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Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “Horizon”

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Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “Horizon”

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Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “Horizon”

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Published on November 7, 2022

Screenshot: CBS
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Screenshot: CBS

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.

Screenshot: CBS

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.

Screenshot: CBS

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.

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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. 

Screenshot: CBS

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.

Screenshot: CBS

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.

Screenshot: CBS

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….

About the Author

Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Keith R.A. DeCandido has been writing about popular culture for this site since 2011, primarily but not exclusively writing about Star Trek and screen adaptations of superhero comics. He is also the author of more than 60 novels, more than 100 short stories, and more than 70 comic books, both in a variety of licensed universes from Alien to Zorro, as well as in worlds of his own creation, most notably the new Supernatural Crimes Unit series debuting in the fall of 2025. Read his blog, or follow him all over the Internet: Facebook, The Site Formerly Known As Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, YouTube, Patreon, and TikTok.
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ChristopherLBennett
2 years ago

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?”

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ED
2 years ago

 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).

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2 years ago

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.

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ED
2 years ago

 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!

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o.m.
2 years ago

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 …

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ED
2 years ago

@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.

ChristopherLBennett
2 years ago

@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.

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2 years ago

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…

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ED
2 years ago

 @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”. 

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