18 “Acquisition”
Don’t look now, but this one’s another clear violation of Sacred Canon. The Ferengi rear their lumpy (and heavily-lobed) heads (despite the fact that Picard was supposed to have the first official encounter with them), with Jeffrey Combs and Ethan Phillips (a former Star Trek regular making the rare, completely unassuming appearance) helping represent them as greedy space pirates, exactly the pure form always suggested but never actually seen previously. Me, I thought it was brilliant. Just watch as Archer’s beloved beagle Porthos (the one Scotty “lost” in the new film) finds itself in comic peril! For a species that got off on such a horrible foot, the Ferengi ought to have, by this point, found some redemption with the audience. But, alas, that just wasn’t the case. And if you try to figure out just why, based on material fans hated but apparently vehemently respected, it just makes your head hurt. You might get lumps.

1x20 “Oasis”
Here’s another episode that fans decided to hate simply because “they’d seen it before.” But Star Trek being what it was, even the original series was repeating episodes fairly quickly and fairly often (which is half the reason why my recaps for it skipped over so many entries). But fans at this point once again decided it was a cardinal sin, and not even another former franchise regular, Rene Auberjonois (who had actually been featured in the episode that this one most closely resembled, which I will not name), could affect negative opinions in the slightest. Hey, you try and figure it out.

1x21 “Detained”
This was one of those episodes that was right on target in so many ways. Bakula’s famous past was directly addressed when his old Quantum Leap costar Dean Stockwell finally made his appearance (which probably helped get him a recurring role in the sci-fi franchise reboot that genre fans did lap up, Battlestar Galactica), while the Suliban are fleshed out considerably.

1x22 “Vox Sola”
The Kreetassans, an alien species created specifically to emphasize the importance and finesse of first contact diplomacy, make their debut in this episode, represented by (who else?) Vaughn Armstrong.

1x23 “Fallen Hero”
Just to show that all Vulcans in this period not answering to the name “T’Pol” weren’t all arrogant pricks, Fionnula Flanagan pulls another franchise appearance to represent them admirably.

1x24 “Desert Crossing”
One of the few episodes to spotlight the friendship between Archer and Trip was this one, which was another notable one for the engineer, who grows delirious during the title event, and starts to talk food when he’s trying to focus on his ship. Clancy Brown, one of my favorite actors, still manages to steal the episode, which also refers back the events of “Detained.”

1x25 “Two Days and Two Nights”
The famous pleasure planet Risa makes it appearance of the series, but hardly anyone leaves with fond memories, especially Archer, who really can’t live down the events of “Detained.” Sadly, the last appearance of Cutler, about two years before Kellie Waymire died.

1x26 “Shockwave, Part I”
Archer probably didn’t enjoy this one, either, because the Temporal Cold War pretty much screws him out of his historic mission. Or so it seems…

The first season, while handling a number of generic entries (which, as per my custom, I skipped over), still managed to pull off a considerable number of important, series-defining episodes, which would become all the more significant, not just because the show would have a comparatively short run to the three series that came before it, but also because, unlike those shows, it seemed to know exactly what worked, right from the start. Not since the original series was a first season such a success, at least creatively. Popularly, it was a different story.

But not for lack of trying…

Star Trek: Voyager Season Seven

In the fall of 2000, Voyager began its seventh and final season in a unique position. Unlike Next Generation, which reached the same point with massive popularity but low on creative energy, or Deep Space Nine, rearing on the strength of a critically approved sixth season and faced with the daunting task of wrapping up everything it had been working on throughout the series, Voyager was relatively free of expectations, and was thus free to bow out however it liked. To say more of the same would be very deceptive indeed.

7x1 “Unimatrix Zero, Part II”
The visual shock of Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok “assimilated” at the end of the previous season was probably a conscious decision to borrow the most famous Borg moment in the franchise, the introduction of Locutus (Picard) in “The Best of Both Worlds.” It was aimed directly at fans, which at this point was all Star Trek could hope for, whatever “fans” meant at this point. But the episode itself was also aimed squarely at Voyager fans, especially those who might be looking for clues as to how it was all going to end. Tuvok, notably, has the first of several allusions to the subtle arc that would carry him through to conclusion, suffering a mental collapse that makes him the first to fall in this latest plot. Seven, meanwhile, begins embracing her humanity in a more direct way than ever before, while Janeway has little qualms about facing up the Borg threat with a clever plan that would use the Collective against itself. Any of this sound familiar? Well, then maybe you haven’t actually seen “Endgame” yet. But we’ll reach that one soon enough.

7x2 “Imperfection”
More or less the end of the first half of Icheb’s existence, as he basically “grows up,” the other Borg younglings leaving the nest this episode, and he affects Seven for the first time on his own, helping her make the first real steps on her season arc.

7x3 “Drive”
The last great hurdle of the Torres-Paris relationship is passed as they collaborate in a race, and finally get married. They also get to wear some distinctive new uniforms for the occasion, guaranteeing that the episode is distinctive at least in one sense. Brian George guest stars.

7x4 “Repression”
One of the episodes that recalled Alpha Quadrant days (and foretold future ones) was this clever entry that revisits the Maquis days with a Bajoran subconscious plot that results in the very mutiny fans had expected in the early days, if only for a brief time. Chell (Derek McGrath) and Tabor (Jad Mager) make rare but appreciated appearances.

7x5 “Critical Care”
The Doctor takes another break from his personal journey for this episode, another improvement on the “Ethics” concept of exploring the limits of medical drama in Star Trek. Gregory Itzin makes another franchise appearance.

7x6 “Inside Man”
Here’s another of the late series Barclay episodes, which I thought was another excellent attempt at merging the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine ideas of the Ferengi, who hatch an ill-conceived plot to hijack Starfleet’s continuing efforts to bring Voyager home. Admiral Paris makes another appearance, while Marina Sirtis marks her final turn as Troi…at least in Voyager.

7x7 “Body and Soul”
The Doctor and Seven enjoy their last collaboration, and make sure it’s, er, special, as our emergency medical hologram actually, well, takes a ride in our drone. It’s less dirty than it sounds. But probably not for The Doctor. This one also revisits Tuvok’s season arc, bringing up the dreaded Vulcan blood fever and the poor holographic substitute of his wife to try and cover the spread. Is it any wonder the poor dude ends up in a mental asylum (at least, sort of) by the end of the series?

7x9 “Flesh and Blood, Part I”
In essence a sequel to “The Killing Game,” things have gotten out of hand for the Hirogen and their holographic prey, who have literally taken on a life of their own, not to mention become the hunters.

7x10 “Flesh and Blood, Part II”
This two-parter also happens to be another of the attempts by the show to prepare our crew and viewers for the return home, which is all the more interesting, because the series wouldn’t actually let either see it in the end, at least in any practical sense. So now it makes a little more sense, huh? Vaughn Armstrong, meanwhile, takes on another alien species, as one of the hunted Hirogen.

7x11 “Shattered”
The one I like to think of as the Voyager equivalent of “Parallels,” the Next Generation seventh season episode that saw Worf cross multiple alternate realities, and in the process walk viewers through a sort of history lesson in that series, and also a rare fan favorite. Chakotay finds himself making his way through the ship, which has been splintered in time, so that he revisits famous periods in the series, including a last look at Seska.

7x12 “Lineage”
A pregnant Torres finds herself reflecting once more on her Klingon half, and the problems she had growing up. I told you that darned Ron Moore caused a shift in emphasis with the character, and by this point, he was long gone. But the character was more than up to the challenge.

7x13 “Repentance”
One of my favorites from the season has no particular bearing on anything, and that’s what I liked about watching Star Trek, because at its best, it could easily find compelling material in just about anything, whether it was important to the characters in whatever series it occurred or not. Here it’s a complicated look at justice (doing it far better than “Justice”), which has Seven thinking about the chance she herself got at redemption from this crew, despite how hard she made it for everyone. F.J. Rio appears, playing a completely different character than the one he maintained for a brief period in Deep Space Nine.

7x14 “Prophecy”
In its final season, the show worried a little less about the restraints it had set up for itself early on. Here, Klingons make a very prominent appearance thanks to a generational ship that runs into our crew, representing earlier versions of the familiar race, while also giving Torres another chance to fret about all that business she has been struggling with from the start.

7x15 “The Void”
Did it really take this long for Janeway to realize she could create a miniature Federation during her travels through the Delta Quadrant? Well, here she has to do it out of necessity, but it’s still nice to finally see the captain think about it. Jonathan del Arco, previously known as Hugh in Next Generation, makes an appearance.

7x16 “Workforce, Part I”
The final midseason two-parter begins with our crew basically revisiting “The Killing Game” (guess it’s not hard to guess which two-parter the show’s creators liked best), stuck in some other alien culture’s mess, this time conscripted into, well, a workforce, another pitfall of being a Starfleet crew in a region of space where no one’s heard of Starfleet.

7x17 “Workforce, Part II”
Everyone figures out how to get out of this fine mess, while Chakotay, who has essentially been at the center of this particular effort, rounds out his biggest event of the season.

7x18 “Human Error”
But wait, there’s more! Chakotay gets his own little allusion to the end of the series when Seven experiments with the idea of romantic relationships, and decides our dashing first officer is the most likely target of her pursuit. In sickbay, The Doctor holographically fumes.

7x19 “Q2”
Q returns! As if you couldn’t tell by the title of this one. But the bigger surprise is that Q Junior is ready for his spotlight, and this episode basically belongs to him, and to make it really special, he’s played by Keegan de Lancie, a chip off the old Q all the way around. Happens to be Icheb’s last spotlight, too.

7x20 “Author, Author”
Perhaps still fuming from getting spurned by Seven, The Doctor resumes his tortured personal journey, this time reaching far beyond the ship and putting his case into the hands of the public, writing his own holonovel that presents a warped view of what his experiences have actually been, and so the Alpha Quadrant finally weighs in, and once again, we learn that The Doctor is no Data, at least as basic acceptance goes. We also see conversations with many family members we’ve already seen or heard talked about, including Harry’s parents at long last, while Barclay and Admiral Paris also appear. A clear personal favorite from the season, for any number of reasons, not the least because it’s the only real follow-up to “Latent Image.”

7x21 “Friendship One”
Janeway gets her first Starfleet assignment in seven years, and that alone makes this otherwise forgettable episode worth remembering. Also, the big dirt nap embraces Lt. Carey (Josh Clark), as I suggested in the sixth season recap, to massive fan apathy.

7x23 “Homestead”
The final Naomi Wildman appearance! Oh, and Neelix bids a fond farewell to our crew, having stumbled upon a colony of Talaxians. I defy anyone not to get emotional when Tuvok makes his goodbye gesture, a true highlight of the season.

7x24 “Renaissance Man”
The final Doctor romp sees all the stops pulled out, and in one embarrassing scene, all his secrets are inadvertently blurted to exactly the people he would have wanted to keep them from, when he assumes he’s about to die. Alexander Enberg makes a final appearance as Vorik.

7x25/7x26 “Endgame”
Oh, come now, you know exactly what happens here. Tuvok, as it turns out, really needs to get home, or he’s going to lose all mental control. Seven and Chakotay end up in a real relationship. Janeway outsmarts the Borg. But perhaps more cleverly than fans cared to admit, the big return home is teased with a glimpse into the future where everything turned out badly because it took too long, or so Janeway thinks, so she lets loose into action mode one last time and tackles the Borg Queen (Alice Krige reprising the role for the first time since Star Trek: First Contact, apparently without having missed a beat) head-on, but not before confronting her own past self and crew, forcing everyone to remember that it’s the captain who got them into this mess in the first place, and it’s she who will have to make the big decisions to finally get them out of it. The final shot, which directly echoes the final scene of the pilot, is exactly what it should have been, just the same cyclical image that Lost rightly chose with Jack. Vaughn Armstrong makes another appearance, Admiral and Tom Paris finally share a scene (sort of), and Barclay is rightly acknowledged as an honorary member of the family. Oh, and Torres gives birth.

Like the show at its best, Voyager chose to embrace the opportunity of its final season by seeking out unexpected possibilities, defying assumptions once again that it couldn’t in its own way provide worthwhile serialized material in the traditional episodic Star Trek format. As the final example of that version of the franchise (at least to date), it was far more successful at this than it was ever given credit for. The way Next Generation stumbled through the same thing, Voyager slid along naturally for seven seasons, creative changes never slowing it for long, and in some ways, actually intensifying it, making it more incisive, and insightful. But would you know it from the fan reaction…?