I thought this was one of the best episodes they’ve done so far.
Okay, sure, the time paradox had a typical number of holes. No, they didn’t really think about the implications of the situation, and left a number of options unexplored. (If they can’t go back to Earth, and they’re too late to prevent the Xindi homeworld from being destroyed, why don’t they go to Vulcan? I bet the Science Directorate would love them.)
But: They didn’t dwell on the treknobabble. Usually Trek time-travel stories are narratively clunky and unconvincing because they spend so much time inventing gibberish in a lengthy and tortuous attempt to explain why things are just so. “Well, when we zinglebatted the negative-tachyon joogobber, we probably frotzmonkeyed a quantum tesseract, which led to an inversion of the happy warp emitter console isolinear fermion Heisenberg dish EM compensator, and so that’s why we all look like Jessica Simpson.” Instead, they simply said, this is the way it is, now let’s get on with the story. “We did a lot of research, and it’s due to a problem with the impulse manifold (damn manifolds again!), and now here’s what’s going on.” Amazing how much better the story works when they get right to the point.
And I loved that Lorien re-enacted Archer’s previous act of piracy, with almost exactly the same rationalizations. What Archer did to cope with it, beaming out critical gear, was fun and clever (though I’ve wondered since the middle of TNG why nobody was trying something like that: “Worf, beam out their reactor containment module!”), but the important thing, to me, is that the writers are thinking about what they’re doing and writing a story. This is the first time I’ve really felt that they might know what they’re doing, that they aren’t just making shit up as they need it and then dropping it in favor of the next episode’s arbitrary plot device.
Oh, and a subtle touch, something they changed a couple of weeks back that has made a tremendous difference in the energy of the storytelling, something that as far as I know no Trek has done before: Note the abrupt cutoffs of the climaxes of the scenes as we go to commercial. Previously, every single Trek has signaled it was going to commercial by dollying slowly in on a character standing still, showing us they’re internalizing whatever has just happened, having an emotional reaction, long moment, fade to black. It’s a stylistic thing that has been with us since the beginning. But now Enterprise has dumped it, preferring a more modern transition, and I like what it does to the show’s energy. It’s a very small thing in execution, but the effect, I think, is deceptively significant; if nothing else it indicates that the show might be waking up and setting its own stride.
However, I still think Archer is too abrasive, by far. In this episode, at the beginning of a combat scene, he turns around and barks at Malcolm, “Target their weapons!” I half expected Malcolm to say, “Jeez, dude, I’m on it. You don’t have to yell at me.” And this isn’t the same thing as what I was talking about last week, re the producers’ unwillingness to make the characters unlikable, to take risks with them. There’s a difference between giving a character some depth, some internal contradictions that make the individual an interesting and flawed human being, and simply making the character into an asshole. I guess it’s nice that the writers are trying to do this, but I think they’re missing the mark with Archer.
I also wonder why they chickened out having Trip meet the old T’Pol. That is the scene I wanted to see, not T’Pol with herself. It would have been incredibly difficult to write, and just in general a bitch to pull off, but to me, narratively, those are the most interesting scenes. In the first Batman movie, they skipped over the scene where Vicki Vale finds out about the secret identity, and just show her walking up to Bruce Wayne with the knowledge. But her finding out would have been the most interesting scene in the movie, or it should have been— but for whatever reason they decided to skip over it, probably because it would be too difficult. Same thing here: the really good emotional meat is not inside T’Pol, but between her and Trip. Imagine a scene where Trip goes to Old T’Pol, presumably just to talk about her calculations, but really with the objective of figuring out how he and T’Pol end up together. “She drives me crazy!” he could confess; “I mean, you do, well, you know what I mean.” And Old T’Pol could say, “The feeling is mutual. Nevertheless, the positive outweighs the negative. Listen, Charles. She is wounded. I know this because I was wounded. I cannot tell you exactly how, but I have not yet fully healed. I never will. But I have made the progress I have because of you…” That, to me, is where the really good storytelling is: not inside somebody, but between people. The relationship, and its changes, its movements. Not the static agony of somebody who can’t decide what to do, and effectively talks to herself for an hour about it. I’m not saying what they did was bad, but I do think they missed an opportunity because they were intimidated (IMO) by the difficulty of pulling it off.
Compare, for example, the moment with Reed. He finds something out in conversation with Mayweather and Hoshi. We see him start to stew about it. And then he makes a choice outside of himself. That was a nice little moment, and it’s exactly what I’m talking about.
So yeah, I liked this episode quite a bit. I may even watch it a second time.
More of this, please. This is the right track. Stick with it.
No, Reed I think got the greatest chance. He got to see that the course he is on is Not going to give him a relationship, and he wants one. Inviting that woman over is him changing his future. Good stuff.
