“Two Days and Two Nights”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Chris Black
Directed by Michael Dorn
Season 1, Episode 25
Production episode 025
Original air date: May 15, 2002
Date: February 18, 2152
Captain’s star log. After being sidetracked twice, Enterprise finally gets to Risa! And there was much rejoicing! Yay!
The crew draws lots to see who gets to go on 48-hour shore leave and who is stuck on board. In addition, Phlox chooses to take this opportunity to hibernate for two days, leaving Cutler in charge of sickbay.
Archer feels guilty about going down when so many of his crew aren’t, but T’Pol firmly reminds him that he needs a vacation. Rostov flies Archer, Porthos, Tucker, Reed, Mayweather, and Sato down in one shuttle, which is apparently the one labelled, “opening credits regulars.” They compare vacation plans: Archer has rented a villa on the water, where Porthos can run on the beach. Mayweather is going rock-climbing. Sato has deliberately left her universal translator behind as she wants to learn some new languages. And Reed and Tucker plan to get laid.
Archer discovers that he has a humanoid neighbor named Keyla, who also has a dog. At one point, her dog, Rhylo, gets loose and confronts Porthos. Keyla comes to rescue Rhylo (or maybe rescue Porthos), and while she turns down Archer’s dinner invitation, she does agree to meet up with him the next day. Later that night, she sees him looking through a telescope. She joins him and sees Sol through the telescope.
They talk, and soon Keyla reveals that her family was all killed by members of the Cabal. After Archer mentions that he’s encountered the Suliban, Keyla becomes more curious, almost getting to the point of interrogating him. They decide to go for a walk on the beach, but Archer is getting suspicious of the sudden questioning. He surreptitiously does a bioscan, then sends it to Enterprise while Keyla is getting a sweater. She’s revealed to be Tandaran, and while Keyla initially denies it, and says she has no idea who Colonel Grat is, she then drugs Archer, and disappears.
Sato converses with a Risan couple at a restaurant in their native language. They’re impressed with how quickly she’s picked it up. After they head out, an alien named Ravis approaches her. He’s curious as to whether or not she can learn his very complex language. She invites him to join her, and they continue to talk for some time. He picks up on English with great acuity and speed, while she struggles with his tongue. They go to a steampool, and eventually wind up spending the night together. On the final morning, Ravis expresses concern that he took advantage of her, but Sato reassures him that she didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do, and had a wonderful time.
Mayweather has an accident while rock climbing, and while he’s taken to a Risan hospital, he prefers to be treated on Enterprise. He’s more than a little nonplussed to be treated by Cutler. However, while Cutler has no problem treating his injury, Mayweather has an allergic reaction to the pain meds the Risan hospital gave him. They have to reluctantly wake Phlox up. Phlox is bleary, to say the least, and struggles mightily to be coherent, much less have enough of his shit together to treat Mayweather. However, he manages to stumble through and fix Mayweather’s anaphylaxia, and then he collapses on a biobed.
Finally, Tucker and Reed go to a nightclub. They scope out the alien babes, eventually finding themselves chatting up a couple of lovely humanoid women. After talking for many hours, one of the women asks if they’ve seen the subterranean gardens. When they reply in the negative, the women lead them down a staircase to some tunnels, where the women are revealed to be shapechanging male aliens who pull weapons on the pair of them. Since they don’t have many valuables on them, they take their clothes, and then tie them to a pillar. They’re there most of the night, finally managing to break a bottle of wine and using the shards to cut the ropes, at which point they have to come up into the club in their underwear.
On the shuttlepod back to Enterprise, nobody is specific about what they did, Tucker and Reed because they’re too embarrassed, Sato because it’s nobody damn business, and Archer—well, it’s not clear why Archer didn’t discuss an attempt by a Tandaran covert operative to interrogate him about the Suliban Cabal with his senior staff, but whatever.
The gazelle speech. For the second week in a row, Archer’s decision to help the Suliban prisoners in “Detained” bites him on the ass.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol sends a copy of The Teachings of Surak for Archer to read while on vacation. It’s not clear if she’s misreading her captain or trolling her captain…
Florida Man. Florida Man And Friend Get Rolled By Shape-Changing Alien Seductresses.
Optimism, Captain! Denobulans hibernate six days out of the year, and Phlox is due, though he only hibernates for two, which he says will do in a pinch. But waking him up prematurely results in a certain lack of focus. Or ability to stay upright. Or remember where he is.
Good boy, Porthos! Porthos gets to galumph on a beach, meet another dog, and wake Archer up when he’s drugged by licking him a lot.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Tucker and Reed go for the explicit purpose of getting laid and get rolled for their trouble. Sato doesn’t go looking for sex, but finds it anyhow. There’s a lesson in that…
I’ve got faith…
“Have you ever been to an alien hospital?”
“Yes—in San Francisco.”
–Mayweather asking a plaintive question and needing to be reminded that T’Pol (a) isn’t from Earth and (b) lived on Earth for several years before being assigned to Enterprise.
Welcome aboard. Dey Young plays her third Trek role as Keyla, her second time playing a character who is an alien in disguise and whose flirting with a main character is a cover, having previously done so as Arissa in DS9’s “A Simple Investigation.” She also played Bates in TNG’s “The Masterpiece Society.”
Buy the Book
The City Inside
Rudolf Martin plays Ravis. Martin is probably best known for his recurring role of Ari Haswari on NCIS, and he also has the amusing distinction of playing both Dracula (on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Vlad the Impaler (in Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula).
We’ve also got recurring regulars Kellie Waymire as Cutler and Joseph Will as Rostov.
Trivial matters: This, sadly, is Kellie Waymire’s last appearance as Cutler. She died unexpectedly in 2003 at the age of 36. The producers had intended to bring her back, but never did before her untimely death.
This is the only Enterprise episode directed by Michael “Worf” Dorn, who also directed three DS9 episodes.
It was established that Denobulans hibernate for six days a year in “Dear Doctor.”
Tandarans, and their conflict with the Suliban Cabal, were seen in “Detained.”
The producers considered using an original series planet for their shore leave episode, including the amusement-park world from “Shore Leave” (and “Once Upon a Planet“) and Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet mentioned in “The Man Trap.” The former was rejected because it was new to humans in the original series episode, and the latter was rejected because it sounded too human to be a world Enterprise would encounter this early in its mission.
This was the last appearance of Prada as Porthos. Breezy, a beagle who’d been used as a stand-in for Prada when Porthos needed to be friskier, took over after this episode, alongside another beagle named Windy.
The copy of The Teachings of Surak that T’Pol gives Archer is translated by Skon of ShiKahr. Skon was established as Spock’s grandfather (Sarek’s father) in The Search for Spock, while ShiKahr was established as the hometown of Spock and his family in the animated episode “Yesteryear.”
It’s been a long road… “You don’t sound very relaxed, Captain.” After two episodes of buildup, the actual arrival of Enterprise at Risa is a huge letdown. Trek is now three for three in having their Risa-focused episodes be dreadful, as both TNG’s “Captain’s Holiday” and DS9’s “Let He Who is Without Sin…” are both also pretty lousy.
This may be the worst, though, mainly because the episode is just cheap. Cheap laughs, cheap sets, cheap visuals, cheap everything. At least in the other two episodes, Risa looked like a fun, relaxing place, with beautiful scenery, and even a bit of location shooting. In this episode, Risa looks like a bad soundstage, with some particularly mediocre 2002-era CGI to make it look even worse.
To add insult to injury, we keep hearing about cool places to visit: the boat where they eat fresh seafood that Keyla recommends to Archer, the steambaths Ravis and Sato go to, Mayweather’s rock-climbing. For that matter, most of the alien women that Reed and Tucker check out remain off-camera, and their daring escape from the catacombs also inexplicably happens off-camera.
Reed and Tucker’s plotline is by far the worst of the four. The moment they walked into the club in their jackets I was just waiting for Haddaway’s “What is Love?” to start playing and the two of them to bop their heads to it. While their getting rolled by shape-changers was played for laughs, I mostly just thought it was what they deserved after watching their sleazy behavior, and I was rooting for the thieves. And rooting for Enterprise to leave without them…
Archer’s plot is serviceable, but not that exciting. It’s a little too reminiscent of Dey Young’s last role, but with less subtlety, and with a significantly less interesting person for her to play off of. Odo is a tragic figure trying to figure out his place on a station where he’s unique and different, and where he’s been rejected by his people, whom he has also rejected because they’re fascists. Archer, by contrast, is a dude with a dog.
(Oh yeah, the dog. We did this in Voyager’s “Ex Post Facto,” too—how is it that this alien woman has an Earth dog? What the heck?)
Anyhow, Scott Bakula’s rather tiresome inability to make Archer into anything other than a mediocre white guy pretty much torpedoes this whole plot, as there’s nothing really there. Having more unintended consequences to “Detained” is nice, but rather than build on it, this is instead the last we’ll ever hear of the Tandarans, rendering the whole thing pointless, since it kind of ends on a cliffhanger with Keyla buggering off after slipping Archer a Mickey.
What one thinks of the Mayweather-Phlox storyline depends entirely upon how funny you think John Billingsley’s goofball antics are while being half-asleep. I found the whole thing to be a tiresome sitcom plot—which we already had too much of with Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating channeling Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell on the planet—and I just found it irritating. But I freely admit that that’s particularly subjective, and your mileage may vary.
The only part of the story I actually liked was Sato and Ravis’s whirlwind vacation. There was genuine chemistry between Linda Park and Rudolf Martin, and their conversations were all fun and engaging, unlike the leaden banter between Bakula and Young or the idiocy with Trinneer and Keating.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also reviewing the current Trek shows as each new episode is released. Look out this week for his overview of Picard‘s second season and his review of the “Children of the Comet” episode of Strange New Worlds.
Why shouldn’t an alien pretending to be another alien who happens to look almost like a human female have a pet who happens to look almost like a dog? The Tandarans certainly put some thought into this operation.
Regarding chemistry and outcome, two white guys got rolled, one white guy got drugged by a femme fatale, and Hoshi had a nice chat the next morning. Was anything else possible at the time? I’m used to making excuses for the original series, is it time to start the same for Enterprise?
“Captain. You need. A vacation.” was nice. I wonder if T’Pol really thought Archer needs it more than other crew, of course, or if that is just an example of main-cast-focussed writing.By the way, has anybody been counting extras in the crew? A smaller ship and more seasons than TOS.
o.m.: T’Pol said that to Archer specifically when he was trying to come up with excuses not to take shore leave. And one can argue that he does need it more than anyone else because, as the saying goes, the fish stinks from the head down. If the captain is fatigued and underperforming, it almost doesn’t matter if the rest of the crew is rested. The guy in the center seat needs to be at his best.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Not much to add. It’s astonishing that they managed to make the free-love hedonism capital of the galaxy so boring and tame. Even the title is dull.
Although given how badly ENT’s writing staff tended to handle their attempts at titillating the audience, maybe it’s a mercy that they kept things understated here.
Cheap and pointless about sums it up. A budget saving episode.
Maybe Strange New Worlds can buck the trend of bad Risa episodes or maybe they should just stay way clear entirely!
Wow, Dey Young and Gates McFadden could play sisters.
I feel sorry for Michael Dorn. He’s associated with both non-TNG Risa episodes, and they’re both duds.
@2 Didn’t both Janeway and Kirk get told to take shore leave with exactly that kind of logic? I can’t remember if Picard and Sisko had to be as well.
Kirk had to be conned into taking shore leave by rhetorical trickery from Spock. Picard had to be bullied into it by the entire bridge crew. Janeway just needed her doctor to tell her “you need a break” once. Sisko took vacations without any prompting from anyone.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I am not surprised Sisko is the sensible one.
I remember thinking that Reed and Tucker’s subplot was pretty funny when I saw this episode in high school, but it also occurs to me that this was the hey-day of the 2000s ‘bro’ comedy, and this is basically that imported into the Star Trek universe, right down to the attractive women who turn out to be “really dudes”. Like many things from the early 2000s, it has not aged well.
As I recall, we’re going to see more of Phlox’s wacky antics in season two’s “A Night in Sickbay.”
I definitely agree with @1. o.m. that the most logical explanation is that Tandaran intelligence went to the trouble of acquiring an Earth dog as icebreaker (and, given that Boomers are doing business throughout the Adventures of Enterprise, it’s very easy to imagine the Tandarans taking advantage of their services).
Also, it struck me this morning that there’s NO WAY Rhylo made it up to Archer’s balcony without outside help; somebody was clearly working to set up a “meet cute” and it’s a pity Tucker & Reed’s sad excuse for a Dude Bro double-act sucks up so much screen time that could have been used to show Captain Archer putting the pieces together himself.
In any case I can only agree that this is all too often a sad waste of an episode, which I’m tempted to attribute to the director not having the best feel for the material (I strongly suspect that a more masterful director would have been able to weave the various sub-plots together in a way that used them to support each other and drive the core plot forward – rather than just throw everything together in a way that makes it hard to tell what the core plot actually was*).
*For my money that would have to be Captain Archer’s little John Le Carre scenario, which I actually like all the more for leaving us with questions about this particular spy’s true character; we have some idea of what she wants, but very little about who she works for and what her exact goals might be which seems perfectly appropriate for a professional spy.
It’s a real pity we don’t see more of such a potentially (and, technically-speaking, quite literally) intriguing character; given her apparent respect for Captain Archer, it’s interesting to imagine her becoming a key player in Tandaran efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the newborn Federation.
Still, it’s an ill-wind that blows no good: while Tucker & Reed’s plotline might be the platonic example of something that hasn’t aged well (and wasn’t very savoury to start with) it does have a surprisingly cool design for those shapeshifting muggers – in what one assumes to be their native forms, although trying to work out which shape is a shapeshifter’s ‘real’ form strikes me as a real “The Chicken or the Egg?” sort of business – and could have potentially been an absolutely perfect “Noodle incident” moment, if only they’d had the good sense & good sense to cut from the set-up to the punchline; Captain Archer’s storyline should have been much more intriguing, but I’d argue that it’s a misfire rather than an actual mistake (Also, my money is on T’Pol making a gift of that book as a joke between friends that also works as food for thought if the captain actually reads the Teachings of Surak – “Kidding on the square” if you will**); the comedy of poor Doctor Phlox being too indispensable to get any actual sleep really worked for me (and could only have been improved by our getting a glimpse of poor Travis waking up in an alien hospital before being shipped back to NX-01), especially that line about San Francisco medicine being alien territory for her and the poor Doctor saving the day yet again before crashing out on his med-bed; Best in Show, for my money, was the sub-plot with Hoshi Sato’s holiday (Short, sweet, quintessentially STAR TREK – in making the point that going out with an open minded interest in other species and a willingness to meet them on their own terms will always be far more rewarding than charging out with inconsiderate lust in your heart, your head and elsewhere, even if you don’t wind up bumping into a smoulderingly attractive extraterrestrial – and all the more entertaining for having the alien played by ‘Count Dracula’ turn out to be made of Boyfriend Material from top to bottom***).
**Also, your remark about Captain Archer being a dude rather than a legend reminds me yet again that ENTERPRISE could have done well by leaning into the idea that Captain Archer’s a good man, but that it was his crew that made him a legend, not his innate brilliance – in fact I would still love to see a show set at some later period of the Federation’s history pointing out that it was the support of T’Pol, Trip et al which helped lift Captain Archer beyond his limits (A combination of his ideas and the brilliance of others making the Federation possible).
***Mister Bennett, thanks to your novels I’m happy to fly my colours from the main mast of the SS Kimura Maru, but I hope you can find it in your heart to imagine Mr & Mrs Hoshi (I know, I know, it’s a personal name and not a family name, this is deliberate poetic license) out on a couple’s night with Ravis and his other half: given Mr Ravis is good with languages and clearly interested in establishing positive relations with alien cultures, it’s very easy to imagine him becoming part of the diplomatic community (Just as easy as imagining Hoshi Sato working at a Federation embassy, as an ambassador or an expert advisor).
I was composing a post about how I now have a burning ambition to Goon for Hoshi Sato (You know, work as the muscle who looms over those tempted to work harm for a much, much nicer person – all the better to persuade those villains to reconsider their life choices – and thinks nasty, suspicious thoughts so Our Hero will never need to*) when I suddenly started thinking about Chewbacca from STAR WARS (Who occurred to me as a vaguely-applicable equivalent to Mr Worf, Starfleet Goon extraordinaire, in that Galaxy Far, Far Away) when the question of what the most famous Wookie in STAR WARS might sound like within working range of a Universal Translator.
“John Rhys Davies” struck me as the best possible answer; I may rag on ‘Two Days and Two Nights’ for a number of failings, but who could possibly hate an episode that indirectly inspired such a mental image?
*Amusingly, Captain Geordi La Forge – from that VOYAGER episode where USS Challenger chases Mr Chakotay & Mr Kim as they get ready to tamper with the timeline – is the only other STAR TREK character to elicit this particular protective response from my imagination.
On the dog thing, I’ll say what I (probably) said in the “Ex Post Facto” rewatch: An alien dog looking like a human dog is no more implausible than an Argelian or a Gideonite or an El-Aurian or whatever looking entirely human, or a Vulcan or Betazoid or Trill looking entirely human except for one minor feature. Maybe the alien dog has a slight difference that another dog would notice but a human wouldn’t. Since cats and dogs rely more on scent than sight, maybe the dog smells alien in a way that’s the equivalent of pointed ears or forehead ridges.
Indeed, given how often aliens recognize humans as human despite the abundance of other humanoids that look exactly like us, I think I once suggested in one of my novels that different human-appearing species can be distinguished by scent, or by subtleties of kinesics/body language.
Okay, how do I state this gently?
I hate this episode.
I don’t hate it more than “Dear Doctor” or the ending of “Cogenitor” but I hate everything that was done here. I don’t mind the fact Porthos has a little alien dog girlfriend. I don’t attempt to explain it anymore than Krypto the Superdog that is the Kryptonian version of Labrador Retriever. Sometimes you just have to accept the silly at face value and go with it in fiction. It’s why Star Trek: New Frontier is my favorite.
No, what I hate about this episode is that Risa is identical 200 years in the past to the way it was in TNG. It’s such lazy writing and basically highlights everything wrong with ENT in that so much of it is unwilling to experiment with the franchise. I also have had issues with Risa’s presentation when someone suggested it was just based on Hawaii and the reduction of it to a “sex” and “vacation” planet ignores the real life issues of it having been stolen from the native people to turn it into a tourist trap.
What else do I hate about this episode? The fact that it is made up of Dad jokes and urban legends. Perhaps my reaction is based on the fact I’ve heard the “My friend and I were in Thailand when we got mugged by two men impersonating women while trying to get laid.” There’s also the anti-sex positive attitude that wanting to have a hook up is inherently sleazy. While the woman not looking for a hookup does as if there’s an actual story here. It actually feels worse than TOS where the crew hooking up with locals was treated as perfectly normal and uncommented on behavior.
So much of this episode infuriated, particularly that we see an alien with a presumably alien dog and it looked just like an earth dog. I say presumably because so much of what we see of Risa – an alien pleasure planet, not a human colony – makes it look just like a mid range Mediterranean resort. Nothing about the design values on display here suggest they put the slightest thought into creating a unique alien culture. This episode gets a 2 from me, and only that high because of the Sato subplot.
“It took a while but we’ve finally made it to Risa.”
Well, I think I enjoyed this one more than most, because I felt it was at least halfway to being a decent comedy/character episode. The main stumbling point is Archer’s storyline, or rather Archer’s storyline in the context of the series. We get at least one good character detail with him actually reading the book of Surak’s teachings that T’Pol left him, plus Porthos giving him that “Are you coming or what?” look in the pre-credits. But then the episode decides to go “Ha-ha, it’s the Tandarans! See, we haven’t forgotten that plot point, we’re going somewhere with it!”…and then I don’t think the series ever mentions the Tandarans again, meaning we’re left with a load of set-up for a reveal that never comes. Which is pretty much business as usual where that story arc’s concerned. I agree it’s a bit of a stretch that Keyla, instead of some exotic alien pet, just has a dog, but I also agree that maybe the Tandarans have done their research and found or created a dog from somewhere as part of her cover. (To be honest, my main issue wasn’t what it looked like, but that she actually called it a dog.)
Then we have two plots that are just utterly hilarious. Tucker and Reed trying to pick up girls possibly doesn’t age well, but it gets away with it because we’re meant to be laughing at them rather than with them and their chat-up techniques are ridiculously inept, complete with some great exchanges (“I saved the captain’s life.”/“I thought you were the captain?”/“We rotate. He’s captain next week”, “Don’t forget, they were gorgeous.”/“They were male!”/“Not at first!”). Tucker even wears the hideous Hawaiian shirt, although he’s been persuaded to put on something a bit more sensible for the actual bar visit. And then there’s Phlox unable to get a decent weekend’s sleep, as he wakes up not having a clue what’s going on (everyone suddenly gets a promotion to captain!) and falls asleep as soon as he has the chance: John Billingsley stealing scenes in his pyjamas. Plus T’Pol pointedly saying she went to an alien hospital in San Francisco.
That just leaves Hoshi’s plot, which is kind of in the middle for me. They’re obviously going for the irony that, while Tucker and Reed’s attempt at getting some is an epic fail and Archer’s new lady friend is an alien spy, Sato manages a holiday romance without even trying. She seems to have enjoyed herself, but at the risk of employing a double standard, it’s hard not to suspect Ravis made up a nonsense language to get her interest, especially when he then announces that a word she’s used means “kiss” in his language and has to demonstrate because apparently it’s the one English word he hasn’t learned.
Tucker and Reed’s chat-up includes references to the events of “Shuttlepod One” and “Acquisition”. Crewman Cutler makes her third and final appearance, although she’ll get a mention in Season 3. Rostov makes his second appearance: He’ll be back next year in “The Crossing”.
Was anyone else bothered by the fact that the entire crux of Hoshi’s storyline was that she was having to learn other langueges, but Tucker and Reed were able to perfectly converse with everyone? Just a few episodes ago we had the Ferengi speaking in a native languege that the crew needed to use a bulky universal translator to understand. Are they already putting translators in the ears of the crew?
And yes, I think the Phlox bit was the best part of the episode, and no, I don’t care if anyone disagress.
I feel like the Tandarans were a missed opportunity for the show overall. It would have beem very interesting to have them be the local superpower in the time period. For much of the Federation’s history, Earth is basically the United States and the biggest dog around. How much could they have done story-wise if Earth is just a tiny insignificant protectorate of Vulcan and they’ve cheesed off the most powerful race in the Alpha Quadrant? Especially since the Tandarans are implied to be the local superpower and United States 20th century equivalent.
Hell, let me throw out a Temporal Cold War” idea:
“In the original timeline, the Tandarans go on to form the Union of Planets and manage to utterly crush the Romulans and form a militant but democratic alliance across the galaxy. The Romulans destroyed it via time travel and the Federation is born instead, which is a slightly better timeline.” How’s THAT for a twist? Humanity wasn’t meant to be the big dog but temporal shenanigans crippled another power so we could rise.
That occurred to me as well. Mind you, I’m pretty sure Hoshi suspected she was being fed a line anyway and thought, “What the hell.”
I guess I can’t help but think they could have done so much more with Risa than what they did. I’m not even sure what they use for money in the 22nd century that would be accepted as currency here (or if the Risans are already post-economics). It’s also a strange place for T’Pol to recommend they go in the first place given she already think they’re a ship of slackers.
@18/Echthelion: “Was anyone else bothered by the fact that the entire crux of Hoshi’s storyline was that she was having to learn other langueges, but Tucker and Reed were able to perfectly converse with everyone?”
As Keith mentioned in his recap, Hoshi chose not to take a translator with her. She didn’t have to learn other languages, she wanted to, in order to practice her craft.
Vale Kellie Waymire – how sad it was when she died so suddenly. She added a nice presence to Enterprise.
I love Dey Young, so it’s always a pleasure to see her, though that picture is very Gates McFadden.
I agree Hoshi’s storyline is easily the best part of the episode. I remember finding the Phlox part pretty funny, though I felt so bad for him.
As for the Tucker-Reed Show…it came off as pretty pathetic on first viewing, but in retrospect I really feel sorry for them, because seriously…could nobody have told them to just buy a Horga’hn and chill? I mean if they were trying to get laid Risa is the simplest planet to do it on.
@12. ED
It might have been a lizard with plastic surgery, not a dog. That would explain the initial hissing encounter, before they calmed down …
@18. Ecthelion of Greg
Nope, the best part is T’Pol telling Archer he needs a vacation.
@19. C.T. Phipps
There is a cut scene where Archer negotiates an “all inclusive” holiday package for a set number of individuals.
As far as Risa episodes go, this wasn’t as bad as DS9‘s turn. But still a step down from TNG‘s Captain’s Holiday. Part of it is because they hyped it so much on the last two episodes. Hyping something up like this is a sure way to come out disappointed.
I actually thought the CG was pretty good back in 2002. Certainly dated by 2022 standards, but in that era? Acceptable (it’s not as if other shows of the era did any better). And given this was episode 25 out of 26, when they probably had NO money left in the budget, I’m surprised they still had any to spend.
The Hoshi plot is the one that kind of baffled me. She got in, she had a great experience, and she got laid. In other words: where was the conflict? Even Bashir and Leeta had a breakup subplot. The closest thing we have to one is her struggling with his native tongue. But given how rough and scary the Enterprise mission has been for her this season, I can understand the writers giving her a carefree good time, for once. As it is, she remains the only Trek character to have a 100% great time on Risa onscreen. Everyone else had a miserable experience or another, whether it’s Picard being deceived by Vash or Worf being a jealous dick.
I’ll admit the Phlox one gave a couple of laughs. It’s definitely sitcom cliché 101, but Billingsley sells it, especially his final collapse. And pairing him with a one-note sedate character like Mayweather does create a bit of a dynamic. Probably my favorite plot of the four.
The Archer one? Archer has chemistry with Keyla, but it goes nowhere, much like the Temporal Cold War as a whole.
Not much to say about Tucker/Reed either. They got what they deserved.
And I just noticed. Chris Black, who was a writer/producer for the first three seasons of Enterprise is now a writer/producer on Apple’s Severance.
@24/Eduardo: Not every plot requires conflict; sometimes it’s more about a character going on a journey or learning something, or expecting one thing and discovering something else that changes their perspective. If anything, that’s what conflict really means. People tend to assume it means fighting or hostility, but it can just be a conflict between a character’s desires, goals, or beliefs and the reality they experience instead.
In a way, all the plots here are about characters expecting one thing from Risa and getting something else instead. Archer just wanted to relax and got drawn into a half-hearted spy thriller instead. Trip and Malcolm expected to meet hot babes and got rolled instead. Travis wanted to go climbing and instead spent the trip in the hospital. Phlox just wanted a good weekend’s sleep and didn’t get that. But Hoshi went in with the most modest expectations, seeking nothing more than a chance to practice linguistics, and so she was the only one who got a better result than she expected. So she was there to contrast with the others.
@25/Christopher: I guess it could be framed that way. It’s just odd to see a story where everything goes this smoothly. But then again, this is a very low stakes breather episode to begin with.
I was also very sad regarding Kellie Waymire’s passing. I really liked her as Cutler.
Hoshi’s subplot is easily my favorite, as it feels like the least “forced” of the bunch. The chemistry is there and it doesn’t hurt that Hoshi is one of my favorite characters on the show, so I like it when she actually gets screen-time.
@26/Eduardo: “It’s just odd to see a story where everything goes this smoothly.”
It’s not a story, it’s a subplot in a story. A story doesn’t require every character in it to face conflict at once. Sometimes what you want is contrast — one character suffers and struggles while another has a smooth, easy time, throwing the first character’s struggle into sharper relief.
I apparently enjoyed this a lot more than most, maybe because of all the warnings of how bad it was going to be. (I’m watching—not re-watching—so all I know about what’s coming is what other people have mentioned in the comments to previous episodes.)
I agree with CLB @14: I assumed the “dog” was an alien species that looked canine, which would account for Porthos’s growling at it initially.
Of the plots, the Reed/Tripp one was painful to watch, and I admit that knowing that there’s no follow-up to Archer’s plot definitely takes it down a notch for me; I thought it was a cool introduction to further stories, but if there are no further stories, it’s not much on its own. Phlox’s antics worked for me, so I was fine with that plot, and obviously Hoshi’s plot was the standout of the episode.
I am, however, disappointed that no one has mentioned the best line in the episode yet:
Wah-hey!
Plenty has been said about the Tucker/Reed SNL sketch but i’d forgotten how misogynistic, transphobic and just painfully unfunny it is. The heteronormativity of Enterprise really shows its ugly head in episodes like this and doesn’t shake one’s feeling you’re watching an episode of ‘frat boys in space’. Utter trash.
See, I watched this all of one time maybe a couple of years ago and I must have been so disinterested that I never realized Keyla wasn’t human and therefore never wondered why as an alien she would have a dog. I was also watching episodes out of order and hadn’t yet seen the prior episode that introduced the Tandarans. So, when it was revealed here that that’s what she actually was the significance of that revelation didn’t register with me, or again, I was already tuned out.
I don’t recall the CGI in this episode but I’m not surprised to hear about the quality. I’ve seen other episodes of Enterprise more recently like “Stigma” and “The Expanse” and “These are the Voyages” and they have similarly questionable CGI. It seems most obviously bad in far away shots of crowds or humanoid figures trying to depict naturalistic movement. I’m just surprised that this is the quality when the CGI of later seasons of Voyager and DS9 looked so impressive. Though I suppose it’s a lot easier to make realistic depictions of ships and alien vistas than naturalistic moving people.
Headcanon: dogs were a successful early export from Earth.
@14. ChristopherLBennett: Now that’s actually an intriguing thought (and it’s especially interesting to wonder which species are the most and least oblivious to these particular cues); concerning the dog in question, I actually like the idea that this is a plain old Earth dog (albeit of a somewhat-unusual looking breed) simply because the acquisition of an Earth dog by a Tandaran would make for a potentially-interesting story in its own right – also because our Tandaran spy not quite knowing how to deal with an alien pet would make a nice little hint that all is not quite as it seems (without quite being a blatant giveaway, especially if our spy suggests that the animal is a relatively recent acquisition; in fact her asking Archer for pet-care tips would be an extremely useful ‘in’).
@15. C.T. Phipps: I definitely didn’t get “girlfriend” energy from Porthos’ encounter with that other pooch – more “My balcony! My room! My Human!” (Also, are we sure Rhylo is a female? I don’t think it’s ever mentioned directly).
On the other hand I do agree that it’s a pity that the creatives didn’t do a little more (probably via scripting, rather than production design, since this is a somewhat budget-strapped episode) to suggest a slightly different status quo on 22nd Century Risa (Perhaps by suggesting a slightly less polished, more catch-as-catch-can atmosphere?).
Also, I’d argue that Tucker & Reed aren’t being penalised for chasing a hook-up, but for the hideous frat-boy attitude with which they pursue their R&R (I think it’s fair to point out that Ensign Sato’s hook-up carries no stigma because neither party treated the other like a piece of meat).
@17. cap-mjb: I quite like the idea that Ravis at the very least exaggerated the difficulties of his native language to catch & keep Hoshi’s interest (I think was can safely agree that Hoshi Sato is a linguist well worth putting in the extra declensions for!); I think we can also agree that Ravis was definitely working an angle with that bit about kissing.
@19. C.T. Phipps: You know that ‘Tandaran polity as Major Might-Have-Been’ works beautifully even if we don’t give a hoot about the Temporal Cold War (and let’s face it, the less Temporal Cold War stuff the better); after all, History is littered with might have beens even in our own era, so why not in the 22nd century to boot?
I wonder if it would be a too on-the-nose to depict Tandar’s treatment of the resident Suliban as a key point in the beginning of their downward arc? (Seriously handicapping their ability to serve as Primus Inter Pares of a multi-species polity because nobody wanted to risk being shoved in a concentration camp for years at a time).
Also, it bears pointing out that T’Pol absolutely made it her mission to get the crew of NX-01 laid (for the sake of general efficiency), as mentioned in one of the previous cold opens; where better to achieve that goal than Planet Risa?
@22. Mr. D: I’d like to think that the local talent listened to Tucker & Reed’s rather discourteous assessment of various clubbers and decided to steer well clear of those two horny jackasses.
Also, it’s interesting to wonder if the Horga’hn was a custom already being practiced in this era; after all, cultural mores & practices do change over time, so there’s no guarantee that this totem (and the mindset associated with it) was fully developed at this point in time (Though sadly we don’t really get a good enough look at Risan culture to draw any sensible conclusions on the subject).
@23. o.m. I’m not going to lie, the fact that even one of the weaker episodes of ENTERPRISE has something (even more than one something) to love is something of a relief and rather charming to boot.
@28. ChristopherLBennett: I do feel that having Hoshi enjoy the charms of Risa completely untroubled is a nice reminder that most visitors to the planet do not suffer misadventure or worse (With Ensign Sato being the exception that proves the rule that Starfleet officers are one of the few forms of sapient life for whom Risa is NOT a refuge from the cares of their everyday employment … ).
krad: “Scott Bakula’s rather tiresome inability to make Archer into anything other than a mediocre white guy….”
This! That’s a perfect distillation of my feelings about Bakula, not just as Archer, but as every other character I’ve ever seen him play.
Agree that Hoshi’s subplot was a nice respite from. The other lame vignettes. The chemistry was definitely very good between the two actors, and I’m glad Hoshi was able to relieve some tension with a nice guy.
@32. craigoxbrow: Well dogs do have long experience of twisting strange, impossibly-advanced and powerful lifeforms around their little pawprints without even being able to speak the same language, after all (Just think about how long those hairy little moochers have been hitting us up for a free meal, eh?). (-;
Yes, yes, I know that for most of Human history dogs have been working dogs, but please let me remind you that pugs have been a going concern for longer than the United States of America (and is there a less working breed of dog than those rascally little canine courtiers?).
Cats, meanwhile, colonised space themselves. Including Earth. I saw that in a film once.
@33/ED: “Also, are we sure Rhylo is a female?”
Are we sure Porthos is heterosexual?
@38. ChristopherLBennett: Well they would be doing it doggy style either way …
On a more serious note, I’m perfectly happy to remain in ignorance of Our Heroes’ sex life when those heroes are human (A private life can and should remain private when we’re following their work and not their biography); I’d be downright delighted to remain innocent of Porthos’ history of close encounters.
@30 politeruin Thank you for bringing that up! I was coming here to say that myself, and it was horrific. Such a cheap nasty joke that has no place in Star Trek.
@30 and @40 — Ditto. I lived in Florida for a while — this was very Florida Man behavior, unfortunately (at least anywhere near a beach/resort area.).
Head canon: Dogs are the dominant lifeform in the galaxy. ALL alien planets have dogs. (The real rulers, the cats, prefer to pull strings from the shadows. And the mice are just furious).
This WAS the first episode where I genuinely came to like Hoshi and it seemed clear to me that she knew EXACTLY what was going on the whole time…and enjoyed it.
This would be a 5 for me — it’s absolutely in the middle. Totally bland, like tofu. Without the Hoshi plot and Billingsley’s comedic antics it would be much lower.
The explanation for Keyla’s alien dog looking like an earth dog is that it was a doge.
Trek is full of aliens who look exactly like humans, so why can’t people accept an alien dog looking like an Earth dog? It’s an odd double standard.
Not to mention that practically every planet in the galaxy has trees, grass, and other vegetation identical to Earth’s. Why does nobody ever complain about that?
They should have just horns on the dog like they did in TOS; made it a continuity reference.
I happen to enjoy Captain’s Holiday.
Other than that, I don’t have much to add, except that Scott Bakula IS a mediocre white guy, so I don’t know what you are expecting from him. I finished my Enterprise rewatch recently, and I kept waiting for him to get better as the show went on, and he didn’t really. He was always serviceable, and that’s about it. I will say that, this time around, I really enjoyed Jolene Blalock a lot more. The first time I watched the show I thought she was too stiff, but I think I better appreciated what she was going for this time around.
@43. ChristopherLBennett: As noted elsewhere, I’m not complaining at all – I simply find it more entertaining to imagine Tandaran Intelligence (eager to get more from Captain Archer than ‘Herr Commandant’ ever did) asking themselves “OK, this dude loves dogs, how do we find one?” then finding themselves asking “How do we keep one?” when they find out how attached to their Best Friends humanity can get (Not least because Boomers, the humans most likely to be found, are used to driving a hard bargain).
Rhylo, with its bald pelt but big tuft of scalp hair, honestly didn’t look any more like an Earth dog than did the unicorn terrier in “The Enemy Within” did. I just assumed it was an alien species of some sort, and I further assumed we’d be told at some point that Rhylo can fly or teleport, and that would explain how they got onto Archer’s balcony. I was disappointed that didn’t happen.
Hoshi’s storyline was super charming, but as dumb as was Phlox’s plot, it was also the most relatable to me. I’ve never had a vacation hookup, never got rolled in a bar, and have never gone rock climbing—but I have been interrupted in the middle of a deep sleep, and wanted nothing more than to return to it ASAP.
That still doesn’t explain why he was acting so weirdly addle-pated.
#47/terracinque: “That still doesn’t explain why he was acting so weirdly addle-pated.”
Who isn’t, when they’re awakened at the wrong part of the sleep cycle?
Is the Enterprise on such a tight schedule that they couldn’t spend another 2 days and 2 nights on Risa to give the other half of the crew the chance of some R & R (and Phlox some more sleep) even if we didn’t see it? Perhaps I’m missing something but I did rather get the impression that they’d be flying off somewhere else immediately the main characters got back.
Ouch, this episode made no sense except for the Hoshi subplot.
agree with 49./rwmg – it’s kinda stupid that they can’t spare a few more days to give everyone some shore leave…
What ticks me off the most about this episode, and the reason why I quit it five minutes in, is that Reed and Tucker go full 2000s with their gross joke about women with dicks, trans women, and being “deceived”. I forgot the exact wording, but as I recall, they use their scanners to peer and are shocked that one of the ladies they had the hots for has a dick.
Sigh.
The 2000s were really nasty in that regard in general (no film à la “The Fast and the Furious” could do without gratuitious fetishising of lesbians; Eminem was calling people “faggot” on every other song, etc.), and Enterprise had a real opportunity to carry Trek’s values of equality and respect into that era – and instead they decided to lean into it and double down on the rampant homophobia of the era. A really disappointing letdown.