Yet she was able to get on her back afterwards.
If Archer could lift it off of her, how is it that she, as a Vulcan and being 3 times as strong as a human, couldn't get herself out of this situation. Furthermore, how is it that only Archer got parasites from that wave even though the entire ship passed through it and T'Pol was a few feet away, and only a little over one foot away from where she'd been trapped to begin with? Why did no other wave before that have the mysterious parasites? Why did none after?
Enterprise nearly succeeded under T'Pol. They were literally seconds late to stop the attack. Hardly an example of T'Pol being reduced to incompetence.
Enterprise was damaged and unable to complete her mission because she took the helm herself and rammed a Xindi ship, severely damaging one of Enterprise's nacelles in the process. I was very much under the impression that they were trying to say that she shouldv't have (given Trip's treatment of her) and that Archer would have found some other way. Not to mention that at the end of the day, what the episode was basically saying was that since Archer wasn't able to carry out the Xindi mission, they failed and Earth was destroyed.
Every other Star Trek captain has had the role of Chief Hero. Why should Archer be the exception?
Picard kinda was, but not to this extend. Kirk moreso, and yet again, it wasn't at the expense of the other characters. Sisko, definitely not - DS9 was an ensemble show and the quality that brought really shows through, even today. Voyager is where that trend of the captain always being right even when showing poor leadership started.
Did you ever watch TOS? Kirk was always more resilient than anyone on the ship. Spock would be out of ideas when Kirk would figure out the solution. Or Spock would be incapacitated and Kirk would writhe and squirm his way across the floor and push the button or get the phaser to blow up or shoot the bad guy.
I've watched some episodes, but the ones most of the ones I've seen involved Kirk working together with Spock and McCoy or some of the others to solve the problem, and not doing it all on his own (or the mission fails). In fact, I seem to remember he had to get his ass handed to him by Spock in order for one situation to be resolved. I'm sure if it was Archer, they would've had it play out more like Torres and Vorik, where neither of them really won, or worse yet, Archer would've won, and just refused to kill Spock, or faked Spock's death, or soemthing along those lines.
What I considered inconsistent here is that Trip refuses to listen to Phlox and T'Pol offer an alternative to fighting (which Trip had to know was pretty much hopeless).
That's more what I was getting at. Kind of like with
Cogenator, they had Trip act like Archer, only in that case it was supposed to be wrong to do so because the writers made it so blatently obvious what the correct course of action is supposed to be.
I guess we see Enterprise in different lights. Archer only succeeds in the restored history where T'Pol "failed" in Twilight because:
1. Daniels doesn't help her.
2. Therefore, she never gets the opportunity that Archer gets to convince an influential member of the council that they have been lied to.
Yet there was no reason why Daniels wouldn't have been able to, or why it wouldn't have been in his best interest to do so, since his future would end if Earth was destroyed and the Federation never formed. But since Daniels' primary function was to serve as a cheerleader for Archer...
I love "Yesterday's Enterprise," but it was just a stand-alone story.
It was still a reset button that offered an alternate universe that occured because of something historical not occurring that should have, namely a Federation starship sacrificing itself in an attempt to protect a Klingon colony.
In seasons 1 and 2, it's established that Archer will be the linchpin of the establishment of the Federation.
Which was all part of the glorification of Archer over all the others. This is what made him Super!Archer!, because it made him the msot important character on the show, not because he actually did anythign to deserve it, but because he was
supposed to be some kind of founding father of the Federation (that we never heard of before). Hell, even Picard evidently wasn't that historically important by himself, because in the AU Q showed him where he never rose above the rank of Lieutenant and thus never commanded Enterprise, he was fine, the crew of the E-D was fine, the E-D herself was fine, and the Federation was fine, despite the fact he'd played such a crucial role in so many things during the run of the series up to that point. As Q put it, in the grand scheme of things, he just wasn't that important - someone else took his place. To say that Archer was so important frankly killed any drama, because as a prequel, we already knew the outcome of anything major - we already knew the Xindi would fail because not only is Earth safe, but we never even heard of them before. Even if it's been the Romulans and the Romulan War, we already knew that Earth would win. What we
didn't know, is if our characters would live through it or not, So by saying that Archer had to survive, it killed any real drama. Which, really all reset buttons do that anyway, because in the end we know that we'll be back to the status quo.