Who was the being from the Future?

here's your sign
https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-enterprise-future-guy-archer/

 

Hmm.. So he was trying to set right, what once went wrong?

 

I liked the idea of a Romulan or Archer being Future Guy.

 

Those two would be the most obvious answers.

Or it could be Burnham in the Red Angel suit.

 

Why? Archer doesn't make sense anymore, since the TCW storyline ended in Season 4. There's no logical reason for him to end up in the 28th century as he apparently became one of the first federation presidents and most likely died either at the end of the 22nd or in the first decades of the 23rd century.

And Burnham's suit was destroyed in the first episode of Discovery Season 3.

 

You could shoehorn it in as something he does before he takes the Presidency..... Just make sure that President Archer is older than Bakulas current age and the whole thing could just be a side story.

I still just can't believe season 4 ended the storyline without giving it an answer....

 

"Future Guy" was Daniels' MU counterpart.

Look, none of it made sense and it's best left behind, unanswered.

 

Braga had no clue who Future Guy was at the time. The wrote the Temporal Cold War into the show as a mystery box. They had no clue where it was going to go. And they never decided while it was on. Only many years later did Braga decide that Future Guy was really a future Archer. That was a name kicked around at the time, along with Kirk, a Romulan, or someone new. But Future Guy being Archer was not part of Future Guy's original conception.

If this sounds poorly planned, that's because it was. Keep in mind, this is the show that named "The Suliban" as such, because Berman and Braga had read about "the Taliban" in the news in the prior year (this was before 9/11). Kind of a yikes in retrospect. It's also the show where some producers wanted the Akira-class reused for the NX-01. Parts of Enterprise were well thought out. Parts of it were totally B.S'd through.

 

So, Star Trek. Actually, most production ideas.

 

Ehhhhhh, it stuck out at the time because it was one of the first. TV shows really weren't serialized at all like that when Enterprise aired. Specifically, even the serialized shows, like DS9, had serialized premises, but not mystery boxes. This is before Lost turned the under-imagined master plan into an art form after all. The worst offender of all time, of course, is the X-Files, which predated Enterprise. Chris Carter rebooted the Alien Mythology on that show at least 3 times.

Future Guy's identity was all the rage here in the early 2000s with most betting a Romulan or a Future Archer, with the latter winning out towards the end. It was really all for nothing though. Berman and Braga were clearly creatively burnt out (or at least, burnt out while working within the constraints of Paramount and UPN) and Enterprise failed to reignite what worked for so long. That they didn't put thought into Future Guy's identity at all, but managed to create an alien of the week, the Xindi and the Na'kuhl, is totally in keeping with where they were. Future Guy is something that sounded cool in the pitch, but they grew entirely disinterested in it as production of the show continued, as their hearts and minds were really back in the Delta Quadrant.

 

I always suspected Future Guy was an AI used by rogue historians bent on changing timelines to suit their interpretations. Were they working for some organization with a wider view of time? Perhaps. The muddle of reality created by numerous temporal incursions must have been impossible to manage properly by organic systems, hence the AI which could plot developments more precisely.

 

If it had to be Archer, then it makes more sense for Future Guy to be Mirror Universe Archer. He became obsessed with his counterpart's importance to the Prime Universe, reading the Defiant logs.

Pocket Books carried on Mike Sussman's Season 5 plan, with his being revealed as not poisoned at the end of "In a Mirror, Darkly Part II" and not dead, just incapacitated. So I suppose he's destined to escape the Empress's clutches and flee to the distant future. He'll be in there, among the more likely red herring suspects planted in a theoretical continuation, like the Romulan trying to change the war idea and I don't know, Gary Seven, Daniels, Kirk or whoever might show up to throw fans off...

The idea of it being an older, embittered version of our Archer doesn't sit well with me. Future Guy is responsible for polluting the timeline with the Suliban's genetic alterations and presumably their stealth technology. There are then many innocent people caught up fighting in the Temporal Cold War native to the 22nd Century. I'm not sure no matter what happened, our Archer depicted in the show ever wanting to be responsible for all that.

 

An interesting alternative is the fact that Future Guy Archer would be the guy who is trying to keep the Sphere Builders from screwing up the timeline so much.

But I admit, I prefer the idea it's a Romulan.

 

My vote would be for Michael Burnham.

Or for the lead star of a Star Trek series that doesn't exist as of yet.

Or perhaps the timeline has been altered/restored (take your pick) to such a degree after the Sphere Builders were stopped that he never really existed in the first place.

 

Never cared for the idea that it was a future Archer. I just have a hard time buying Archer manipulating the timeline like that. 'Future Guy' clearly had his own agenda and was trying to manipulate things to favor himself in some fashion. I never got the sense 'Future Guy' was doing anything altruistically. Even thwarting the Xindi. I don't think for one second 'Future Guy' would have helped Earth in any way if there wasn't something in it for him. It's more likely the Sphere Builders were a serious threat to his own plans.

I also have a hard time buying it might be some Mirror-Archer just trying to be a PITA. There were things 'Future Guy' did that really had nothing to do with Captain Archer and the Enterprise at the outset. They thwarted 'Future Guy's' schemes usually, but initially they weren't really intended to be involved at all. Then it was 'Future Guy' who tipped them off about the sphere builders and Xindi threat. Not sure that would fit the MO of a jilted Mirror-Archer, and I can't imagine such a character helping Archer to save the prime-universe Earth.

I find I prefer 'Future Guy' being some other character, something akin to the DTI novels. A humanoid with a mixed background of different species trying to manipulate events for his own benefit and power. There are just too many convoluted twists you have to do to try to fit it into a jaded or mirror-Archer, and the pieces just don't fit when you consider the entire history of 'Future Guy.'

 

Other ruminations.

Daniels is Future Guy. Daniels, the worst temporal agent ever. This guy's made more mishaps than Wile E. Coyote. Using Archer as an ACME tool he invites disaster upon himself every occasion he tries to catch Silik or Vosk.

And it's an odd coincidence he possesses a device that can project Archer's image, voice, and body itself through the same portal located on the Helix where Silik takes instruction...

He's a smug little git whose face is screaming out for a punch whenever he fails to answer a straight question. Dude! The damage is done! How can things get any worse? Answer the damn questions! Tell Archer about the Romulan Star Empire. Tell him what you really are! Grrr...

 

That could have potential. He screwed up a couple of times, and maybe at some "future" point he became jaded and started manipulating events.

There are still some things that wouldn't fit all that well. But we did see the captain from the Relativity on Voyager become warped and then try to have Voyager destroyed so there is some precedence for a character like that, who's supposed to protect history, turning bad.