Ooh, predictions! I love predictions!
Look, you all with the Romulans and the Borg, and the every-other-damn-thing-that-has-already-had-Star-Trek-season-finales-done-about-it are not being creative enough. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that when you make a reasonable prediction, God kills a kitten? Well, she should have. Not because it’s true, just because every child deserves to be told horrible things by censorious grown-ups.
So, to save the kittens of the world, here’s my Preposterous Prediction for the Season 2 finale:
Boom! Zap! Crash! The show opens on a battle scene, and we see the bridge crew scrambling about, falling down, getting thrown over consoles, etc. Did Archer forget to tell them to brace for impact?! No, sir/madam, he DID tell them, only the weapons being used by the Alien Ship (which we haven’t seen yet, so we don’t know who the aliens are) interfere with human (and vulcan, and denobulan) neurological functioning, on account of which, the crew has been made all clumsy and can’t make their hands hold onto things.
Bummer.
So here’s Enterprise, getting all knocked about, and nobody can brace for impact, and nobody can push the buttons that make the weapons work, or the hull-plating get polarized, or anything. Man, it sucks.
The aliens beam on board, and they’re all “We are taking your ship, and you are our prisoners!” They kill a few redshirts - oh, wait, no redshirts. Sorry. They tickle Travis until he gets all silly, and the rest of the Enterprise crew realizes that it would be pointless to try to fight such a powerful species.
But soft, I haven’t described these aliens yet! They’re three-foot-tall hermaphroditic pirates. They say “Aaaaarrrrr” a lot. They all wear eye-patches, and have peg-legs (well, one peg-leg each, actually), and carry around potty-mouthed parrots on their shoulders.
Porthos sneaks onto the bridge in all the confusion, and one of the parrots eats Porthos. Hooray! I mean - Oh, darn! Archer’s SO freaking pissed. He goes apeshit on that parrot’s ass, and twists its little parrot head right off. Bad move, Cap’n. The pirates have finished tickling Travis by now, and they see Archer’s assault of the bird.
Now, the pirates are all mad (because it was the pirate Captain’s parrot, and he loved it as much as Archer loved Porthos), so they decide, not only are the Enterprise crew going to be their prisoners, they’re going to be prisoners who have to wear ballet tutus and toe shoes, instead of the ordinary orange prison jumpsuits. Because humiliation is seen as the greatest punishment to these aliens.
WELL, the pirates take the humans (plus one vulcan and a denobulan) back to their planet, and lock them up, and make them wear tutus. Then, they take Enterprise, and scrap it for spare parts. Then we don’t see any more of the aliens.
Lots of long boring scenes in the prison. Hoshi brushes her teeth (we learn she’s obsessive compulsive, as well as claustrophobic). Malcolm does yoga. Phlox smiles his creepy smile. Chef… mmm, I don’t know what he’s doing, because we can only see his feet. Trip pretends he’s playing the harmonica, but really he’s just putting his hands over his mouth and going “Waaa-wa-wraaaahh-waa”. It’s so irritating. Travis isn’t there. I don’t know what happened to him, maybe he got left on Enterprise. Nobody notices he’s missing.
So, crap. We’ve got Our Heroes, all bored, and done up in little pink dresses, and their ship’s been dismantled, and it seems like they’re totally screwed. Archer stares as the prison wall (he’d stare out the window, but there isn’t one), and tells T’Pol that it’s all his fault, and how he hates himself, and wishes he were dead, and couldn’t his tutu at least have been lavender?
T’Pol agrees that he was a dumbass for killing the bird, and implies that she wishes he were dead, too, but then she tells him lavender really isn’t his color, and he looks simply smashing in pink. Actually, she says “aesthetically pleasing,” but you know she meant smashing.
Archer looks at her tenderly. She looks back at him, with that slightly bored expression that he finds so irresistible. They lean toward one another. Ooh! Ooh! They’re going to kiss! They’re going to have hot, steamy, prison-ballet sex!
Or are they?
Find out next season.