Enterprise: Broken Bow (S01E01/02)
My Star Trek-loving polar bear finally convinced me to start watching Enterprise.
A Klingon crash lands in an American cornfield and is injured by a rootin' tootin' gun-tottin' racial stereotype and the Vulcans (who aren't super friendly with proto-Starfleet) recognize the need to return him to his home world. Some arguing happens and Captain Archer gets the job.
Archer collects Funny Doctor Guy then heads to Brazil a Southern Californian park to collect Hot Asian Girl. For vastly different reasons, these are my two favorite characters. T'Pol, a Vulcan lady is also assigned, there's some flaccid speech and we get underway.
Enroute, the ship is attacked by Suliban, some new aliens, and the Klingon is taken. We go to Rigel where Archer meets a Suliban lady who explains the central plot: some of her people are taking orders from ~SpoOooky Future Man~ who intends to start a civil war within the Klingon Empire. They track a Suliban ship to another planet where they steal the Klingon back. They return him to his home world, everyone hugs, and T'Pol stays on the ship.
Well, for starters, it's unclear what the show is trying to be. There's new aliens like the Suliban, but the plot revolves around the Klingons. We get an entirely new ship, but its color design and hull is reminiscent of the Enterprise-E. We get a new crew, but the core trio is an all-American boy scout, a Southern gentleman, and a cold and logical Vulcan. Is this just more of the same, or is it supposed to be something different?
The Enterprise and its technology is less advanced, but not in any substantial way. The ship is limited to warp 4.5, but can still zip around in a blink of an eye. There's no tractor beam, but there's a grappling hook which serves the same function. There's "phase pistols", which... are just phasers. The climax hinges on using the transporter, and while the script enjoys reminding us throughout the episode that it can't be trusted, it works just fine in the end. It's pretty hard to get excited for a resolution that relies on a familiar Star Trek staple...
It seems like Broken Bow handicaps the show's premise (Voyager-style, baby!) by starting just far enough into the future that war, hunger, and disease are already a thing of the past. We start from a point where Earth is unrecognizable. We have no chance to investigate the transition. The juicy questions raised by the premise have already been dismissed by the end of Broken Bow's 90 minutes of runtime. (Voyager-style!)
Instead, the show seems more interested in the humanity side of this period. About exploring how people went from savage barbarians to the enlightened individuals of Roddenberry's Trek. But if that's the intent, there's some problems with that. Namely, that the characters in Roddenberry's Trek were far from ideal humans. If the show intends to connect the dots of "savage barbarian" to "enlightened individual", then it's operating from a mistaken assumption. The humans in Starfleet are composed of people just as human as Archer and his officers (and will continue to be so into this universe's future). There's no room for growth.
Also, just gonna point this out, but the casting is predominantly white, making the show feel strangely more dated than TOS. There's only two alien crew members (T'Pol and the doctor), but both are identifiably Caucasian. Then there's only two characters of color. One, Hoshi Sato, is a Japanese character played by a Korean actress. The second is Token Black Guy. One is the translator and the other flies the ship, which is an inversion of the roles of the only non-white characters on TOS.
But hey, at least they get first names... Unlike poor Sulu who had to wait until Star Trek VI or Uhura who had to wait until JJ Abrams could use millions of dollars to make an in-universe joke about it. Wow, remember JJ Abrams? Whatever happened to that guy? Did everyone finally realize what a talentless hack he was the entire time?
Hoshi gets the very-important role of being helpless, jumping at strange noises, and generally being useless in anything other than linguistics. At one point she needs to be saved from danger by her physically stronger, male protectors. Thanks show. Nice reminder of Asian girl stereotypes there.
The casting just feels regressive, even for 2001, and the xenophobic attitudes about the Vulcans doesn't help matters. Even if humanity is flawed and maybe not quite ready to explore the stars, it doesn't work to convey that idea by portraying humans as intolerant bigots. Going from "racist" to "not racist" just isn't as satisfying as going from "flawed human" to a "enlightened individual".
Ah... I did like the notion that humans and Vulcans don't get along, since it makes logical sense that two different species with vastly different experiences and sensibilities will naturally have points of conflict, but it also operates on yet another misconception about Star Trek, namely that Vulcans and humans later become the bestest of best friends. That idea should really begin and end with Kirk and Spock. Captain Solok in DS9 is a bigot, but episodes like Amok Time or Journey to Babel really showcase the "rocky" relationship between the two peoples. Calling attention to it here also raises a few questions, not least of which is "Why are the Vulcans even helping these barbarians?" It seems like they'd be better off without them?
Oh, then there's the gel scene...
Ya gotta know the gel scene...
The premise here is that Trip (a human male) and T'Pol (a female Vulcan) return from an away mission and must rub each other down with disinfectant gel. These are two characters who do not get along, forced to lubricate each other in a dark room wearing nothing but their underwear.
There's a handful of questionable direction choices here, foremost of which is the repeated close-ups of lubricated skin and high-contrast lighting that really accentuates T’Pol’s rock-hard nipples.
The scene doesn't lead anywhere, it's not played for laughs, and it's never mentioned again. Just a lengthy sequence of very professional, highly sexualized touching. Star Trek has never done "sexy" particularly well outside of some TOS and a scattering of episodes in DS9, but... this was just uncomfortably awkward.
Anyways, the episode is fairly well-paced and plotted, with a relatively tight structure. The plot is simple and linear (Archer finds Klingon, loses him, then finds him again), but as the show's pilot, I'll give that gets a pass. Ya don't wanna clog everything up with a convoluted storyline.
In conclusion, Archer is being portrayed as someone jumping at the opportunity to explore the universe, insisting that mankind is capable and ready to do so. A good, interesting direction to take this would be to show just how wrong he is... namely that there are things he's not ready to deal with. While we get a little bit of that here—the Klingon is taken from his own ship right under his nose and he gets himself shot and incapacitated in the rescue attempt—it doesn't really try to explore the idea, despite the script making a continual effort to show us how eager humans are to meddle in affairs they don't understand.
Also, the opening montage is cringy, the painful pop music overlaid atop an American-centric vision of the space race. I’ll be readily skipping that for all future episodes.
