Enterprise: "Stigma" (Spoilers)

Cafe Society
41

This stupid show just gets worse and worse.

Now, to be fair, I suppose it’s remotely possible the Vulcans would behave like that. Yes, they have their established ideals and philosophy, but it’s not like we in the United States haven’t occasionally woken up and suddenly realized something like, “Oh, right, it’s a bad idea to put that ethnic minority into prison camps. How could we have been so stupid. Oops.” So I guess it’s theoretically possible that the show is suggesting that the Vulcans are failing to live up to their own standards, but don’t realize it.

And there’s a slim chance that this is an element of a major story arc for Enterprise, showing over the course of the series’s run how the Vulcans, ostensibly much more advanced and powerful than humanity, faded in importance by the time of Kirk and his successors. I mean, Earth serves as the capital of the Federation in a couple of hundred years, and the Vulcans have become a decidedly minor player. How?

I’ve said this before: Enterprise has the potential to do for the Vulcans what Next Gen did for Klingons. There could be a long, complicated story arc where human influence indirectly causes a major upheaval in Vulcan culture. The mind meld would become accepted; the “minority” would be tolerated and assimilated. As the Vulcans are distracted by internal struggles, the way is cleared for humanity to take the leading role in the sector. This would play out all the way through the end of the seventh season (assuming they stick with Trek precedent).

So that’s possible. Do I think it’s likely? Not at all. I have no faith that Berman and Braga can keep their eye on the ball for that long. I mean, shit, the only major arc they’ve tried to establish, with the Suliban and the temporal cold war, just plain doesn’t work, and it appears they’re trying to distance themselves from it, given how little attention they’ve paid to it so far this season.

Even this very episode highlights the weakness in the show’s management of its writing. The A plot and the B plot directly contradict each other thematically, and the result is a split-personality story. Consider: In the A plot, the Vulcans are morally backward and the humans are trying to teach them a lesson. In the B plot, the Denobulans are sophisticated and the humans are stupidly unable to adapt to new cultures. I mean, what the hell?

Fire Berman and Braga and put me in charge. I’ll give you Trek to remember. :mad:

(Oh, and yet again Mayweather gets shortchanged. This time when he’s introduced we don’t even get to see his face. He starts talking, and the camera focuses on his six-pack abs, and then pans away to the doctor. Christ almighty, the ship might as well be piloted by Joe Millionaire for all the impact the character has on the story.)

42

Don’t you get it? Within the next generation or so, the mind melders are going to take over! Whoever wins the war gets to write history. The katra and fal tor pan thing may be hidden, dark, not-spoken-of-in-polite-company secrets, but a hundred years from now, after the mind melders take over and rewrite history? They’ll be ancient, traditional family rites.

43

Well, at least they didn’t try to tell us an AIDS allegory with someone who was gay on the left side and straight on the right side, and a second dude who was vice versa…I’d have had to kill 100 yak if that happened.

44

I found that to be the high point and quite interesting. Whose culture is right and whose is wrong?

45

No. Seska was played by Martha Hackett..
Feezal was played by Melinda Page Hamilton. Here’s one site that lists it, and this name matches what appeared in the opening credits.

Tars, you’re cracking me up! :slight_smile:

46

Maybe mind-melding was common and/or accepted on ancient Vulcan and they later turned away from the practice.

47

“Crash Landing” - February 19[sup]th[/sup]
spoilers

48

Fair enough, that could be the way as well as the points others have made. But I hate the fact that now we have to unnecessarily do the mental gymnastics to explain away past references and this episode.

Much in the same way certain Star Wars guys won’t admit that the “parsec” line was an obvious mistake and create all kinds of weird theories to make it work, we are now forced to recreate an entire new past for the Vulcans to make this fit with the rest of the cannon.

It is sloppy writing and wrongheadedness. they could have used another alien species to make the same point.

The gay on the left side idea is a far better method than this was. And would be more interesting to watch IMHO.
So long as they get Frank Gorshen to do one of the aliens.

49

If they’d actually embraced the ambiguity, I’d be right there with you. But in the A plot, the humans were clearly right and the Vulcans clearly wrong. Now, if they’d had T’Pol taking the establishment position instead of the “enlightened” position, and somehow making a credible case for it, then they would’ve had something.

50

Cervaise; I think that was the point. The Vulcans believed themselves to be just as “right” as Tripp felt himself to be. Most of us save for the Testsoteone Poisioned would agree with Tripp; yet from Phlox’ viewpoint, he was wrong.

51

That might work… In STIV:TVH (there be whales here), the Klingon ambassador said of Vulcans: “Vulcans are well known as the intellectual puppets of the Federation!”

So, maybe… interaction with humans, or something in the Romulan War, causes a turn about. If that’s so, Berman and Braga are geniuses for setting up such a condition and the excitement of seeing it evolve. If not, they’re just irritating the fan base.

52

Hear, hear, to all those complaining about the obvious moralizing. The AIDS public service announcement following the show was perfectly unnecessary.

Also the entire concept screamed plot discontinuity at me. How do we get from these widely prejudicial Vulcans in Archer’s time, to the philosophy of IDIC in Kirk’s? In Vulcan terms I don’t know if that’s even more than one lifetime. I’d always assumed that mind-melding should be looked upon as a form of intimacy sometimes, but not always, like sexual intercourse among humans; at any rate, something that would be considered normal and not deviant.

As for the visuals, I thought the scenes on Vulcan, and in T’Pol’s shipboard quarters were fondly reminiscent of TOS. Slightly cheesy and contrived, yes, but for me that was always part of the original series’ charm. I notice now that when I see an old move from the same period as ST:TOS, a lot of the visual effect is much the same even though it has nothing to do with science fiction.

53

Say what?

54

Yeah, not Vulcan. The Vulcans were there, yes, but not Vulcan. Anyone remember the name?

55

Why did she have a suitcase? Why not an intergalactic B-4 bag or something? Can’t you beam all your stuff into RAM or a CD when you move? ^:)^

56

you notice the size of her uniform? That suitcase was too big (i’m thinking Pringels can, like in Dilbert)

57

It was planet something-Candy. Nikandi?

58

Anyone else think that Archer’s remark about “we have learned to celebrate our diversity” was a stretcher at best? Yes, the planet is shrinking all the time and we are more accepting than ever before blah blah blah, but I still think that (unfortunately) part of what makes us human is our tribalism. We are social creatures who want to belong and to fit in. We will always have disagreements about our values, which means some will be In and some will certainly be Out. Years ago I imagined that if we ever start colonizing other worlds as on Star Trek and Star Wars, there will inevitably be a Klan planet and a Mormon planet and a Las Vegas pleasure planet and whatever else we can imagine and establish.

FWIW I also think TOS’s concept of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) would be totally chaotic and most illogical. Only a Vulcan’s concept of “diversity,” whatever exciting ideas that might generate, would be accepted.

59

The concept of TOS was that humanity was united. This was altered a bit in DS9 when Sisco ranted about humanity was in paradise on earth, but not out in his area.

IDIC was a sales gimick to make money off the amulet. Shatner wouldn’t wear it, so it fell to Nimoy. But I digress. The Enterprise Vulcans are quite different from those in the rest of Trek. Apparently they too will change with the series. I hope so.

60

Has anyone else given up on Enterprise yet?

Halfway through this season, I just stopped watching. Rehashed plots, stupid stories, bad acting, eye rolling continuity destruction, and sadly enough-- it was boring.

I watch the previews each week during Buffy, and I have not seen anything worth watching-- does next week look any better?

Heck, even Voyager was more enjoyable-- Voyager!
:frowning: