Star Trek: Enterprise - Series 3 - That Clone Episode - Angry Rant

[dolorous_ett]

Does anyone apart from me like Enterprise? I know it's generally considered a low taste among serious Star Trek fans, but I followed the first two series with great enthusiasm - it won my heart in the very first episode with its faulty translation software, twitchy tactical officer who no-one ever listens to and the charming inexperience of the

Comments

[ignipes]

So, I've never seen Enterprise, but this post makes me giggle a little bit because on last night's Stargate Atlantis the very same actor (Connor Trinneer) who played Tucker on Enterprise was again playing a character who was the subject of a very sketchy medical experiment that put the "good" guys firmly on the wrong side of the ethics equation. If Mr. Trinneer isn't careful, he's going to start being typecast as the go-to guy for sci-fi shows in need of subjects for their morally questionable experimentation. I wonder what exciting medical horrors will be inflicted upon him next?

[dolorous_ett]

Ooooo - you'd think one peice of really abhorrent medical ethics would be enough, wouldn't you? Still, there's no accounting for taste...

Perhaps they'll take a leaf out of my students' book, and have his brain transplanted into the body of a gibbon? Though by the standards of what he's already been through, I don't imagine that would be such a big deal.

In Enterprise he is obviously a Good Old Boy you are meant to like just... because. And for this reason I didn't like him at all in the first couple of series. I used to regularly cheer on his opponents in fights - but nobody deserves to go that way. And Trineer's acting as the clone was really very good.

[snorkackcatcher]

I saw parts of Season 1 and quite liked them -- but no, I wasn't much impressed with Archer either. In the self-righteousness stakes he seemed comparable to Janeway in Voyager (who likewise made ridiculous command decisions based on obscure principles of her own).

Ah, Star Trek scripts. IMHO the only series they got it really right with in terms of consistent quality was DS9, with some good TNG mostly from Seasons 3-6 (ducks fire from fans of the other series).

[dolorous_ett]

You won't get anything thrown from me - there were some great TNG episodes, though I'm no authority on TNG, and I don't think I've ever seen an episode of Deep Space Nine, alas, alas.

But Archer, while apparently a more than competent competent pilot, is a disaster as a captain - unpredictable, illocigal and inconsistent. He has some excellent advisors, and generally ignores them. I can only presume that up close he has immense charisma, as most of the crew seem to like him just fine - including people like T'pol, who ought to know better.

Personally, I wouldn't put him in charge of a shuttlepod.

[snorkackcatcher]

The one I remember was an episode where they find an alien planet where the locals have some sort of genetic wasting disease that will kill the race off in a couple more centuries, and the Doctor comes up with a technique for basically curing it, and Archer agonises for several minutes of screen time about whether to give it to them before saying 'no' on the grounds of non-interference (with a nod to future/previous series 'maybe we'll have a rule one day that will make the decision for us').

I'm afraid my reaction was 'Bullshit! You're not talking about giving them weapons technology they can't handle or something, you're talking about their extinction!' Oh well. Was that just me?

[dolorous_ett]

I have slightly more sympathy with this one, as in this case Archer was ready to give the medicine to the sick species, it was the doctor who was really cutting up rough about it - on the grounds that it would not allow the other species on the world to evolve to fulfill their full potential.

Though now I come to think of it, you're quite right. Archer doesn't normally let things like future problems bother him much - and again, he seemed happy enough to look the doctors on that planet in the eye and say that he can't help, sorry, but here are some really good painkillers...

...

Do you know, I almost talked myself into that? And then I remembered that episode called "A Night In Sick Bay" when that stupid dog of his gets sick - Phlox tries to fix the creature, and Archer stands around, is emotional and loses his temper. Which is no more than mildly irritating until I remembered the entire planet of sick people he happily left to die off in their own time...

No, there's no doubt at all, the man has some very strange priorities.

[tree_and_leaf]

That's.... very disturbing. Even worse than that Voyager episode where Tuvok and Neelix got splinched together, and Janeway effectively had the new entity (Tuvix?) killed in order to bring back Tuvok and Neelix

[dolorous_ett]

I never understood how Malcom-the-British-Weapons officer and T'Pol-the-Vulcan-Science-Officer stood any of them (I always thought that a reserved Brit and a Vulcan ought to find each other an agreeable change from the Americans).
I agree with you completely about both of them. And let's spare a thought for poor Hoshi while we're about it (I'm not including Phlox - because although he is very sensible and rational he's also astonishingly thick-skinned

[tree_and_leaf]

Frankly, there were moments when I wondered why the Vulcans bothered with humanity in the first place (probably because they were worried about the harm a species which can choose Archer as its representative would do if let off the leash?) And yes, poor Hoshi, too.

Although one of the good things about Enterprise was the fact that the friction between humanity and Vulcanity(?) it created actually made some sort of sense of the appalling racist crap Spock had to put up with in the early episodes of the original series, most notably the one where he's in command of a shuttle that gets trapped on a planet full of savage proto-hominids, and the crew blame Spock for everything, are just short of mutinous, and keep making offensive remarks. Or 'Balance of Terror', where a junior officer insinuates on two seperate occasions that Spock is a Romulan spy, and gets only a very minor telling off from Kirk on the second one. While Spock is vindicated in both cases, no-one seems to realise quite how badly the humans are behaving.

[dolorous_ett]

I thought it was just the humans picking on T'Pol, and we'd have grown out of it by the Original Series - of which I've seen almost nothing. Looks like not. Poor Vulcans.

I like T'Pol's character, but she does get the most horrible things to act - like that beastly "Mate or Die!" disease she got at the end of Series 2. Quite worthy of !

[anna_kat]

I don't watch Enterprise but I love your rant and do sympathise. I was equally angry when Janeway killed Tuvix or when she formed an alliance with the Borg who had slaughtered 30.000 of her comrades. Contrast this with the (very early) DS9 episode where someone created his own clone only to kill it and because of it was charged with murder. Except for the strangely esoteric end that I never fully grasped, DS9 was the best.

[dolorous_ett]

I really must watch some DS9. It sounds like it's the Thinking Person's choice in Star Trek. Though Enterprise in its better moments is neither thoughtless nor amoral - episodes like the one above are thankfully in a minority.

[bufo_viridis]

Never fear, they didn't really bury him in the space: it would be a horrible waste of a noble sacrifice. His liver, hear, kidneys and other spares were safely stacked away for future use - accidents happen and somebody else may need a replacement. To say nothing about five litres of good blood...

[dolorous_ett]

A very good point. And very logical. As such, almost certain to offend Archer's delicate sensibilities one way or the other...

To say nothing about five litres of good blood...

Mmmmmm.... blood...

Talking of which, a Polish shop has opened just 5 minutes' walk from my flat. Can that delicious-looking blood-based dish you mentioned a few entries back be bought in packet form?