“Babel One”
Written by Mike Sussman & André Bormanis
Directed by David Straiton
Season 4, Episode 12
Production episode 088
Original air date: January 28, 2005
Date: November 12, 2154
Captain’s star log. We open with the Andorian ship Kumari, commanded by Shran, being pounded to pieces by what appears to be a Tellarite ship, Shran is forced to abandon ship ahead of the warp core going boom.
Enterprise is being tasked with escorting Ambassador Gral of the Tellarites to a peace conference on Babel. Because Tellarites like to argue and insult people as part of normal conversation, Sato practices a conversation with Archer that involves lots of both of those things—but we don’t know that at first, so it just looks like Sato and Archer are being mean to each other for no reason.
Because the route between Tellar Prime and Babel involves going through Andorian space, and because Earth is mediating the peace talks, Starfleet gets the job of taxi service, since the Andorians are less likely to fire on a Starfleet ship than a Tellarite one. (Tucker expresses annoyance at that, as they’re supposed to be explorers.) Archer endears himself to Gral by being nasty to him when he comes on board. However, Gral is also skeptical of the humans’ ability to be impartial in these negotiations given the role the Andorians played in saving Earth from the Xindi.
Enterprise picks up Shran’s distress call. Mayweather confirms that there are no Andorian ships in range of the communiqué, but it will only cost Enterprise two hours to divert. Archer gives the order and has Sato inform Babel that they’ll be late.
They find the debris of the Kumari, and rescue nineteen of the eighty-six people on board. Among the casualties are the Andorian ambassador and his staff, who was being brought to Babel by Shran. Shran—already pissed about the loss of his ship and many of his crew—is ripshit to learn that there are Tellarites on board.
It doesn’t make sense to Archer that the Tellarites would agree to Earth helping out with peace talks, going so far as to have Enterprise transport Gral, and then attack the Andorians. However, the Kumari was definitely attacked by Tellarite particle weapons, and the sensor logs show that it was a Tellarite ship that attacked them. When shown this evidence, Gral denies it, saying it must be fabricated, as his people would never attack when there’s peace talks scheduled—though the Babel conference has been postponed indefinitely after all this.
Confusing the matter further, an Andorian ship attacks Enterprise. It ignores Shran’s request to stand down, and when Shran provides a method of destroying their shields, it doesn’t work.
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System Collapse
The ship retreats, its power grid fluctuating, but not due to anything Enterprise did. Gral is convinced that this is all an elaborate setup by the Andorians, that the Kumari was deliberately destroyed to frame the Tellarites, while Shran thinks the Tellarite ambassador is lying to cover up his people’s cowardly attack.
Complicating matters is that T’Pol’s scans reveal that the Tellarite ship that attacked the Kumari and the Andorian ship that attacked Enterprise each have the exact same power signatures. Which is unlikely.
An attempt by Archer to get Gral and Shran to talk it out fails miserably, as the two almost come to blows.
Enterprise can detect the Andorian ship’s warp trail, and so they follow it. Shran’s not happy about that, but if they continue to Andoria, they’ll lose the trail.
We cut to a darkened space that looks like the bridge of a ship. In the center is a being covered in a helmet and gloves that hide the person’s identity, though that person seems to be controlling everything. In charge are two Romulans, Admiral Valdore and a scientist named Nijil. They detect a vessel approaching: Enterprise, which has tracked the ship that attacked them to a different-looking ship with an unknown configuration. T’Pol’s scans a whole mess of subspace transceivers, multispectral emitters, and no life support, and she’s not sure what to make of it.
A team beams over, including Tucker, Reed, and two MACOs. Tucker tries to get life support online while Reed and the MACOs explore the ship.
Nijil reports to Valdore that the propulsion matrix on the ship is still not operational. Valdore orders Nijil to prepare to destroy the ship, as they can’t let it fall into Starfleet’s hands.
The away team is tossed around the corridors while the ship fires on Enterprise. Archer tries to beam back the away team, but the hull plating of the enemy vessel has been reinforced and they can only beam out one at a time. After beaming the MACOs off first, weapons fire damages the transporter catastrophically.
Archer has no choice but to run so they can lick their wounds, leaving Tucker and Reed behind, but promising to come back for them. Those two have their own problems, as Reed’s air hose is compromised and he only has a bit of air left in his tank now. Tucker shares some of his, but they need to find more air. Tucker can’t find anything that even remotely looks like it controls life support. They work their way to the bridge, figuring that, at least, must have life support…
Archer has Mayweather take the upgraded injectors out for a spin, and get all the way up to warp 5.06 before they lose the ship. Based on the readings the away team sent back, T’Pol hypothesizes that this might be a Romulan ship, as there are some broad similarities to the Romulan minefield they were in. Archer and T’Pol speculate as to why the Romulans would try to sabotage the peace conference.
Shran is suspicious of Gral, still, and thinks Archer is being naïve. He and Talas manage to get past the MACO guarding their quarters by beating him up after an attempt to seduce him fails miserably. They go to Gral’s quarters and interrogate him at riflepoint.
Nijil detects a panel being opened manually. Valdore orders internal sensors to be activated, and they see Tucker and Reed. After Valdore confirms that there are no inertial dampeners on the ship, he orders evasive maneuvers, which tosses Tucker and Reed all around.
T’Pol and Sato determine that the emitters on the Romulan ship’s hull are holographic projectors, which enable them to look like any other ship, and their weapons have tri-phasic emitters that enable them to mimic the signatures of other types of energy weapons.
A security alert sounds from Shran and Talas’ escape, and Archer and the MACOs show up at Gral’s quarters and get the Andorians to drop their weapons. A Tellarite aide then grabs Talas’ weapon and shoots her, only for Archer to shoot him right back.
Tucker and Reed finally make it to the bridge—which looks just like where Valdore and Nijil are, but it’s empty and also without life support.
We cut to Valdore and Nijil in what seems to be the bridge, but which is actually a room in a building on Romulus.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Tucker finds oxygen to put into Reed’s air tank so he can breathe. Here’s the problem: tanks in EVA suits (and scuba suits) don’t have oxygen in them, they have air in them, which is only twenty-one percent oxygen. Breathing pure oxygen is damaging. Mind you, most folks who write dramatic fiction get this completely wrong, but a) it’s still wrong and should be called out especially when b) the episode is co-written by the guy whose first job in the franchise was as the science advisor.
The gazelle speech. Archer speculates that the Romulans see that peace is developing in their little corner of the galaxy—the Andorians and Vulcans are talking, and now the Andorians and Tellarites are talking, plus Earth avoided a war with the Xindi. He thinks that maybe the Romulans don’t like that idea, and fear an alliance.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. Koss informs T’Pol that their marriage is officially dissolved.
Florida Man. Florida Man Not Present When Ship Goes Faster Than Warp 5.
Good boy, Porthos! Tellarites apparently consider canines a delicacy. Sato warns Archer to keep Porthos away from the ambassador’s delegation.
Better get MACO. The MACO’s job is to protect the crew. Therefore, they should never have allowed themselves to be beamed off first. But they don’t have speaking parts, so they don’t get to be stranded.
Meantime, the MACO guarding Shran and Talas thankfully doesn’t even come close to falling for Talas’ seduction attempt, and he puts up a good fight against her, as well.
Blue meanies. The Andorians and Tellarites have been at odds for quite some time, but they were on the way to peace before the Kumari’s destruction—and even before that, there wasn’t a huge amount of trust there…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. It takes all of half a second for the news of T’Pol’s divorce to fly through the ship’s grapevine, and while they’re trapped on the Romulan ship, Reed asks Tucker what his intentions are now that T’Pol’s a free agent again. It’s unclear, thanks to the helmet of his EVA suit, whether or not he waggles his eyebrows when he asks.
In addition, Shran and Talas are now a couple, the latter having put the moves on her commander. Shran says he had a choice between taking her as a lover or arresting her for assaulting a superior officer. Wah-HEY!
More on this later… The rivalry between Andorians and Tellarites was baked into their very first appearance in the original series’ “Journey to Babel.” Speaking of that episode, it was the one that established Babel as a neutral planet for negotiating purposes, though in both the 1967 episode and the 2005 one, we never see the ship actually making it to Babel…
I’ve got faith…
“I’m told this ship is the pride of Starfleet. I find it small and unimpressive.”
“Funny—I was about to say the same thing about you.”
–Gral and Archer making Tellarite small talk.
Welcome aboard. A whole lot of Trek veterans in this one. We start with recurring regulars Jeffrey Combs as Shran (back from “Kir’Shara”) and Molly Brink as Talas (back from “Proving Ground”).
The others are all in new roles. Brian Thompson plays Valdore; he was previously Klag in TNG’s “A Matter of Honor,” Inglatu in DS9’s “Rules of Acquisition,” Toman’torax in DS9’s “To the Death,” and another Klingon in Generations. Lee Arenberg plays Gral; he previously played three different Ferengi (one of whom was also named Gral) in DS9’s “The Nagus,” TNG’s “Force of Nature,” and TNG’s “Bloodlines,” and also a Malon in Voyager’s “Juggernaut.” And J. Michael Flynn plays Nijil; he previously played a Mazarite in “Fallen Hero” and an Angosian in TNG’s “The Hunted.”
All of the above will be back next time in “United.”
In addition, stuntman Jermaine Soto gets a few lines of dialogue as the MACO that Talas fails to seduce.
Trivial matters: The is the first of Enterprise’s last three-parter, continuing next time in “United” and concluding in “The Aenar.”
Shran came to Earth’s aid against the Xindi in “Zero Hour.” Koss agreed to dissolve his and T’Pol’s marriage in “Kir’Shara.” Enterprise first encountered Romulan technology in “Minefield.” The NX-01 got upgrades to the vessel, including their shiny new injectors that get them over warp 5, in “Home.”
Archer and Shran share a drink from the supply of Andorian ale that Shran gave to Archer in “Proving Ground.”
This episode had a record low number of viewers. Several days after it aired, UPN announced that the show would not be renewed for a fifth season.
It’s been a long road… “We seem to keep running into each other, Captain.” It’s funny, the Andorians and Tellarites were considered important to Trek lore in ancillary fiction for years thanks primarily to “Journey to Babel.” But once new Trek started being produced on the regular in 1979, the Andorians and Tellarites were barely a factor onscreen—at least until 2001. What’s fascinating is how little there was to go on. One of the things Enterprise has done supremely well is flesh out the Andorians based, mostly, only on the (excellent) performance of Reggie Nalder as Shras in that original series episode.
Tellarites have been seen less often prior to this, mainly only in “Bounty,” and that was a story that gave us very little about Tellarite culture. (Indeed, the two Tellarites in that episode were painfully generic.)
It was a surprise that Enterprise initially gave us, not an Andorian-Tellarite conflict, but rather an Andorian-Vulcan one. It’s not until this episode that we finally get the rivalry between the blue folks with antennae and the folks who look somewhat porcine that “Journey to Babel” established.
And it’s one of Enterprise’s best episodes, in part because it does what a prequel series can do well.
One of the dangers of doing a prequel to a science fiction show is that the notion of what the future will look like changes. Hell, it’s a danger of doing a science fiction show generally. In the 1960s, hand-held communicators and video conferencing both looked incredibly futuristic, but a plurality of humans had devices that looked like communicators by the time this episode of Enterprise aired, and video conferencing is an everyday occurrence in 2023. In the 1990s, the handheld padds used by the crews of the Enterprise-D, Deep Space 9, and Voyager looked incredibly futuristic, and now it looks quaint to watch them all handing iPads to each other.
And when Paul Schneider wrote “Balance of Terror” in 1966, it made sense to posit a war in the future between Earth and Romulus where there was no visual communication and no contact between the two species that fought. But in 2005, that notion was ridiculous, at least in part due to the march of technology in the real world that made a lack of visual communication a step backward.
Enter “Babel One,” which provides a lovely notion as to how that might work while also giving us one of the single most effective cliffhanger endings in Trek history: remote-controlled ships. It’s beautifully set up, too, as throughout the episode things seem a bit off with the orders Valdore is giving to Nijil. Why are there no inertial dampeners? Why does he have to turn the internal sensors on? Why is he going to blow up the ship if he’s in it? (That, at least, you figure is the Romulan willingness to fall on their proverbial swords, which we saw in their very first appearance in “Balance…”) But once we pull back from the “bridge” and see that Valdore, Nijil, and their helmeted mystery person are all in a room on Romulus, it all comes together and makes sense.
And the episode leading up to that cliffhanger is also excellent. Enterprise is at its best when it’s showing Earth stumbling its way into being a major player in the forming of the Federation, and this episode is a magnificent culmination of the (annoyingly few) episodes that have had that theme, starting with “The Andorian Incident” and “Shadows of P’Jem,” continuing in particular to “Cease Fire,” and most recently with the Vulcan trilogy. Earth has already played a role in easing tensions between the Vulcans and Andorians, not to mention standing up to the Klingons a few times and helping usher in a new era on Vulcan. Now we see them specifically requested to be in the middle of negotiations between Andoria and Tellar Prime.
The episode also provides a nice retcon that makes Sarek less of a racist. In “Journey to Babel,” Sarek commented, “Tellarites do not argue for reasons—they simply argue.” It’s a pretty horrid remark, all told, but this episode makes it clear that Sarek isn’t engaging in racial stereotyping, but rather in cultural observation. As established in the hilarious scene between Sato and Archer after the opening credits, arguing and insulting people really is how Tellarites communicate.
Speaking of the opening credits, kudos to writers Mike Sussman and André Bormanis for giving us a vanishingly rare occurrence: a teaser of an Enterprise episode that actually teases the episode! Opening with Shran’s ship going all asplodey with Shran angrily giving the order to abandon ship is a much better way to lead into the long road that leads from there to here than the show’s usual.
The plot involves the Romulans, who do not want to see peace in the galaxy, as their empire is much more likely to be successful if the other powers remain at each others’ throats. So they use an experimental ship to sabotage the peace talks. What I especially like is that it would’ve worked but for Enterprise’s compassion. Only the fact that Enterprise rescued Shran and the other survivors is what enables the holoship’s deception to be exposed. Shran’s presence on Enterprise is what makes it abundantly clear that the “Andorian” ship that attacks the NX-01 is not what it seems, given that they ignore Shran’s communiqué and aren’t vulnerable where an Andorian ship of that class should be.
Even with that, Valdore’s plan almost works. Several Andorians and one Tellarite get shot on Enterprise before Archer’s able to even come close to restoring order, and the lack of trust between Shran and Gral is palpable. Throughout the episode, Gral is convinced that Archer is conspiring with Shran against him, and Shran is convinced that Gral is fooling Archer. Meanwhile, Archer’s trying to get at the truth, and the only one acting like a grownup. Which, I gotta say, is a very nice change from first-season Archer, who was usually the least like a grownup in a situation. One suspects that the trauma of the Xindi mishegoss—not to mention sharing his brain meats with Surak’s katra—did him some good.
For the third time, Enterprise has commenced a three-parter with a strong opening. Next week we’ll see if the Andorian trilogy will do a better job of living up to its opening than the Augment trilogy or the Vulcan trilogy…
Warp factor rating: 10
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest work is The Four ???? of the Apocalypse, co-edited by him and Wrenn Simms, on sale today from Whysper Wude. It features alternate takes on the end-of-the-world quartet, such as the four PTA Moms of the apocalypse, the four cats of the apocalypse, the four Hollywood executives of the apocalypse, the four lawyers of the apocalypse, and so on. Among the contributors are Star Trek scribes David Gerrold, David Mack, Peter David, Derek Tyler Attico, Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, and Aaron Rosenberg, as well as New York Times best-sellers Seanan McGuire, Jonathan Maberry, and Jody Lynn Nye, and tons more.
Definitely one of the series’s best uses of the prequel concept. This arc does so much to explain why humans are at the center of the Federation, aside from the fact that TOS was originally about an Earth ship and only gradually developed the idea of an interspecies Federation, so that it had human-centrism baked into it. It’s not that Humans Are Superior in any John W. Campbellian way, it’s just that we have the least baggage — we’re the new kids on the block, the only ones that none of the others have a vendetta against, so we’re the only ones everyone else trusts.
I do wonder why the designers of the decoy ship didn’t realize that having a single unvarying power signature was kind of a dead giveaway, given how routine it is in Trek for ships to be identified by their power signature, or to fool an enemy by altering their power signature. So that’s an overly convenient plot hole. Also, given that starships would typically accelerate at thousands of gravities, Tucker and Reed wouldn’t have just been knocked around on a ship without inertial dampeners, they would’ve been crushed to goo within their spacesuits.
I believe the idea that Tellarite arguments are their version of politeness was introduced by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens in their Trek novel Prime Directive, where they called it Civil Conversation. Since they were writing staffers this season, they probably contributed the idea to the story.
“I regret that you’re drawn into another one of our conflicts, Captain.”
And so we pick up the storyline from ‘Kir’Shara’, with the return of Shran, and Enterprise beginning to cotton on to the fact that the Romulans are trying to ruin any chance of an alliance between other Alpha Quadrant species. It probably takes the characters longer than the viewers to realise that someone is simulating the attacks by the Tellarites and Andorians, but we once again see the value of Archer’s refusal to show blind loyalty to the Vulcans or anyone else: By staying impartial and judging each situation on its own merits, he’s about the only one that can hold everyone together. He nearly succeeds in resolving everything without bloodshed, except for a rash decision by Shran and another one by Gral’s aide.
It’s a nice touch to have the two MACOs, who looked as though they were being set up to be the token sacrifice, beamed to safety while the two main characters are left in danger. The ending is a real gut-punch, with Tucker and Reed’s search for the bridge failing to bring them any closer to the culprits and the reveal that the Romulans are controlling the ship from Romulus, leaving the two Enterprise crewmembers stranded with a limited air supply.
I liked the early scene of Archer and Sato practising arguing with Tellarites, with Archer then practising just a bit too much on Tucker, and T’Pol back in the role of his confidante. The MACO guarding Shran’s quarters does a spectacularly bad job in allowing Talas to just walk out past him, even if he does manage to avoid Shran’s attack. The team actually put in a good showing against the Andorians, although Archer does a lot of the heavy lifting.
Second appearance of Talas. This is the first major appearance of the Tellarites since Season 2’s ‘Bounty’, although one was seen in ‘Borderland’. There’s a references to Reed’s crush on T’Pol from ‘Shuttlepod One’ when he tries being suggestive to Trip.
This entire trilogy is peak Enterprise for me. If they’d been doing more to explore the origins of the Federation in previous seasons, I suspect that this show would be among the most fondly remembered Star Treks. And given the combination of this and the Vulcan trilogy, one can easily understand why the Romulans would start to look Earth as a stone in their shoe that needs to be removed.
I must agree that it is pretty remarkable how little we know about the Tellarites. Even with this episode and Prodigy, we basically only know that they’re quarrelsome and look at argument and insult as normal modes of communication. It would be nice to see how this actually plays out for a civilization. Indeed, I’m not even sure that we’ve see a female of the species.
I feel like the Andorians got preferentially developed because they had a more appealing makeup design.
jaimebabb: You know what’s really funny? In the 32nd century Federation, prior to Discovery‘s arrival, Earth is no longer part of the Federation, the Andorians have left the Federation and become part of the Emerald Chain, the Vulcans have reunited with the Romulans and Ni’Var also left the Federation…
…which means that the Tellarites are the only founding Federation member left! I find that hilarious….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Very sad on those ratings. This episode is the girl that people came to the dance to dance with, and by the time she got here most people had left the party. No temporal cold war shenanigans, it’s Earth-Romulan War shenanigans. And I gotta say I like how the evolving continuity makes it as such. It was called the Earth-Romulan War before the Federation as an entity was crystallized as an idea, but rather than overwrite it, it was folded in so that the war is before the Federation, and as time went on the war became a foundational event in the Federation coming into being. I really dig that.
And yes it’s a 10/10 episode.Loved it from start to finish. Still hurts my heart that they got cancelled while doing their best work.
Even if Trip and Malcolm should be chunky salsa after those evasive maneuvers. Might’ve been nice if maybe that zero g spot Travis knew about also existed on the Romulan ship and was a safe point. Conversely while I understand why it would be an advantage, turning the Inertial dampeners completely off seems like it wouldn’t be 100% advantageous. The ship’s components should also need protection from acceleration forces, and having the inertial dampeners on allows for more extreme maneuvers.
Quoth mr_d: “Still hurts my heart that they got cancelled while doing their best work.”
It was far too little, far too late. The show spent three years hemorrhaging viewers. By the time they got to season four, not enough people were around to watch. Indeed, this had the show’s lowest viewing figures, which is just depressing.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@5/mr_d: I’ve always believed it was because the ratings were so bad that they were able to do their best work. Nobody was watching anymore but the hardcore Trekkies, so the pressure to please the network and cater to general audiences was off, and the show was free to go all-in with the fan-pleasing Trek mythology stuff. They knew they were probably going to be cancelled, so they just threw in everything they wanted to do, because they had nothing to lose.
From what I’ve read, UPN was kind of a clown-shoes operation from the beginning, so even if Enterprise had managed to at least keep up the same viewership numbers as Voyager, it’s not clear to me that they would have gotten more than one more season before the network died.
“Tucker finds oxygen to put into Reed’s air tank so he can breathe. Here’s the problem: tanks in EVA suits (and scuba suits) don’t have oxygen in them, they have air in them, which is only twenty-one percent oxygen. Breathing pure oxygen is damaging. Mind you, most folks who write dramatic fiction get this completely wrong, but a) it’s still wrong and should be called out especially when b) the episode is co-written by the guy whose first job in the franchise was as the science advisor.”
The science advisor got this one correct. EVA suits aren’t like SCUBA, because SCUBA is a high-pressure regime and EVA suits operate under a reduced pressure regime (around 0.3 atm) to improve the mobility of the user. As a result, they do use pure oxygen. This has been true from Apollo through to the Shuttle through to the ISS. Another result of this in conjunction with the move towards standard atmosphere on the spacecraft is that astronauts needing to perform an EVA need to spend a chunk of time doing oxygen pre-breathing to purge nitrogen before heading outside, in order to prevent the bends.
Foamy beat me to it. I think you’re thinking of scuba, where it can be dangerous to breathe oxygen at lower depths? EVA suits do in fact use pure oxygen, according to NASA: What’s a spacewalk like?
It is sad that the show got canceled as it was starting to pull in better episodes and character/storyline development. Although CLB has an interesting theory about them no longer needing to appease the network.
When I finally got around to catching up with this show online, it still was far from my favorite of all Treks, but I still felt like it deserves a fifth season, especially as it really seemed to find its footing towards the end.
@7 said: Nobody was watching anymore but the hardcore Trekkies, so the pressure to please the network and cater to general audiences was off, and the show was free to go all-in with the fan-pleasing Trek mythology stuff. They knew they were probably going to be cancelled, so they just threw in everything they wanted to do, because they had nothing to lose.
It’s interesting how the show went from leaning away from being “too Star Trek,” even dropping the words “Star Trek” from the title, to a point where it was almost “too much Star Trek,” adding a ton of continuity with the other series. I like the show a lot (up until Strange New Worlds, I would’ve identified it as my favorite of the post-TNG shows) but o definitely think that had they had a situation where it was a little more wild-and-wooly with unreliable technology and more of a sense of danger and wonder, it might have held on to a few more of those viewers in the early seasons
@13/twels: I don’t think the choice to leave Star Trek out of the title was meant to make it somehow “less Star Trek“; they just figured that it wasn’t required for every show in a shared universe to have the same blanket title (look at, say, Hercules and Xena, or Buffy and Angel, or Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley), and that Enterprise was a recognizable enough name to make it clear what franchise it was in. The developers of Deep Space Nine gave some consideration to dropping the ST supertitle; it’s just something Berman had had in mind for a while and finally decided to try.
Honestly, I felt that putting the Star Trek back in season 3 in hopes of boosting the ratings felt a bit desperate — like anyone actually needed it spelled out for them that a sci-fi show called Enterprise was connected to Star Trek.
Plus, I think it’s unfair to season 1 to say it wasn’t Trekky enough just because it didn’t have a lot of obvious continuity nods and references to specific episodes and species and characters and such like season 4 had. That’s superficial — it’s the forms, not the substance. I think ENT season 1 did as good a job of capturing Star Trek‘s spirit of exploration and frontier adventure as any Trek sequel has ever done. And I like the way it worked in a reasonable number of future-continuity nods in an unobtrusive way, letting us see species only name-dropped in TOS like the Axanar and the Malurians, but in the context of telling its own stories. It was subtle and measured; the show was aware of the franchise’s future but not preoccupied with it to the extent season 4 was.
Perhaps they suspected all along that their fourth season would be their last and set about trying to cram in as much “connective tissue” to TOS as possible for that very reason?
@14 said: I think ENT season 1 did as good a job of capturing Star Trek‘s spirit of exploration and frontier adventure as any Trek sequel has ever done.
I definitely agree with that statement. Many of the heights of the series (for me) come in Season One, with the pilot being my second-favorite pilot episode of any Trek series (for me, “The Cage” is always the one to beat). “Strange New World” and “The Andorian Incident” are also tops for me. Still, I think there was the opportunity to do even more to differentiate Enterprise. Make the bridge look more like a conventional control room. One thing I really wish they’d eliminated was the stun settings on the sidearms. It’s a lot easier to shoot your way out of a situation when you know you’re just going to knock someone out. It would raise the stakes in a way that would feel more “of our time” to the viewers.
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@16/twels: “Still, I think there was the opportunity to do even more to differentiate Enterprise. Make the bridge look more like a conventional control room.”
Oh, I think the ENT art department did a fantastic job making the bridge look like a plausible advance from modern technology. I love it that the consoles had visible cooling fans on them. I also love the handles everywhere; it’s never spelled out overtly, but they’re clearly there as a backup in case the gravity goes out. It’s a lovely touch.
“It’s a lot easier to shoot your way out of a situation when you know you’re just going to knock someone out. It would raise the stakes in a way that would feel more “of our time” to the viewers.”
Would it, though? It’s not as if being shot with a bullet is automatically fatal. Unless someone’s shot in the head or heart, the odds of survival are as much as 95% if they get medical treatment in time. And even head or heart shots can be survived nearly 10% of the time.
Also, it’s rather American to assume that the only way to resolve a dangerous situation is with a gun. Police forces in other countries like England and Japan have effective ways to de-escalate or detain violent offenders without shooting them — in Japan, they literally just charge people and wrap them up in oversized futons to immobilize them. So “stun settings” — nonlethal alternatives — are already a thing in real life.
World building at its finest. I appreciate the work done to reconcile previously established facts on past Trek shows in a novel fashion. Remote-controlled ships is a very clever solution to the “Balance of Terror” continuity issue. It is somewhat reminiscent – not from other Trek shows – but from something that happened on Babylon 5. The Drakh using remote controllers for Centauri warships to provoke an interstellar war was the main plot device for that show’s final season.
This is the point where four seasons of buildup finally come together. Even if they didn’t necessarily see it at the time, Berman, Braga and the staff deserve credit for reintroducing the Andorians back into Trek way back in season 1 – and creating Shran, and casting Jeffrey Combs (of course, there’s Behr to thank for making Combs a recurring presence on DS9 – which certainly inspired the ENT producers to find a use for him). I guess they saw the potential for where all of this could go, and now Coto, Sussman and company get to finally bring it all to fruition.
The best thing is that much of that development is hardwired into the Archer/Shran relationship. A relationship that began under extremely tenuous circumstances. Archer and Shran first bonded over their shared distaste for Vulcan meddling and subterfuge. But Shran was able to move past the anger and paranoia and get to know Archer – who in turn earned a level of respect from Shran that he would never give any other alien species. In a way, it reminds me how the Sisko/Kira relationship on DS9 was supposed to mirror Bajor/Federation developing relations throughout that show. Archer/Shran serves the same purpose on the developing Andorian/Starfleet situation, but in a different tone than Sisko/Kira. But one that will have greater repercussions on the long run. No disrespect to Bajor and the Dominion War, but founding the Federation is a bigger deal. Kudos to ENT for planting these seeds onscreen throughout these episodes.
@7/Christopher: That’s probably the case. Braga previously said that the UPN regime that took over during season 4 had little to no interest in Trek. Presumably, they had little to no oversight – the network sending little to no notes. The only exception I can think of potential network meddling is the upcoming episode “Bound”. That one sounds like a T&A mandate just like season 2’s “Bounty”.
As foamy has noted, the use of pure oxygen is normal. Yes, over time pure ox is bad for you. But I’ve spent time on pure ox as a flier and you’re fine for several hours. About the only thing I ever got was dry mouth because the oxygen has no moisture in it.
Always nice to see Brian Thompson get work. I’ve had a soft spot for him since he played Klag and then was on a short-lived series about Key West (which also had Denise Crosby).
I thought this episode missed one step, in the quality of the insults. For a species who prizes insults, their insults are rather pedestrian, especially for an ambassador. You’d think their ambassador would be on par with Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker and Winston Churchill.
Quoth jaimebabb: “Perhaps they suspected all along that their fourth season would be their last and set about trying to cram in as much ‘connective tissue’ to TOS as possible for that very reason?”
I doubt it, especially given that much of what they were doing (particularly in the Vulcan trilogy and in this one) was setting up the Earth-Romulan War. I really think that they genuinely thought they’d get the same seven seasons that the prior three spinoffs got and didn’t realize they’d be canned until they got the word from on high. I suspect that, instead, the reason for the shift was simply the change in show-runners, with Manny Coto having a different notion of how to approach things than Brannon Braga.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
-I agree with Krad, the twist ending was brilliantly pulled off and it seemed so obvious in hindsight.
-The design of the Romulan ship was pretty cool. From the side it almost looked like the front end of a TNG era Warbird had been lopped off and redressed, which very well might have been an intentional nod.
-On the subject of Tellarites being largely absent after “Journey to Babel,” it brings to my mind TNG’s “Coming of Age.” In that episode, we’re introduced to a race called the Zaldans, whom Wesley Crusher adds some exposition:
Sounds like one possible description of Tellarites!
This is such a pity that good episodes were the exception, not the norm in the series…