Enterprise 1x26 "Shockwave"

rating: **

the story: The mission is cancelled after a horrific accident, but turns out it's really meddling from agents of the Temporal Cold War.

what it's all about: "Shockwave" is a blunt concept, too obvious in at least one element.  It might be the reason fans never warmed to the concept of the Temporal Cold War.  It's all obvious setup for a season finale: the crew finally managed to screw up that badly?  And Archer's stuck in the future with no time travel devices to get him back home?  And of course the second season premiere quickly resolves both of these issues, and it's back to the status quo as if nothing ever happened.  It just feels too cheap, especially for being a featured element of the series.

Silik doesn't have the same chemistry with Archer as he did in "Cold Front," and that's a major problem in and of itself.  Daniels is as fascinating as always (well, as he'd been in his debut, "Cold Front"); in fact he's the best part of this finale and an even better part of the second part.  But again, here he's mostly relegated to setup.

The Temporal Cold War deserved a much better push if it was going to be featured in such a climactic moment.  Maybe learning more about "Future Guy," the shadowy instigator of the Suliban, but not only do we learn nothing more than when we saw him in the pilot ("Broken Bow"), we never learn more about him, even with the rushed wrap up of the arc at the start of the fourth season ("Storm Front").  And that's the most disappointing thing of all.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Will casual fans really care about too-obvious material?
• series - Despite reservations, it does serve as a reminder of the Temporal Cold War, and its scope.
• character - Archer's the one caught in the crosshairs, as always.
• essential - It's the most painful thing to say about a season finale, that it isn't essential.

notable guest-stars:
John Fleck (Silik)
Matt Winston (Daniels)
James Horan ("Future Guy")
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)

Enterprise 1x25 "Two Days and Two Nights"

rating: **

the story: The crew attempt to enjoy some r&r.

what it's all about: For the past few episodes this trip to Risa kept getting interrupted, creating one of the more esoteric serialized stories in franchise lore.  Risa is the pleasure planet previously featured in Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, so this is another of those soft hooks.  The episode itself is actually pretty much composed of separate vignettes for one or more characters.  Everyone has something to do.  Admittedly, Mayweather's is minimal compared to everyone else's, getting treated by a compromised Phlox, attempting to get some hibernating in.  Hoshi has the happiest experience.  Trip and Reed have perhaps an even more awkward experience together than in "Shuttlepod One."

And Archer discovers backlash from "Detained."  The aliens who'd been harassing innocent Suliban send an undercover agent to spy on him. It's a soft continuation of the story, but it's appreciated for having been done at all.

Otherwise a fairly deliberately low key affair, just spending time with the characters.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - It' doubtful that casual fans will care too much about a visit to Risa.
• series - Some soft serialization in a follow-up to "Detained."
• character - Everyone gets in at least one moment.
• essential - Not especially.

notable guest-stars:
Kellie Waymire (Cutler)

Enterprise 1x24 "Desert Crossing"

rating: ****

the story: Terrorists try recruiting Archer to their cause.

what it's all about: There's a little something of everything to love about this one: big ideas, time well-spent with a pair of characters, continuity, and Clancy Brown.

Let's just get Clancy Brown out of the way.  Clancy's a big personality.  He's never really found that one (or two or three) projects that squarely put the spotlight on him, but he's always been an outsize highlight in the material he has chosen.  Scoring him, which surprisingly took this long to accomplish, is a major coup for Enterprise.  He instantly makes the episode seem that much bigger, just by being in it, and he sells the material as few guest-stars could have.  Anyone else, that lost dimension is the difference between mediocre and great.

But there's a lot more working around him, too.  "Desert Crossing" is a rare opportunity to see old friends Archer and Trip on an adventure together.  For Trip, the experience ends up eerily similar to "Shuttlepod One," and with different interpersonal dynamics we get a different experience out of him, which I think works better for him.  ("Shuttlepod" works as well as it does because of Reed.) 

The episode also acknowledges the loose serialization of the series to this point.  Clancy's character references the events of "Detained" as the reason he's convinced Archer will be able to help him.  That's a great way to give further dimension to a story, something Enterprise was particularly good at.  A lot of serialized TV storytelling can begin to feel too insular, events blending together in a bad way so that it's just something that keeps happening.  Knowing how to link stories together is its own kind of skill.

The big ideas are terrorism and Starfleet noninterference policy.  Terrorism was a big thing in Next Generation, with memories of Irish unrest permeating episodes that never quite seemed capable of exploring the idea.  Bajorans had been terrorists in Deep Space Nine, and of course between them there was also the establishment of the Maquis.  Fans were actually upset that the Maquis in Voyager weren't rebellious enough.  I don't think they ever really managed to reassess that in the wake of 9/11.  Enterprise eventually tackled 9/11 (it launched literally in the shadow of the attacks) in its third season, but "Desert Crossing" is like a soft preview of the topic.  Archer decides that Clancy's terrorists, like the Bajorans, and even the Maquis, were probably right in their actions.  This isn't really to say terrorism itself is a justifiable tactic, but that there's always a need to assess the justice of a cause. 

Anyway, it's another example of Archer considering a Starfleet protocol of noninterference.  In the real world we see oppression in a country and it's probably hard to not condemn the oppression itself, but...what to do about it is usually a far more difficult matter.  What are you ultimately signing up for?  Are you willing to make the commitment?  How does it change you to become involved?  These are the kinds of questions Archer asks, and helps further explain the basis of the Prime Directive (previously explored in "Dear Doctor" under very different circumstances), one of the central tenets of franchise lore.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Exploring the concepts of terrorism and the Prime Directive.
• series - Loose serialization strikes again.
• character - Fine spotlight for Archer and Trip.
• essential - It's hard to describe an episode that deals with terrorism as "fun," but this is one of the most straight-up enjoyable experiences of the first season.

notable guest-stars:
Clancy Brown

Enterprise 1x23 "Fallen Hero"

rating: ***

the story: An embattled Vulcan ambassador requires rescuing.

what it's all about: Sometimes a bad situation stays bad because there's never a breakthrough in communications.  That's the thing about Enterprise.  It posits a relationship between humans and Vulcans that's a bad situation, because Vulcans find humans primitive.  Anyone who saw Star Trek: First Contact knows humans were certainly in a bad place when they first met.  It shouldn't be surprising.  Cochrane certainly wasn't a "great man" until history started making its judgments.  It definitely seemed to help, not only his achievement but his engine becoming so important; the Cochrane we glimpse in "Broken Bow" is a lot more civil than the one in First Contact. 

Anyway, so despite that warm fuzzy moment at the end of the movie when we see the Vulcan remove his hood, relations themselves weren't automatically warm and fuzzy.  That was merely a cathartic moment speaking for itself, after a tumultuous experience battling the Borg and making sure Cochrane's flight happened at all.  Not only does it attract the attention of an alien ship, but it's Vulcan, and it feels like the birth of the future in a snapshot.  But nothing's ever that simple.  Vulcans ultimately find these human upstarts primitive.  And I say again, is that really so surprising?  The only surprise is the depth and persistence, but again, a bad situation tends to stay bad until there's a breakthrough, and Enterprise is all about making breakthroughs.

"Fallen Hero" doesn't seem like it's a breakthrough story.  There are a lot of breakthrough stories in the first season, and subsequent ones.  But ultimately, it is.  It's the first time the crew encounters a friendly Vulcan, someone who will take them at face value rather than history or cultural development.  The crew helps the ambassador out of a sticky situation, and that does the trick.  It begins to thaw a sticky situation.  Ironically, it's very similar to a couple of experiences with Klingons earlier in the season, and yet the results are the complete opposite.  That should be telling.

Somewhat more intriguingly, however, is the plot itself, why the ambassador is in a tricky situation.  It's politics.  There was plenty of Klingon politics in Next Generation, and plenty of Bajoran and Cardassian politics in Deep Space Nine, but I think "Fallen Hero" still manages to mine new franchise territory.  The Vulcan ambassador's situation turns out to be that her reputation has purposely been smeared for political expediency.  The idea practically is politics, certainly politics as it's been practiced by Americans for over two hundred years.  It's ridiculously petty, but it seems to work every time.  This is an episode that seeks to point out the stupidity of it.  Later, "Judgment" sort of echoes this lesson, with a Klingon.  Irony.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Insight into the eventual thaw of human/Vulcan relations.
• series - Another example of how Archer makes bridges.
• character - The thrust of the episode is more the experience of it than a spotlight on Archer or T'Pol, or even the ambassador.
• essential - Intriguing insight into the pettiness of politics.

notable guest-stars:
Fionnula Flanagan
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)

Enterprise 1x22 "Vox Sola"

rating: **

the story: The crew struggles with an entity it can't communicate with.

what it's all about: "Vox Sola" is a long-delayed (relatively speaking) straight-on spotlight for Hoshi's linguistic skills, as she hones not just her personal abilities but the budding Universal Translator as well. 

That's all well and good, but it's actually kind of more relevant as the first of two appearances by the Kreetassans, both times featuring massive cultural misunderstandings that the crew never saw coming.  In the later "A Night in Sickbay" from the second season, the whole episode is dedicated to the incident, but in this one, it's a little more tangential to the plot, even if it's a featured element.  Different cultures have different customs, and interpret the customs of others in different ways.  In Next Generation, this concept was handled clumsily, downright stupidly, in "Justice," one of the worst episodes of the franchise. A lot of fans considers "Night in Sickbay" a similarly poor episode, but I never have.  "Vox Sola," meanwhile, seems like it can be lost in so much goo, stuff that dominates the visual aspect of the episode, the amorphous representation of the lifeform Hoshi must scramble to understand.  But it's much better understood for what it does around the goo, which admittedly has sometimes been a problem in Star Trek.  Once you establish a memorable element, for good or ill, the episode tends to be dominated by it.  In this instance it would be a considerable mistake.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Seems like a fairly standard episode.
• series - But it's not.  it's actually significant for a later episode.
• character - Hoshi gets a mild spotlight compared to her more sensational appearance earlier in "Fight or Flight."
• essential - The Kreetassans are more relevant in their next appearance.

notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong

Enterprise 1x21 "Detained"

rating: ****

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

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

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

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

criteria analysis:

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

notable guest-stars:
Dean Stockwell
Christopher Shea

Enterprise 1x20 "Oasis"

rating: **

the story: The crew encounters an apparently haunted ship.

what it's all about: Like "Acquisition" immediately preceding it (Voyager's Ethan Phillips), "Oasis" features the novelty of a previous series main cast member appearing in an entirely unrelated role.  This time it's Deep Space Nine's Rene Auberjonois, who previously embodied shapeshifting Odo.  Fans had a hard time appreciating this fact on original broadcast, as he happens to be featured in an episode that's very similar to one Odo himself previously experienced ("Shadowplay").  Yet it's also worth noting that even then, the template of an isolated survivor living in an artificial setting had been done before even that, in Next Generation's "The Survivors."  And if we want to be really technical, that's the basis of the very first episode ever produced in the franchise, "The Cage," a pilot that was scrapped and later repackaged as the two-part "The Menagerie."  So the story has considerable pedigree.

The question is, does "Oasis" do anything significantly different?  Well, it can be argued that every time the story's been told, it's been told differently.  "The Menagerie" retold Pike's experiences so that he could reclaim a semblance of a normal life after a horribly debilitating injury.  "Survivors" was about a lonely alien who regretted the actions he took on the attackers of his colony, and the wife he resurrects to accompany him.  "Shadowplay" was about a similarly isolated man who simply wanted to have village life around him again.  "Oasis" is about a father trying to give his daughter a normal life.  Each time the premise is depicted as a mystery.  "Menagerie" is presented as a Spock story, his complicity in Pike's efforts to return to the planet where he might find sanctuary.  Only "Shadowplay" has similar character-specific content: it's a rare instance of a soft look at Odo, who otherwise usually puts up massive barriers around himself.  His relationship with a little girl is actually the central element of the story.

Which makes it appropriate that Auberjonois is once again playing someone protecting a girl.  The premise happens to lightly touch on the nature of the young Starfleet mission, how the crew learns about the space around them, and how that reflects their fears.  Voyager similarly produced scores of episodes that handled its crew's isolation and hope for a shortcut home, but usually had more direct associations being made.  In "Oasis" it's mainly the crew experiencing the mystery, including the manner in which the ghost ship is discovered, from a visitor, which calls to mind material from earlier and later episodes ("Cold Front," "Cogenitor").

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Follows a rich tradition of mysteries surrounding inexplicable communities.
• series - Touches on the crew's habit of learning things.
• character - Focuses mainly on a guest character's arc.
• essential - Its appeal seems diminished rather than enhanced by the story's history.

notable guest-stars:
Rene Auberjonois
Tom Bergeron

Enterprise 1x19 "Acquisition"

rating: ****

the story: The Ferengi unofficially make first contact with Starfleet.

what it's all about: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: fans had kittens about yet another thing Enterprise "wasn't supposed to do."  And they weren't particularly amused about how "Acquisition" skirts canon, anymore than they were the next season when it was done with the Borg, too.  But those fans can seriously stuff it.  "Acquisition" is above and beyond anything else one of the best Ferengi episodes of the franchise.  Maybe the best.  Or most accessible anyway.

Those same fans, mind you, would call that faint praise.  Part of the problem is that the Ferengi have a bad reputation.  Originally conceived as a major new menace in the first season of Next Generation, they instead came off as goofy wannabes.  While that series revised its depiction of Ferengi over the years, Deep Space Nine actually included one in its main cast, the bartender Quark, not to mention a whole host of recurring Ferengi around him.  Now, Deep Space Nine is generally regarded, at least by a cult-within-the-cult, as the best Star Trek series.  But even so, it became plagued, so these fans suggested, by "Ferengi episodes," an epitaph that means anytime an episode revolved around a Ferengi, any Ferengi, all Ferengi...it was probably regrettable.

Anyway, Voyager managed to do a few Ferengi episodes, too, mind you, despite featuring a crew flung far from home.  I can only assume the amusement level of the fans.  But let's move along.

"Acquisition" features a pack of Ferengi who aren't trying to be warriors or merchants but...pirates.  It's really the first time they're ever depicted this way, and it's genius.  Of course it fits into their wheelhouse, perfectly.  And not only is the depiction perfect but the real treat is that the three Ferengi attempting to rob the Enterprise are all played by familiar faces (...underneath the rubber): Jeffrey Combs, Ethan Phillips, and Clint Howard.  Combs had played a Ferengi before, the recurring IRS figure Brunt in Deep Space Nine, Quark's nemesis.  Phillips, better known as Voyager's Neelix, had masqueraded as one ("False Profits," from that series, naturally).  Howard, meanwhile, subsequently became the first actor to appear in every era of the TV franchise when he showed up in Discovery.  He's a truly peculiar Star Trek institution.

Of them, it's Combs who's the lead, and like Quark's brother Rom, he's not especially happy trying to be a typical Ferengi.  Since it's Combs, who also plays Shran in the series, it's a strong performance, and he gets to play opposite Archer (as he does in Shran's blue makeup, too), and once again draws out some of Scott Bakula's strongest Enterprise material. 

Trip's running around, too, in a Die Hard scenario, so it's effectively a three-man drama.  And the thing about it?  In retrospect?  It's kind of a warm-up for the series finale, "These Are the Voyages...," in which another caper involving Archer, Trip, and some invading aliens ends...differently. 

Plus there's some classic comedy, because it's a Ferengi episode, and there's got to be comedy, too.  Eventually Archer admits they do have the vault the Ferengi are looking for.  But really, it's just their reaction to Porthos.  Honestly, the importance of Archer's beagle can't be overstated in the series.  He's not just a vague reference in JJ Abrams' later film reboot!

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Arguably the most accessible Ferengi appearance of the whole franchise.
• series - Foreshadows the final episode.
• character - Archer, Trip, Jeffrey Combs...you pick.
• essential - If you can get past your reservations about whether this should happen, you'll discover its immense pleasures.

notable guest-stars:
Jeffrey Combs
Ethan Phillips
Clint Howard

Enterprise 1x18 "Rogue Planet"

rating: *

the story: The crew encounters a party of hunters who are unwittingly tracking sentient prey.

what it's all about: In hindsight, "Rogue Planet" feels like a leftover Hirogen script from Voyager.  Just look at that summary...!  Otherwise it's one of those historical ironies of the later franchise: an episodic adventure in an era when that was no longer satisfying in and of itself.

But it is worth watching of its own accord.  "Planet" amounts to an allegory of contemporary concerns.  As fewer people hunt for a living, or even for sport, the very notion of it begins to seem barbaric, especially as more people identify as vegetarians or outright vegans.  Enterprise doesn't go so far as to sympathize with all that so far as to acknowledge it as a growing trend.  Sometimes such bare acknowledgment can seem somewhat disastrous (Next Generation's "Forces of Nature"), but here it's merely innocuous.  We get to see Archer once again loosely fitting the Kirk mold of ladies man, a role Trip would fill later in the series, as had already been suggested in "Unexpected."  And on the whole, it's another light exploration of the crew's learning curve, and how they experience this sort of thing as newcomers to the Starfleet mission overall.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Light allegorical work concerning modern-day hunting.
• series - Not particularly informative.
• character - Light work here, too.
• essential - Not especially.

notable guest-stars:
Eric Pierpont

Enterprise 1x17 "Fusion"

rating: ****

the story: "Vulcans without logic" visit the ship, bringing with them an ancient, abandoned custom: the mind meld.

what it's all about: "Fusion," as my brief summary above suggests, features one more significant deviation Enterprise chose to feature from classic depictions of Vulcans.  In fact, it may be considered the most important of them.  Vulcans who don't mind meld?  Whoa!

That the series depicted Vulcans in a less than flattering light was always a bone of contention among fans.  They also didn't like the thought that Vulcans and mind melds were not somehow intrinsically synonymous, that this too would be added to the things Enterprise sought to establish about the familiar Star Trek mythos.  "Fusion" posits that mind melds had been abandoned, ending up practiced only by fringe members of society.  T'Pol actively shuns the ship's visitors because of it, initially, until Archer insists.  Then her experience ends up with a metaphorical rape.  Aside from Shinzon and Troi in Star Trek Nemesis, this is a topic that's never really been explored in the franchise, and that alone makes the episode noteworthy.

That the whole incident is followed up next season with "Stigma" also makes it a part of the show's informal serialization, besides the fact that it of course begins to reconcile the differences between the classic depiction of Vulcans and how they appear in Enterprise; these are things that further develop in the fourth season. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Exploring the famous Vulcan mind meld, and how it wasn't always practiced openly.
• series - Crucial development in the overall Enterprise arc.
• character - T'Pol reaches a critical moment in that arc.
• essential - A massive chipping away at the mythology surrounding the Vulcans, and therefore making them more believable.

notable guest-stars:
Robert Pine
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)

Enterprise 1x16 "Shuttlepod One"

rating: ****

the story: Reed and Trip end up marooned together in a shuttlepod, convinced either that Enterprise has been destroyed, or they won't survive long enough to be rescued.

what it's all about: "Shuttlepod One" has a few antecedents. The more famous of the two I'll mention is the original series classic "Galileo Seven," in which Spock is similarly marooned with some bigoted colleagues.  But perhaps more to the point, Deep Space Nine's "Armageddon Game" features Bashir and O'Brien finally putting aside animosity toward each other that had existed since the start of the series, as they struggle to survive.  Reed and Trip don't have as much history as Bashir and O'Brien at this point (theirs happened in the second season, for one), and regardless of my interest in Enterprise, they will probably never be as famous or beloved as Spock.  What they have going for them instead is a singular, spectacular experience, regardless of how many times the scenario has happened before.

Reed had previously gotten a little character work in during the events of "Silent Enemy."  Trip, meanwhile, had been featured as one of Enterprise's most important characters since the start.  The contrast between Trip's extrovert nature and Reed's introvertedness is itself a classic template, Odd Couple style.  How far can they push each other?  How desperate will their situation become?  Will they put aside their differences, at last?

Trip actually has another survival experience later in the season, "Desert Crossing," with someone he is friends with, Captain Archer.  The results are completely different.  In "Crossing" he gets to be the vulnerable one.  Of course in "Shuttlepod" it's Reed.  The first regular episode of the series, "Fight or Flight," had attempted to paint Hoshi as the most neurotic main character, but she has nothing on Reed.  A second season episode (one of my favorites), "A Night in Sickbay," draws on the kind of delusions Reed experiences in "Shuttlepod," and this is a series where this is no coincidence. 

So the joy of the episode is watching Reed and Trip antagonize each other.  That's it!  But they have so much time, as it's really most of the episode with minimal subplot aboard the ship, that it either works or it doesn't.  It works.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Drawing on a tradition of characters antagonizing each other for a whole episode.
• series - It draws you further into Enterprise by revealing the true strengths, and weaknesses, of two main characters.
• character - Ah, again, Reed and trip.
• essential - It's a must-see character moment.

Enterprise 1x15 "Shadows of P'Jem"

rating: ****

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

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

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

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

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

criteria analysis:

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

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

Enterprise 1x14 "Sleeping Dogs"

rating: ***

the story: The crew rescues the crew of a Klingon ship.

what it's all about: To this point, Enterprise had cautiously spent most of its time with unknown aliens, even at times so unknown they're never even identified.  The one major instance of deviating from this strategy, "The Andorian Incident," might be said to have basically reintroduced aliens who had all but fit that type anyway.  "Sleeping Dogs" features Klingons.  It's their second appearance in a regular episode, after having been a featured element of the pilot ("Broken Bow"), although in "Unexpected" they were more of a bonus element.  Aside from Vulcans, there are no other aliens more identified with the Star Trek franchise than Klingons.  Having them appear three times this soon, and for all three appearances to be completely different, is a welcome development for a prequel series, especially one that wisely sought to use them early as a sign of early Starfleet development.  The Klingon problem, as it were, is as defining element as the Klingons themselves.  They were the earliest and most enduring threat to peace and stability. 

Yet in all three appearances, including this one, war is not really the topic.  All three times Archer is able to talk himself out of things spiraling out of control.  In the second season, he runs out of luck, but all this material leading up to that feels like the first steps of Enterprise serialization, other than the Temporal Cold War; it's the most obvious material that is repeatedly referenced, a continuing piece of the narrative.

And yeah, it's pretty interesting how they manage to do this story three times.  By this point, it now made sense why all those previous crises where the crew felt threatened never involved the Klingons.  This was the beginning of a relationship, a multifaceted one throughout franchise lore.  And the Vulcans did tell Starfleet about Klingons.  All of this is to say, the crew had been tested, and so "Sleeping Dogs" is its first big calculated risk, and in some ways the start of the next leg of the journey.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Klingons!
• series - The third Enterprise appearance!
• character - Archer finds these encounters incredibly personal, but that comes later.
• essential - At the moment he's feeling pretty damn cocky, because so far he keeps making all the right decisions.

notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong

Enterprise 1x13 "Dear Doctor"

rating: ****

the story: The crew faces a difficult moral dilemma when they encounter two competing species on an alien world with a medical crisis pitting their futures against each other.

what it's all about: "Dear Doctor" is the first season episode generally agreed by fans to be the first great episode of the series.  It's another foundation episode, in that it's technically about setting up one of the basic elements later taken for granted in the franchise, the Prime Directive, and yet for the first time it feels not only completely natural, but incredibly compelling.

A lot of that is down to Phlox.  As one of two aliens in the crew, and out of the two the one from a race created for Enterprise, so with infinitely more to account for, Phlox had a lot to prove.  If Denobulans themselves never quite seemed to become significant (they're depicted from the start as ready allies of humans, so there isn't even an arc for that), Phlox quickly earned his place as one of the cornerstones of the series.  Enterprise had been from the start posited as Star Trek essentially explaining itself, so that even less could be taken for granted than its predecessor, Voyager, whose crew may have been cut off from home but at least knew what Starfleet's mission was, even 70,000 lightyears away.  This meant that every decision was a hard one.  None were ever as difficult, maybe, as this one.

Phlox unexpectedly becomes the voice of pragmatism.  In the pilot, he famously beams at Archer while declaring optimism to be the order of the day, and yet in "Dear Doctor," he faces a different path entirely.  The Prime Directive is a tricky concept.  Practically, it represents another relic of the Cold War, the growing reluctance on the part of war-weary Americans to interfere in developing countries.  It might also be seen as a metaphor about UFO culture, that ever-present doubt as to whether or not we've been visited by aliens.  Certainly with no definitive proof, we have to assume either that aliens don't exist, or they haven't yet made their presence known.  Why?  Because we aren't ready.  That's what Vulcans announced, right from the start, even as explained in Star Trek: First Contact, and then all the more emphatically in Enterprise.  But what does that look like when applied to someone else?  Kirk never seemed to mind bending the rules, and yet the rules existed.  This is why.

It's told in epistolary format, like two standout Deep Space Nine episodes before it, "Whispers" and "In the Pale Moonlight," as well as Next Generation's "Data's Day."  One almost wonders why it isn't done more often, if the results tend to turn out so well.  Phlox is composing a letter to a friend, his human counterpart in the interspecies medical exchange program, whom we actually get to meet in the fourth season ("Cold Station 12"), and the dominance of Phlox's presence in the episode reiterates not only his importance to its story but in the series as a whole.  He becomes, halfway through the season, one of Enterprise's defining assets. 

What makes the proceedings all the more remarkable is that the series produces a kind of answer to it in the third season, "Similitude," and that one's a classic, too.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A study of the concept of the Prime Directive.
• series - One of the key moments of learning how some of the classic Star Trek elements came about.
• character - Phlox steps into the spotlight.
• essential - Actually, he downright commands it.

notable guest-stars:
Kellie Waymire (Cutler)

Enterprise 1x12 "Silent Enemy"

rating: ***

the story: The crew shore up their defenses in response to repeated assaults from an unknown enemy.

what it's all about: One of the things modern serialized TV storytelling has sort of ingrained in viewers is the need for everything to be explained.  Some fans won't tolerate this being violated at all.  That makes a franchise like Star Trek, which has traditionally featured aliens-of-the-week for most episodes, a somewhat problematic entity.  "Silent Enemy," which is to say, is an episode that features "an unknown enemy" that remains unknown for the duration of the series.  Regardless of how well it works in the context of the episode, this is a kind of automatic mark against it, even if episodic storytelling remains a valid style and some things can remain mysteries.

Now, these unknown aliens mostly serve as further impetus for the crew to realize the perils of deep space exploration, such as Starfleet hadn't yet discovered, although certainly spacefaring pioneers like the Boomers would've encountered such difficulties as a matter of course.  What makes this different is that Starfleet, thanks to the Vulcans, has been a reluctant organization, quick to doubt itself, fall back and regroup, as the crew considers during this experience.  In a lot of ways, "Silent Enemy" isn't terribly different from "Fight or Flight," the first regular episode of the series, except now the crew isn't just wondering whether or not its mission is a good idea, but whether or not it's actually deadly.  It's another precursor moment, in some ways, to the Xindi arc of the third season, when the stakes are raised considerably.

Of course, it's also an excuse to push Reed into the spotlight.  The episode tracks him on two fronts, professionally and personally.  If Hoshi in "Fight or Flight" was a bundle of nerves, Reed here is presented in an impenetrable cloud.  The crew's efforts in getting to know him better are stymied repeatedly.  This is an insanely private guy!  Reserved doesn't really begin to cover it.  And although this character work ultimately pails in comparison to the later "Shuttlepod One," we also see why he was probably a good recruit for Section 31, a fact we don't learn until the fourth season!  Some fans scoffed at such a late revelation, but it's definitely within character, as this episode makes clear. 

And yeah, it's another excuse to help the crew develop some of the stuff we know from later in the franchise, and maybe that was an overplayed element of the series, in the first season, but when an episode explains exactly why it's doing something, it's easier to accept.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - This is kind of Enterprise-specific, all told.
• series - It's another step in the crew's development.
• character - The first real exploration of Reed.
• essential - In hindsight, perhaps even more revealing than it seems.

Enterprise 1x11 "Cold Front"

rating: ****

the story: Archer is confronted by rival agents in the Temporal Cold War.

what it's all about: The Temporal Cold War proved to be controversial among fans.  They thought it was poor compensation for having a prequel series that looked backward instead of ahead.  And yet it was an obvious extension of the increasingly sophisticated view of time travel in the franchise, building on the Department of Temporal Investigations (Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations") and a future Starfleet that actually policed time travel (Voyager's Captain Braxton, as seen in "Future's End" and "Relativity").  In "Cold Front" we meet Daniels, who comes later still than Braxton, and becomes the second most important figure we meet in the arc, other than Silik, who debuted in the pilot, and the forever-mysterious "Future Guy," Silik's shadowy boss. 

"Cold Front," I always thought, was actually the best Temporal Cold War episode.  Rather than attempt a major event, it merely plays up the "cold war" aspect, in which agents are constantly working against each other, as happened between operatives of the United States and Soviet Union.  It's a spy story, essentially.  It casts the arc back to the origins of the franchise, when the real world cold war was running hottest, and adversarial aliens like the Klingons and Romulans earned their enduring place in Star Trek lore, having been cast in the roles of the Chinese and Russians, the two biggest communist threats. 

Which means Daniels and Silik are actually the best reasons to enjoy the episode, not only for their own sake, but how they play off Archer.  And actually, this is the best Archer showcase of the series to this point, and as with his earlier foreshadowing in "The Andorian Incident," proves that his real importance will be his ability to pivot humans between opposing forces, as would develop in the fourth season, the birth of the Federation. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A powerful argument in favor of the Temporal Cold War as an extension of classic Star Trek storytelling.
• series - An explanation for the stakes of a signature Enterprise arc.
• character - The introduction of Daniels, a key player in the arc.
• essential - It not only sells the concept, but it helps contextualize it, once you realize what it's really about.

notable guest-stars:
Matt Winston (Daniels)
John Fleck (Silik)

Enterprise 1x10 "Fortunate Son"

rating: ***

the story: The crew responds to a Boomer freighter emergency.

what it's all about: Mayweather was quickly identified as the weakest character of the series, and he never really recovered from that perception.  According to the structure set up for Enterprise, it deviated from the practice of the three series before it, returning to the original series mold of focusing on three core characters and filling in around them with the rest of the main cast as time permitted.  Now, in the grand scheme of the series, Mayweather certainly did prove to have the least amount of material; like Chakotay before him in Voyager, the more fans saw him as an afterthought, the more he was treated as such.  Perception became reality.  And yet, Mayweather came bursting with potential, and "Fortunate Son" was a readymade vehicle for him, something few of the other characters could claim.

The idea of the Boomers was an Enterprise concept, filling in the void of early human space travel, what it was like before Starfleet came to dominate the scene.  The series was all about the time just before Starfleet accomplished that, and so it was a wonderful opportunity to see what it was like, and Boomers were the intrepid folk making a living in space ahead of the rest of humanity.  Mayweather had been a Boomer before he joined Starfleet.  He provided a direct link to the crisis in the episode. 

In a way, the episode is a kind of metaphor about Archer's crew, and it foreshadows the third season, where Archer found himself faced with this very kind of situation, where it was suddenly necessary to make tough judgment calls in the face of dire opposition.  If the Boomers are merely facing piratical Nausicaans (fans of Next Generation's "Tapestry" will love seeing them again), Archer would face far worse.  A lot of what Enterprise tried to accomplish was explaining why Starfleet ended up operating the way it did in later series.  Sometimes it was fairly obvious, sometimes it was more like this.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Besides the Nausicaans, the situation itself is reminiscent of other episodes, such as Janeway's "Equinox" experience in Voyager.
• series - A big highlight of Enterprise-specific mythology in the Boomers.
• character - Mayweather in a rare spotlight!
• essential - He'd have to wait until next season to reunite with Boomers he actually knew (his family).

notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)

Enterprise 1x9 "Civilization"

rating: **

the story: An away team discovers meddling aliens in a developing society.

what it's all about: "Civilization" is essentially the first regular episode of the series.  It features a classic-style mission and even features Archer in a kind of Kirk role where he becomes involved with a local woman.  It doesn't really linger, as previous episodes had, on the novelty of the deep space experience.  It's just the crew discovering things on an alien world, in an alien, well, civilization.

And...that's about it, really.  There's a neat bit of franchise continuity, in that the interloping aliens the crew encounters are Malurians, a species later wiped out by Nomad in "The Changeling" (the original series episode that helped form the basis of Star Trek: The Motion Picture).  The role they play in "Civilization" is not dissimilar to the kind of competing role the Klingons ended to occupy, not only in the original series but later in Enterprise itself ("Marauders"), although they choose to hide their actions and even their scaly appearance (we only catch a glimpse).  This kind of sneaking around actually makes them similar to the Romulans, who would also show up later in the series, so it's almost like foreshadowing.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - An episode that will feel completely normal to longtime fans.
• series - Our first chance to see the crew function on a routine basis.
• character - Aside from Archer channeling Kirk, not a lot of distinctive material here.
• essential - Not particularly.  Nothing hugely significant happens here.

notable guest-stars:
Wade Williams

Enterprise 1x8 "Breaking the Ice"

rating: ***

the story: The crew is uncomfortable about a Vulcan ship lingering nearby.

what it's all about: There are some episodes that just can't easily be summarized.  Take this one.  Please!  Because you can read my pithy attempt and not get what it's about at all, although if you take it to mean it's an episode that at least explores the tension between early Starfleet and Vulcans as posited by Enterprise, you'd get a good start.  Because it is that, but it's a lot more, too.  What it is, mostly, is the series beginning to find its sea legs.

The funny thing about Enterprise is that it had learned from Deep Space Nine, and Voyager too.  Deep Space Nine found its greatest narrative strength in deliberate, obvious serialized storytelling, meaning that a lot of times, what you saw in one episode was the result of things that had happened in another episode.  It wasn't quite the serialized storytelling that emerged in later TV programming, where literally the story continues in every episode, sometimes for a whole season, sometimes a whole series, but it was pretty close, at least in comparison to the rest of the franchise.  Voyager was more episodic, but it had serialized storytelling, which was in large part the continued effect of being stranded far from home.  With Enterprise, following an early Starfleet crew meant following the Voyager model, but there was also a persistent attempt throughout the series to keep even episodic material relevant to these experiences.  Sometimes it looked like this, very much the model of a day-in-the-life kind of episode Next Generation loved doing every now and then ("Data's Day" being the most famous example).  One of the highlights of "Breaking the Ice" is a simple presentation by the crew to a classroom back on Earth, and the highlight of that is a repurposing of the early Enterprise attempt to make Trip feel as awkward as possible.  ("A poop question, sir?")  Here you can understand completely why he's feeling that way, unlike "Unexpected" a few episodes earlier.  And he gets even better character material later in the episode, but more on that in a little bit.

It's worth getting back to the Vulcans, first.  The question of how Enterprise would handle its tricky depiction of their relationship with humans had been implanted into the storytelling from the very start.  Some fans thoughts the series got Vulcans flat wrong.  "Breaking the Ice" is a hugely amusing challenge to that assumption.  Here Archer is confronted with a dinner with a Vulcan counterpart, in which the Vulcan is both rude and distant at the same time.  He sees no reason to acknowledge any of Archer's attempts at conversation.  The actor playing him doesn't need to do much of anything to convey the hilarity of the moment, which is exactly what you would expect from a Vulcan.  The franchise had never seen anything like this, and it was absolutely perfect.  Only Enterprise with its unique perspective could've pulled it off. 

Anyway, speaking of awkward Vulcan moments, this is the official start of Trip and T'Pol's relationship.  Some might assume that its roots were planted in the third season, but nope, it's here.  It's also where we first learn of T'Pol's arranged marriage.  Vulcan arranged marriages had a dramatic debut in the classic "Amok Time" from the original series, but that was absolutely an episodic experience, once referenced and never heard about again; Spock ends up completely free of his obligations.  T'Pol's matter continues to haunt her into the fourth season!  It's Trip's inadvertently learning about it that creates the link between them, forget any preceding material, which may have suggested their chemistry but established nothing else.  This begins arguably the most important arc of the series, and certainly the most important character arcs of it. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Casual fans will probably miss the significance of what it does with the Vulcans.
• series - Even though it sums up perfectly what they are like in Enterprise.
• character - A seemingly casual subplot involving T'Pol and Trip...
• essential - Ends up defining them for the rest of the series.  So, pretty important.

Enterprise 1x7 "The Andorian Incident"

rating: ****

the story: The crew finds itself in the middle of a conflict between Vulcans and Andorians.

what it's all about: If the first handful of Enterprise episodes seemed tentative, "The Andorian Incident" kicked the door down.  It brought back in sensational fashion aliens who'd appeared in the original series ("Journey to Babel"), unique in their appearance, and yet only glimpsed in the four series and nine films that followed.  Even if this had been a one-off appearance (and it certainly wasn't), "Incident" would still have been a monumental moment.

But let's put aside the Andorians for a moment.  It's the Vulcans who really got the initial benefit from the episode.  The pilot of the series introduced the premise that humans and Vulcans were at odds, a shocking development for fans accustomed to thinking of them as steady allies, that reassuring image of Kirk and Spock as best friends among the most famous legacies of the franchise.  Yet the Vulcans of Enterprise were suspicious of humans, distrustful of their maturity.  But what about the Vulcans themselves?  This was the first opportunity to see them at their own level.  We discover that they are actually on the defensive, more scared of their Andorian neighbors than concerned about humans.  In fact, "Incident" might be said to explain why Vulcans behave toward humans they way they do in Enterprise, because they're afraid they've found another Andorian problem.

All of this is to say, the Andorians are actually good guys in this episode.  Even if you need to trace back from what happens after this episode, the relationship that develops between Archer and Shran and how it helps build the foundation of the Federation, you can see that for yourself.  If "Incident" itself seems to have antagonistic Andorians, it's only because they're trying to expose Vulcan deceit, and Archer gets caught in the middle.  (And even there, you can see the seeds of the future, where the series posits humans as gaining their intergalactic significance mostly for helping solve conflicts like this between the more established players, including the Tellarites.)

It's also well worth talking about Shran himself.  Jeffrey Combs, the actor who plays him, had already had two recurring roles in Deep Space Nine, the Ferengi Brunt and the Vorta Weyoun.  He gave two different performances in those roles, and he produced a third one, a far more volatile one, for Shran, and he gave new energy to Enterprise itself through it.  Without him the Andorians would still have been a notable appearance for the series, but even on his credibility alone he gave them additional meaning, and by portraying Shran with enthusiasm he made the character seem all the more important.  Simply put, he made a big moment bigger, and in a lot of ways he singlehandedly gave the series its impetus to break out into more serialized storytelling, using him as a template in its third and fourth seasons. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Reclaiming Andorians as signature Star Trek aliens.
• series - And ensuring their significance to Enterprise itself.
• character - The introduction of Shran, who would become a defining recurring character.
• essential - In a lot of ways, a more important episode than even "Broken Bow" in the early series.

notable guest-stars:
Jeffrey Combs (Shran)