Tom Salinsky

ENT S04E18 In a Mirror, Darkly (). As noted, this is the show which is, or was supposed to, get us from First Contact to The Cage. As such, opening with clips of the Vulcans landing and greeting Zefram Cochrane – a mix of movie footage and newly shot material – makes sense. But lo! This time, Cochrane shoots the Vulcan and the humans nick his ship, which takes us into titles glorifying war and weaponry (and sparing us “Faith of the Heart”). Every previous Mirror Universe story (which have included some five star bangers) has shown us the darker side of the Federation from the point of view of our usual goody-two-shoes characters. This time we’re just here.

Vaughan Armstrong is back as Captain Forrest, with Archer as his ambitious XO and the stage is set for a ton of malicious, moustache twirling, dark hair dye, navel-baring fun. That begins, alas, with Hoshi sexualised and disempowered, reduced to nothing more than Forrest’s floozy. Mirror Universe Kira was a bad ass. Mirror Universe Hoshi is just a piece of ass. And T’Pol just looks ridiculous in a Starfleet uniform cut under the boobs and down past the hipbone.

Mirror Universe Archer is considerably more interesting than his familiar Big Boy Scout incarnation. His seemingly self-appointed secret mission involves a trip into Tholian space, and fans of TOS should recognise that name. Having taken care of Forrest, Archer begins his rule by assembling a team of people whose names he knows. T’Pol becomes his first officer, Travis becomes his personal bodyguard, Hoshi puts on a uniform (or most of one). Once again, torture is shown to be a successful method of interrogation, which all available evidence indicates that it absolutely isn’t, but everything here is so amoral and ridiculous that it’s hard to take even that too seriously.

ENT S04E19 In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II (). The ship from the – shall we call it Cis-Universe? – is not just shorn of its goatee beard, it’s from Kirk’s time, which means we get even more fun times, as our regular characters get to run around on a recreated 1960s Enterprise set (technically, this is the Defiant). The commitment to the bit is what really sells this, with another dose of that Ain’t War Grand title sequence, the ruthlessness of the Terran Empire forces and the destruction of the NX-01. Once his stolen motor is under their control, Archer has no problem wiping out the Tholians and any web which they might care to erect.

And the nostalgia continues with Archer wearing Kirk’s wraparound green jersey (followed by everyone else getting in on the TOS-play fun), learning about the Federation and drinking Romulan ale. There’s a bellicose Gorn on the loose and we even hear Majel Barrett’s computer voice again. And while I’m not the least bit sold on evil Hoshi as a character, it’s a joy to see Linda Park allowed to spread her wings for the first time since… well ever. Anthony Montgomery only gets to point a gun and glower, of course.

It’s hard to know who to root for, as power-crazed Archer tries to return to Earth at the command of the overpowered NCC-1764, planning on making himself God Emperor King, only to have the Tholians start picking off members of the crew. But again, that’s why these alternate universe stories are so enjoyable: everything is up for grabs. If I was tempted not to give this one five stars, that reticence evaporated when Scott Bakula lolled Kirk-like in the captain’s chair. Bravo.

ENT S04E20 Demons (). RoboCop, in a very contemporary looking suit and tie, examines a Vulcan child in an incubator, which is the latest in a series of nothingburger teasers. Enterprise gotta Enterprise I suppose (the old theme is back, too, of course). But it seems as if such costumes are just what the well-dressed psychopath is wearing in 2155. The child is the timey-wimey offspring of Trip and T’Pol and somehow its presence is going to threaten the formation of the Federation.

Prime Minister Will Ferrell knows that xenophobia is still rife on Earth, following the Xindi attacks and tries to tell Archer not to be so naive as to rely on something as silly as faith of the heart. Wise words. And after 95 episodes, it’s finally time for Travis to get a storyline which doesn’t involve his immediate family. His subplot, in which an incredibly foxy ex-girlfriend throws herself bodily at him, has nothing to do with the main plot of course, but it’s nice to see Anthony Montgomery doing something other than saying “Aye sir”. I don’t entirely trust this young reporter, and I certainly don’t appreciate the many minutes of screen time she occupies with her tedious goo-goo eyes. Without that, this episode has much to recommend it, but – as is often the case with part ones – this is all build-up and no pay-off.

The hidden Star Trek metaphor of Magellan-era exploration is briefly surfaced once more, where it is blithely assumed that “orbiting” is equivalent to “nearby” and that because the Moon orbits the Earth and Mars is the next planet out from the Sun, that the Moon and Mars must always be nearby. Alas, orbital dynamics are a bit more complicated than the relative positions of say, Spain and the Cape of Good Hope.

ENT S04E21 Terra Prime (). What’s particularly exciting about this is that although it looks like a thrilling race against time adventure, it’s really a battle for the hearts and minds of humanity. Have you ever heard anything more Star Trek? RoboCop makes a splendid villain, in the grand tradition of smooth-talking psychopaths who have spent years devising their evil plan and who will stop at nothing to pull it off. And he seems to believe his own poisonous rhetoric, which gives him the terrifying single-mindedness of a true zealot. It’s strong stuff. Thankfully his super-powerful death ray focused on Enterprise seems to pass straight through it with little effect.

Unconvinced by Will Ferrell’s plan to blow to hell the superpowerful comet-redirecting array next to the occupied Martian colony, Archer plans a stealthier infiltration mission. Meanwhile, Travis’s tedious girlfriend is so desperate to ensure that no-one onboard learns her identity that she is forced to reveal her identity to… wait, run that by me one more time… As ever, all of the plot dealing with Gannet Brooks (which is her actual character name and not a silly nickname I’ve given her) is incredibly boring and silly, but there’s much less of it this time, which is good as the rest of this is excellent. Tense, well-paced, and heartfelt, with very decent character stuff for Trip and T’Pol, and even a few crumbs for Malcolm and Hoshi.

And this doesn’t tie everything up with a bow either. Trip and T’Pol lose their child. The inhabitants of Earth won’t all decide overnight that aliens are their friends. And Archer still only knows the names of six of his crew. But we’ve got past the latest stone in the road, and sometimes that’s enough.

This is also – in almost all ways that make sense – the last episode of Enterprise, its slightly truncated episode orders for Seasons 3 and 4 reducing the total number to less than the 100 normally thought to be the minimum for a syndication deal. That seems like an unnecessary kick in the groin delivered by Paramount to the team which earned them so much money over the years. But Brannon Braga (who’s still hanging around) and Rick Berman nevertheless felt like they needed to say goodbye not just to this show but to the franchise they’d built which started back in 1987. So there’s one more instalment left over…

ENT S04E22 These Are the Voyages… (). It does look like an episode of Enterprise to begin with. It’s not even clear that considerable time is supposed to have passed since Terra Prime. But almost immediately, Riker freezes the program and strides off the Holodeck. Wow.

This kind of framing story isn’t brand new for the franchise. One thinks of Living Witness from Voyager, for example, or even In the Pale Moonlight. The recreation of the Enterprise D, barely two episodes after the recreation of (in all but name) the original Enterprise, is pretty faultless – as you might expect. And it effectively enables the last few seasons of the cancelled show to be summarised in forty minutes, finally getting us to the creation of the Federation.

What’s confounding is that for the most part, this is simply an episode of Enterprise, with the usual mix of fan servicing, thrilling escapes from death, old friends reunited and thin characterisation. Quite what we gain by having a 24th century director’s commentary over these scenes is very far from clear. Simply having Frakes and Sirtis hanging around doesn’t make this feel like the summation of the whole 18-year journey, any more than a “Six Years Later” caption would have done.

So, on the one hand, this doesn’t play like the extra episode of TNG which is its reputation. On the other hand, Riker and Troi add very little, except a vague buzz of nostalgia, but I do understand Braga and especially Berman’s desire – from a personal point of view if nothing else – to sum up the entire era. And I don’t buy the bitter comments to the effect that this one story retroactively turns the previous 97 episodes into Riker’s holodeck fantasy. That’s not how TV works.

I would say that all the talk of how irreplaceable Trip is rather gives the game away regarding his fate, except that it’s made absolutely explicit that he’s going to die very early on. Bumping him off seems like a pretty sour way to add a hit of extra emotion to proceedings, and his death seems pretty pointless in the context of the overall narrative. That’s a far bigger problem than making 20% of this instalment a mild ret-con of The Pegasus (a sort Rikercrantz and Guildentroi Are Dead). Really, if we’d been allowed to hear Archer’s much-vaunted speech, this would probably be better liked. But then again, maybe the speech we imagine is better than any speech Bakula could have given – and he gave us a version of it at the end of last week’s episode anyhow. So we go out with a mash-up of the opening monologue instead. I’ll take that.

On this occasion, Riker and Troi’s costumes are holographic, unlike all those scenes in Voyager and TNG where people summoned hastily back to the bridge turn up in unlikely garments.

Season 4 wrap-up

• Right, that’s it. That’s all she wrote. With UPN imploding, Enterprise is the victim of corporate mismanagement and quietly expires, echoing the fate of TOS as it is moved to a new timeslot and then cancelled on the pretext of low ratings, following which the franchise dies with it for countless years. There would be no more new Star Trek of any kind until the first JJ Abrams film in 2009 and no more Star Trek on television until 2017.
• And, of course, it’s cancelled just when it was getting interesting. The one trick which Rick Berman never seemed to master was getting consistently entertaining episodes in year one. There’s good stuff in Season 3, but the season arc storyline hampers the narrative as often as it helps, and the fact that only T’Pol and Phlox can be relied upon to show any interiority is a persistent problem. Season 4 is better and the two and three-parters help enormously. It’s amazing to think that this was primarily a budget consideration; with less money to spend on each show, new sets needed to be amortised over multiple episodes to spread the cost.
• That said, looking at the numbers, Season 4 comes in just a shade under Season 3, 3.32 compared to 3.37, but take out the dreadful Klingon Ridgegate two-parter and the ghastly Orion Slaver episode and things would look much healthier. Enterprise as a whole averages 3.09, virtually a dead heat with Voyager, but both some way behind everything except The Animated Series.
• Another reason why Season 4 doesn’t score more highly is that T’Pol is underserved for much of it. And it’s not like Hoshi and Travis finally get some meaty storylines, because they get ignored almost as much as they have been for the previous three years. It’s just that this becomes the Archer and Trip and The Shiny Guest Stars show. Come back Michael Piller (or Ira Steven Behr).
• For all that, I did have a good time with Enterprise, on the whole. It’s still Star Trek after all, and I’m immensely struck by the crestfallen and apologetic tone of the special features on all four seasons of the Blu-ray release. Maybe if it had run the approved seven seasons, then even if Star Trek had still gone off the air, the creators would be able to look back on it with more pride. As it is, the documentaries are just hours and hours of Brannon Braga saying sorry. It’s profoundly weird.
• Also profoundly weird – I’m out of Star Trek. I have no immediate plans to continue this exercise beyond 2005. I dislike the JJ Abrams films and there’s no opportunity to put any other series into any kind of context, given that the show which kicked off the next phase of the franchise, Discovery, is still running as of this writing. So, instead, as this mission has concluded as planned on Christmas Day 2023, I am going to open some presents, drink some champagne and consider what life looks like without Kirk, Spock, Picard, Data, Sisko, Kira, Janeway, Seven, Archer and T’Pol to keep me company any more.
• Thank you for reading. Live long and prosper.

ENT S04E12 Babel One (). The Andorians in general and Shran in particular are the hidden MVPs of this show. Between the off-brand Vulcans, the conveniently quarrelsome Xindi and the played-out Klingons, the “blue-skins”‘s blend of warlike aggression and compassionate nobility is absolutely fascinating. Less so is the “species which communicates via arguing” which ret-conning feels a little like writerly desperation at the crunch point of a long season. And in true TOS/TNG style, Enterprise is being used as a taxi service for this week’s crop of touchy ambassadors instead of continuing with its mission of exploration.

Doing sequels to TOS episodes is weird choice for a show set before any other Star Trek series, but less weird than bringing in TNG staples like Ferengi and Borg, and as Zagbars vs Zoobles stories go, this isn’t bad and it does help that we’ve seen both aliens before (although in the case of the Tellarites not for decades). But the concept of “the aliens who insult you to show respect” really doesn’t work when you’re trying to tell a story in which diplomatic relations break down, because the Tellarites sound exactly the same when Archer’s welcoming them on board as they do when they accuse Shran of trying to get them all killed. Somebody didn’t think this through. We’re also back in Voyager-land, where Enterprise is under attack and nearly destroyed – and then in the next scene, everything is running smoothly again, and they’re charging along at top speed. And we’re back in multi-part story land, tying up loose ends from TOS’s Balance of Terror. It’s a strong ending too, earning a last minute extra half-star.

After last week’s episode in which Hoshi got plenty of lines when she wasn’t in control of her own body, here we she gets a big scene shouting at Archer in which she was only pretending. I mean, I guess it’s progress but… “Vulcans are expert liars!” claims Shran, not without reason, but it’s not exactly what they’re known for in every other series. I don’t think injecting pure oxygen into those air tanks is going to go well for Malcolm and Trip. I can only assume that science consultant and co-writer of this episode Andre Bormanis turned two pages at once.

Last episode to air before Paramount announced that there would be no Season 5. The party’s over and all that’s left is the clearing up.

ENT S04E13 United (). So this is why Kirk’s crew had never seen a Romulan before, despite the Federation having fought a war with them – remote controlled ships. Neat. And it’s a great escalation for Trip and Malcolm whose last hope was getting to the bridge where presumably life support would be in full effect. Tracking down the hologram-disguised Romulan ships requires a huge fleet to create a sensor web, and thus Archer must assemble a coalition of squabbling species with Enterprise issuing the commands. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect a prequel series to have been doing from the beginning but it’s no less welcome for its late arrival.

This is quite a busy episode, but all the strands work well. Trip and Malcolm’s trial of traps inside the Romulan drone is tense and unpredictable; Archer’s grouchy diplomacy strikes a good balance between Bakula’s two chief modes of impatient headmaster and jovial baseball coach; Shran’s subplot with poor doomed Talas is genuinely affecting; and the big political plot has tremendous scope and impact. We could have used something for T’Pol to do, but that seems like quibbling when the overall quality is so high.

Archer’s dual with Shran isn’t set up with quite the seamless logic of Kirk’s famous battle with Spock but it’s a great way of making the bigger story personal and keeping the focus on our leading players, and not on the Zagbars and Zoobles. This doesn’t have the deep character work of the very best of Star Trek, but it’s otherwise pretty faultless, with a confidence which is extremely gratifying.

ENT S04E14 The Aenar (). Wrapping up many of the big plotlines last time gave a satisfying end to the previous episode but means we don’t carry much momentum into this one. The visit to the Andorian homeworld is worthwhile however, being a genuinely alien environment as well as just a change of scene. But it’s Shran who comes a cropper on the ice and not newcomer Archer. The slower pace creates a bit of room for some nice Trip/T’Pol scenes which is welcome, but it’s hard not to feel that this is just a bit dull, compared to part two which combined Thrilling Escapes From Death with an opportunity for Archer to build the Star Trek legend.

Slicing an antenna in half is enough to render Shran incapable of defending himself, thus ending the dual last week, but he happily goes on the mission with Archer, seemingly unaffected. Maybe that’s why he slips on the ice. He shrugs off being impaled through the thigh as well.

ENT S04E15 Affliction (). Columbia is setting sail and Trip is going with her to avoid having to see officially unmarried T’Pol every day (although he denies that’s the reason). I’m not sure this is the for the good of the show. T’Pol seems to have concluded her arc prematurely and while the stories in this season are far more engaging than before, T’Pol – who was such a highlight of episodes past – for the most part has just become Tuvok. She delivers exposition in a slightly sarcastic tone and lets other people have the big emotional journeys. If she and Trip had to deal with their complicated feelings for each other, I’d be more interested in both of them. Luckily he’s still popping up in her white cyclorama meditation dreamscapes. The new chief engineer is never introduced to us, or Archer. Do you know, I’m not altogether convinced that Trip’s never coming back.

Speaking of things I am and am not interested in, we’ve just had a three-part story in which the Romulans turned out to be pulling the strings – Romulans with a rather different make-up job than those who appeared in TOS. But nobody thought to mention this fact, because it’s clearly irrelevant. And yet, here we are with bumpy-foreheaded Klingons so concerned with some of them not having bumpy foreheads that they’ve kidnapped Dr Phlox and made him try and figure out what’s going on. That’s pretty much the definition of letting the foam latex tail wag the targ. I’m also pretty uninterested in whatever Malcolm is creeping around doing. Maybe I’d have looked upon this subplot with more generosity if I wasn’t so distracted throwing things at the TV screen as poor John Schuck has to dole out this pointless nonsense.

Far from embracing a glorious death, the Klingon in the opening scene protests “My death sentence was commuted!” It’s nearly as bizarre as those madly illogical Vulcans. Seth McFarlane is back for another brief appearance. In Phlox’s absence, another medical officer takes over. Archer doesn’t talk to her, because he doesn’t know her name.

ENT S04E16 Divergence (). Director David Barrett brings us out of the titles with a bonkers CGI whip-zoom through both Enterprise and Columbia to really hammer home just how thrilling this all is. It would love to be a huge exciting chase like the movie Speed, which is clearly where they got the idea of “if we go below Warp 5 we all die”. But it just feels like people in silly costumes standing around studios hanging on to ropes. None of it has any reality or verisimilitude, and it all just feels like busywork because the story of How the Klingons Lost Their Ridges turns out not be worth a movie’s worth of broadcast TV after all. It also seems like there should be someone on Enterprise who can do Trip’s job when he isn’t there. Didn’t they learn that lesson in Similitude?

Phlox’s method for determining the likely effect of various compounds appears to be akin to playing hypospray Russian Roulette. Apart from Malcolm, who is given a new personality in order to make this week’s plot work, characterisation has become something which only happens on other shows. This is all theatrical actors glowering meaningless exposition at each other while melodramatic music thunders away in the background. It’s what Star Trek looks like to people who don’t watch Star Trek. Only John Billingsley emerges with any dignity at all. Actually, Ada Maris isn’t bad as Captain Hernandez. Where’s her spin-off?

ENT S04E17 Bound (). We have a nascent Federation, so now let’s start building some Starbases. And who could wait to see the Orions again after the Augments trilogy? After all, this show’s always had great luck with slave girl stories. It will take Lower Decks to really make a good stab of the Orion Syndicate, because here we’re right back to trafficking scantily-clad young women like a science fiction version of The Benny Hill Show, complete with senior Starfleet officers watching the floor show with their eyes bugging out of their heads like the Tex Avery cartoon wolf. Travis too behaves as if he’s never seen a woman before when they come on board. Meanwhile, Trip is in a plot superposition of states, both with his love life and his professional life, neither in a relationship with T’Pol nor not, neither chief engineer on Enterprise, nor not. This had better be going somewhere, because at the moment it’s orbiting a story but not actually landing on it. The rest of this is just a The Naked Time yet again, but in bikinis. Yawn.

ENT S04E07 The Forge (). Finally, Manny Coto remembers that the original pitch for Enterprise was “Let’s see how we got from First Contact to The Original Series” and Admiral Forest is hoping that the Vulcans will finally be ready to begin joint missions with humans. Of all the things I had heard about Enterprise (and vaguely remembered from watching it at the time) nobody seems to be talking about the hatchet job that this series did on the Vulcan character. Once again, they are portrayed here as fearful, paranoid, deceitful, proud and petty, but there is some softening and Gary Graham manages to do something other than sneer. Bumping off Admiral Forest is a big move – he’s been a supporting player on the show since Broken Bow and was played by Vaughan Armstrong who first appeared in Star Trek back in 1988.

The strongest early episodes of Enterprise were the ones dealing with the Vulcan/Andorian conflict and so I am delighted to hear their name spoken, but in fact it’s splinter group the Syrannites who are in the frame. This emotional faction appears to have no connection to those we met in Season 1’s Fusion. Lot of splinter groups floating around Vulcan at this time, huh? Adding to the soapy feel, T’Pol’s husband turns up and reveals that her mum is one of these Syrannites too, all of which strains credulity a bit, but I’m nevertheless grateful that the emphasis is on one of our regulars and not a guest character. (Malcolm and Travis are kept busy with a largely irrelevant I’ve-stood-on-a-mine sequence after which is not seen again. Hoshi is MIA as usual.)

The titular Forge is one of the best-looking alien worlds we’ve yet seen and the pairing of T’Pol and Archer is often worthwhile, but there’s yet more thrilling-escape-from-death busywork to be done before they actually start uncovering the mystery (or learning more about each other, I’m good either way). And that’s because this is another unheralded multi-part story. Yet more mind-meld ret-conning. This time it’s still vaguely unsavoury but any random Vulcan can do it, if the need is sufficiently urgent. Also, the notion of a katra (which saved Spock’s life) seems to be a wacky fringe belief.

ENT S04E08 Awakening (). One of the problems of prequels is that it’s so easy for the audience to be ahead of the characters. That’s not necessarily a problem. Dramatic irony is just as useful and legitimate a storytelling device as surprise. But when I’m already feeling as if I could have done better than my leading characters given half a chance, it doesn’t help that I know all about preserving a Vulcan’s essence by transferring their katra to another, and Archer and T’Pol are both clueless. Of rather more interest is Ambassador Soval’s transition from supercilious parent-figure to concerned ally, and the rapprochement between T’Pol and her mum. As usual, when we do get crumbs of character development, they are with the supporting characters, but pairing T’Les with her daughter and Soval with Trip helps enormously.

Director Roxann Dawson does well with Archer’s visions as well, making what could have been a rote wisdom-from-hallucinations scene into something a bit more personal and powerful. And there’s a sense here too that these paranoid and vindictive Vulcans needed human contact (and Archer in particular) to become the dignified and compassionate people we’ve known since 1966. I find it hard to believe that this was the plan from the beginning, and I would have rather seen dignified and compassionate Vulcans from the beginning – Vulcans who actually were logical instead of simply using the word “logic” as a stick to beat lesser races with. But we are where we are, and this isn’t a bad fix, especially as again it makes clear that humans were a vital part of the Federation puzzle. We also aren’t done with this story yet – it’s a second consecutive three-parter. Gotta love the ambition suddenly on display here. Helmsman Travis gets one brief scene where he tells Chief Engineer Trip about the engineering fix he’s pulled off. Hoshi is almost entirely absent (as is Phlox).

ENT S04E09 Kir’Shara (). The “blue-skins” are back! Shadows of P’Jem has proven to be a remarkably influential episode. This early triumph of the first season pointed a clear way forward for the show which was sadly often ignored, but the thread which starts there and ends here is probably what I will remember Enterprise for most. It’s also nice to see Trip stepping up in Archer’s absence. This gun-toting good old boy might make a decent officer yet.

But this is really about the continuing political double-dealing between the Vulcans and Andorians, with great work from both Gary Graham and Jeffrey Combs, who really sell the (still rather distasteful) torture scene. And it’s about how the Vulcans and the humans finally manage to bring out the best in each other, which is all rather sweet.

Manny Coto’s apology tour for the past three seasons continues as the nonsense about T’Pol’s mind-meld disease is ret-conned away. All he needs to do now is turn Malcolm, Hoshi and Travis into actual characters and he truly will have achieved the impossible. That last twist is basically nonsense though, and costs this episode half a star. Vulcan divorces are remarkably quick and easy. All it takes is for the husband to say “laters”. Whether the wife has the same power is not clear.

ENT S04E10 Daedalus (). The title is a giveaway of course. Daedalus was the father of Icarus whose wax wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. This hopeful aerial pioneer is Dr Emory Erickson, inventor of the transporter, which in four short seasons has gone from unreliable and experimental death-trap, to only-to-be-used-in-emergencies-but-probably-fine, to routine mode of travel for people and cargo alike. As usual the title sequence is just shoved in between routine scenes of calm domesticity. We’re a long way away from the punchy teasers of past franchises.

Erickson, the crackpot inventor in a wheelchair, feels like a bit of a trope. Even today, breakthroughs tend to come from whole teams of researchers working together, not one mad genius whose broken body allows the mind to soar. But Cobbs makes him charming and reasonable, and having one character stand in for an idea or a point of view makes for better drama than an army of anonymous drones all working away. However, after a strong run of serialised episodes, this stand-alone story feels thin, and the drama unfolds with few surprises or innovations. I’d have been delighted by this in Season 1 or 2, but by now the show can do much better than this.

ENT S04E11 Observer Effect (). Super-powerful aliens appear to have taken over Malcom and Travis. It’s hard to spot this at first as Dominic Keating is playing it as Evadne Hinge whereas Anthony Montgomery is just playing Travis. Having what’s essentially a director’s commentary from inside the episode is a novel wrinkle, which adds some useful dramatic irony, but Travis’s alien observer is so poor at his job that (not for the first time on this show) he makes the rest of the regulars look like dummies for not immediately going “Something is badly wrong, put this guy in the brig until we figure out what’s up.” In fact, in general it does seem like rigging up little cameras would be a better MO for super-powerful aliens who want to spy on humans, rather than inhabiting the bodies of two of the crew.

Even more surprises – Hoshi gets some lines, and she and Trip end up coughing and puking in quarantine. Trip is astonished to hear Hoshi’s tales of being chucked out of the Academy, and no wonder as they all flatly contradict everything we’ve learned about her so far. There’s a line between revealing layers and just writing a brand new character, and this feels like it’s way over that line.

So, this is yet another riff on Q putting humans on trial, but while the plot machinery of the crew infected with a deadly virus is fairly routine, this is a good excuse to shut two characters in a small room together, and the perspective of the “Observers” adds a nifty extra layer. I especially like how they pass from person to person with no distracting visual effects. The moment of eye contact between Malcolm and Travis on the bridge when they are repossessed is deliciously creepy.

How a silicon-based virus interacts with carbon-based cellular machinery is not clear.

Well, that was unexpected!

The first forty-odd minutes of this, I unequivocally loved. The creepy opening with Neil Patrick Harris, born to play the Toymaker, connecting the sixtieth anniversary of the show to the birth of television itself via a spooky-ass puppet doll. The glimpses of the same Toymaker pirouetting as Camden (and we learn, the world) disintegrates under the weight of endless what-about-ism. UNIT’s Avengers-style HQ featuring the return of Melanie Bush. The (no doubt shortly to be revealed as evil) Zovirax or whatever the hell making little blinking upper arm doo-dads to keep everybody sane. A quick flash of a very much not-sane Lethbridge Stewart. The chase through the cave of traps, with Donna beating a puppet to death, because fuck that puppet, that’s why. And most gloriously of all, the Toymaker’s “Spicy” re-entry into the story.

And RTD’s commitment to this-is-all-one-big-story continues with shout outs to Mavic Chen, Sarah Jane Smith and more besides, and the Toymaker recapping the non-RTD years and totting up the fatalities (which did feel a bit like the returning showrunner marking the homework of the last two showrunners). Well that’s all right then!

Lasering the Tennant Doctor through the tummy is certainly an arresting way of bringing about a regeneration, but a lot of what followed really didn’t make a whole lot of sense and – if you’ll pardon the expression – I could feel the writer’s hands pulling the strings to make the story work. There’s nothing here I’m fundamentally opposed to. I’m not here celebrating MY RIGHT TO BE RIGHT ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WRITE. Sure, let the Doctor split in two if he wants. Sure, let the old Doctor retire and eat curry in a garden if he wants. Sure, let’s despatch the most powerful villain we’ve ever seen with a game of catch – bathos is kind of the point. But are these all necessarily changes for the better? Would something less daring, more predictable, more running on rails actually have been more satisfying? I dunno. Maybe.

Is the Toymaker’s presence connected with the double Doctoring? Not clear. Russell’s stated reason for this bi-generation is that he was fed up of regenerations being tragedies, being sacrifices. But if victories are too easily-won, they cost nothing. And it was odd that the Toymaker’s plan to face a different Doctor having backfired, the fact that it was two against one in the game of catch at the end didn’t seem to factor in. The Toymaker just fumbled his last catch because he did. And if we are to believe that Ten/Fourteen’s Lonely God has finally tired of all the running, shouldn’t that have been layered in just a little more?

But my biggest problem with all of this is that, having decided to strip out the pain of losing a Doctor, having decided to have the Toymaker easily defeated, having decided to let the retiring Doctor have his TARDIS and eat his curry too, there isn’t a lot to be invested in at the end of the story. The climax comes at the 47-minute mark. The rest is just calm, pleasant, measured story admin. Still at least the angry fans who know what an anniversary special looks like and want only that got the multi-Doctor narrative they had been furiously clamouring for.

Reading that back, it all sounds rather harsh, and actually that wasn’t my experience of watching this at all. Those first 46 minutes are staggeringly good, with “Spice Up Your Life” possibly being my favourite sequence since the Osgood Boxes. And the remaining 15 minutes aren’t bad exactly, they’re just odd, and oddly dramatically inert. But you can’t say that about Ncuti Gatwa’s first few minutes on-screen. He blazes onto the set, full of fire and energy and gusto. Not for him a whole episode wandering around the TARDIS impersonating his predecessors, or sleeping through an invasion in his dressing gown, or going bonkers and strangling passing American botany students. The new Doctor arrives fully formed, and oh honey, I can’t wait for Christmas.

ENT S04E01 Storm Front (). Oh joy. Nazis. Apart from the fact that our people deserved a win, this feels like a massively stupid and irrelevant twist to suddenly impose upon a series which had haltingly, falteringly, started to figure out what it was for and how it worked. Anyway, maybe now T’Pol will accept that time travel is possible. Enterprise is still being infiltrated by the Acne Squad, who are presumably responsible, so this doesn’t feel much like the start of a whole new version of the show, more like still trying to make bits of the old show work and feel important. New showrunner Manny Coto takes over from here, but clearly had little choice but to do the dopey time travel story he’d been handed by Brannon Braga on his way out the door. He does at least try and write out Daniels, but 45 minutes isn’t enough to unravel all of this, so we’ll have more of the same next time. Ropey plotting here too as Trip and Travis beam down and get captured, essentially swapping places with Archer who escapes capture and beams back on board the ship. That’s not storytelling, it’s just busywork.

Time Magazine referred to “World War II” as early as 1939 so it’s hard to see why Alicia hasn’t heard the phrase before. First episode of Star Trek shot on digital cameras, and it looks absolutely fantastic, I’ll give it that.

ENT S04E02 Storm Front, Part II (). Some nifty compositing shows Hitler in Times Square and sailing past the Statue of Liberty, which is at least an arresting set of images, possibly proving that their might be a few dregs left at the bottom of the Star Trek vs The Nazis barrel. But British character actors doing Allo Allo accents while declaiming at people in rubber heads is still a pretty ludicrous sight, no matter the justification. Meanwhile, Archer attempts to make Alicia feel at home by listing his ship’s casualties at her, which is a pretty weird seduction ploy to say the least. Golden Brooks is a very appealing presence though, and once again gets more and more interesting things to do than many of the regular cast. Silik had formed the idea that Earth people were some kind of hippy peaceniks. Enterprise kicking some Xindi ass set him straight. Trip and Archer, who used up some screen time swapping places last episode, use up more screen time swapping back again this time. I don’t think Manny Coto’s heart was in this one. Still at least the Temporal Cold War is done and dusted now – and all it took was blowing up one not very large building. Who knew it could be so easy?

ENT S04E03 Home (). There’s a parade for the heroes who saved Earth (or seven of them at any rate). Archer knows that twenty-seven people didn’t make it back, but can’t name any of them, natch. We do find time to check in with most of the seven people that apparently did all the actual work. T’Pol is bringing Trip home to meet her mum (science fiction royalty Joanna Cassidy from off of Blade Runner). These Vulcans are still the same touchy, catty, neurotic, paranoid nut-jobs that they have been since Season 1. They fulfil obligations because it makes their parents feel good rather than for any other reason. They preferentially respond to certain “influential” members of their society, rather than judging each person’s arguments on its own merits. Why has Star Trek’s longest established culture suddenly become so hard to write for?

Phlox is disembarking with his private menagerie and hoping not to be the victim of a hate crime, despite Malcolm’s warnings. Presumably Hoshi and Travis have loved ones who are waiting for them too, but, you know, screw those guys. And Archer is helping his old girlfriend with the fit-out of Columbia, and re-opening the debate about whether Starfleet is a military outfit or not. He also has to explain some of his less than ideal ethical choices to a typically acidulous Vulcan tribunal (which feels a bit like the new showrunner marking the old showrunner’s homework). Archer again demonstrates his childish short temper and general unsuitability for the role he’s been given. Some things never change, apparently. Malcolm and Travis waste little time before getting into a bar-fight too.

It’s nice to have some focus on (some of) the characters, and although it’s clumsy, I appreciate the attempt to show what effect the Xindi attack has had on Earth (or on belligerent America males, at any rate). But this isn’t anything like as good as TNG’s Family (which it is obviously cribbed from) and some plotlines are left frustratingly unresolved or underdeveloped. T’Pol gets all the best stuff as usual, and having her go through with marrying her unsuitable boyfriend is a bold note on which to end the episode. Now can we go back to discovering strange new worlds?

While Archer was gone, another World War Three epic swept all the awards.

ENT S04E04 Borderland (). For a show whose very raison d’etre would appear to be connecting Berman-Trek to The Original Series, this final roll of the dice seems to be going back to the TNG well instead, with some very nineties looking Klingons and a guest appearance by none other than Brent Spiner, playing a nutty ancestor of Data’s daddy. In a riff on The Silence of the Lambs, crazy criminal scientist Arik Soong is the only one who can catch the augmented superhumans currently on the loose. Quite why this is Archer and Enterprise’s business is anyone’s guess, as is why Archer in uniform is giving the mission briefing to his six trusted bridge crew all of whom are in civvies. (T’Pol later appears in a skintight purple version of the uniform which cannot be Starfleet standard issue. Why the hell can’t they dress her like the others?)

It used to be the case that Archer’s mission represented humanity’s first few faltering steps outside the solar system. But now Soong, who has been in prison for years, seems to know everything about Klingons, Orion Slave Traders (who are at least part of Kirk’s series) and much else besides, of which Archer is entirely ignorant. That puts Scott Bakula back in tetchy headmaster mode, but this plays off Spiner’s casual insouciance rather well, and having T’Pol and various redshirts kidnapped and sold as slaves is a nice high-stakes twist. I’ve commented before that this is by far the most useless and ill-suited bridge crew we’ve seen, but god, the redshirts are even worse. Only one is featured, T’Pol literally doesn’t know his name and when she finds him, he’s basically wetting himself with fear. Not exactly the right stuff. And just when I was thinking “there’s a lot here to wrap up and not much time left” – it’s to be continued. But at least there aren’t any space Nazis. And there are boy slaves this time, which I guess is some kind of progress (even if the girl slaves are still in silver bikinis). One of the Augments saying “I’m going to attack you,” and still getting the drop on Archer is just the right side of ridiculous. They’re great villains, but they need to stop arguing among themselves (shades of the Xindi).

ENT S04E05 Cold Station 12 (). This is all presumably supposed to tie into the Eugenics Wars / anti-genetic engineering stuff which began in Space Seed and which was a turning point for Dr Bashir’s character in Deep Space Nine (and which played out again in Picard many years later). I don’t really know how much sense any of this makes, but if what I’m being offered is Brent Spiner as a seemingly-benevolent father figure at the head of a race of aggressive superhumans who are hell-bent on the destruction of everything we hold dear, then I’m pretty happy. The Augments are suitably creepy and Aryan and there are some nice nods to sixties NBC looking technology in the set dressing.

Naturally, the superhumans reject the gimpy one who didn’t turn out so awesome, and it’s nice that “Smike” refuses to betray the siblings who turned their backs on him, at least at first. And the prospect of power-mad Soong unleashing an army of genetically-superior murder-brats is a suitably compelling one. About the only thing which this exciting space adventure has in common with the previous three or so years is that Hoshi and Travis have nothing to do. Best scene – Soong vs Richard Riehle’s Dr Lucas vs his own conscience. Cracking stuff.

ENT S04E06 The Augments (). Part three of, I assume, three. This has been fairly thick-eared adventure stuff for the most part, with a shiny guest star executing his evil plan, the heroic captain being square-jawed and heroic, and the brave crew doing whichever job needs doing efficiently and anonymously. But within those limitations, it’s very effective and Archer’s thrilling escape from death is pretty wild stuff. My only qualm is that once again, it will be the villains squabbling among themselves which will prove to be their undoing, more than any brilliant tactical innovations on the parts of our heroes.

I think the hope of the creative team was that the eugenics theme and the vacillation of Brent Spiner’s character would provide some conceptual or emotional ballast, but neither does all that much to anchor this breezy trilogy, which kind of comes down whether our orange glowing ball of pixels will overtake their green glowing ball of pixels. What’s really missing is that Star Trek sense of wonder and optimism, to say nothing of family. We do get a nice scene between T’Pol and Trip (reviewing the former’s choice at the end of Home), but this is still The Captain Jonathan Archer Show and he’s just not all that interesting. However, the renewed sense of confidence is undeniable.

References to Khan, Botany Bay and the Briar Patch feel like slightly pointless Easter Eggs rather than a new stitch in the great Star Trek quilt of history, but I don’t object to them (maybe the Briar Patch just a little).

ENT S03E19 Damage (). After 700-odd episodes in which the lead characters of the various Star Trek series showed us what we could be if we listened to the better angels of our nature, someone on the Enterprise writing staff seems to be continually saying “This time, what if our lead characters were all doofuses instead?” No-one has escaped this brush so far, whether it’s no-space-legs Hoshi, waste-of-space-Travis, let-them-die Phlox, I-work-alone-Malcolm, three-genders-I-don’t-think-so Trip or shoot-first-ask-questions-later-or-never Archer. The sole exception has been T’Pol, so now’s the ideal time to have her freeze up on the bridge, the first time she’s given official command of the ship. Great. And yes, I can tell they’re setting up a bigger story arc for her, but I still prefer my Star Trek cast to set goals for me to aspire to, rather than to leave me thinking “Honestly, I could do better on a bad day.”

When the attack is called off, she gives a better account of herself, assessing the damage, triaging the repair works and keeping order, but it’s still a relief to see Archer returned home (and not brought before the council as requested). And honestly, I feel bad about dunking on the characters here, because it’s show-level problem and in this story, when their backs are against the walls, they all a) come through and b) gain some much-needed dimension – even Hoshi (not Travis of course, don’t be ridiculous). The promise of being cut off from Earth and Starfleet really starts to pay off here, and there are more tough choices coming for Archer, and further trials for T’Pol. I don’t like the idea of weakening her in this way, but it couldn’t happen at a worse time, and that’s a lovely complication. She’s essentially getting hooked on emotions, which is a fascinating version of the Vulcan persona.

Archer’s decision to nick an innocent ship’s warp coil in order to save his own sorry skin is a ghastly one, but at least it’s given some moral context by T’Pol and Trip who point out what a huge jerk he’s being. Strong stuff, but as noted I’d still rather have my optimistic science-fiction fables centred on a captain who’s less of a jerk.

ENT S03E20 The Forgotten (). Year of hell indeed. Enterprise is still all kinds of screwed up and it looks like it’s staying that way for now at least. That’s a commitment to consequences and making things matter which is brand new for this show at least. Connor Trinneer is really good here, making Trip’s exhaustion, determination and emotional disengagement believable and effecting. His bitterness towards the Xindi is further evidence of his unsuitability for the role of first officer, but it’s quite understandable. Archer’s sour inspirational speech is stirring stuff too, but the smash into the new jangly guitar-pop version of the theme has almost never been more jarring.

Degra was behind Archer’s return to Enterprise, which does make some kind of sense, but really we should have had the explanation last time. Now, finally, we start to develop the Star Trek version of this story. Intrinsic enemies who learn to understand each other and find common cause. Trying to forge a new alliance, Bakula falls back on his disappointed headmaster style of acting, when something rather more warm and compassionate might have worked better. It’s a false note in an otherwise strong episode.

And this is a very strong episode. It isn’t a headline-grabber, it doesn’t represent a major left turn in the season arc plot, there aren’t any old favourites making return appearances. But pretty much everything works, from T’Pol’s attack of the yips, to Trip’s visitation from his dead comrade, to the Xindi’s understandable skepticism regarding the wild tales told by these crazy humans, and their eventual decision to turn on their own. I doubt this is a true fan-favourite, but as the Xindi arc really starts to pay off properly, I’m delighted to finally be able to dish out five stars, not least because here all of the characters sound and behave like people, instead of plot contrivances. Of course, there’s nothing for Travis or Hoshi to do, but let’s not ask for miracles, eh?

Star Trek celebrity super-fan Seth McFarlane shows up in a tiny role. A dozen or so year’s later, he’d get his own science fiction series The Orville on the air, which many have interpreted as a love letter to the franchise in general and The Next Generation in particular. It takes a while to find a consistent tone, but I really enjoyed it.

Archer wishes he could thank the eighteen crewmen who were lost, but he can’t alas (because he doesn’t know their names). Accordingly, Trip has to write the letters of condolences.

ENT S03E21 E² (). Despite all of the recent episodes starting with “Previously on Enterprise…” the commitment to serialisation is still a bit half-assed. Basically there’s enough arc-plot for a modern ten episode season, but there are twenty-four transmission slots that need filling, so when Degra says to Archer “See you in three days” he means “See you after the next batch of filler episodes.” And the early sight of Jolene Blalock under half a ton of Michael Westmore’s most crinkly latex is an early clue that this time out from the season-spanning narrative will be – oh goody – a time travel story.

In fact, it’s not that long until we see Randy Oglesby again, but all he and the other Xindi gents do is to rehash information from earlier episodes. Once more, the all-powerful aggressors are rendered impotent by their own silly quarrels. But quickly, Archer’s ship is warned off by another Enterprise, which was sent back in time over 100 years. T’Pol, who refused to believe in time travel for years, became the expert, asserting that travel back through the anomaly was not possible, and so the ship became a generational vessel, waiting for the chance to stop the Xindi attack.

Rather than the usual rules, as stressed by Daniels and his ilk, which involve not altering the past, the descendants of the original crew can’t wait to tell everyone on board who married whom, who was horribly killed and when, and how everything turned out. It’s meant to shine a light on their different personalities, but it only comes off as silly. Then the twist is that T’Pol’s creepy son is going to do to Archer what Archer did to the Illyrians in Damage – nick his engine and leave him stranded, but this is rapidly abandoned. It feels like no-one is really sure what this was supposed to be about. Honestly, you could skip this one and you’d lose nothing.

Women only make up a third of the crew on Enterprise. Why?

ENT S03E22 The Council (). Archer thinks he’s found a way into the spheres and Degra is keen to see whatever they can find. Accordingly, Malcolm recruits one of his hated MACOs to accompany him. I wonder why he didn’t ask Travis or Trip? Meanwhile the almost-all-male rapidly-becoming-more-reasonable Xindi council is being pressured by the all-female Guardians who appear to have been taking fashion lessons from the Borg Queen.

So, the big showdown is approaching, and I’ve been tracking the progress of this multi-episode storyline from its initial we-will-enact-our-bloody-revenge beginnings to a more compassionate and, well, Star Trek version in which those who claimed so many lives on Earth will yet become allies. The price we pay for that is a transition from exciting space battles to people in rubber masks talking in rooms. The challenge now is to make us care about who they are and what they’re saying. That would normally come from how well we know the regular characters, but, you know…

The combination of this story arc and Randy Oglesby’s sensitive portrayal actually means that Degra’s character has been pretty well defined, but Archer’s morality has ebbed and flowed according to the demands of the plots of different episodes, T’Pol has become little more than a medical case history, and Trip hasn’t been given anything important to do so far, so this is going to be hard to pull off.

The early going isn’t promising with the Insectoids being relentlessly belligerent with zero nuance, and Hoshi just there to translate (“I’m doing it… I’m repeating the computer…”). The action-adventure quotient meanwhile is up to T’Pol, Malcolm and Lt Deadmeat, who are attempting to penetrate a sphere. (Travis stays behind in the shuttle because of course he does.)

Ultimately, this does the job it is intended to do, all the pieces move one step further down the chessboard, but the grace and detail and feeling for character in The Forgotten has been… well, unremembered.

ENT S03E23 Countdown (). With Archer face-to-face with his enemies, it now just becomes about stopping them from squabbling with each other long enough to get them to listen. Alas for him, and for us, Degra has left us, which means Archer has lost an ally and we’ve lost a character with genuine dimension. Instead the Insectoids have kidnapped Hoshi and expect her to fire the weapon for them. T’Pol seems to be taking this harder than anyone and has to apologise to Commander Tucker – whom she calls “Trip”! – for her outburst, and then ask him for help. That’s the stuff. She almost smiles when he tells her “I’m all ears”.

And now finally the monolithic Xindi Insectoids start to become suspicious of their creepy time-travelling advisors, even as they’re pumping Hoshi full of space sodium pentothal and putting her to work for them. This is getting close to being the kind of vast space opera which Star Trek has occasionally flirted with, but never really landed on. It’s more fun than all the endless recapping of the same information in different rooms which has dogged the last few episodes, but – T’Pol and Trip aside – the character stuff is generally restricted to more of that tedious Malcolm vs the MACOs stuff, about which I really struggle to care, even when Big Chief MACO nobly bites the dust saving Hoshi.

Nobody seems to miss Degra. He’s barely even mentioned.

ENT S03E24 Zero Hour (). As is so often the case, when an aggressive alien race builds a complex interlocking web of deadly devices, it is sufficient to destroy only one and the rest fall like dominoes. Why aggressive alien races build their complex interlocking webs of deadly devices this way isn’t clear, but it sure is convenient that they do. Thus, Archer and company need only knock out one sphere in order to permanently neutralise the Changelings (sorry, Guardians).

Some awkward dialogue papers over various cracks in the plotting regarding how close the Xindi can get to Earth, how fast they can fire the weapon and so on. Recall that the original weapon was deployed almost instantly. It does rather seem as if all of this time was taken to produce a second weapon that isn’t anything like as effective. But, as if protecting his home planet from imminent annihilation wasn’t motivation enough, time travelling Daniels finds it necessary to show Archer the future of the United Federation of Planets in order to make sure that he knows how gosh-darned important he is. This feels like a last desperate attempt to prove that the Temporal Cold War was part of this story all along – but if so it fails, since Archer tells Daniels to get knotted and then does just what he was going to do anyway.

But if the plotting is ropey, those little strands of character work are paying off. There’s a genuine feeling of doom hanging over proceedings, and a lovely scene between Phlox and T’Pol about preparing for the worst. (Her attacks of the vapours seem to be in the past now.) Even Hoshi starts to feel like more of a person and less of a plot function. It’s clear that Linda Park deserved much better than she got in this series. I wish I could say the same for Anthony Montgomery, but it’s impossible to say either way on the basis of the four purely functional lines he gets each episode.

This is basically good solid, four-star stuff, but I have to knock off half a star for that dopey ending, which I fear is going to tie up the early episodes of next season getting it reset.

This was one hell of a bumpy road, making it blatantly obvious that the Xindi threat was being rethought from episode to episode. We did get some sharper character work than we’ve had in a while, and a handful of really excellent instalments, but the attempt to tell one story over 24 episodes was often botched, and might have levelled the ship but it still isn’t soaring. Maybe this uncertain series needs reinventing yet again. Nice hero shot of Archer running away from the ’sploding Xindi weapon.

Season 3 wrap-up

• Everything about this season feels like hard work. Nothing flows, nothing expands naturally to fill story vacuums. The overall arc advances in fits-and-starts and it’s often hard to connect the different strands into a coherent whole. Compare this to DS9 in its pomp, when narrative ideas cascaded from one episode to the next in a completely organic fashion.
• And I’m banging the same drum over and over again but the crew are almost always either useless (Malcolm, Trip), anonymous (Hoshi) or both (Travis). Only Phlox and T’Pol really work as characters, although Scott Bakula often manages to get by on sheer leading man starpower. I say “the crew” but apart from the new intake of cannon-fodder, essentially none of the other people on board the ship gets as much as a single line of dialogue. But then again, often neither does Travis.
• And yet, in the second half of the season, and after some truly execrable episodes early on, we finally got something which felt real, and true, and like it mattered. The little trilogy of Azati Prime, Damage and The Forgotten is absolutely excellent stuff, with the last of those earning the full five stars for the first time since Voyager’s In the Flesh.
• This contributes to a pretty decent season average of 3.37 which is about the same as DS9 Season 3 and better than any season of Voyager except its excellent Season 4. So Enterprise still has some work to do, but it’s not out for the count just yet.
• That is, unless you’re the numbers people at UPN. Voyager’s finale had been watched by 8.8 million viewers, and Broken Bow had pulled in over 12 million, but that was already down to 5.2 million by the end of Season 1 and only 3.9 million for the end of Season 3, of whom only 2.9 million came back for the first episode Season 4. This is a show that’s running on borrowed time.

In Doctor Who’s second-ever serial, commonly known as “The Daleks”, the episode consists only of the regular characters getting to know each other and exploring their environment. Partly, this is an exercise in making sure that writer Terry Nation had enough story for seven 25-minute scripts. But the focus on the core cast so early in the run is very advantageous. And there’s something fascinating about seeing what you can do with just your core team. The exercise was repeated in the first of the four episodes of The Space Museum a few years later, and for the first ten or so minutes of The Wheel in Space, before – magnificently – Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter took their first trip in the TARDIS together and spent a whole episode on their own in The Ark in Space. Writer Robert Holmes may have had this in the back of his mind when he left the Sixth Doctor and Peri largely to their own devices on an abandoned space station for around 20 minutes’ worth of The Two Doctors, albeit this material was in the context of a 45-minute episode and intercut with other plot strands.

It’s hard to imagine a modern showrunner attempting anything like this in the fast-cutting, multi-coloured, Disney-funded, post Star Wars, post Marvel, post Barbie era. Heaven Sent comes to mind, but – as fabulous as that is – it’s not quite the same. And yet, with only three opportunities to put the Fourteenth Doctor on-screen, Russell has chosen to follow the dash and colour and joyful silliness of Beep the Meep with this spooky, introspective, grindingly psychological game of cat and mouse in which it’s the David and Catherine show for almost the entire running time.

I loved it.

The tension is ramped up slowly, as first the TARDIS leaves them to it, then they find themselves in a preposterously long (and brilliantly-realised) corridor, before finally, the game of doppelgangers begins. And if fucked-up psychodrama isn’t your thing, sit tight because we’ve got goofy body horror along for the ride. Sitting somewhere between Cronenberg’s The Fly and Looney Tunes, some of the images conjured in this episode may never leave me. And – shades of Image of the Fendahl – there’s much which is left unknown at the story’s conclusion. Who is that horse-headed pilot who gave her life to protect the universe? We will probably never know.

The episode is bookended by sequences which feel like they belong to different stories. The opening gag with Isaac Newton is very silly indeed and I don’t know whether to be pleased or crestfallen that Donna’s interaction with England’s finest ever scientific mind results in the language being re-written. The tone of this opening was so at odds with the rest of the episode, I’m going to knock off half a star for it. Rather more smooth was the modulation into the final special, with Bernard Bloody Cribbins there to ease the transition, and the dedication to him at the end was delightful.

Another triumph then, ably demonstrating the full range of possibilities of this uniquely flexible format, and even managing to retrospectively make a scintilla of sense out of the Flux, which is impressive by anyone’s standards. And we have two more episodes to go this year, which is absolutely thrilling.

ENT S03E13 Proving Ground (). Andorians are now searching the once-deadly-now-merely-a-bit-wibbly Expanse for any sign of the (sigh) “pink-skins”. And the Xindi Rotary Club is ready to test its new prototype weapon – not on Earth, the way they did the last one, but on an uninhabited planet instead for… reasons. Shran is almost too eager to help out the Earth ship with their repairs and it’s all Malcolm can do not to chuck their Lt Talas out the airlock.

The politicking is nifty, and the amazing Jeffrey Combs continues to add layers to what could have been a much more simplistic character. The arc-plotting continues to be soggy, if not actually nonsensical, but the story-of-the-week stuff is really good here, managing to deliver a series of rug-pulls that continue to surprise, make sense and not just be frustrating. The push-pull between Shran and Archer is very real. As usual, this is the Archer and T’Pol show with Shran and Talas getting more lines than several regulars, but that’s just what we’ve come to expect by now.

Archer is back to a close shave, but Jolene Blalock’s real eyebrows can clearly be seen growing back under her pointed ones. That and the bare-bones Andorian bridge set (which feels awfully Lost in Space) contribute to a tiny nagging feeling of “will this do?” but there’s plenty to enjoy elsewhere – and even some nice character stuff for Malcolm.

ENT S03E14 Stratagem (). Cover-of-a-comic-book time as Archer and Xindi Quartermaster Degra have escaped together after three years in an Insectoid prison. Something about this whole set-up gives me Mission: Impossible vibes – and yes, that’s exactly what it turns out to be, a glorified flight simulator in which the Enterprise crew hopes their prisoner will spill his guts. But even if the reveal isn’t much of a surprise, it is nice – and very Star Trek – to have mortal enemies have to work together and learn to empathise with each other just a little, even if it is only pretend. This seems a far better method of interrogation than those airlock shenanigans from a couple of episodes ago, and Randy Oglesby is good value as Degra. Once he figures out the deception, the air goes out of the balloon somewhat, and it’s also true that the once terrifying and unknowable Xindi here deteriorate further into a bunch of squabbling dummies who are constantly outwitted and outmanoeuvred, by outsiders and by each other. But overall, this is good solid stuff and it’s nice to see Phlox again, he’s been AWOL for several episodes now. Second (and last) script for future Picard showrunner Terry Matalas and it’s another impressive piece of work, setting us up for the Xindi endgame at last.

ENT S03E15 Harbinger (). Watching Royal Navy brat Malcolm Reed bellyache pointlessly about having to work with the militaristic MACOs makes me long for Roddenberry’s no-conflict-on-the-bridge rules. And that sets the tone for a dull, unfocused and sour episode, which sees the return of a lot of Enterprise’s bad habits, after a run of very strong stories. Once again, Trip is written as a horny teen rather than an experienced officer, and Malcolm like a playground bully. Once again, Archer uses painful torture to extract information from a prisoner. About half the run time is devoted to massage sessions with scantily-clad women. And I guess it’s now officially too late for me to keep saying “Stop trying to make Trip and T’Pol happen,” pon-farr or no pon-farr.

ENT S03E16 Doctor’s Orders (). You can’t make a dull story captivating by telling it out of order, but that doesn’t stop hopeful writers from trying to conceal weaknesses by shuffling up the sequence of events to create fake mystery where none intrinsically exists. It’s becoming a go-to move for this show, and when it’s used to underline a deception as in Stratagem, it can be very effective, but more often than not, it’s used as here, to create an artificially strong opening to a flabby script. Phlox lying in bed, doomscrolling and talking to Porthos, is an image which has become far more potent with the passing years. Overall, I preferred this story when Voyager did it and it was called One. There it was about digging into just who Seven of Nine is. Here it’s the Doc going nuts because that’s more interesting than him not (just about). The big scene between Phlox and T’Pol earns this an extra half star, as the two best actors in the show give it everything they’ve got. I almost took it off again for the very silly closing twist, but if you didn’t see it coming, that’s your good fortune and my bad luck.

ENT S03E17 Hatchery (). This is all good solid Star Trek stock. Our crew of intrepid explorers, led by the brave captain, goes prowling around in some moderately convincing caves, somebody (probably the brave captain) gets whammied by some belligerent local biology – and then we go out of our way to protect the aggressors. With a show that’s struggling to find its identity as this one is, it’s downright reassuring when familiar story shapes start to reassert themselves. Saving the insectoid nest requires fixing their technology and as usual the ship’s chief engineer recruits the tactical officer and helmsman to help him with this engineering problem (as he doesn’t know the names of any of the other engineers on board). When it comes to Malcolm vs MACOs vs Trip, instead of being able to see everyone’s point of view, the way you can in good drama, I find everyone equally childish and stupid, which is disappointing to say the least. But the most disappointing aspect of this episode by far is the revelation that Archer’s moral decision to protect the Xindi eggs was the product not of his own enlightened ethics but instead being zapped in the opening minutes. So – he only fought to save all those innocent lives because alien venom was eating his brain? My hero! Nice to see T’Pol in uniform again. And as usual the sharpshooting, militaristic MACOs are all bested by the science officer and her pals.

ENT S03E18 Azati Prime (). At long last we arrive at the Xindi Gentlemen’s Golf Club where, as luck would have it, the superweapon is ready to be deployed. This is all procedural problem-solving stuff, but the stakes feel incredibly high and the problems genuinely epic. This little ship, years from home is going to try and save the world. And there are ethical conundrums too. Archer is forced to destroy an entire Xindi facility to give Travis and Trip a chance as they try and sneak through the detection grid on their reconnaissance mission. That leads to a Star Wars style bomb run to take out the superweapon, which Archer insists on flying himself, whereupon bloody Daniels shows up with more stories from the future. The frequently dumb Xindi storyline and the faintly irrelevant Temporal Cold War storyline here get braided together, and remarkably the combination manages to somewhat strengthen both, when it could equally have fatally weakened either or both. The trouble is that again we have gung-ho, shoot first, kill-the-bugs Archer who has to be talked out of his murderous ways by T’Pol (her “I don’t want you to die,” is lovely). But in his absence, even Trip of all people manages to step up, giving T’Pol unwanted but accurate leadership advice. Her snarling at him when he attempts to stop her from going after the Captain is genuinely shocking.

It’s only when kidnapped that Archer attempts a diplomatic solution using the information he learned in Stratagem, and the further byplay between Bakula and Randy Oglesby is just as engaging as it was then. And we end on pretty much the best cliffhanger since The Best of Both Worlds. With just a touch more of that open-hearted Star Trek optimism, this would be a five-star show, but I can’t overlook Archer’s kill-or-be-killed philosophy, which – as the Xindi point out – he only abandons when it is no longer viable, and not for any more noble reason. Xindi prisoner protocols seemingly do not included searching captured combatants. These Xindi are crazy.

(Spoiler free – ish, but watch the episode first.)

Generally when I’m writing these reviews I like to start the process with some sort of thesis mind – especially if I’m intending on writing anything more than about a paragraph. As I’m watching – whether it’s a film, TV episode or anything else – I’m turning over different angles in my mind. What does this amount to? How does it develop what came before? Where does it point to? I don’t really know where to start with The Star Beast. I don’t have a thesis, or a list of discussion points, or any real way into taking my reaction and turning it into a piece of writing. I’m just grinning.

This is the show which roared back into delirious life in 2005, now revved up once again for 2023, having learned every lesson it’s possible to learn along the way, including the most important one of all – don’t be afraid to take some risks. It’s a giddy confection, taking inspiration from a well-remembered 1980s comic strip, connecting it to the Doctor’s past and boldly setting out for what looks to be a frankly incredible future.

The conclusion of Donna’s story in Journey’s End was, in its way, perfect, but it was also ghastly, and the awful tragedy of the Doctor having to not just witness but enact the erasure of something as coruscatingly brilliant as the Doctordonna was heartbreaking. It was clear in The End of Time that this was an itch which Davies still wanted to scratch, and when Catherine Tate and David Tennant made it clear that they were up for a reunion, he seized the chance. That means that this episode had a lot to accomplish. It had to re-establish David Tennant as the Doctor, catch up new viewers with events which were broadcast back in 2008 (before some younger viewers were even born), establish what Donna’s life had been like during those 15 years, resolve the issue of the meta-crisis Doctor so that Donna could go on more adventures – oh and do Beep the Meep.

But unlike some of those eighties adventures with their “shopping lists” of criteria (Planet of Fire, The Five Doctors) this never felt over-stuffed, over-hurried, box-ticking or rote. It unfolded beautifully and like a true genius, Davies spotted one repeated word from his earlier script and stirred it back in here in a blindly fresh context which brought a gasp to my breath and a lump to my throat. Everyone’s on top of their game here – Tennant and Tate are superb of course, but the entire cast is faultless from the zappified soldiers to “Dame” Miriam Margolyes on Meep voice duty. And the production is exemplary, with Murray Gold’s music lending huge grandeur and scale to the thing once more.

Quibbles? Sure. The opening titles are very brief and rather anonymous and having Donna and Rose be able (and willing!) to simply let the meta-crisis go seems like a bit of a cop-out. But if I was tempted to knock off even half a star for those tiny indiscretions, then it immediately goes back on for that incredible TARDIS interior which has instantly vaulted to the top of my list of favourites time machine sets. It’s absolutely gorgeous and I can’t wait to see it again.

So, returning Russell’s game plan becomes a bit clearer now. Firstly, make sure that the show isn’t just the show but have it surrounded by a whole galaxy… a Doc-uverse… a Whotopia (we’ll workshop that) of other content, from in front of the camera and behind the scenes, from the show’s past, from its future and – in the case of the Da-glo Daleks story (don’t worry, I loved that too) – both combined. Second, celebrate the sixtieth using a favourite modern Doctor returning for a victory lap, taking the pressure off the new boy. Thirdly, we’re back on Saturdays, we’re back to rollicking adventure stories, and we’re back on Christmas Day baby.

I’ve scarcely ever enjoyed an hour of TV more. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sit down and watch the whole thing again. And then listen to the official podcast. And watch the behind-the-scenes YouTube clips. Life is good. Welcome back, Doctor. I’ve missed you.

Killers of the Flower Moon

It’s awards season, and first up is Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon, bringing his two favourite actors together in front of his lens for the first time. This bum-numbing narrative probably could have been told at even greater length as a mini-series (the director falls back on a radio programme to deal with the aftermath, and gives himself a brief cameo) but which never bored me for a second. Clearly, this is a story made by white people and told from the point of view of white people, but as its purpose is to centre the selfish and cruel decisions made by those white people, I think this is legitimate, even if I’m left with a feeling that there was a whole other, less familiar, version of this story which I didn’t get, even at this length.

As usual, Scorsese doesn’t either judge his characters or manipulate the facts in order to generate a fake catharsis. Without giving too much away, I kept hoping for a moment of moral clarity from DiCaprio’s dim-witted Ernest, but in fact he just continues to be buffeted by the demands of people around him and his own shortsightedness. In other hands (or on another day) that might render the whole exercise slightly pointless, but the fact that this is a true story, the strength of the playing (Lily Gladstone is amazing), and the director’s expert marshalling of time and place and space combine to create an engrossing experience, which hugely benefits from the big screen experience.

How to Have Sex

Molly Manning Walker’s feature debut would lose less watched at home, but watched at the Curzon Soho, the more tense moments feel a little less escapable. This is a tricky exercise in tone. Too much hijinks and not enough pain and it might come across as trite and superficial. But turn the screw too far and we’re into soap melodrama, undercutting the blazing authenticity of the acting and filming. Walker, who also writes, finds this thin line with unerring accuracy and although Mia McKenna-Bruce is attracting all of the acting plaudits, the whole ensemble of terrifyingly young actors is faultless and the whole experience brilliantly grubby, joyful, horrifying, intoxicating, disturbing and life-affirming. While it’s unlikely to feature on anything like as many Oscar ballots as Flower Moon, a couple of nominations for, say, screenplay and one or two of the actors would be jokes.

Anatomy of a Fall

Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner arrives on these shores and represents a fascinating Euro-riff on the familiar US/UK courtroom drama, with a couple of neat twists. Chief among these is the fact that the continental legal process (which I can only assume is represented at least vaguely accurately here) is rather unlike the combative system we’re used to. Sandra Hüller is deliciously hard-to-read as the widow of the dead man and her last argument with her late husband, shared with the jury courtesy of a slightly ludicrous contrivance, is mesmerising stuff. Maybe because of the snowy Alpine setting (but not only because of that) this reminded me of the amazing and influential Force Majeure and while I don’t expect this to be followed with an American remake and a stage version at the Donmar Warehouse, it is  still compelling, engrossingly ambiguous stuff and I can understand entirely how it won.

The Marvels

And certainly unlikely to trouble Oscar voters much, the latest offering to fall off the Marvel production line does ask a considerable amount of viewers who are expected to simply know who all these various characters are (at minimum you need to have watched Infinity War, Endgame, Ms Marvel, WandaVision, Captain Marvel, Secret Invasion and ideally Hawkeye and Iron Man) but which gets by on the colossal charm of Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani, to say nothing of a very silly and very effective pantomime villain turn from Zawe Ashton. The other string to its bow is the near Rick and Morty commitment to bonkers space opera as we zip from orbiting space station to Skrull ghetto to Planet Jai-Ho where everybody communicates in the medium of song. But what’s really bonkers about this is that it’s the biggest box office success ever for a movie directed by a Black woman, and still a commercial failure which will end up losing Disney tens of millions of dollars. That’s your problem, right there.