“Horizon”
Written by André Bormanis
Directed by James A. Contner
Season 2, Episode 20
Production episode 046
Original air date: April 16, 2003
Date: January 10, 2153
Captain’s star log. Mayweather is summoned to the bridge, as Enterprise has been asked to reverse course in order to document a planet that is having multiple volcanic eruptions. This backtracking will put them fairly close to the Horizon. Since he hasn’t visited home in four years, Mayweather asks permission for leave to visit home, which Archer happily grants.
Since the survey mission is pretty much on automatic, Tucker decides that, for the duration of the mission, every night is Movie Night. They’re going to do a marathon of James Whale’s Frankenstein and its sequels—Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, and maybe even Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. T’Pol is less than enthused by the notion, but agrees to attend at least the first night against her better judgment, partly out of a sense of crew camaraderie, mainly because Tucker pouts, Archer offers her a nice dinner ahead of the movie (and a promise to never ask her again if she doesn’t like it), and Phlox is unable to provide a legitimate medical reason for her not to attend.
When they get within comm range of the Horizon, Mayweather is devastated to discover that his father, the captain of the freighter, has died. The last he heard was that he was ill, but it wasn’t that serious—the later death notice from his mother that had been sent six weeks earlier never made it to Mayweather.
Armed with some of Tucker’s photos that he’d taken, and also a request from Tucker to take a gander at Horizon’s engine when they come back to pick him up, Mayweather goes across and meets up with his mother Rianna. They hug and commiserate and catch up. Mayweather is touched to see that he’s sleeping in his former cabin, which Rianna has redecorated with all his old stuff, including the star chart he created labelling all the stars he wanted to visit.
Mayweather is reunited with his brother Paul, now the freighter’s captain. Their brotherly banter is tinged with some awkwardness, partly at least because of their father’s recent death. Mayweather is also happy to see that the cargo holds are more full than ever, which means business is good.
Later, Mayweather does some upgrades on the bridge, which pisses Paul off, both because Mayweather didn’t consult with his brother on those changes and because what happens if these upgrades fail, who’s going to fix them with Mayweather back on Enterprise?
One of Mayweather’s childhood friends, Nora, visits him in their cabin, and confides in him that things are not all skittles and beer on Horizon. Paul has been struggling with the role of captain.
Their talk is interrupted by Horizon being fired upon by a couple of small ships that take some potshots and then leave, after depositing a booby-trapped beacon onto the hull. The ships’ configuration and MO is the same as ones that attacked the Constellation a few weeks earlier. Paul’s plan is to give them what they want rather than try to fight back. Mayweather points out that pirates like this will just be encouraged to keep doing it, and they should fight back—he has a way to boost the power of their weapons with a trick he learned from Reed. But Paul refuses, not wanting to endanger the ship.
On Enterprise, T’Pol does some research and discovers that Frankenstein is based on a work of literature. Her alternative suggestion to Tucker of a dramatic reading of the novel falls on deaf ears. However, when she attends the movie, she starts getting into it, going so far as to shush Phlox when he starts babbling. When she discusses the movie with Archer and Tucker in the captain’s mess the next day, T’Pol surprises the pair of them by referring to the monster as the protagonist and sees how the villagers treated the monster as a good metaphor for how Vulcans were treated by humans when they arrived on Earth.
On Horizon, Mayweather talks with Rianna, who tells him about what a pig’s ear his father made of being captain when he first ascended to the role. But he settled down eventually, and so will Paul.
Buy the Book
Wild Massive
The pirates come back, but Paul’s plan to just hand over the cargo doesn’t quite work because the pirate captain demands that they abandon ship. Paul will not let them have his ship, so he asks Mayweather to enact his plan. They detach the cargo modules, which gives them more maneuverability, and then Mayweather uses the souped-up weapons to mess up the pirates’ engines.
Enterprise and Horizon rendezvous, with the Mayweather boys having reached a rapprochement. Mayweather also offers to have Reed look at the beacon to try to get it off.
When he comes back on board Enterprise, Archer greets him and mentions the damage to the cargo modules. Mayweather fobs it off as meteorite damage. How he will reconcile this lie with his request to Reed to pry off the booby-trapped beacon is left as an exercise for the viewer.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? If you tie your plasma turrets into the impulse engines, they’ll be super-awesome.
The gazelle speech. Archer continues the efforts he started in “The Catwalk” to get T’Pol to be more friendly with the crew with the communal experience of Movie Night. He offers dinner beforehand as an incentive, which strikes me as an odd offer, since she dines with the captain, like, all the time anyhow…
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol spends most of the episode resisting watching Frankenstein, but then finds it extremely compelling when she finally does, to the point that she plans to recommend that Soval watch it.
Florida Man. Florida Man Bullies First Mate Into Attending Movie Night, Later Regrets It Because He’s Narrow-Minded.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox has sufficient medical ethics that he won’t make up an illness to help T’Pol get out of Movie Night. He also has insufficient human social skills to realize that you shouldn’t talk during the movie…
More on this later… Mayweather and Reed have a conversation in the mess hall that “predicts” the status quo on TNG, with Mayweather saying that families should be allowed to serve on starships and Reed countering that if so, he’d need a therapist on board to help deal with that much exposure to his parents.
I’ve got faith…
“This Doctor Frankenstein, his technique is not dissimilar to a practice on B’Saari II. They successfully used an isolytic current to reanimate the bodies of the recently deceased.”
“Really?”
“Of course, the revived individuals weren’t capable of more than basic cellular metabolism. However, the B’Saari have developed a procedure that shows promise in repairing the synaptic—”
“We can stop the film if it’s disturbing your conversation.”
–Phlox babbling at Tucker in the middle of the movie (and inadvertently providing a lovely plot notion for a zombie story) before being interrupted by T’Pol shushing him.
Welcome aboard. Joan Pringle and Corey Mendell Parker play Mayweather mère et frère, respectively, while Ken Feinberg plays the pirate captain.
Nicole Forester plays Nora. Forester previously appeared on DS9 as the image of a dabo girl in “Distant Voices” (her first TV role, that) and will go on to play Cassie Winslow in Guiding Light, which would earn her a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2008.
Trivial matters: The Horizon shares a name with the ship that visited Sigma Iotia II and gave them a gift of a book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties, which they then patterned their entire society after, as established in the original series’ “A Piece of the Action.” The set design of this episode hints that it was this same Earth Cargo Services vessel that made that visit, as there’s a book that says Chicago Gangs on the spine on the bookshelf in Mayweather’s cabin. The novel Kobayashi Maru by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin makes this connection explicit.
Rianna refers to the events of “The Catwalk” and “Minefield” when querying her son on the subject of the dangerousness of Enterprise’s mission. Tucker also references “The Catwalk,” as that was the first time T’Pol participated in the groupwatches on board Enterprise, and also, apparently, the last time she did before this episode.
This is our first time seeing the low-gravity “sweet spot” since “Broken Bow.”
Paul references the difficulties ECS vessels have hiring people in the wake of the Warp 5 Project that was also a plot point in “Fortunate Son.”
Deneva was established as a human colony in the original series’ “Operation—Annihilate!”
Phlox mentions some B’Saari medical techniques during the movie. The B’Saari were established in “Future Tense” as the first alien species Denobulans ever encountered.
Tucker’s proclivity for photographing their missions was first seen in “Strange New World.”
According to Tucker, the J-class engines were put together by Zefram Cochrane his own self, and he’s heard a rumor that he personally autographed the housings. Cochrane was established as the inventor of warp drive in the original series’ “Metamorphosis,” that invention being seen in First Contact.
All of Tucker’s proposed movies are actual movies that adapt or spin off of Mary Shelley’s famous novel. Frankenstein was released in 1931, directed by James Whale and starring Colin Clive and Boris Karloff. Bride of Frankenstein was released in 1935, also directed by Whale, with Clive and Karloff returning, joined by Elsa Lanchester as both the author in a framing sequence and the titular bride. Son of Frankenstein came out in 1938, directed by Rowland V. Lee, starring Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Bela Lugosi. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein came out in 1948, starring the famous comedy duo of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, along with Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Glenn Strange, and an uncredited Vincent Price.
It’s been a long road… “You’re not part of this crew anymore.” I mostly liked this somewhat flawed episode, but three aspects of it angered me a great deal, so let me rant about each of them and get them all out of my system…
Rant the First: Okay, here’s a little bit of Scriptwriting 101: in a show with the format of Enterprise (and all the prior Trek shows), there’s a bit before the opening credits. While the stuff after the credits is structured the same way theatrical productions are, as acts (Act 1, Act 2, etc.), that prior bit is specifically in teleplay writing referred to as the teaser.
A teaser is defined by Dictionary.com as “a person or thing that teases,” as “presented to generate interest.”
You know what totally doesn’t generate interest or tease much of anything? A guy sitting in low-G reading a book and being summoned to the bridge for a course change.
I’ve rung this bell a lot in this rewatch, but I’ve also been rewatching Enterprise for a year now, and the thing that has really stood out more than anything over the past twelve months is the spectacular inability of most episodes to actually tease in the teaser. Combined with the sheer awfulness of the theme music that follows these unteasing teasers, it makes it incredibly difficult and challenging to scrape up any enthusiasm for the subsequent episode.
Rant the Second: In 1818, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was published, with a revised edition published in 1831. It has remained, not only in print, but incredibly popular and iconic for all of the two centuries since then. It was a pioneering work in both the science fiction and horror fields, which is pretty impressive for a book that Shelley wrote when she wasn’t yet twenty years old. It inspired stage plays, a radio drama, and many movies, including the one in 1931 that has become even more iconic (and which the Enterprise crew watched in this episode). It is one of the most famous and important works of literature in the English language.
So for Tucker to describe the author of the book to T’Pol as “Mary Shelley, the wife of a famous poet” is fucking ridiculous. It’s like referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as “the wife of a famous lawyer,” or Olympic gold medalist Corey Cogdell as “the wife of a Chicago Bears lineman” (which the Chicago Tribune did in 2016 and got justifiably reamed for it), or actor Cate Blanchett as “the wife of a famous playwright.” Hell, it’s like referring to Joe Biden as “the husband of a famous educator,” which no one would ever do.
On top of that, T’Pol’s notion that the monster is the protagonist of the story not only isn’t the radical notion that Archer and Tucker seem to think it is, but it pretty much how the novel is often interpreted, and is also not even a little bit of an unreasonable reading of the text of the book or the movie. That particular bit wouldn’t have bothered me so much except Archer and Tucker’s reaction is out-and-out confusion and revulsion. Instead of portraying our two main male protagonists as open to new ideas and reconsidering the movie, we show them instead as hidebound assholes who can’t handle the new concept, which is the exact opposite of what humans are supposed to be like in the twenty-second century (recall Archer’s rant on the subject of humanity’s enlightenment to Soval in “Cease Fire”). T’Pol seeing the villagers as analogues to humans responding to the Vulcans’ arrival should be food for self-reflection on Archer and Tucker’s part, not cause for them to look at her like she’s crazy and not let her watch movies anymore.
On top of that, Tucker’s nauseated reaction to T’Pol’s alternate suggestion of a dramatic reading of Shelley’s novel instead of watching the James Whale film made me nauseated. Tucker’s disgusted dismissal of the notion of a dramatic reading of fiction is the type of anti-intellectual snottiness that I encountered from the people in high school who used to torment me and make fun of me for a) being smart and b) watching things like Star Trek.
Rant the Third: Why the hell is it the captain’s son who takes over the Horizon and not the captain’s wife? Seriously, Paul obviously doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, and Rianna is obviously smarter, more experienced, and more qualified. Yes, she’s the chief engineer, and maybe that means she isn’t right for command—except her late husband also was the chief engineer before he was made captain, so that excuse doesn’t fly.
There is, bluntly, no reason presented in the episode why Rianna shouldn’t be in charge instead of her dumbshit son, and the only reason she isn’t is because of good old-fashioned sexism. So nice to see that nothing has changed since Janice Lester’s idiotic comment in 1969…
Okay, rants over with, let’s get to the parts of the episode that didn’t anger me.
One of the most fascinating parts of the setup of Enterprise was the “boomer” subculture that Mayweather was said to be a part of. We’ve gotten glimpses of the community of freighters that were a big part of early interstellar travel, mostly in “Fortunate Son,” and it’s fun to see it again here. I particularly like how it instantly becomes clear that this is not a military vessel. While there’s still a hierarchy, this is civilians doing a job rather than military personnel in a chain of command. The casual banter, the multitasking, the focus on doing the job right and making a profit over serving an ideal. André Bormanis’ script does a good job of showing the more casual, more lived-in life on Horizon.
This almost makes up for a bog-standard plotline that follows the same tired beats as every other person-is-reunited-with-family-and-struggles-to-reconnect-with-them storyline that every TV show has done at some point or other. Trek has dipped into this well many times (the original series’ “Journey to Babel,” TNG’s “The Icarus Factor” and “Family,” DS9’s “Prodigal Daughter,” etc.). That it works at all is entirely on the backs of good acting by the guest stars. Corey Mendell Parker does a particularly good job with the initial scene between him and Anthony Montgomery’s Mayweather, with a conversation that modulated entertainingly between awkward and affectionate.
And Joan Pringle is superlative as Rianna, doing the usual Mom thing of cutting through the bullshit. Why wasn’t she made captain again?
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s favorite novel is Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. He recently wrote a short story that dealt with how the author was perceived both in her lifetime and afterward, called “What You Can Become Tomorrow” in Three Time Travelers Walk Into….
I didn’t think much of this episode. The one thing it really has going for it is that it was the season’s only attempt to give Travis something to do — and the last time that would really happen until season 4.
I do like the idea of the Space Boomers in principle, though, and I wish they’d done more with them. I’ve often thought it would be nice to see a whole Trek series about a civilian ship for a change. We’ve kind of sort of got that with Prodigy, but even they have adopted the roles of Starfleet cadets and try to follow Starfleet procedures. I’d like to see how things work on a purely civilian ship, say, a science vessel like Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso.
It’s disappointing that they didn’t put the actual Chicago Mobs of the Twenties on Travis’s bookshelf. They came so close, but got the title wrong.
And yes, you said everything I was thinking of saying about the Frankenstein issue and the interpretation of the Monster as the real protagonist. Even in the ’31 movie, let alone in the novel, it’s clear that the Monster is an innocent provoked to violence by others’ fear, hate, and abuse.
I find it surprising that they actually ponied up to Universal for the rights to show a clip from Frankenstein. Usually they go with Paramount movies for “movie night” episodes. I know there were specific plot beats they wanted to hit, but I bet some budget-conscious staffer or executive raised the question “Is there a Paramount movie property that works as a substitute?”
On a Doyle-ist level, I agree that not having ‘Captain Mom’ at work is a pity: on a Watsonian level it’s probable that Rianna Mayweather didn’t step up as Captain after her husband’s death for the same reason it was her husband and not the lady herself who held the role in life.
Not everyone WANTS to be Captain, after all.
Also, it’s perfectly fair for at least ONE Starfleet officer to be less than thrilled by the notion of digging deep into 19th Century literature (having read FRANKENSTEIN the thought of a ‘Dramatic Reading’ doesn’t exactly strike me as a good time): they are, after all, living proof that change has actually occurred between the 22nd & 24th Centuries (The crew of NCC-1701-D would have been ALL OVER that notion).
I wonder if anyone suggested trying to stage scenes from a fictional Frankenstein movie instead of paying Universal. Surely there would be another dozen versions between now and Enterprise.
In general one thought this episode to be quite good – and an interesting change of pace – but it must have the most boring pre-credits sequence in the entire franchise!
I get the feeling that the script writer wanted me to feel all warm and fuzzy about the family reunion. And partly I feel that way. But then there is that other part of me, which wants to rant at Travis (or rather, at André …)
Travis is now Starfleet. He is no longer on the Horizon. As Paul pointed out, it is not his authority to make modifications to the ship, not just once but twice, after being called out on it the first time.
Travis is now Starfleet. He is no longer on the Horizon. It is not his authority to brief the Horizon crew on experimental Starfleet weaponry.
Travis is now Starfleet. He is no longer on the Horizon. He is required to tell his superior officers about any battles this human ship got into.
Oh, and it sounds as if the writing staffs’ notion of a meter is right about with a kiloquad.You know, meter, that unit of distance a touch over one yard …
On the other hand, I want to challenge your assertion that Paul’s promotion is sexism against Rianna. We don’t know how old Rianna is, but she is the wife of a man who just died after several years of medical issues. It it absurd to assume that the Horizon wanted someone younger in that slot?
At times I wonder how these ships are organized and managed. When I think of family crews on long-range freighters, the merchanters from C.J. Cherry’s Alliance/Union universe always spring to my mind. But the Earth Cargo Service ships don’t quite feel that way, as far as family dynamics go. Mayweather made it clear that they’re quite dependent on hiring staff, yet the senior ranks seem to be in the family. Did the Mayweather family (or specifically Travis’ father, until his death) own the Horizon? If so, why the ECS designation? If we assume that “the Mayweather clan” was planning to run ECS Horizon for many more years, should they promote the elderly Chief Engineer and Chief Medic to a third hat, or give the hot seat to an up-and-coming bridge officer?
That’s the in-universe view. The out-of-universe view is even clearer. The sibling rivalry, and overcoming it, was clearly part of the story. Now, they could have made the sibling a sister. But making Rianna the new captain would have made it much harder for Travis to pull his “look how Starfleet does it” show …
@1. ChristopherLBennett: That sympathetic interpretation of Frankenstein’s ‘daemon’ only holds good & true right up until he – with malice aforethought and not a particle of remorse – casually condemns Justine to death by setting her up for the murder of William Frankenstein (with the unhappy assistance of Victor Frankenstein, who fails to speak up and suggest that he made an enemy while at college*).
After that his actions (blackmail, extortion and murderous vendetta) are purely villainous, whatever their motivations.
*Though in fairness I’m not sure Frankenstein even has empirical proof that his monster has come home to roost at this point in the novel and the very, very literal sense of “made an enemy” would be a hard sell in any courtroom.
@6/ED: Yes, of course the creature becomes a villain, but the point is that he was turned into that by the torments he suffered as a result of human bigotry. In the novel, he explicitly says that he would’ve been the kindest of souls if he’d only been met with kindness, but since all humanity ever showed him was cruelty and hate, he decided to repay it in kind, because humanity had given him no reason to believe it deserved anything else. That’s what makes it a tragedy. The point is that he wasn’t born a villain, but was made one. Like so many victims of abuse, he became an abuser himself, perpetuating the cycle. Victor blamed the creature’s evil on his intrinsic inhumanity, and so do people like Archer and Trip who miss the point of the story. But perceptive readers and viewers can recognize that Victor is the real monster, the parent who rejected and abused his child rather than loving him, and therefore started him down a path of suffering that turned him into a villain.
And you can see this in the movies as well. In the original, the creature goes on a rampage because he was tormented by Fritz. In Bride, the blind man shows him kindness and he proves he can be a gentle, sensitive being, but when he’s met with the mob’s violence, he retaliates.
Which is why Young Frankenstein is an invaluable companion piece to the original films, because it shows the alternative where the father figure finally gets it right, where he accepts his son and loves him, and thereby prevents another tragedy.
The mundane movie night plot was as interesting as the space pirate plot, which is pretty sad. If you can’t make space pirates exciting…
@7. ChristopherLBennett: I’ve always felt that calling Victor Frankenstein “the real monster” of the original is less accurate than describing him as one-half of a quintessential tragedy, since this isn’t a grown-up man callously scorning the misshapen work of his own hands, but a medical student (probably not much above twenty) who finds himself with a whole d— person on his hands and proceeds to drop the poor creature because he’s not much more than a kid himself.
It bears pointing out that Frankenstein worked himself to the point of physical & mental collapse creating his ill-fated magnum opus and then proceeded to quite literally collapse after the grisly spectacle of his own exercise in hubris brought to life (One angle I’d like to see used in more adaptations is that Victor Frankenstein’s monster bears a striking resemblance to his maker, but distorted to the proportions of a classical statue – which are, it should be noted, NOT those of an actual living being – and more or less wrapped in the skin of a mummified corpse): this does not strike me as the stuff of classic villainy.
As a father Frankenstein is unquestionably an abysmal failure, but in my opinion he only begins to be truly vindictive (even malicious) when he destroys the Creature’s ‘bride’ rather than allow her to be brought to life – at which point Victor Frankenstein becomes one half of a vendetta that will only die with the man himself (and which may have brought the other half crashing down with him, there being not very much left it his life than Hatred for his Creator).
Put another way, I favour an interpretation of FRANKENSTEIN that treats it as, mostly, a two-hander tragedy that shows the tragic consequences when the bastard son of an underage father comes home after a long, unhappy odyssey and finds forgiveness neither in himself nor in his “Father”.
ED: I disagree completely with your interpretation of the novel. Victor is entirely villainous — or, at the very least, an unthinking, self-centered, egotistical ass — from beginning to end. When Victor sees the creature, he’s horrified, and runs away from it. The next time he checks his lab, the creature is gone. Out of sight, out of mind: it’s gone, Victor falls into an illness, and when he recovers, he puts it all out of his head. Later, the monster, having sworn revenge on his creator who made him so ugly only a blind old man could stand to be near him, kills Victor’s younger brother William and frames Justine Moritz, an old friend of the Frankenstein family, for the murder by leaving William’s locket on her sleeping body. There is a trial, and Justine is hung. Victor knows that the creature is truly responsible, but refuses to say anything, because he cannot bear to reveal the secret of his creation to anyone, so he stays silent, and allows Justine to die.
Then, as you point out, Victor promises to create a bride for the monster. He agrees at first, but at the last second changes his mind, refusing to inflict another hideous wretch such as this upon the world. The monster is furious, and promises, “I will be with you on your wedding night.” Despite this promise, Victor marries Elizabeth, never once telling her that a huge, superstrong creature has threatened to crash the party, so to speak. And sure enough, on their wedding night, the monster comes in and kills her.
There is no point in the novel where Victor is anything but a self-centered ass who commits numerous acts of depraved indifference, which result in the deaths of people he cares about.
As to the other point about Rianna made by you and o.m., as I said in the rewatch, there’s no reason in the episode why Rianna isn’t captain. We can speculate all we want, but Andre Bormanis’s script failed to provide such an answer — the same script that made it clear that Rianna would be about fifty billion times better at the job than her dumb kid.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@9/ED & 10/krad: In any case, I think we can all agree that Victor is by no means a heroic figure, and that T’Pol isn’t wrong to say the creature was persecuted for being different. The implausible thing is that Archer and Trip are surprised by that reading, as if they’ve never heard it before. It’s obvious enough right there in the movie, and in its sequel.
There is always a risk when you reference other art in your own work. It reminds people that they could be doing something else with their time. I would rather be watching the 1930’s Frankenstein movies than watching this episode of Enterprise (note that I don’t say any episode of Enterprise; it’s still a good series overall).
I wish they had done a better job with the Boomer thing – some actual legit tension with Starfleet – these people have been on their own for a long time, and now Starfleet with Warp 5 engines pulls into town. Are they going to get refits? Are they screwed? Will they try to enforce Earth law on the decks of ECS Ships?
Cherryh did this so well, and the Boomers are obviously a pastiche of the Merchanter’s Alliance, but not done nearly so well. Actually making enemies of them, and having to win them over, as a group, to help win the Romulan War would have been a very interesting arc, especially if the price of that would have been Mayweather leaving to Captain his Family’s ship. The problem with Enterprise is that nothing really had a price.
Instead of Cherryh meets Trek, we get insipid sibling drama and weak pirates.
Around the time Enterprise was on the air, I saw “Master and Commander” and realized that that representation of a small ship in a vast and dangerous environment requiring constant effort for survival was an element I wanted to see in a Star Trek prequel – and “Horizon” briefly gave me the sense that “Enterprise” might give me that kind of representation of space travel, at least for some of the people the Enterprise encountered – but I was not to be so.
This episode is basically a companion piece to “Fortunate Son” except we have actual stakes in the fact that this is Travis’ family but the two plots are similar enough that I think it’s interesting to compare/contrast them on their message.
Basically, Archer in “Fortunate Son” is furious with the Fortune’s crew attempting to fight back against the Nausicaans and actively attempts to inhibit them from destroying a pirate base. This despite the fact that Archer makes it clear Starfleet won’t provide security so the lesson is, “Self-defense is wrong even when no one else will defend you.”
Here, Travis upgrades the Horizon’s weapons systems and that’s why they survive against pirates. They promptly succeed in driving off the pirates and absolutely no one has any problem with the way things are settled. There’s also some of the same hesitancy to incorporate Starfleet upgrades and arguments over Travis “abandoning” his people’s ways but more punch because it’s his family.
I feel like the two episodes are basically the same episode with someone removing the stupid from the first episode, which also means most of the tension is removed. In a series that was better serialized (not necessarily any more episodic than TNG but directly acknowledging the previous one) they could have done this episode as a sequel to Fortunate Son and shown how the Boomers are changing due to the advances of technology. Imagine if the first episode had also been on the Horizon, Travis’ father died, and he finds his brother is more willing/open to ideas that will ultimately end the Boomer lifestyle.
Instead, it feels more like a rehash and no one acknowledges the similarity.
I doubt that you could find more than one person out of 100 alive today who would consider Percy Bysshe Shelley to be more famous than his wife, least of all amongst science fiction fans, so this was a truly baffling decision on the part of the writers.
#14
That was always my hope for Voyager, too. Alas, it never quite reached that level either.
(Incidentally, I actually did participate in a live reading of Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus in 2018 to commemorate the bicentennial of its original publication, and I’m with T’Pol; it was a good time)
“Columbus, Magellan, Travis Mayweather.”
This feels rather cringey and contrived in places. After, as krad says, one of the worst pre-credit sequences on record, we get the whopping great coincidence of Mayweather’s father having died shortly before Enterprise is in the region. Oh, and his visit home coincides with an alien attack. While we’re obviously meant to side with Mayweather, he is a bit of a dick messing around with ship’s systems without checking it’s okay, even if his modifications do save the ship. It doesn’t seem entirely fair for Nora to be complaining to him about Paul’s command style either. And he demonstrates Starfleet officers’ usual inability to change out of uniform while on holiday, although he does change into civvies eventually. Travis and Paul’s initial friendly reunion shows promise we might avoid cliches but it quickly turns into a bog-standard “estranged relative” story. At least he’s still on good terms with his mother. The final battle with the aliens holds the interest but is nothing special.
I think this could have been avoided if the three elements had actually had some connection: Mayweather had gone home because of his father’s death (which is even what I thought happened, so I was surprised to find him already on the way when he got the news), or maybe Starfleet had heard about the previous pirate attacks (which are even mentioned!) and that prompted Mayweather to check in on his family. As it is, everything happens at the same time because that’s when the episode takes place.
The B-plot is more fun, with T’Pol again showing herself to be not so above it all. Archer suggests she be his date to the movie: Subtext much? But me in the queue of people not sure why Archer and Tucker treat T’Pol’s perception of Frankenstein as being about how humanity treats “the other” as though it’s some revolutionary concept: Plenty of English Literature students have done the same. (I must admit I’ve never read the book or seen a film adaptation, so I can’t join in that discussion. My brother did dictate his GCSE essay on it for me to type out though…) While Tucker’s unnecessarily snooty about it, I can see that people turning up for a movie wouldn’t be happy to find someone reading a story to them instead. Maybe T’Pol should have taken his suggestion she set up a book club herself seriously.
The C-plot about Enterprise doing a charting mission ends on an odd note: It feels like either the ship’s going to be in danger or there’s going to be some follow-up on the life they detect, but then it’s never mentioned again.
A bit of a continuity reference cavalcade, much of which krad has already mentioned. Mayweather also recalls the encounter with the Mazarites in ‘Fallen Hero’ (although he glosses over the fact they needed rescuing by the Vulcans) and Reed boosting the phasers in ‘Silent Enemy’. Admiral Forrest is mentioned, as is Mayweather’s sister: She was said to be aboard Horizon in ‘Fortunate Son’ but has apparently moved on. (An alternate version of the episode where she’s captain is interesting to contemplate.)
Mayweather left Horizon to join Starfleet four years ago and hadn’t been back since, although his father sent Archer a letter of recommendation two and a half years ago. Archer recalls he considered joining the cargo service before Starfleet was formed. Reed says his last family reunion was a decade ago.
This is the last time the show ever attempts a Mayweather-centric episode: He’s basically a glorified extra in Season 3, while Season 4 at best gives him a B-plot.
@15/CT Phipps: As I tried to point out on ‘Fortunate Son’, at no point is it said that the Fortunate was wrong to defend itself against pirates. The issue was that, after they’d successfully driven off the pirates in self-defence, Ryan decided to lead his crew after them, picking a fight and putting all their lives (and the lives of Enterprise, who had to come to their rescue) at risk just to get revenge.
C.T.: cap-mjb is correct and your memory of “Fortunate Son” is faulty. Archer’s issue with the Fortunate crew is not that they defended themselves, it’s that they took a prisoner (and tortured him, though Archer’s only actual complaint, stupidly, is that they took a prisoner).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@19, 20
I stand corrected!
But yes, I feel like the Boomer culture deserved better. The idea of humanity generating a nomadic new culture in space should have been ENT’s version of the Belters from The Expanse. People who have been thrown together from all parts of the world who have learned to live together and die together in the confines of a ship.
I’d have been very interested in finding out who is joining such a life, why, and what sort of places they visit.
As someone who believes that the best way to understand a culture is to sample their fiction (to see their ideas of good and evil, what qualities they consider heroic, what crimes they consider monstrous, their greatest utopian dreams, their worst fears, etc), I remember being more caught up in the movie night than the Horizon plot.
Of course an engineer like Trip would suggest Frankenstein, seeing it as a tale of a mad scientist’s invention gone wrong (he’s probably never really spared a thought to what the Creature was thinking/feeling; it’s just a runaway robot, after all). It occurred to me back then that a Vulcan would probably get more out of Dracula, with its allegory of the dangers of passion (especially lust) in the face of proper Victorian Enlightenment-era ideals of logic and emotional reserve.
@10, 22
I also feel there’s an interesting social element going on with Archer and Trip reacting so unpleasantly to T’Pol’s interpretation of Frankenstein. They probably would have just nodded along if any other crew member had said the Creature was someone who had been unfairly maligned by both Frankenstein as well as society at large.
However, T’Pol explicitly points out that humanity is being racist to Vulcans and as Krad points out, “Should be food for self-reflection for Archer and Trip.” Instead, it causes them to be defensive and deny she’s right. Because they don’t want to admit they’re bigots against Vulcans.
@22/Cybersnark: If we’re talking about Stoker’s novel, I think T’Pol would see it quite negatively, for the same reason she identified with Frankenstein’s Monster. While Frankenstein can be read as a condemnation of prejudice against those who are different, Dracula is an endorsement of it — an allegory for the “threat” posed by the increased immigration of Eastern European Jews to England at the time the novel was written, and an expression of the stock xenophobic fear that immigrants of an alien ethnicity are Coming For Our Women and will erode the purity of the race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Race
So she’d probably identify just as much with Dracula, an outsider who’s perceived as devilish for his differences.
@24
I wonder what she’d makeof Saberhagen’s Dracula. Or Holmes for that matter
Ah yes, the Travis episode. I remember this as being better than the average Season 2 fare, which isn’t saying much, admittedly. Like others, I was very interested in seeing the civilian side of Star Trek’s early space pioneers, so this one held a lot of appeal for me. Still, it could have been much better. I also wondered why the mother wasn’t the captain, but maybe she didn’t want to be, I dunno.
I love the book Frankenstein (though I hated it as a kid) and would have been delighted by a dramatic reading. It sounds like a great way for the crew to relax together. Different people could have taken turns doing the narration. I agree with the comment which said the Enterprise D crew would have loved that sort of thing. But the film is a lot of fun, too, I suppose.
@11. ChristopherLBennett: First and foremost, you are correct sir – I am quite happy to agree with yourself and Dahar Master krad that Victor Frankenstein is far from heroic, whether in the novel or in most adaptations thereof (though I do remain committed to a slightly more sympathetic take on The Creator than that of Mr DeCandido, not least because of how very, very difficult it would have been for the former to explain his Creation without being locked up for gibbering insanity*).
Also, can we all agree that the B’Saari and their ever-so-slightly Mad Scientist approach to medical science deserve some attention
*Given that the novel is set either quite late in the 18th century Anno Domini – or very early in the 19th – it seems extremely unlikely that Victor Frankenstein would face charges of witchcraft, but given that his outstanding achievement was far more the product of Alchemy & the occult than of actual science it’s quite possible that he deserved to be!
@24. I do, however, comprehensively disagree with your interpretation of DRACULA: Dracula is hated for his differences because he’s the perfect embodiment of every Bastard Feudalist who ever pretended the droit de seigneur was a God-given Right and not a thoroughly nasty privilege of rank (I’m tempted to invoke the Maquis de Sade, but given the latter was an especially nasty fantasist it’s difficult to separate his actual crimes from the rather sickening fiction he wrote: perhaps a more apt comparison would be Gille de Rais, not least because of the latter’s career as a storied warlord).
Put simply Count Dracula isn’t hated for what he IS, Count Dracula is hated for what he DOES (Including, but not limited to, kidnapping, murder, theft, multiple murder, the vampiric equivalent of infecting several young women with a sexual disease, cruelty to animals, stalking, vandalism, manipulation of the mentally ill and only God alone knows what else).
If that list looks a little OTT to those who haven’t read the original novel then prepare yourself for one wild ride when you actually do.
It also bears pointing out that the sort of Old World aristocracy that inspired – amongst other things – the French Revolution was very far from dead in Mr Stoker’s day: DRACULA itself was, in fact, published twenty years before the Russian Revolution (to the very year).
@C.T. Phipps: You make an excellent point about the Boomers being a potentially intriguing focus for some STAR TREK production, especially in the context of the developments that will change their life beyond all recognition – one can only wonder if any of these vessels were upgraded or converted into ‘Q Ships’ during the Romulan War – though I’m not sure what sort of rendition would suit them best.
Wait a minute, just imagine Beckett Mariner serving on a Boomer ship – I can’t decide if she’d go stir crazy within the first three months or just enjoy soaking up that “we’re all family here, let’s see the galaxy and make some money in the process” ambience.
A nice decent episode that provides some badly needed spotlight moments for Travis Mayweather, and it paints a pretty honest and accurate portrayal of an awkward tense, but still loving sibling relationship. If we’re comparing this one to other Trek “family reunion” shows, this is a massive improvement over Kyle Riker, that’s for sure. Paul feels a lot more three-dimensional, who’s a bit of a jerk, but you can see the weight of the responsibility over his shoulders. Rianna was also a welcome presence, giving even more character to the Boomer side of the Trek universe.
Not much of a plot around it, but it harkens back to season 1’s more experimental focus on these character vignettes. And Bormanis has certainly come a long way in the decade he’s been involved with Trek, going from being the science/astronomy to becoming a half-decent writer/producer, capable of building a character-based story with very functional scenes (of course, as mentioned above, a lot of the credit still has to go to the actors to make it all work).
As for Tucker’s misguided reference to Mary Shelley, I prefer to assume that our engineer is still very much a person who has yet to grow and evolve past centuries-old prejudices. He probably doesn’t even realize the chauvinistic implications of what he’s saying. This is someone who comes from Florida, which as of right now has Ron DeSantis as governor. I don’t expect all of mankind to evolve as switfly in unison over the 100 years that have passed since Zefram Cochrane’s first contact with the Vulcans. Some will evolve slower than others, taking longer for old prejudices to die out as they should. Since Cogenitor is still a couple of weeks away, I’m going to hold back on Tucker discussion for now.
@27/ED: You have it backward. Yes, in the story, Dracula is hated for his villainous ways, but in real life, Bram Stoker chose to make the immigrant character villainous as an allegory for anti-immigrant stereotypes. That’s what I’m talking about. It makes no sense to defend a story based on what happens in the story, because everything in the story is imaginary; it only happens that way because the writer wanted it to. If the writer is prejudiced against a certain group, then of course members of that group are going to be portrayed in the story as villains. That’s the point.
It’s the same as, say, Fu Manchu. In the story, you could argue that the characters only hate and fear Fu Manchu because he’s a sinister evil mastermind. But in real life, we recognize that Sax Rohmer chose to portray Fu Manchu that way because he was an embodiment of racist fears of the “Yellow Peril.” It’s not that the characters fear him because he’s a villain, but that the writer made him a villain to capitalize on the audience’s fears of his race. When Dracula was written, anti-Semitic hatred of Eastern European immigrants was as common in England as anti-Asian racism was at the time the Fu Manchu stories were written. In both cases, the authors were playing into the xenophobia of their audience, either because they shared it or because they were willing to exploit it to sell their work.
#28
Yes, Tucker comes from the same state as DeSantis. He also comes from the same state as NASA astronaut and engineer John Young and a whole slew of other scientists and academics working there.
@Christopher
Interestingly, Christopher, I think you may be wrong about Stoker for specifically interesting reasons. Stoker wrote an alternate version of Dracula called THE POWERS OF DARKNESS for an Icelandic audience that significantly broadened his interpretation of Dracula and his goals. It takes place about 80% in Dracula’s castle and also adds a huge amount of sex that puts to lie the interpretation Stoker was unaware of the “Sexy Dracula” take that so many people think is a misinterpretation of the Count.
But more relevant to the point is that Dracula actually has a scheme and ideology in Powers of Darkness. Dracula expounds on his philosophy of militarism, social Darwinism, eugenics, and other fascist ideology talking points. Which interestingly renders the book an early Anti-Fascist work. Which given the focus attributed to Dracula on his bloodline as nobility, makes the idea of it being Anti-Semitic questionable.
@31/C.T. Phipps: I don’t know enough about the subject to respond on the rest, but as to this point:
“…also adds a huge amount of sex that puts to lie the interpretation Stoker was unaware of the “Sexy Dracula” take that so many people think is a misinterpretation of the Count.”
As I recall the book, it couldn’t have been clearer that Dracula’s blood-drinking was a metaphor for sex. The thing I think is a misinterpretation is the way many later adaptations portray Dracula as an alluring, romantic figure that women are drawn to. In the book, he was pretty blatantly a sexual predator, with no indication that his victims consented in any way.
One of the reasons why Dracula has been so enduring is because it’s open to multiple interpretations, and there were multiple forces at work around Bram Stoker that influenced his writing of it. Both Cybersnark’s and Christopher’s interpretations are legit ones — Dracula is VERY VERY MUCH a metaphor for Victorian repression of sexuality, but it’s also a metaphor for the fear of the other that commonly goes along with waves of immigration.
Personally, I think that — unless T’Pol is a greater student of 19th-century European history than she’s been portrayed to be — she’s more likely to go the way Cybersnark suggested, viewing it in terms of the evils of emotionalism, as that particular metaphor is a bit more overt in the book itself regardless of the socio-historical context.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@29. ChristopherLBennett: While one would certainly not dispute that DRACULA was very much part of the wave of ‘Invasion Literature’ in British fiction of the late 19th century, I find it extremely hard to swallow the notion that Dracula’s inspiration was Shylock instead of Mephistopheles – I believe that it’s an established fact that Sir Henry Irving’s performance in the latter role that was the seminal influence on Count Dracula’s creation – and it also bears pointing out that Mr Stoker at no point characterises Count Dracula as a typical representative of his homeland.
While he unquestionably has local servants in Transylvania (the wagon-drivers who deliver his boxes of ‘rare Earth’ to the port of Varna), just about every other person (I.E. living human person) we observe in the East is either terrified or terrorised by The Count AND more often than actively assists our heroes (from the coachman who tries to make sure Mr Harker misses his meeting with Count Dracula to the lady who insists he accepts the crucifix that does so much to keep him alive in Castle Dracula to Sister Agatha and her convent, who help nurse Mr Harker back to health after his escape*).
Given the role Professor Van Helsing & Mr Quincey P. Morris play in the text, combined with the characterisation of the several inhabitants of Eastern Europe whom we encounter in the text, I find it extremely hard to describe DRACULA as xenophobic and even harder to describe as anti-Semitic (Given that Count Dracula is, explicitly, The Devil who was once a Christian warlord).
In fact so far as I can tell the only person who delivers anything like a screed against Johnny Foreigner in the entire book is … Count Dracula, it’s very blatant master villain, who produces a magnificent confusion of history, mythology, blatant fantasy and brutal nostalgia fit for a Fascist rally while entertaining Mr Harker at Castle Dracula (It even concludes with “… and the glory of the great races is as a tale that is told”).
I won’t deny that Our Heroes are more than a little provincial, especially by 21st Century standards, but if you’re looking for a theme in DRACULA I’d argue that “Old World Vs New World” is far more apposite than “Foreigners are EVIL MONSTERS.
*These, it should be noted, are only the explicit examples: for Mr Harker to have been able to reach the Big City after fleeing Castle Dracula, alone in a strange country strongly implies he had some help from the natives of those parts.
@32. ChristopherLBennett: One of the reasons I’ve always been very fond of the novel DRACULA is that it allows us the delightful spectacle of a truly nasty aristocrat being systematically taken to pieces by a party of middle-class professionals & academics (with only a little help from a member of the minor aristocracy and a good deal of assistance from … well, whatever Quincey P. Morris was: all we can be sure of is that he was most assuredly an adventurer & a gallant gentleman).
In this day and age of rich … you know what … types committing the same old crimes, it remains most cathartic.
@Christopher
True.
Anthony Montgomery did not shine here. He seemed awkward and uncomfortable. The rest of the guest cast did as well as could be expected, given the material and his awkwardness. In general there was a flatness to the acting. Was the director perhaps none too good?
I have a feeling the childhood friend was originally going to be his sister. I may be wrong but I speculate it was decided that a white actress should be cast for ‘balance’ and so the character was altered from sister to friend.
Comment from my viewing companion that Travis’s tear could not have rolled down his cheek as depicted. I guess not!
I remember seeing this episode for the first time and i was excited at the beginning to see the Horizon and get to know how they live there and to see more of Mayweather’s family and story. Instead what do we get? a cliché brother who is absolutely not open to take new ideas from his brother and a fancy, modern ship…i mean i can imagine someone to behave like that, but it would have been so much better story without this overused story, especially with the magical turn of behaviour in the face of Evil Threat At The Last Minute. I really dislike when you see that a script is just merged together from a bunch of templates with the names of the characters and the locations being replaced…:( so it was a huge, wasted opportunity.
And it would have been nice to talk about WHY it’s not their mum or SOMEONE ELSE who became the captain, cause this looks like a bloody feudalist kingdom where the firstborn son would inherit the throne. Terrible.