Tom Salinsky

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.