Tom Salinsky

Star Trek: Nemesis (). Insurrection was a disappointment at the box office. There are various numbers floating around the internet but the budget would have been somewhere in the region of $60m. A $117m worldwide gross meant that it might just have scraped into the black, but would probably show as profitable overall once it came out on DVD. A long way from the big money First Contact had made. Unwilling to continue with the same team, Paramount went looking for fresh blood. In as writer was John Logan, then best known for Any Given Sunday and especially the multi-Oscar-winning Gladiator. In as director came Stuart Baird, whose CV in the main chair was pretty thin, but who had worked as editor and second unit director on same acknowledged classics including the original 1978 Superman. He had also never seen a single episode of the show. Well, you could say the same about Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer and Wrath of Khan had turned out pretty well. And besides, John Logan was a fan (maybe too much of a fan…?), Rick Berman was still there, overseeing things, Brent Spiner had contributed some story ideas, so we were probably in good hands. And I remember the advance word on this one being really thrilling. Berman had missed his chance to put out a new science fiction movie in the iconic year 2001, but surely the extra twelve months would guarantee success.

The movie we got is… poor.

All the usual problems are there – it’s the Picard and Data show with five other guys just sort of hanging around the place (including Worf, whose return to the Enterprise is never explained). Afraid of being stodgy and slow-moving like The Motion Picture, it’s full of irrelevant “action beats” which are meant to attract the Die Hard or James Bond audience, but it can’t be just a simple chase movie, so we have a plot which ties itself in knots with doppelgängers of both leading men for entirely different reasons, countdowns to certain doom, and so many things which we’ve seen done better in prior movies – Data’s sacrifice is a reprise of the death of Spock in Khan, finding his head recalls adventures with Mark Twain from the telly show, his having a brother is obviously familiar, Picard goes through old photos like he did in Generations, the Bassin Rift is another version of the Briar Patch (or the Badlands, or the nebula from Khan), and the whole climax is a rip off of the end of Star Trek II, with a much less interesting villain, except when it feels like the end of the previous film, with Picard alone on board the enemy ship trying to stop it from doing the thing. That’s the drawback of hiring people who don’t know Star Trek. They don’t know when they’re falling into well-worn grooves.

Once again, we start with the telly cast in their white togs, enjoying some downtime – in this case celebrating Will and Deanna’s wedding. Neither of them actually gets a line – in fact only Data and Picard speak at all in the first half of the scene. Whoopi Goldberg shows up, and contributes nothing of meaning – the point of the second half of the scene is apparently to hear Brent Spiner singing. Yay. Wil Wheaton filmed a cameo as Wesley Crusher, but it ended up cut. He’s not the only one getting short shrift. Troi and Crusher are in the pre-mission briefing and never speak. In fact, Beverley Crusher gets 11 lines in the whole movie – barely more than Admiral Janeway who appears on a viewscreen and sends the Captain Picard off to meet the main plot.

Remember Jean-Luc Picard – the cultured and curious diplomat who led his crew thoughtfully and compassionately through high-minded adventures for seven years? You can still see him if you squint at the bewildered family man in Generations, the traumatised soldier in First Contact, or the lonely romantic in Insurrection. Here, he’s been replaced entirely by a juvenile thrill-seeker who likes fast cars and gadgets, makes dick jokes to publicly humiliate his bridge officers, and whose idea of respecting the Prime Directive is strafing the locals from the back of his 4×4. Picard is such a lynch-pin of the show that you undermine him at your peril, and there’s almost nothing of him left here. Much of Brent Spiner’s time meanwhile is spent pulling faces and doing silly voices as “B4”. Hope you like that because (along with Picard’s dick jokes) that’s your lot as far as humour goes in this movie.

This all looks good, with decent CG spaceships, strong make-up (mainly, Dina Meyer’s sallow complexion seems to stop at her jawline) and a pounding Jerry Goldsmith score, but the new bridge has a cramped and awkward feel with the first officer’s chair miles away from the captain, and the helm and ops stations hemming in the officers in question. And the character of Shinzon pretty much dooms the whole sorry affair. Tom Hardy has never been worse, and the notion that he was cloned from Picard proves completely irrelevant (people keep telling Picard they’re not the same), and would have been even if Hardy had been able to do a better job (or if they’d got Patrick Stewart to play both roles).

His early scenes negotiating with Picard go nowhere. We know he’s the bad guy because we saw the opening scenes of the slaughter of the Romulan senate. And Picard seemingly does too, because he doesn’t do anything Shinzon wants him to. Good thing too. Then he’d be a dummy as well as reckless and coarse. Compare this to Star Trek VI, where a Starfleet captain sets aside his personal feelings in order to broker a risky peace with the Klingons. Here, a lying Romulan fails to convince a rigid Starfleet captain to attempt a lasting truce with the Romulans. Who comes out of that looking good? And does Shinzon think that dream-raping Troi (another familiar and deeply ick image from the TV show) will increase his stock with Picard? If not, why the hell’s he doing it?

How is the Enterprise able to detect a form of radiation thought impossible? Why does Shinzon invite Picard to tea, let him return to his ship and then transport him back to exactly where he was against his will? In fact, why does any of this happen, because after ten minutes, Picard escapes and gets back to the Enterprise. Why does Shinzon refer to B4 as “bait” when Picard’s trip to Romulus was ordered by Starfleet and has nothing to do with their recent discovery of bits of android? In fact, what does Shinzon want, full stop? How does blowing up the Enterprise with Picard on it help him get the blood he needs to survive? And what does any of that have to do with the coup he organised?

I liked this one even less than Star Trek V. William Shatner’s attempt is a mess, and very very dumb in places, but it feels like Star Trek. This one feels like a straight-to-DVD knock off, in which characters run down space corridors firing guns with both hands. When it tries to be exciting, it’s deeply silly, and when it tries to be dark, it’s just sour – a very far cry from the franchise’s trademark optimism about the future. Brent Spiner’s performance (when he stops playing B4 like a Looney Tunes character) is pretty much the only thing worth watching.

Fans stayed away in droves. It’s the only Star Trek movie not to make a profit, reviews from the mainstream media were unkind, and fans lambasted its lack of understanding of what had made the TV show work. It killed off the adventures of this crew on the big screen. Most of them were never seen in any further Star Trek stories until Star Trek Picard began in 2020 (and the big reunion in 2023). And Star Trek wasn’t seen in cinemas again until JJ Abrams reinvented Kirk and Spock in 2009. You can see why I didn’t want Volume I to end here. Even Stuart Baird never directed another movie.

ENT S02E07 The Seventh (). T’Pol is running a secret Vulcan mission and she’s taking Travis seeing as he hasn’t more than about six lines in the last four episodes (rather than say a trained security officer). Wisely, she adds Archer to the gang, freeing up Travis to do what he’s best equipped for – mutely following the other two around. Their pursuit of and verbal fencing with Bruce Davison’s Menos is exciting enough, and the backstory is intriguing – but back in orbit, the general lack of maturity and professionalism extends to acting-captain Trip abusing Archer’s privileges, while proving himself incapable of committing to even the most trivial of decisions. “How very Vulcan,” comments Archer when presented with T’Pol’s completely illogical orders based on irrelevant notions of honour, without which the plot doesn’t work.

ENT S02E08 The Communicator (). Given that the mid-second season of a new show isn’t going to have five years of rich backstory to fall back on, and given that this show in particular is oriented mainly around fairly low-stakes adventure-of-the-week stuff, this is the kind of simple-seeming problem which should suit it perfectly, even if the plot is kicked off yet again by one of Starfleet’s finest being a total doofus. And it largely does work, as a straightforward get-captured-and-escape story. It’s just a shame that it’s a communicator that’s been left behind. Shouldn’t a communicator of all damn things be particularly easy to track down? It’s the thing they use to pinpoint people’s locations before beaming them up for pity’s sake. How can they possibly not be able to find it? Plus, they’ve used the transporter in less dire situations than this before, and this seems like it would have been a great time to give it another go. In fact, why not just beam the communicator back?

ENT S02E09 Singularity (). After a run of very soggy teasers, this one opens with the crew unconscious except for T’Pol whose mission log is near-apocalyptic, fearing that neither crew nor ship will survive much longer. When we flash back, Archer’s fretting about his chair, Hoshi’s cooking up a storm, Travis has an ouchie. It’s all pretty trivial stuff. The gag is that these minor fixations gradually become full-blown obsessions. It’s a sitcom style plot, but the explanation is a giant space wibbly thing rather than the characters’ own natures. Or in other words, it’s The Naked Time again, only with poorer pacing. Are we supposed not to see the disaster coming? Even though this is a story being told in flashback…

ENT S02E10 Vanishing Point () This is another of those plugging-a-hole-in-Star-Trek’s-history stories, exploring how the transporter went from dangerous and experimental technology to routine part of Starfleet kit. But focusing on Hoshi means that we’re seeing the character we know is disappointingly unsuited to space exploration being unsettled by something we’ve already come to know as reliable (except when it isn’t). So, it sends her character into reverse, but we already know how the story ends. We’re also stuck with nobody-believes-the-person-to-whom-weird-things-are-happening, which TNG had ditched by Season 3, noting that it serves only to slow down the (achingly familiar) plot. And what’s the resolution? It was all a dream. Give me strength…

ENT S02E11 Precious Cargo (). For some reason, something about the opening shots of Travis playing the harmonica as the ship glides through space puts me in mind of an advert, maybe for a credit card. Anyway, as usual, that’s all the drama you get in the teaser to hook you into the programme. Who could resist the lure? Speaking of which, the cargo which two bumpy-faced males are carrying turns out to be a smooth-skinned and very foxy chick in suspended animation. Shades of TNG’s The Perfect Mate (it’s the same species) and this is just as ick, if not more so. Just as dull as Vanishing Point, but that didn’t make me want to throw up in my own mouth, hence the score. I’m not alone. John Billingsley gives this episode the credit for turning off the faltering audience for good, which will end up sounding the death knell for this show and Star Trek on television for twelve years. Aliens on this show have baths, eat the same food as humans, and give their height and weight in SI units, but the universal translator gives up entirely when faced with the word “car”. Go figure.

ENT S02E02 Carbon Creek (). From Broken Bow to Carbon Creek (maybe Diamond Ditch was planned to be next). Relations between the Vulcan and human crew continue to improve – to the extent that T’Pol is willing to show them some of her family snapshots. Alas, inserting Vulcans into the 1950s isn’t half as much fun as Ferengi on an airforce base, and since this is just an old anecdote, it doesn’t do anything to advance the story of Archer and Enterprise. But as T‘Mir (who shares her great-granddaughter’s oddly rounded eyebrows) spends more time amongst humans – for months rather than days or hours – it becomes deeply engrossing. The dates don’t quite work (Velcro was patented two years before Sputnik) but the Vulcan’s name does pay tribute to the real inventor.

ENT S02E03 Minefield (). Once again, an attempt is made to make Malcolm Reed’s lack of any defining characteristics (apart from “British” and “always looking like he’s just sucked on a lemon”) a feature. The trouble is, we have T’Pol, so this just looks like laziness. Luckily, it isn’t long before a dirty great hole is blasted in Enterprise’s saucer section – a shocking image, but one which doesn’t mean as much as maybe the producers hoped, simply because we’ve spent barely thirty episodes with the NX-01. And, lo, there are no fatalities which seems surprising given the scale of the damage. The plot of this one is barely any more than its title – the ship has to make its way through a minefield – but this kind of lean, high stakes storytelling is a good use of this inexperienced crew and the set pieces work well. It makes absolutely no difference whether Malcolm watches football or not, I still want him to defuse that bomb successfully, even if the climax is the usual unscientific gibberish. Also – Romulans!

ENT S02E04 Dead Stop (). With a rare nod to serialisation, Enterprise still has a chunk taken out of its saucer and repairs are going slowly, and so Archer sends out a distress call. Malcolm also still has a chunk taken out of his leg and Phlox’s treatment regime tests even his stiff upper lip. A Tellarite floating garage in space welcomes them in, with passive-aggressive attention to detail, but without the personal touch. Archer, T’Pol and Trip agree a price for the repairs, play with the station’s replicator and generally hang out. Again, as so often with this show, it’s relaxed to the point of tedium. And when Trip and Reed go sneaking around and Archer has to tear them off a strip, it’s pretty feeble and unconvincing. Naturally, the benevolent automated pit stop has darker secrets. It even manages to kill Travis (not really). But Archer and T’Pol seem happy to liberate their one crewmember and incinerate all of the other victims, which is less than ideal. As usual on a starship with a crew of nearly a hundred, all of the things of interest happen to the same seven people. I can’t believe nobody on the production team ever noticed how silly that was. Also silly – Hoshi wanting to pay her last respects to Travis during his autopsy (as opposed to say at his funeral).

ENT S02E05 A Night In Sickbay (). We’re back to the mutual-lathering-in-our-scanties scene which is not made any more interesting with the addition of Porthos the dog, whose plight does little to make this teaser any kind of attention-grabber. And from the expert statesmanship of Captain’s past, we’re now faced with Archer’s impatient and petty brattishness in the face of one failed negotiation. Once again, there’s a balance to be struck between wanting this exploration to feel raw and dangerous, and wanting our team to be able and admirable – and once again, in this episode, they come off like putzes. Phlox calling “Freudian slips” “Pillarian slips” is rather neat – and presumably a nod to Michael Pillar.

ENT S02E06 Marauders (). With plasma injectors back up and running, Archer’s now in search of fuel, and is given the brush off by a bunch of very human looking miners wearing t-shirts and jeans. It just feels like no-one’s really trying any more. On which subject, deuterium is treated as a precious substance which has to be carefully mined and refined. In fact, it’s an isotope of hydrogen which can be electrolysed out of ordinary water. Why pick that name for your unobtainium if you don’t know what it is or how abundant it might be? Klingons show up and start demanding deuterium with menaces and these are very generic thugs with little of their TNG texture and dimension. After a suitable pause for agonised indecision, our team sends all seven of them packing, and for no very good reason, they agree not to come back.

ENT S01E21 Detained (). Waking up in an alien prison is a fairly familiar opening, and I guess it makes sense for Travis to follow in the footsteps of O’Brien, Paris and no doubt others. Adding slightly more interest is the fact that their fellow prisoners are the time-travelling Acne Squad (and that Archer is with him). Once again, Travis is a perfect personality vacuum, and this might have been Montgomery’s last chance to stamp his authority on the role. In a pretty funny piece of stunt casting, it’s none other than Scott Bakula’s old buddy Dean Stockwell as the camp commandant. He doesn’t look like he’s in any way happy to be there, which is pretty disappointing. He underplays to the point of torpor. The episode does at least have some substance to it, but the message swamps the story after a while. Travis spells it out in case anyone was dozing at the back.

ENT S01E22 Vox Sola (). More etiquette and translator shenanigans as a bunch of visiting aliens storm off, but while doing so, they allow some digital goo to pixel its way into the airlock – a 22nd century version of that TNG staple, the glowing cursor which roams the ship causing havoc. It quickly starts absorbing various humans into its revolting appendages. Adding to everyone’s problem, T’Pol is being a dick to Hoshi about her language skills – which turn out to be key to solving the problem. As ever, the answer in Star Trek is to understand and communicate, rather than triumph through superior firepower. As director, Roxann Dawson brings considerable Nostromo-esque atmospher to proceedings and Schuyler sister Renee Elise Goldsberry makes a huge impression as the Ensign who discovers her buddy has been enveloped by alien goo. I’d trade her for Malcolm or Travis in a heartbeat – maybe even Trip. The aliens who are shocked at public displays of eating is a brave stab at an unfamiliar culture, but other parts of the franchise has taught us that breaking bread as a form of social bonding is literally universal. Very likely, the Zagbars would know they were outliers. Travis is right – Wages of Fear is a masterpiece.

ENT S01E23 Fallen Hero (). T’Pol wants to know whether the crew has been getting their end away (and she’s far more forthcoming about pon farr than either Spock or Tuvok, for whom this was an intensely personal aspect of their physiology, never to be discussed with anyone). She suggests a Club 18-30 holiday on Risa in order to prevent the crew from getting, as Archer unfortunately puts it, “sloppy”. Alas, Enterprise is required to ferry an erratic Vulcan ambassador off a nearby planet. Fionnula Flanagan is terrific as V’Lar, who confounds everyone’s expectations from T’Pol down, and this is a great episode for the science officer. “Vulcans don’t have heroes.” Yeah, right. Her secret ends up as a bit talky and dry, but it’s great to see a story rooted in character and emotion, even if it is a bit low stakes. That’s two strong episodes in a row. Maybe this new show is finding a groove.

ENT S01E24 Desert Crossing (). Operation Get Some resumes, briefly, before once again the galaxy puts a terrorist between Enterprise and Risa. Seemingly friendly Zobral invites Archer and Tucker to join him for a sojourn in the desert. Zobral is played by Clancy Brown who generally only plays scumbags and villains. Surprise! Zobral turns out to be a scumbag and a villain – or at the very least a freedom fighter who wants Archer to do for his people what he did for the Suliban a few episodes ago. Pairing Archer and Tucker, two very similar characters who generally get on, and who agree on most things, doesn’t lead to much in the way of interest. This is a fundamental problem with the design of this show. The trek across the desert can’t ever be as strong as Odo and Quark’s flog up the mountain, and it’s not clear to me how nobody involved noticed this.

ENT S01E25 Two Days and Two Nights (). Finally, Enterprise makes it to Risa, and Archer was in the half of the crew who won the lottery to be allowed shore leave – along with Hoshi, Trip, Travis and Malcolm. Amazing how being in the opening titles gets you all the breaks. One wonders what Phlox did wrong. And once again, it turns absolutely forever for anything resembling drama to show up. Almost the first half of the episode is like being slowly shown someone’s holiday snaps. When the drama does start, it’s all vacation misadventure cliches with no specificity of either incident or reaction (but with an unhelpful dose of homophobia). Travis’s story is too boring for us to witness it, so he has to come back to the ship and tell everyone about it instead. One whole star for John Billingsley’s hilariously hungover Dr Phlox.

ENT S01E26 Shockwave, Part I (). Lest we forget, the first episode of Enterprise aired barely two weeks after the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. It was a weird time to be launching an American television series which focused on optimism, openness and the importance of treating strangers as friends we haven’t made yet. Given the all-American, largely white, back-to-basics cast, the gravitational pull of US foreign policy on the writers room would have been mighty. And lo, the series finale opens with a disaster which costs the lives of over 3000 people and threatens to start a war. It’s a slightly nauseating start to the episode. Take the colossal loss of life seriously, and the fact that Enterprise is being mothballed seems trivial. Take it lightly and nothing really matters, does it? Sounds like a job for the rest button. And lo, Archer finds himself sent back in time to before his mission began for a do-over. Now armed with secret information from the past/future/whenever, Archer can ride the good ship Wish Fulfilment Fantasy to reveal the badguys and blow them all to bits. Hurrah. But it’s the end of the season, so things aren’t quite that straightforward. In fact, nothing about this muddled episode is straightforward, which is a shame as I think they’re going for good old-fashioned cops-and-robbers adventure stuff, but the mystery surrounding the Suliban, the Temporal Cold War and the accident, starts to become confusion, which is fatal for engagement, no matter how many Acne Lads are dropping from the ceiling. Trip boggles at the thought of a matriarchal society. Sigh.

ENT S02E01 Shockwave, Part II (). To be fair to Shockwave, it’s a pretty nifty cliffhanger. Daniels brings Archer forward in time to discover that by so doing, he’s prevented himself from bringing them back. It’s a bit conceptual, but I do like a seemingly insoluable problem. The one useful thing they have at hand is a library full of paper books, which is a lovely symbol of knowledge and advancement and enlightenment. Daniels mourns the loss of a memorial to the Federation, a topic which can’t help but pique Archer’s curiosity. Watching the team come together on Enterprise to try and outwit the Suliban has some interest (although it’s hilarious that Trip only thinks to try and contact those members of the crew who are in the opening titles – why didn’t the production team just have a smaller ship with a crew of seven for crissake…) but I’m disappointed to see that “space legs” Hoshi has regressed to grumbling about having to do anything which doesn’t involve translation. And we could definitely do without her losing her top on the way through the crawlspace. John Fleck is a strong villain, and having him beat up Malcolm is good way of making us hate him. But the grafted-on Temporal Cold War makes less sense every time it comes up and I grow fearful that the Enterprise crew are going to be bystanders and not participants. It’s not at clear how Trip was able to fake a reactor breach in a way which would be convincing enough the fool the Suliban, and yet which could be fixed in a matter of only seconds.

Season 1 wrap-up

• Deep Space Nine was a potentially poor idea (it’s like Star Trek, but they don’t go anywhere) which was often brilliantly executed. Voyager was a muddle of both good and bad ideas none of which anybody really wanted to commit to. Enterprise is a decent idea, hobbled by some weak casting choices, but spending time at the birth of the Federation is often fascinating.
• This is a smaller regular cast than we’re used to. TNG eventually thinned down to seven, but we had a sizeable supporting cast by that time – Chief O’Brien, Nurse Ogawa, Reg Barclay, Admiral Necheyev, Ro Laren, Guinan. DS9 started with nine and had an enormous supporting cast. Voyager maintained nine regulars, just swapping Kes for Seven, and often gave the impression that this ship was run by those nine and another hundred-odd people who just walked around the corridors holding PADDs all day. Here we have only seven, and they do seem to do absolutely everything. It’s understandable, given how episodic television works, but it does seem slightly absurd at times.
• That would be less of a problem if the characters were stronger. Scott Bakula’s led a TV show before, and at least looks comfortable, which is more than can be said for Dominic Keating who permanently looks as if he might be about to throw up, and Anthony Montgomery who has been given even less to do than Garrett Wang. Jolene Blalock as T’Pol is the undeniable MVP of the show, but if the plan was to recreate the TOS holy trinity, then one leg of the stool is missing, as Conner Trinneer’s Trip Tucker is far too similar to Archer, and the few ways in which he’s different only make me dislike him.
• Two able performers in John Billingsley and Linda Park round out the cast. Billingsley is never less than watchable, and he manages that delicate trick of turning a page of backstory into an actual character. Hoshi Sato is defined mainly by her lack of suitability and enthusiasm for space exploration, which is a thoroughly retrograde step, and I don’t trust this show to nurture her character and give us the moment of triumph we’re being conditioned to look forward to.
• There’s also an uncertainty as to what the story engine for this series is. Are we filling in the gaps in pre-Federation history, are we more interested in the Temporal Cold War, or is this just TOS with less good phasers and an unreliable transporter? That said, some individual stories have been very good, with personal favourites including the excellent The Andorian Incident, and its follow-up The Shadows of P’Jem and the very creepy Vox Sola.
• Enterprise’s average score for Season 1 is 2.88 which is about the same as the early seasons of the other Berman shows, but nosing ahead of each of them, with the exception of Deep Space Nine Season 2. So, there is promise here, but we need to get the adventure back, and get the pace of the storytelling back up.

ENT S01E13 Dear Doctor (). Michael Piller figured out the trick way back in Season 3 of TNG. Not a startling innovation – the curious thing is that previous show runners hadn’t thought of it themselves. Build up your regular characters by giving them episodes which focus on them – and yet a dozen episodes into the new show and pretty much all we’ve had is Archer, and a bit of Trip and T’Pol. So, it’s a bit of a relief to have a Phlox-phocused episode, especially as John Billingsley is one of the most able cast members. The window into the Doctor’s life onboard the ship is genuinely fascinating.

However, off the ship we find ourselves in the midst of a signature Star Trek social commentary allegory, since the plague planet consists of a master class and a slave race. And the problem can’t be solved without Archer staying behind and/or giving them warp drive generations early. Phlox’s concern is that curing the plague will upset the natural development of the planet and he is unwilling to meddle. Archer, understandably, can’t face leaving them to their grisly fate. Until suddenly he invents the prime directive and leaves them to their grisly fate. It’s a weird switcheroo, which isn’t really earned and means that a promising episode ends on a sour note.

As usual, nobody has email (invented 1971) or devices which can receive messages. Phlox’s voice mails have to be physically brought to him on a giant fluorescent SD card. Similarly, the ship shows only the kinds of movies which the writers would have grown up seeing on American TV.

ENT S01E14 Sleeping Dogs (). Another aimless start to an episode – Hoshi’s target practice, Malcolm’s sniffles, Travis’s insomnia, none of these give the early part of the story any momentum. Hoshi also announces that she has found her space legs, which might stop her whining, but also removes the only thing which made her in any way unique. However, once the mission gets underway, the balance between expertise and jeopardy is struck rather better than of late. Malcolm and Hoshi are inexperienced but they aren’t dummies, and it’s slightly surprising to me that it’s taken half a year to find that balance ever with anyone other than Archer (and him not consistently). Taking away the transporter also raises the stakes considerably when the Klingons nick the shuttlepod, stranding the boarding party. And there are some nice character notes for T’Pol, indulging her human comrades for the sake of the mission and out of genuine friendship.

“Your own solar system has four gas giants,” observes T’Pol, despite the fact that Uranus and Neptune were identified as being entirely different in composition long before this episode aired, leaving only Jupiter and Saturn. Second outing for ersatz tractor beam The Grappler which looks far too Inspector Gadget for my liking.

ENT S01E15 Shadows of P’Jem (). Archer and T’Pol’s actions in The Andorian Incident have consequences, which in itself is gratifying. And T’Pol’s recall to Vulcan plays differently than, for example, Kira being transferred off Deep Space Nine – partly because T’Pol’s under-reaction is so affecting. Given that on paper, she’s little more than Spock crossed with Seven, Jolene Blalock consistently manages to bring very impressive depth and subtlety to the part. That’s just as well, as the limp screwball comedy-esque scene in which they are manacled together and have a heart-to-heart while in constant close physical contact would test any actor’s abilities. The rest manages to build on the show (and the franchise’s) past without requiring a new viewer to do a lot of homework to understand what’s going on. The writers are so pleased to have come up with “insomnia” as the motivation for Shran’s change of heart that they have him explain it two or three times. I wasn’t so enamoured.

ENT S01E16 Shuttlepod One (). In what passes for wit, Trip and Malcolm swap fairly rote Brits-vs-Americans banter in between exchanging exposition as their titular shuttlepod drifts past what appears to be the wreckage of Enterprise. After a lot of rather flat, gossipy teasers, it’s nice to have a bit of excitement for once. Yet after “Faith of the Heart”, Archer and Hoshi rapidly establish that it was little more than a fender-bender, which means that we’re watching our heroes expend a lot of energy to solve a problem which we know doesn’t exist. But it does generate some friction between two regulars which is a rarity for human characters.

We’ve seen this device before, and better, in episodes like The Tholian Web, where everyone on the ship thought that Kirk was dead and was coping with his absence. But Trip and Malcolm seeing a couple of bits of deck plating (and no bodies) and haring off into deep space in the hope of finding who knows what doesn’t have anything like the same power, especially not when no-one on the Enterprise is the least bit concerned. And I really could have done without Malcolm’s Vulcan-flavoured sex dreams. (I gather Dominic Keating envisaged the character as gay, so it comes as no surprise to see Rick Berman stamping out any hint of that here.). Archer meanwhile doesn’t seem to know anyone on his ship whose name isn’t in the opening titles. Hair and nails don’t keep growing after you die. Trip should fail his honours biology course.

ENT S01E17 Fusion (). A gang of feckless Vulcans needs their ship repaired, and they come off as horny teenage boys, marvelling that a third (a whole third!) of Enterprise’s crew are female and that they don’t wait seven years for mating. Even given that these are essentially the Golgafrinchan B Ark collection, the state of their technology and the ability of the Enterprise crew to fix it for them doesn’t really reflect the centuries headstart which Vulcans have over humans. They also seem incapable of doing basic research into a society which their home planet has formed a long alliance with. Even T’Pol seems clueless about basic facts regarding her own biology and psychology. Her experiment with not meditating strikes me as almost as silly as Guy Crawford never looking under his eyepatch. Second T’Pol sex dream in two episodes, which is two too many. Weirdly, this episode establishes mind-melds as a Vulcan ability which has been largely forgotten – T’Pol has never heard of it – which is very hard to reconcile with its depiction elsewhere in the canon.

ENT S01E18 Rogue Planet (). Rogue planets are those which aren’t orbiting a star. Quite how this one sustains life without the warm rays of a sun stopping it from freezing solid isn’t clear, but pretty soon, the landing party is ooh-ing and ah-ing over various bugs and creepy-crawlies. But another humanoid group has beaten them to it and pretty soon everyone is eating round the campfire, and seeing mysterious figures in the darkness. This turns out to be a manifestation of the hunters’ quarry, changing form after reading Archer’s thoughts. There’s some interest in both perspectives, but in the absence of a Prime Directive (whether self-imposed or not) Archer decides that the shapeshifters’ perspective is the most valuable and seeks to define them. Experienced director Alan Kroeker creates some nice effects with the hunters’ goggles, glowing red in the darkness, but it’s hard to know what all this is supposed to be about or why we should care.

ENT S01E19 Acquisition (). One problem with setting the new series before any of the others, is you have to ignore all of the alien races which later crews encountered for the first time. That even includes the Romulans, and it definitely includes the Ferengi who were unknown to Picard’s crew. But, just as Voyager couldn’t resist guest appearances by Jonathan Frakes, Dwight Schultz, Romulans and for that matter Ferengi, here comes Enterprise helping itself to a fan favourite alien. We don’t even get subtitles for the opening scene which shows them buzzing our heroes without being detected. Trek favourites Ethan Phillips and Jeffrey Combs are among those donning the big rubber ears. Archer’s manipulation of the thieves is fairly rote but amusing enough at first. But the script never develops this in any interesting ways, and the repeated refrain of “the women” (used as bargaining chips) grates enormously.

ENT S01E20 Oasis (). Star Trek’s flexible format means that, as long ago as Season 1 of TOS the production team discovered that it can be a courtroom drama, a tense siege, a morality play – a recent episode of Strange New Worlds was a full-fledged musical (even the thought of which had some particularly rigid fans clutching their pearls in despair). Enterprise was a goofy comedy last week, so having a go at a haunted house story this week seems fine, except that this script is nothing but cliches, which is disappointing. And while it’s nice that somebody on the team seems to have remembered that Travis exists, he’s still not given anything interesting to do or say. After about ten minutes of creeping around in the dark, suddenly the conceit is abandoned and we meet a far more typical gang of shifty colonists, including one Rene Auberjonois. Despite T’Pol’s acid-tongued warnings, Trip can’t help but try and chat up the pixie-cut young engineer who stops him from making a fatal blunder. Once again, Star Trek’s view of sex and relationships seems to be stuck at high school level. When Trip isn’t arranging to meet her behind the bike sheds, she and the others are whispering in low tones about the secret which it’s manifestly obvious they are keeping from the Enterprise crew. Annie Wersching will be back as the third Borg Queen in Star Trek: Picard Season 2 before her untimely death aged just 45. Convergent evolution ensures that all intelligent species look humanoid, but dogs are known only to Earth, apparently.

ENT S01E06 Terra Nova (). Earth’s first extra-solar colony planet cut itself off from home within a few years – as Archer’s opening info-dump explains. Given that nothing in this scene reveals character, I wonder why we didn’t see it in flashback, other than budgetary considerations (or the seeming commitment that this series has to telling stories in as slow-moving and dull way as possible). It’s also a strange place for the Enterprise to visit, given that they would presumably have had to U-turn to reach it. Down on the surface, things improve considerably. The cave set looks impressive and the inhabitants hiding in the crevices are nicely creepy (although their Aboriginal-like presentation is a bit ick). And we get to see Archer and T’Pol working smoothly as a team for once. But taking off and blithely leaving Malcolm behind is totally and utterly wrong. That’s the behaviour you give to the cowardly and deceitful captain who is shown up by our awesomely capable and compassionate heroes. And it achieves nothing, because the next thing Archer does is to go right back down there and carry on where he left off. The pidgin English of the colonists is pretty rote, but there are some resonant moments in the details of their story, albeit still no character development for any of the regulars.

ENT S01E07 The Andorian Incident (). Fussbudget T’Pol reluctantly agrees to the Enterprise visiting a Vulcan spiritual retreat to discover that the inhabitants are spending a month in silent contemplation. T’Pol instantly knows something is up, but Trip continues to prove his uselessness but ignoring her concerns in favour of making fatuous jokes. It transpires that the Andorians (who’d have guessed?) are holding the Vulcans hostage. Rather upsettingly, the blue-hued aliens refer to humans as “pink skins”. One wonders whether Anthony Montgomery was on-set that day. That aside, this is far better than the previous episodes, with enough plot for forty-five minutes, a chance for Malcolm to shine in the captain’s chair, a credible threat and a superb guest performance from the always reliable Jeffrey Combs. And there’s strong – if not wildly original – thematic material about pacifism, militarism and how to deal peacefully with aggressors. The final twist is important too, putting T’Pol on the side of the humans, condemning her own people for their deceitful conduct. It’s the first time we get any hint in this series as to why it’s the humans who end up as the lynchpin of the Federation, and not the more technologically advanced, more experienced Vulcans, and it’s a great showing for both Scott Bakula and Jolene Blalock.

ENT S01E08 Breaking the Ice (). The title refers to a comet, ho ho, which Archer names after himself, and which oddly is both super-gigantic-enormous and hitherto undetected. More has been learned about comets since this episode was broadcast, so I guess we have to give the writers a pass when it comes to the scientific gibberish on display. T’Pol’s tug-of-loyalty continues as Archer wants to know why the Vulcans have suddenly shown up, and why they’re happy to sit and watch as Travis and Malcolm attempt to go comet-spelunking. This gives rise to the title’s other meaning, Archer trying to get to know the Vulcans a little better, ho ho. All of the posturing between the two groups makes little sense in the light of the previous episode. I can only assume this was meant to be shown first.

Trip is the one who discovers that T’Pol is being summoned home to take go through with her arranged marriage. They spend a long time conversing on the subject but it doesn’t amount to all that much, and it’s called off as soon as Travis twists his ankle. The Vulcans like to portray the humans as arrogant and inexperienced, and Archer’s initial refusal to ask Captain Vanik for help doesn’t do much to undercut this. It’s a pretty poor showing from all concerned. A cloying and protracted sequence in which Archer answers student questions from a high school in Ireland seems to have been inserted simply to pad out the running time, as it goes on for well over five minutes, which is pretty shocking, and is yet another opportunity for Trip to get worked up about all the wrong things.

ENT S01E09 Civilization (). The crew are giggling like giddy schoolchildren at the prospect of a nearby “Minshara” (M-class) planet complete with 500 million life signs. And here’s where T’Pol starts explaining what will turn into the Prime Directive. This is a good example of the space Enterprise seemed purpose-built to occupy. For years we’ve been watching transporters, warp drives, phasers, tractor beams and so on. Here’s the chance to see where and how some of these things originated. As noted, The Andorian Incident is successful largely because it’s the beginning of a human-centred Federation. But, for example, the transporter simply works or it doesn’t depending on the needs of the plot. Here, Captain push-random-buttons-first-ask-questions-later Archer is determined to gather information on this primitive society by sending a disguised landing party rather than, as T’Pol suggests, watching them from orbit. And that’s the flip side of this Star Trek: The Early Years concept. We’ve seen this exercise before, but performed by a more competent, more able crew. There isn’t the same pleasure in seeing goofballs stumble through it, especially when the characters are still so thinly drawn. But the main plot revolves around Archer and Trip discovering and “Evil Leaper” in the form of Wade Williams as “Garos” whose nefarious activities I find far less interesting than the prospect of the Enterprise crew figuring out how to and whether to make first contact. And sure, Archer having to snog his way out of an awkward moment when the Universal Translator goes on the fritz is funny enough, but things like that and the transporter are storytelling devices first. Having to faff about with shuttlepods and dictionaries kills the pacing.

For the second time in three episodes, the plot turns on Archer’s discovery of a vast underground technological array which has no business being where it is. And we end with no better protocols for interacting with pre-warp societies.

ENT S01E10 Fortunate Son (). Father/son sports bonding is one of those eternal things which decades of technological advancement and space exploration just can’t stamp out, as once again the ability of early 2000s writers to imagine a new kind of society just ends up recreating 1960s American sitcoms. This ersatz family are under attack from Nausicans and Enterprise has to U-turn to come to their rescue – only to be told that they aren’t needed after all. In a minor variation of the situation in The Andorian Incident, the human crew has a Nausican prisoner they don’t want the Enterprise to know about. As ever, there’s plenty of time for casual chatting, the story is in absolutely no hurry to get here. Travis was born on a similar freighter but this is factual backstory, not characterisation and knowing this information doesn’t help us or Anthony Montgomery to get more of a handle on him (although Montgomery makes a fair job of Travis’s big speech). The rest of the team are as hapless as ever, letting this haulage crew run rings around them, but there are exciting sequences in between all the tepid chatting, and some of them even involve the people we care about.

ENT S01E11 Cold Front (). Those spotty-faced time travellers from Broken Bow are back. Unconnected to this, creepy crewman Daniels extracts some exposition from Archer, which is at least a distraction from the exchange of cliches occurring on the bridge. A squad of religious acolytes come from dinner, so we’re off to the usual relaxed, conversational start. Travis’s thirty seconds in the captain’s chair makes him seem like a goofy teenager instead of a junior officer. Trip assuming that his visitors don’t know what a warp drive is makes him seem like a patronising jerk. The crewman Daniels reveal is a real missed opportunity. We could have had almost a dozen episodes getting used to his presence before he explained who he really was. The wrinkle that the time cop’s quarry is the person who secretly saved the ship is interesting, but T’Pol’s scepticism is dull and serves only to slow the plot down (although Archer’s wonder at Daniels’s planetarium light show is bizarre to say the least). When Acne-head gives his own side of the story, it becomes genuinely hard to know who is on whose side, and while this has nothing to do with the story of the first wave of space adventurers from Earth, or the game of plugging holes in Star Trek’s early history, it is more tense and exciting than a great many recent episodes. But amid all the intrigue, the climactic fight in the cargo bay is very confusingly and unconvincingly shot, as if director Robert Duncan McNeill didn’t have all the coverage he needed.

ENT S01E12 Silent Enemy (). Archer has determined that Enterprise needs a weapons upgrade and so he wants to take her back to the shop. A ship shows up and then goes away again. Hoshi talks to Malcolm’s sister. Even by the slightly aimless standard of these episodes this is unbelievably pointless and sluggish. Finally, halfway through, the ship is attacked and boarded, but then they go away again and we’re back to squabbling about maintenance procedures and lunch preferences. Eventually Malcolm fires his big gun, and everybody is happy. It’s a bizarrely vacuous 45 minutes which barely qualifies as a story. And it seems if, to the writers, British people are as bizarre as Klingons or Denobulans. Certainly, Malcolm’s parents behave like no human beings I’ve ever encountered.

ENT S01E01-02 Broken Bow (). Voyager had been a risk. All of those political factions, familiar aliens, established guest stars and popular locations would be jettisoned in favour of a single ship, exploring the unknown. There would be no missions from Starfleet and nowhere to go home and refuel if life got too tough. It worked – just about. The new show didn’t really do what UPN needed it to do, and the viewing figures were nowhere near those for TNG, but it did better than DS9 and it had its fans. Maybe the mistake had been to try and launch a new show while the old one was still on the air? If so, Paramount wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

But watching Enterprise now, it seems as if the creative team was at pains to take only the most piddling of risks (removing the words “Star Trek” from the name, having a song for the opening titles instead of a purely instrumental piece) but elsewhere the mantra was: play it safe. Berman and Braga wanted to take the whole first year to get Captain Archer into space. Paramount insisted that the crew had to be exploring Strange New Worlds as soon as possible. Past captains had tried to put distance between them and Kirk. Jonathan Archer is just Kirk in different pyjamas. TNG, DS9 and Voyager had made stars of then-unknowns Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks and Kate Mulgrew. Enterprise chose Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula. DS9 in particular pushed the envelope in terms of representation. The main crew of the NX-01 are white male humans. Of the two aliens, one is yet another Vulcan and the only two people of colour are also the two most junior people in the opening titles. This is a boy ship full of boy people going out into the galaxy to kick some alien butt. Hoo-yeah. And if it looks bad now, wait till we get to Season 3. Yikes.

Picking up where First Contact left off, we quickly establish via some father-son Airfix painting that Vulcans and humans are working together on interstellar travel, but the the Vulcans are hitting the brakes, not the gas. Following which, a crashed ship gives us bumpy-forehead Klingon, some shapeshifting dudes and an human wanting them to get out of his backyard. It’s a bit of a jumble. Poor old Scott Bakula doesn’t even make it into the teaser of his own show.

Let’s run down the main cast. As noted, Jonathan Archer is pretty much Diet Coke Kirk. He is charming, friendly, and he’s got a dog. The kind of captain you’d want to have a beer with. T’Pol (who spends much of her opening scene mute) is pretty much a 50/50 blend of Spock and Seven of Nine – or if you prefer, she’s yet another incarnation of Majel Barrett’s original Number One from The Cage. But Jolene Blalock immediately understands that a little dry humour goes a long way and it’s clear what the producers saw in her. Rounding the central triumvirate is Bland White Guy number two, Connor Trinneer as Trip Tucker who starts out, as so many characters do, as just a position. We’re light years away from Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The second tier starts with John Billingsley as Phlox, who is another blend of existing characters, in this case the Doctor and Neelix. His cry of “Optimism, Captain” put me weirdly in mind of the Thermians from Galaxy Quest.

And then there’s Bland White Guy number three, Dominic Keating as Malcolm Reed, who thankfully doesn’t sound American because he looks almost identical to Tucker. The two junior crewmembers are Linda Park as Hoshi Sato and Anthony Montgomery as Travis Mayweather. Mayweather is basically Harry Kim Redux, only if memory serves, he gets even less to do. Hoshi is the one genuinely original character in the entire regular cast. Instead of having automatic translation whenever it’s needed, a linguistics expert is needed to figure out what these aliens are saying. And the novelty comes from the fact the she’s a scaredy-cat who hates space flight. That makes a change from the usual ubermenschen but it’s pretty regressive when the only two women are an ice maiden and a frightened little girl. Park is a very appealing performer, which makes it even more of a shame that’s she’s saddled with this characterisation.

The NX-01, whose CG exterior looks very nice in the new widescreen frame, is dispatched to ferry a wounded Klingon back to Qo’nos, which sets up the chief conflict between buccaneering Archer and stay-in-your-lane T’Pol. It’s a major step forward for Earth’s burgeoning fleet of starships, and they get a send off from none other than James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane reciting a paraphrased version of William Shatner’s opening narration. It’s meant to tug at all sorts of nostalgic heartstrings, but it comes across as a bit flat, a bit rote, a hasty sketch of a magical moment rather than a truly earned sequence of genuine emotional power.

Complicating matters are the Suliban who invade and make off with the ailing Klingon. When our crew pursue him, they fetch up on a supposedly exotic planet but in fact it’s just another riff on the Star Wars dive bar, with yet more male chauvinism, as near naked alien chicks writhe for the entertainment of male patrons, and a foxy Suliban chick can only confirm Archer’s trustworthiness by making out with him. it’s a marvel she doesn’t say “tell me about his human activity you call kissing.” Later James Conway’s camera perves all over T’Pal’s curves as she and Trip slather decontamination gel over each other’s bodies, which is a pretty poor way of “keeping the dads watching”.

However, among all of these disappointing choices, there is interesting stuff her. Archer may be a bland Kirk-clone but Bakula’s personal charisma is capable of a lot of heavy lifting, and Jolene Blalock is the show’s early MVP, both because of the detailed performance and because the human/Vulcan conflict is something genuinely new and interesting. Although she does have very human looking eyebrows. Plus, this opening double-length episode doesn’t attempt too much, so the characters do get the chance to breathe. True, that exposes how thin some of them are, but it gives especially Hoshi a chance to establish something beyond which station on the bridge is home. And the setting is novel, with no Federation, no replicators, transporters which aren’t rated for live cargo, and much else besides. It remains to be seen whether these limitations will raise the stakes, or cut off avenues of storytelling.

The only thing which fogs the issue is the Temporal Cold War subplot. Having been told they were not allowed to spend the majority of the first season getting the ship into space, Brannon Braga fretted that the show needed another element, and grafted this on from a non-Star Trek project which was at a nascent stage. It fits poorly with the rest of the material and feels like a distraction. The top brass on Earth are given the names Forrest, Leonard and Williams – as in DeForrest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner. There’s also a Vulcan named “Tos”.

ENT S01E03 Fight or Flight (). Linguist Hoshi Sato is moonlighting as an exobiologist, fretting over the future of an alien slug. Contributing to the low-key feel, Archer is fretting also, this time about a mysterious noise from under the deck, like he’s your grandad who claims the plumbing is stopping him from sleeping. And Hoshi is also having trouble sleeping because she’s on the wrong side of the ship. We’re a long way from the luxury of the NCC 1701-D (or even Voyager) which is refreshing, but these trivial concerns also just aren’t all that interesting. And travelling at under Warp 4, space seems very cold and empty.

Finally, the tedium is interrupted when a small probe shows up and T’Pol tries super hard to get Archer to leave it alone. But the excitement doesn’t build, because there’s an awful lot of getting-ready admin and further Hoshi-fretting to contend with first. Eventually they get on board and discover fifteen alien bodies being drained of fluid which is quite a striking image to say the least. Fooling nobody, Archer warps away leaving the corpses and the mystery behind. And having burned a good ten minutes of screen time, we eventually start a post-mortem. TNG would have got us to this point in the teaser.

ENT S01E04 Strange New World (). T’Pol wants to spend a week scanning a new planet from orbit, but Archer insists on sending a crewed shuttlepod. I think we’re supposed to see him as gung-ho hero, and her as an overly cautious fusspot. Actually I see him as a patronising jerk, and the episode comprehensively proves her right and him wrong. Either way, it’s another soggy teaser, focusing on a pair of anonymous red-shirts (although both survive the episode). Shortly, Starfleet’s finest prove themselves incapable of dealing with a camping trip interrupted by thunderstorm and a scorpion, as if this episode of Star Trek was in fact a pilot for a Stand By Me television spin-off. Eventually it all goes a bit Naked Time, but for that trick to work, we’d need Archer in the Cave of Hallucinations, and for the psychic shenanigans to be more than this generic paranoia.

ENT S01E05 Unexpected (). Trying to pull off zero gravity water on an early 2000s TV budget is either very ambitious or very stupid depending on who you ask. But, again, we’ve replaced a wish-fulfilment dream of excellence with a bunch of screw-ups who can’t even manage something as simple as having a shower without literally falling on their arse. I also don’t like T’Pol refusing to try blueberry pancakes. Sure, it’s a relatable shorthand for her alien/fussbudget/spectrum persona, but Spock was more driven by curiosity and I can’t account for why T’Pol is so fearful in comparison. When they make contact with their hitchhiker, the translator takes a moment to kick in. It should be fun seeing a less advanced crew but the danger is we’ll just end up seeing them solve the same problems each week, so it takes longer to get to the story.

Giving Trip Riker’s job of participating in the officer exchange programme is a good idea on paper, and my hope is that I will find out something a bit more impressive about him, given that last week his very poor showing consistent mainly of panicking and wetting himself. Alas, this time, he keeps calling and asking Daddy if he can come home from camp, even though he’s only just got there. Once again, this problem is solved in just a few minutes, and so the story never gathers momentum. Instead of piling complication upon complication, we just encounter a trivial issue, rapidly solve it, and then plod on to the next plot point. It’s more like a dull computer game than a science-fiction adventure. And the novelty of seeing alien environments can be assumed to have worn off the audience who has been watching them every week since 1987, which again means when the characters go “Golly gee whizz” it makes me think less of them and not more of the setting. The feeling of slovenly pacing is increased when Trip and Malcolm spend most of the next scene reminding us what happened earlier in the episode.

More scientific illiteracy. These very human-looking aliens whose body chemistry must therefore be almost identical to ours, are not familiar with water, which is fundamental to organic life of almost any kind. Despite this colossal gulf in their physiologies, Trip ends up impregnated by the foxy alien chick who very nearly asks “What is this thing you humans call love?” Say what you like about Voyager, but they would have had Harry Kim up the duff by the first ad-break. Maybe before the opening titles.

VOY S07E22 Natural Law (). Chakotay and Seven beam off a doomed shuttle and are trapped on a forest planet beneath an impenetrable barrier, where they find a primitive culture making blankets and smashing com-badges. In a virtual re-run of a scene in Q2, Tom Paris is pulled over by the space fuzz for piloting infractions. And mysteriously, Seven and Chakotay are trying to get back for a conference, further reinforcing that life in the Delta Quadrant has become just like home. This feels rather like three different episodes have been put in a blender and the result is that none of them really work. The noble savage strand is by far my least favourite, but they’re all pretty bad.

VOY S07E23 Homestead (). Neelix is throwing a party when Voyager comes across life signs – Talaxian life signs. The Delta Flyer goes to investigate and crashes, whereupon Neelix discovers that around 500 of his people are living in a hollowed-out asteroid, being victimised by a bunch of ghost-faced miners. If it weren’t that one side looks like Neelix, this would be yet another Zagbars vs Zoobles conflict. As it is, the fact that this is Zagbars vs Talaxian only helps a little bit. This all looks very much as if they might be going to write Neelix out here – there are only three episodes to go, after all. Neelix and Tuvok bury the hatchet (which given the events of Tuvix – recounted excitedly by Naomi in this episode!! – really shouldn’t be necessary) in rather a sweet scene. Surely, on the great ship reset button, nothing ever really changes…? But no, we won’t get to see Neelix sign up to Starfleet. He’s staying behind and Voyager is going on without him.

VOY S07E24 Renaissance Man (). Once more, the unknown environment of the Delta Quadrant provides plenty of opportunities for itinerant captains and holograms to attend symposiums and deliver papers. Janeway has done a deal with the oligarchs who control this region of space. In return for not dismantling the ship, they will be allowed to settle on a nearby planet. Quite why we have to learn about this second hand isn’t clear. It sounds like it would have been quite a dramatic and exciting scene. But lo! The Captain is behaving very oddly, because she’s not the Captain. She’s the Doctor and he’s obeying the orders of a pair of Sontarans who have Janeway held prisoner. (And presumably these all-powerful oligarchs who presented us with such an extraordinarily intractable problem are just made-up, which is a pretty rotten bait-and-switch.) As strong as they are, Mulgrew and Dawson aren’t quite in Jeri Ryan’s league when it comes to impersonating Robert Picardo impersonating them. On the other hand, the Doctor hiding himself in a sea of a hundred identical decoys is a marvellous visual. His over-the-top goodbye is nothing short of embarrassing, however. Vulcan crewmember Vorik appears for the final time and manages not to get himself executed, which I suppose is something.

VOY S07E25-26 Endgame (). What does spending seven years lost in deep space do to you? How might your friends, family, loved ones and colleagues react when you return home? What does it feel like to be welcomed back like a hero, when you know your success was earned with the lives of at least some of your fellow crewmembers? As usual, Voyager isn’t interested in any of those things. Which is a shame, because I super am. But the tug-of-love between deep character drama and the perceived need to stop people switching away from UPN ends up where it so often does on Voyager – in a bonkers high concept time travel pretzel logic fever dream of a story which aims to throw so many ideas at the viewer so quickly, that you stop questioning whether any of this means anything and you just sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s ten years after Voyager’s return to Earth, thirty-three years after they left. A lot’s happened in the sixteen years of travel that we missed. In the main, the old-age makeup is convincing and the actors do a good job of playing their more mature selves. Most are happy enough, but Tuvok has gone nuts, Seven is MIA, and Chakotay is dead and buried.

Back in our main timeline, it’s nearly B’Elanna Baby Day (but not quite), and Seven and Chakotay’s teamwork on the planet of the noble savages (as well as her turning him into a holographic sex doll) has matured into an actual relationship. After a great deal of not very necessary feeling busywork, into this cosy domesticity comes crashing sixty-something Admiral Janeway, and she’s cranky. Overhearing their sparring is the Borg Queen, looking rather more gaunt than when we last saw her, but now portrayed by Alice Krige who originated the role and who gives it a bit of extra sizzle compared to Susannah Thompson. After what seems like an awful lot of preparing, talking, talking about preparing, walking around with PADDs and general faff, it’s finally time to return to the Borg-infested nebula and try going home the short way round. Using future anti-Borg tech, Captain Janeway takes out two fully-operational cubes, slaughtering who knows how many drones. But she does draw the line at nipping through a trans-Warp conduit and it’s only here that the real Janeway on Janeway conflict begins. True to form, the Captain wants to destroy the conduit instead of using it to get home. They’re both well aware that this is a reprise of the debate in Caretaker, and the script hangs a series of lanterns on it. Embarrassingly, Garrett Wong has to say “It’s not about the destination, but about the journey,” as if he really, really means it.

Admiral Janeway seems to be motivated by the need to save Seven more than anything else. Shame she didn’t take her armoured TARDIS back in time just a few weeks earlier so she could save poor old Joe Carey, but you know, screw that guy. She briefly becomes as much the antagonist as the Borg, going behind Voyager’s back to ensure they get home whether they want to or not. And it all ends in a demented climax full of neurolithic pathogens, worm holes, destabilised conduit shielding, auto-dismemberment and much else besides. But this is a send-off party more than anything else, and everyone is invited: Barclay, Neelix (via Zoom call with Seven), the Borg Queen – but not Kes, of course, don’t be silly. And Mulgrew plays her dual role brilliantly, her older self coming back into alignment with the idealism of her younger self being one of the highlights of the show, reaffirming for absolutely the last time that, yes, she was right to destroy the array.

The Doctor, who spent much of the last episode impersonating Janeway, regrets that a therapeutic visit from Janeway won’t be possible to soothe an agitated Tuvok.

Voyager Season 7 wrap-up

It’s hard to know what to say about Voyager’s seven year run that I haven’t said dozens of times already. The cardboard characters let the side down again and again and again, with the result that this is the Janeway/Seven/Doctor show almost as much as TOS was the Kirk/Spock/McCoy show. Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo are the only cast members who managed the dual trick of being supremely able actors who also inspired the writers. Unlike, say, Tim Russ and Roxann Dawson who almost never inspired the writers, no matter how good they were, and definitely unlike Robert Beltran who seemingly stopped trying somewhere in Season 2.

And yet, there is good stuff here, and good stuff in this final season. The Workforce two-parter was a good use of the whole ensemble, with a very beguiling mystery in the first part, Body and Soul was an absolutely hilarious showcase for Jeri Ryan and Shattered was one for the fans, revisiting past glories and failures to great effect. But just as you have to make the deal with TOS that you get one female character with depth per year, and an awful lot of cardboard rocks and crummy monster costumes, you have to make the deal with Voyager that you aren’t going to get deep character work, season-spanning arcs, or delicate emotional stories, and instead look forward to the next bonkers high concept premise which threatens to turn the whole show on its head.

In some ways, the episodes I liked least were the ones which threatened to revisit the premise of the show, because it kept reminding me that the idea of a two warring crews desperately trying to crawl home in a barely holding-together lifeboat would have been so much more interesting than this leisurely cruise through Zagbars vs Zoobles conflicts which we actually got. But, despite all of the problems I’ve articulated, I genuinely did enjoy hanging out with this crew for 170-odd episodes, and I’ll miss the sheer ambition that was often on display here.

Voyager’s final season averages 3.06. The show peaked in Season 4 with 3.54, which is about as good as TNG Seasons 3-5, but not quite as good as the same period in DS9. That said, I’d put especially Season 4 next to pretty much any other year of Berman-Trek and expect it at the very least not to disgrace itself. The overall overage for Voyager is about the same: 3.08.

Right, five down and one to go.

VOY S07E16 Workforce (). We’re on location, augmented with some pretty seamless CG additions, as Janeway and a bunch of aliens run around some kind of industrial centre. The structure reminds me of Gambit from TNG – the first part of a two parter which feels like the second part, starting as it does in an unfamiliar situation. Especially as Seven (introducing herself as Annika Hansen) doesn’t appear to recognise her captain. Also present – Tuvok, Torres and Paris. It’s almost a third of the way into the episode before we see a Starfleet uniform (Tuvok, who experiences a flashback when being innoculated against exotic radiation).

When business-as-usual Voyager asserts itself, it’s fairly superior fare with good stuff from the Emergency Command Hologram, butting heads with Forever An Ensign Kim, and a rescue mission with Chakotay and Neelix teaming up. But the best material is down on the planet, with a more thoroughly worked out than usual alien society, a strong role for Tuvok and an unusually effective love story for Janeway. And it all builds to – oh! A cliffhanger. This one wasn’t broadcast as a two-hour event episode, but nor did it announce itself as Part I in the opening titles.

VOY S07E17 Workforce, Part II (). The mystery box structure of the first part is very beguiling and the pay-off for that is that a great deal of the second part is just plot admin. Once again, centring Chakotay means that there’s a hollow centre where character development should be. Robert Beltran doesn’t completely sleepwalk through this one, but the character is a lost cause by now. By far the strongest strand is the Janeway love story and that’s very surprising given the franchise’s track record with sex and romance. Neelix rehabilitating Torres is also rather sweet. In fact, this is one of the few stories which treats the regular cast as a true ensemble, which is worth an extra star. Once again, though, the remaining anonymous members of Voyager’s crew are never seen or spoken of.

VOY S07E18 Human Error (). With no explanation, Seven presents herself with no implants at all, and – finally! – requests a proper uniform and some quarters. This turns out to be a Holodeck program, but when given the chance to practice the same skills in person, she declines. And then changes her mind. And then she turns up in uniform, being shown round her new quarters by Neelix (another simulation). This feels as if they shot alternate pages from two different drafts of the same script. It is a huge pleasure to see Jeri Ryan in uniform, whether it’s holographic or not. It turns out that Seven’s remaining implants will break her brain if she experiences too much character development, so don’t worry, nothing much changes because of this experience. This week, Holodeck programs are capable of providing costumes for participants, whereas previously we’ve seen people get changed before entering.

VOY S07E19 Q2 (). John de Lancie’s final visit to Berman-Trek (he never showed up on Enterprise) and once again, some other poor actor has to live up to his brio and charisma. Q Jr has a small advantage when it comes to playing Q’s off-spring as the actor is de Lancie’s own son Keegan de Lancie, although this turned out to be the last of his acting roles and he’s still a poor substitute for his old dad. Suzie Plakson’s character from The Q and the Gray is referred to but never seen, alas. In something of a re-run of the TNG episode Deja Q, the newest Q is stripped of his powers and stuck on board Voyager to be housebroken by Janeway. So none of this particularly new, but it’s lively enough and the journey from obnoxious brat to earnest hard worker whose Daddy loves him is well worked out, if a little saccharine, with Icheb and Jr making a fun pairing. Minus half-a-star because the writing staff can’t conceive of an all powerful cosmic being who is anything other than resolutely hetero. The Q judges at the end wear versions of de Lancie’s judge outfit from Farpoint which is a nice touch.

VOY S07E20 Author, Author (). With only half-a-dozen episodes to go, we’re back in the Alpha Quadrant as Voyager attempts Operation Watson, which turns out to be a real-time Zoom call. The Doctor uses this feat of engineering to talk to his publisher, which seems like a low-stakes way of handling a seismic alteration in the lifestyles of the crew. Tom Paris is the first one to subject himself to the Doctor’s choose your own adventure, which presents unflattering depictions of the crew. We’ve gone from a desperate struggle for survival to the pampered crew fretting about their reputations. And we’ve seen better and funnier ersatz-versions-of-the-crew stories in the past. Meanwhile this is just a panto version of The Measure of a Man and who wants that? The letters from home are largely cliches as well. Maybe that’s why there’s no uproar when the limited time available is given over to this re-hashed trial procedure. The final shot is unbelievably stupid too.

VOY S07E21 Friendship One (). Regular calls home are now just an ordinary part of life, further making the desperate circumstances of the lost crew more and more comfortable. It doesn’t last. On their second official mission from Starfleet (the first being to track down the missing Maquis ship), USS Voyager meets Voyager 6 in all but name, a probe sent from Earth hundreds of years ago, which has fetched up on a nearby planet, once inhabited but now seemingly desolate and blanketed in deadly radiation. In fact, it was the probe itself whose technology was the catalyst for a deadly war, which together with some of Michael Westmore’s most disgusting latex makes for a bracingly grim edition. As usual our people are never anything more than their job descriptions. We learn more about the planet-dwellers’ relationships and personalities than we do about anyone in a Starfleet uniform. Speaking of which, in a blatant display of redshirting, briefly featured Lt Joe Carey joins the away team and is the only casualty.

VOY S07E08 Nightingale (). A very impressive effects shot of Voyager beached on a rocky planet opens this episode which for once treats the titular ship as a lifeboat and not as a pleasure cruiser. Meanwhile, Kim inserts himself into the middle of a local skirmish and struggles to help a stricken ship where the only survivors are clueless passengers. He proceeds to demonstrate comprehensively why he has never been promoted, until Seven – Seven! – gives him a lesson in people management. Ron Glass, now better known as Book in Firefly, is the main guest star on the friendly side – who notably have much less prosthetic makeup than the badguys. Oh, god, and the remaining Borg teen wants the Doctor explain why nice girls don’t like him. Give me strength.

VOY S07E09-10 Flesh and Blood (). This is the last of the Voyager mid-season “event” double-length episodes, and it focuses on the Hirogen who have so far gone through three of the four standard stages of Star Trek antagonistic alien races. They were introduced spouting typical pulp sci-Fi cliches, they began to develop a bit more specificity and interest, they were neutered when we started to understand them and empathise with them, but they haven’t yet turned into a fully distinguishable array of characters, rather they’re still being pressed out of the same rather rigid template. Also, they were once defined by their enormous height, towering over their co-stars in a very impressive way, but it seems those were exceptions to the usual rule, as this lot seem positively stumpy (and very easily killable).

On board an apparently lifeless Hirogen vessel, Chakotay’s away team discovers what seems like an arboreal environment, strewn with Hirogen bodies and Alpha Quadrant weapons. In what’s pretty much a re-run of In the Flesh from Season 5, we’re on a Starfleet inspired training facility. The not uninteresting twist is that their holographic prey seized the means of projection and turned on their fleshy overlords. It’s just a shame that – in a bumper-sized episode – we have to hear about this second-hand instead of watching it unravel. Like Geordi and Moriarty, the Hirogen made the mistake of asking the Holodeck to create a worthy adversary. And while we’re ticking off things we’ve seen in past episodes, the Hologram squad kidnap the Doctor before hightailing it out of the system.

There’s some hand-waving in the direction or moral complexity here, with holograms presented as a subjugated slave race, but nothing we haven’t seen before and treated with more nuance. Of more interest is the fact that Janeway’s hard nosed attitude towards the photonics aggressors pits her against the Doctor who switches sides in the face of her intransigence. Quite what compassionate, science-minded Janeway is doing automatically siding with fleshy Hirogens against insubstantial holograms is anyone’s guess. It’s a far cry from Picard’s passionate defence of Data’s personhood in Measure of a Man.

Because it’s a bumper two-part episode, Voyager, which is usually presented as completely outclassing everything else in the quadrant, is left crippled at the halfway point, and the downtrodden prey-turned hunters add Torres to their collection of prisoners. But this doesn’t turn into a particularly life-threatening race-against-time requiring desperate measures to resolve an impossible situation. Rather it just feels as if our people are arbitrarily involved in a local skirmish. For organics read Zagbars and for holograms read Zoobles.

Meanwhile the fact that this all started with the Hirogen becomes less and less relevant as time goes on. Even the fact that the antagonists are holograms seems to get forgotten about ultimately. The chief badguy assumes that all holograms are self-aware when in fact these are exceptional cases – and remember when the Doctor’s mobile emitter was a precious and poorly-understood piece of technology and without it, he couldn’t leave sickbay? Now these beings made of light and forcefields seem to be able to go anywhere they like, whenever they like, with only a cursor nod in the direction of holo-emitters.

VOY S07E11 Shattered (). A visual effect zaps the ship and Chakotay suddenly looks like he’s done twenty years of sunbathing always facing the same way (he gets better). The Doctor has never even heard of a mobile emitter, suggesting we’ve gone back in time, and when he reaches the bridge, Chakotay is arrested by a Janeway who’s never met him before. Even more delightfully, engineering is in a time zone when Seska is in command of the ship (for which I’m awarding an extra half a star). Putting Chakotay at the centre of this story makes sense – it would be pointless to see different versions of his character since he doesn’t have one – but it does mean that once again this is a spangly bauble with a hollow centre. There’s good stuff for Janeway, but the structure of the story means that any character development she gets will have to be reset before the credits roll. Also, the details don’t make sense. Chakotay is the only one who can pass from one time zone to another, but in that case why do non-inoculated people disappear when they pass through the boundaries? Surely they should be unaffected. And it’s awfully convenient that every one of the 37 different segments seems to contain different crewmembers. Plus, Chakotay seems to have entirely forgotten about the Temporal Prime Directive as his method for solving the problem seems to be to tell everybody absolutely everything he knows, unprompted. The scene with grown-up Icheb and Naomi is rather sweet, but the extra mention of the contraband cider is butter on bacon. As if the one memory which Icheb carried with him for 17 years would be the exact thing which happened minutes before the temporal accident. C’mon now.

VOY S07E12 Lineage (). Torres’s uncharacteristic sunny optimism is undone when it’s discovered that she is pregnant. “Let’s keep this to ourselves,” she suggests, heedless of the fact that Icheb, Seven, Tom and the Doctor already know, which means the whole ship does. The Doctor is able to use DNA analysis to create a 3D model of their baby. It doesn’t sounds like this is a standard technique, but if it isn’t then the Emergency Medical Hologram has created in mere seconds a brand new procedure which countless parents-to-be would benefit from, which hardly seems credible. In a clumsy metaphor for racial self-hatred, Torres is shocked that her offspring will have forehead ridges and begins a self-administered personal eugenics programme. On the one hand, it’s refreshing that the personal story isn’t diluted by any spatial anomalies, marauding aliens or time travel shenanigans. But on the other, any of those might have been more fun, as this doesn’t really work either as social commentary or character drama.

VOY S07E13 Repentance (). The injured occupants of the stricken ship which Voyager encounters turn out to be convicted murderers under guard, and the all the action teaser turns out to be scene-setter for handwringing ethics class based on the fact that the prisoners are due to be executed when they get back home. Torres, who last week was so scarred by her childhood experiences of racism that she mind-raped the Doctor in order to advance her own personal eugenics programme, is sceptical when told by Neelix that the persecuted underclass of the society they’re visiting might be getting a raw deal. The Doctor and Seven determine that they keep getting arrested because congenital brain defects make them violent psychopaths, which is a pretty shocking detail to include in this kind of allegory. Only Jeri Ryan makes this at all watchable.

VOY S07E14 Prophecy (). The title makes me think this is going to be some species of Red Queen’s Race time travel story but this turns out to be – of all things – a Klingon mythology story. Once again, Voyager’s straight line path from the Caretaker’s array to Federation space turns out to include all sorts of craft with special connections to this particular crew. In this case, it’s a generational Klingon ship which hasn’t heard that the Federation and the Klingon Empire are allies now (mostly). Once you get past this absurdity, the scene is set for a potentially interesting culture clash, reminiscent of Riker’s officer-swap, but instead we have to deal with a lot of nonsense about how Torres’s baby is actually a hither-to-unmentioned Klingon-space-Jesus-foretold. The motivation of the chief Klingon is impossible to determine. He goes from “I believe in these scrolls so much I’m willing to blow up my entire ship, on which I was born, and my parents before me,” to not ten minutes later saying “Who knows who wrote these scrolls or what they mean. Could be nothing. Let’s make up whatever we feel like.”

VOY S07E15 The Void (). Trapped in a mysterious void, Voyager is raided by piratical ships which beam food and fuel off without permission. They’re essentially stuck in space quicksand, competing for resources with 150 other equally desperate crews. This is very much a “competent team solves made-up problem” story, but the details of the problem are well worked out and it’s nice that “making friends” is as much a part of the solution as “decompensating the phase inverter” or whatever. Jonathan del Arco (Hugh Borg) does well as the mute Fantone and director Mike Vejar has fun turning the lights down.