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 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 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 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 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 1x1/1x2 "Broken Bow"

rating: ****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

criteria analysis:

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

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

Voyager 7x25/7x26 "Endgame"

rating: ****

the story: The crew faces one last great shortcut home...but it goes through the Borg and...Admiral Janeway?

what it's all about: Like the rest of the series, Voyager's final episode proved controversial, difficult to like among fans.  Some of them merely singled out parallel elements from Next Generation's finale (a new relationship: Chakotay and Seven/Worf and Troi; a degenerative illness: Tuvok/Picard; a time travel element, different time periods), and thought it merely derivative.  Some were actually upset they didn't get to see just a little more, the crew reuniting with family.  Some were, as they'd been since the third season, upset that the series was still pretending it had something to say about the Borg.  And some still just didn't like Janeway, much less two of them.

To which I say: humbug.  It's surprising, really, how many of Star Trek fan complaints amount to so much humbug, a stubborn insistence to be grumpy, a trend that has grown more and more prevalent among fan cultures of any extraction in recent years, and so Voyager ought to celebrate being at the vanguard of such a movement, no matter how dubious the honor.

I say humbug, too, because this is a perfect ending to the series.  It is a parallel, to the first episode of Voyager.  Janeway has to make a difficult decision that will determine when they get home.  In "Caretaker," she makes a principled stand, a correctly Starfleet one, that strands her ship seventy thousand lightyears from home, so that if it took the full length of time none of the crew would be alive to actually reach it, that it would end up being a generational journey.  By the end of the series, two children had been born into the crew, Naomi Wildman and Miral Paris, whose birth actually occurs in "Endgame."  Throughout the series, Janeway had also struggled with that original decision, notably in "The 37s" and "Night." 

"Endgame" is a chance to revisit it, and once and for all determine whether she made the right call.  But she has help this time.  Namely, herself.  Future Janeway, or as she's known Admiral Janeway, has actually once and for decided she made the wrong one.  Ultimately, one of them has to pay the price.  It might seem cheap for it to be Admiral Janeway, since her timeline ends up being erased anyway, but this is a franchise that has long celebrated such sacrifices, most memorably in Deep Space Nine's "The Visitor," and even in Voyager's own "Timeless," which "Endgame" also parallels and serves as a spiritual sequel.  In that one, it's an older Harry Kim who goes back to fix things, and it's the best Harry appearance of the series.  While Janeway can't quite claim that honor with "Endgame," it's still among her strongest episodes, precisely because it does force her to decide, once and for all, if she was right in "Caretaker."  It's a bold call to say she thinks, at least, that she wasn't.  But she also has an opportunity she didn't then, the classic "have your cake and eat it, too," which results in a dramatically memorable trip home in a metaphorical belly of the whale, a Borg cube that the ship quickly emerges from...in home territory at last.

For a series that long chased truly cinematic moments, knowing like Deep Space Nine before it that there were likely no movies in its future, it's a truly achieved objective.  Getting Alice Krige to reprise the Borg Queen one last time, regardless of whether or not it's a final defeat of the Borg, at least gives the series another long-held objective of giving Janeway a defining win over the Collective, building on everything that had come before it. 

All that and more is why I love "Endgame," and the series around it.  It's a strong final episode, arguably the most appropriate one of the whole franchise, accomplishing in grand fashion what might have been inevitable, but never guaranteed to be so memorable. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A series finale that completes the story exactly as expected but still manages to surprise.  In that sense, totally unique in Star Trek lore.
• series - Parallels the very first episode in a deliberate fashion.
• character - Allows Janeway to finish an argument she's had with herself since the beginning.
• essential - To see how the crew gets home, especially that spectacular final sequence, really has to be seen to be believed.

notable guest-stars:
Kate Mulgrew (Admiral Janeway)
Ethan Phillips (Neelix)
Manu Intiraymi (Icheb)
Richard Herd (Admiral Paris)
Dwight Schultz (Barclay)
Alice Krige (Borg Queen)
Vaughn Armstrong

Voyager 7x10 "Flesh and Blood, Part 2"

rating: ****

the story: Holograms fight for the right to exist on their own terms.

what it's all about: In the highly charged atmosphere of 2017, it's difficult to find anything that attempts to unite disparate perspectives, and yet that's Star Trek at its most ideal.  In the original series, Kirk routinely broke the rules to give alien societies a fighting chance against oppression.  Somewhere along the way, that instinct was muted, but Next Generation's "The Measure of a Man" introduced an intriguing new way to express it: via the individual, the android Data.  Voyager's holographic Doctor was a chance to broaden that expression, and "Flesh and Blood" is one of its finest attempts to explore it.

The short-hand of using holograms who look like familiar aliens, notably Bajorans and Cardassians, prominent in Deep Space Nine, calls to mind how in that series the Founders, a race of changelings, eventually created the Dominion as a means of protecting itself from a galaxy that didn't seem to understand them.  The holograms in "Flesh and Blood" are well on their way to such a destiny, but fate intervenes.  The crew of Voyager was inadvertently responsible for this situation when it gave the Hirogen these holograms to hunt.  The Hirogen greatly enhanced these holograms, to the point where things got out of hand, and suddenly these holograms were considering themselves individuals.

With a lot of additional dilemmas on their hands.  Next Generation had, in some ways, used the Borg to further explore its concept of artificial life ("Descent" helped make that clear), which Voyager itself certainly continued.  The idea of individuality proved to be a concept far more difficult to comprehend for the likes of Seven and the Doctor than anyone could have anticipated.  Seven's journey is clear enough, but the Doctor's is complicated by the fact that it was always too easy to remember that in some respects he was made up of subroutines and programming, and that if he had become something other than all that, it was something he'd earned rather than been given.  Or so it was sometimes concluded.  But what if it's a right of all life, biological or artificial?  Other holograms find it very much worth fighting for.

In the end, it's not really about who's right or who's wrong, which is a sign of the maturity of the franchise at this point, and that's as much as any other reason why "Flesh and Blood" is a pivotal moment in Voyager and Star Trek as a whole.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Grapples some big ideas, in fine tradition.
• series - The final stop before the Doctor reaches his final catharsis in "Author, Author."
• character - Well, so it's significant for the Doctor.
• essential - Seems like it's not that important.  But it kind of is.

notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong

Voyager 7x9 "Flesh and Blood, Part 1"

rating: ****

the story: The crew discover that the Hirogens have underestimated the holographic prey they have them in "The Killing Game."

what it's all about: An unlikely sequel leads to the epic hologram war the series finally gets around to after spending so much of its run exploring the varying ways holograms can exist and whether or not it affects the Doctor's status.

"The Killing Game" was a two-part episode in the fourth season where the Hirogen were ultimately pacified by being given seemingly the perfect solution to a species just looking for a good hunt.  "Flesh and Blood" exposes that to have been wishful thinking at best.  It's like "Space Seed" succeeded by Wrath of Khan, where Kirk learns disposing of the genetic superman on his own planet didn't somehow solve everything.  The next time the franchise attempted such a solution, Next Generation's "Ship in a Bottle," in which the brilliant Moriarty (who is a hologram, by the way) is pacified by a false solution to his yearning for freedom.  Ironically, "Ship" itself was a continuation of a similar conclusion to his first appearance, "Elementary, Dear Data."  So clearly some problems will always have complicated results.

The Doctor is once again confronted by a dilemma that forces him to argue for the rights of his people, regardless of whether or not they're behaving themselves (which itself is a freedom of speech analogy relevant to 2017) as he finds himself caught in the middle of the crew trying to help the Hirogen and the holograms striving for their own freedom.

Since this is a two-part episode, I'll refrain from drawing conclusions as to who's right in all this.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Shares in the tradition of surprising follow-ups to previous solutions.
• series - A sequel to "The Killing Game."
• character - The Doctor reaches an epic turning point in the fight for the rights of holograms.
• essential - If Data and Lore had "Descent," then it's fair to say this is the Doctor's version, and it's got more on its mind.

notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong

Voyager 1x7 "Eye of the Needle"

rating: ***

the story: The crew finds a wormhole that allows them to contact the Alpha Quadrant, but it's a Romulan on the other side...

what it's all about: "Eye of the Needle" is an incredibly clever way to introduce the difficulties of finding shortcuts home (three episodes later, "Prime Factors" hits the mark more squarely), but it's almost more about the Romulan played by Vaughn Armstrong than the crew he has the unexpected opportunity to encounter.

The story is almost too clever by half.  On the one hand it explains why the seventh hour of the series doesn't present the opportunity it seems to, revealing how the Romulan is actually decades in the past (Deep Space Nine's "The Sound of Her Voice" uses a similar plot device more artfully), but the reasoning behind why this isn't as helpful as it seems is shoddy at best, one I don't believe for a minute anyone in that crew would've taken seriously (again, "Prime Factors" proves how even a slim chance will cause considerable divisions among them).

So it's necessary to take the proceedings at face value, and on that level "Eye" is just about clever enough, and as a Romulan episode is one of the best in the franchise, following in the fine tradition of the classic "Balance of Terror."  The big reveal at the end hits like a gut punch regardless of how well it holds up to scrutiny, and the whole experience is an exercise in proving just how committed the series was at the beginning in exploring the full potential of its premise.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Casual fans will want to take note, thanks to the clever appearance of a Romulan.
• series - The first look at possible shortcuts to the long journey home.
• character - This would've been a great place to preview the later schisms of "Prime Factors."
• essential - It's a clever experience all around that suggests the true dramatic potential of the series.

notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong

Deep Space Nine 7x21 "When It Rains..."

rating: ***

the story: Kira is assigned to help the Cardassians mount a resistance movement.

what it's all about: The final arc continues to heat up as the most ironic development of the series finally happens.  Kira is Bajoran.  Before the series began she was a member of the Bajoran resistance to Cardassian occupation.  Do you begin to grasp the irony?  Between Garak, who was always presented as sympathetic, and Dukat, who when he wasn't being a scoundrel or worse flirted with being a good guy, and not to mention experiences like "Duet" and "Second Skin," Kira spent a lot of time around Cardassians who contradicted the ugly history between their peoples.  So in a lot of ways, this development was almost inevitable.  All it needed was for the Cardassians as a whole to find themselves in a situation where they matched the unique circumstances Kira kept finding.  And this being the Cardassians, it was definitely inevitable.

Which still makes this a powerful moment, and one of the defining stories of the final arc.  The way the arc developed is something I haven't always appreciated.  You may remember me complaining about the somewhat arbitrary opening acts.  At this point everything seems justified.  It becomes clear how the arc presents every member of the sprawling cast with situations that push them to their limits, things they never thought would happen in a million years.

Also in this episode: Winn catches Dukat spying on the Pah Wraith book she's been guarding jealously, and laughs at the irony of his being struck blind for it.  Bashir realizes that Odo (and the other Founders) were infected by Section 31, which will lead to him finally getting his revenge against an organization that has crossed paths with him one too many times.

And, Gowron comes back into the picture.  This is the big one, at least at accessibility goes.  Gowron was one of the reasons why Next Generation's Klingons redefined the signature Star Trek aliens.  He'd made a few Deep Space Nine appearances, but he never really seemed like a fabric of the series.  That changes starting with "When It Rains..." (and if you don't know how it ends...).

All these arcs continue and get bigger in the episodes that follow, and that's how you know the arc has really begun to click.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Gowron begins his most significant appearances in this series.
• series - The final arc continues to sizzle.
• character - Kira comes full circle in the way she least expected.
• essential - Everything that happens here really pays off in other episodes, one of the drawbacks of heavy serialization.

notable guest-stars:
Robert O'Reilly (Gowron)
Louise Fletcher (Winn)
Marc Alaimo (Dukat)
Andrew Robinson (Garak)
J.G. Hertzler (Martok)
Barry Jenner (Admiral Ross)
Jeffrey Combs (Weyoun)
Salome Jens (Female Founder)
Vaughn Armstrong

The Next Generation 1x20 "Heart of Glory"

*

This is another classic bit of the Next Generation first season producing what could have been a lasting standout, if the series hadn't drastically improved.

Even though a Klingon (Worf) had been standing on the bridge since the first episode, "Heart of Glory" is the first time the show heavily features this famous Star Trek species.  It's also the first episode to use Klingons and allow them to be, act, and end up like Klingons (unlike the two original series appearances where a forced peace occurred at the end, and the one where their mortal enemy turned out to be Tribbles).  In short, it's probably the first true franchise episode of the series, and in a roundabout way is the genesis of Deep Space Nine, the only series to rely almost exclusively on details the audience already knows (with the notable exception of the Dominion).

This is no doubt a legacy of the movies.  The movies gave a lot more to the franchise than fans sometimes realize.  Not only did the Klingons gain their distinctive forehead ridges (thereby giving birth to all the forehead aliens in Star Trek), but they became recurring elements with lasting consequences, including the reason Kirk got his happy demotion back to captain.

Worf's backstory is the real lasting achievement from the episode.  It's still surprising that Yar didn't receive something similar at some point (perhaps it would have happened had Denise Crosby not left, perhaps with far more dignity than the later "Legacy").  Sure, it was probably part of the series bible, and so "Heart of Glory" or not would have eventually been brought up, and that's part of the reason I give only minimal support to the episode.

It's still memorable.  The Klingon death howl is introduced, and for the moment is a hugely significant feature of the society that is just being built around these aliens who are slowly becoming more than just a constant thorn in the side of the Federation.  There are more memorable Klingon episodes later in the series, and Enterprise would later feature this kind of kid gloves approach to the Empire (heck, the Bajorans in DS9 are very similar to the Klingons here).  At the time this was a very big moment.  And it remains one, but its impact has been muted over the years.

Certainly watch it, either as a fan of Worf or Klingons in general.  Just know there's better material on the horizon, as with the rest of the season.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong
Dennis Madalone

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 2x26 "The Expanse"

****

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

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

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

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

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

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

franchise * series * essential * character

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

Memory Alpha summary. 

Enterprise 2x24 "First Flight"

****

In a lot of ways, this is a sequel to "Carbon Creek" from earlier in the season.  It's a story that Archer tells T'Pol, much as the reverse is true of the other episode.  Anyone who still believes that Enterprise's second season was pretty random will hopefully have one less reason to think so.

It's also a love letter to NASA, something Star Trek had done before in Voyager's "One Small Step."  At a time when the US space program was already in a decline and only a few months after the Columbia tragedy, it perhaps is appropriate that Star Trek did so again.

It's also a rare flashback in franchise lore.  Deep Space Nine did it with Odo and Kira, but for the most part the past was at best something characters only talked about.  "First Flight" presents Archer's efforts to get his father's warp engine approved for deep space travel, as well as his rivalry with A.G. Robinson, whose death in the present is the impetus for the occasion.

In a lot of ways, it's the episode fans had been waiting for from the start, dealing with Vulcans actively discouraging human technological advances.  Archer meets Trip for the first time during the depicted events, so it's an origin story in several regards.  Anyone still wondering just how perfectly the second season treated Trip must also view this episode as proof.  He serves as an excellent counterpoint to Archer, even though they eventually conspire in the same test flight that gets Starfleet the mandate to reach "Broken Bow" (the series pilot), even if it nearly grounds the program in the process.

If you view only one episode from the season, "First Flight" should probably be that episode.  It's a perfect example of Enterprise at its finest, and is a worthy induction into the new classics of the franchise.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong
Keith Carradine

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 2x23 "Regeneration"

*

It's something of a pity that a season that has really started to get a good sense of what it was doing so well ended up doing an episode that was pretty much exactly what Enterprise detractors had been saying the series was doing all along, a fairly unnecessarily indulgent look at established franchise lore.

There are certainly justifications, though they may be too subtle to appreciate for what they are.  The detractors loved to say that Enterprise constantly risked contradicting canon by visiting certain elements that were historically known to not be known at this point in the timeline.  The series had already danced around Ferengi and Romulans at this point, but "Regeneration" features the Borg, who famously catch Picard by complete surprise a long way off in the future.

Fans who don't worry about such things know that there are several clever things done in the episode. One is that it's basically a sequel to First Contact.  The other is that it also provides the source of the Borg Collective's obsession with humanity.

Other than that, it seems like an excuse to feature the Borg again.  Fans grew tired of them after Voyager used the Collective in countless stories.  This is not to say that the Borg are not inherently still fascinating, but that many fans began to lose sight of their appeal, weakening "Regeneration"'s at least initial impact.  The episode is also fairly generic in its storytelling, even if we get some updated perspective on their tech.

It's not bad but it's also not amazing, and sometimes the Borg just need to be amazing.  That's the only real problem here.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong
Bonita Friedericy (wife of "Phlox" John Billingsley)

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 2x16 "Future Tense"

***

After the first season episode "Cold Front," this is the best episode from Enterprise's Temporal Cold War arc.  It's also the only one not to feature Silik, Daniels, or Future Guy.

That may be why it's so intriguing.  Sometimes the arc could seem like it was only there to tease Archer's role in founding the Federation, especially during the third season (the fourth season dumped the arc almost unceremoniously in the two-part premiere).  "Shockwave," the season finale/premiere that kicked off the second season, was an opportunity to truly exploit something that had been planted in the pilot, "Broken Bow," but instead was a fairly generic affair that didn't truly explore the potential of the big concept of a war waged across time.  That's what made "Cold Front" so intriguing, two agents (Silik and Daniels) dueling with Archer caught in the middle.

"Future Tense" is all about a ship Archer stumbles across and tries to figure out.  Sure, the Suliban appear and duel the Tholians (first franchise appearance since the original series, and a precursor to their later appearance in the fourth season Mirror Universe adventure), but the episode is really about exploring the full potential of the Temporal Cold War, especially as it concerns someone who has no idea what's going on, has been caught in the crossfire several times, and would like to finally get some answers.  That someone would be Archer.  In a sense, "Future Tense" is the last episode you really need to see concerning the arc.  It's the one time everything revolves around decisions Archer himself can make.  Otherwise you might consider "Detained" the other essential byproduct of the arc, in which the Suliban are explored outside the scope of the arc.

Another interesting element of the episode is the body inside the ship.  There's some funny talk about Vulcan-human compatibility, because DNA from both species is found in the body's genes, funny because it seems implausible to these characters, but walks and talks just fine a century later as Spock, not to mention the more sober events from the fourth season.  Archer also speculates before anything is known about it that the body might be that of Zephram Cochrane, whose history in Star Trek is more complicated than merely being the inventor of humanity's warp engine.  In the original series episode "Metamorphosis," the fact of his having gone missing is finally solved, but at the point of Enterprise is still a great mystery, greater still for his being so central to recent human history.  The mating element is an example of the episode being a tad hokey.  The Cochrane element is an example of the episode being clever.  That's the benefit of being a prequel series.  You can have it both ways.

There's also a sequence of repeating time, something that's been done before in Star Trek (the Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect").  It's kept to a minimum but's still another pleasure of the episode.  Good fun over all.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong

Memory Alpha summary.

Star Trek The Next Generation Phaser Toy Gun (Google Affiliate Ad)

Enterprise 2x15 "Cease Fire"

***

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

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

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

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

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

franchise * series * essential * character

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

Memory Alpha summary.

Enterprise 2x5 "A Night in Sickbay"

****

Nominated for a Hugo, the most viewed episode of the season, and highly polarizing, "A Night in Sickbay" is an episode that at worst is hard to ignore.

For simplicity's sake, it's known as the Porthos episode.  Porthos was Archer's pet beagle, beloved by all, except when featured in his own episode.  The Kreetassans, previously seen in the first season episode "Vox Sola, put Archer through the diplomatic wringer when they become offended at his in.advertant insults and force him to jump through hoops in order to make amends.  If that's not bad enough, Porthos is another unwitting victim and undertakes the eponymous situation under the care of Phlox.

Of course, it can't be left that easy.  Archer spends most of the night there, too, and because even that would be too easy, he spends a great deal of that time obsessing over his relationship with T'Pol.  The Vulcan science officer was the subject of a quasi love triangle with the captain and Trip, though things never progressed that smoothly for any of them.  The third season saw the most complicated developments, notably in "Twilight," an alternate timeline episode that sees Archer and T'Pol grow old together (and yes, that's a great deal more complicated, too) while the Vulcan and Trip...well, that's not something that ends smoothly.

Anyway, the point is that "Sickbay" is easily the most involved look at the mechanics of the mission probably from the whole series.  Fans who like to be ornery will find it ridiculous, but its nuances are what those fans deride.  They're exactly the kind who consider Jar Jar Binks to be offensive, which is like saying anything remotely foreign must surely be a joke, which is itself offensive.

Basically "Sickbay" is considered character assassination by these fans.  They consider Archer to be a buffoon in the episode.  They apparently don't consider a good humbling to be, well, a good thing.  It's half of what the Kreetassans have been asking for since their last appearance, and most of what T'Pol and the rest of the Vulcans have been saying since the start of the series, that Starfleet needs to take a more sober approach to its mission.  I understand that sometimes it's just more fun to watch lessons being learned while space battles take place, but that's just not going to happen all the time.  Enterprise did a surprising number of episodes where such lessons had to be learned the hard way, with a large piece of pie.  In that sense, "Sickbay" is no different from "Dear Doctor" from the first season.  Watch both of these and you'll understand exactly what I mean.

This is an episode that squarely fits in the "Threshold" tradition, a Voyager episode that a lot of fans consider to be among the worst of the franchise, but is so notable that half the reaction also indicates how hard it is to ignore.  That will only happen if there's something worth watching.  And much of later Star Trek is governed by fans who hated what they watched, but watched anyway.  Yes, that's the "Spock's Brain" effect.  As early as the last season of the original season, fans were started to decide standout episodes were not universally a good thing.  How odd it is...

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong

Memory Alpha summary.