Getting from there to here, an Enterprise rewatch.

True that. I don't mind it personally and I hadn't noticed it until it came up in here. Personally I don't watch Star Trek just to see people die, but I understand it adds a sense of realism for some.

In my view the season has really picked up in the last third. Maybe I'm just in a good mood these days?

Huh. Interesting.

By every single account he is a lovely man. The only time I've ever heard of him getting snappy was with These Are The Voyages and even then, Jonathan Frakes says he was a gent.

Maybe let me know which post or episode you are referencing? This thread is quite large now and some of these shows I watched over a year ago. Welcome to the discussion though!

A very lovely post and thank you for sharing. At times I find I'm having the opposite experience wirth Season 1. I quite liked it way back when, but I'm finding it has been a series of ups and downs on a rewatch. When it's up though, it's really up.

And Blalock is the beating heart of this show for sure. I'd describe the cast as generally solid with Dominic Keating being the actor with the most limited range, but Blalock's T'Pol is a brilliant character, brilliantly portrayed by a brilliant actor.

Fun!

ENTERPRISE: EPISODE 24

DESERT CROSSING



"What impressed me most was his treatment of Earth history as causes and motivations rather than dates and events."

So, let’s start by asking the question: “Is casting Clancy Brown in anything basically a good idea?”. The answer of course is unambiguously “Yes”, so that’s a positive beginning to thoughts on Desert Crossing, a story that refuses to serve up easy answers and makes further headway into forging a unique path for Enterprise to follow.

In Season 1, Enterprise has been (mostly) a show that has shied away from creating its’ own identity. Sometimes this has manifested itself in ways which are less obvious, such as making deliberate effort to focus on a triumvirate of characters, one a Vulcan, rather than give focus to a wider ensemble, as in TOS. So far, so good and I have no problem with that. It may be derivative of TOS, but then that’s something that was part of the shows’ initial manifesto. A back to basics approach if you will. But then we’ve had the less pleasing in the various ‘call-forwards’ that have shown up throughout the season. These instances range from the tired (a focus on Klingon stuff, Ferengi, Nausicaans etc.) to the irritating. What I have called the “nudge nudge - wink wink” moments, such as asininely wondering out loud if transporters could ever be used for people, or having Archer muse upon possibly getting a set of directives one day, the importance of which is prime to him…

The net result of this is a show that has locked itself out of its’ own playground and has contented itself with playing around in those of other shows. A prequel which is blind to the history that it is supposed to be playing with. This has at times given Enterprise a certain sense of redundancy in the first season, with episodes very often feeling like TNG/Voyager episodes with a slightly low-tech re-skin.

"You, Zeons! What kind of monsters are the Zeons sending against us?"

Enterprise has been the most successful on the rarer occasions when its’ focus has been on building its’ own corner of the Star Trek Universe. Most obviously we can see this in the various Vulcan/Andorian episodes that we have in Season 1. I don’t necessarily think that serialisation would have been the right path for Enterprise, but there is something satisfying in being able to join the dots between some episodes. When Shran comes back and makes reference to something that happened in a previous episode in which he featured then we have a sense of continuity at least, as well as a broader focus on races which rarely feature in other shows. Plus it gives some weight to actions made by characters in those episodes as they have to deal with the consequences of their decisions.

Desert Crossing serves almost as a coda to Season 1, using previous episodes to construct a mythology around the exploits of the NX-01, with this episode further serving as a kind of unexpected bookend to Detained. Clancy Brown’s character, Zobral, specifically sought out Archer and the NX-01 due to a pretty extreme game of ‘telephone’ in which our Captain is thought of as a legendary superhero who is in charge of the Galaxy’s Greatest Warship. As with Shran, just a little continuity is adhered to here, callbacks we might say, but the results pay dividends. Not only are the events of Detained enriched, also the sense that the show is going forwards and trying to do something is maintained.

So we have Archer envisioned as a kind of space-faring Robin Hood, flying from planet to planet in his ship, punishing the oppressor and standing with the oppressed… and from there we have this seasons second conversation about the Prime Directive:

However, where early in the season this felt contrived, here it feels earned. Because Archer has been zipping from one place to the next, making friends, saying “hi”, shooting at people and generally acting like a law unto himself. The NX-01 has crossed borders, dropped crew in on planets unannounced (and sometimes unwelcome) with Archer, to some extent at least, treating his mission as a game. 2 episodes from the end of the season, we finally get some real payoff with Archer forced to consider how his behaviour has created an ad-hoc legend around himself and he’s naturally very uncomfortable with it. It’s beautifully done.

Because Hoshi has a point. Contact one group and you risk earning the ire of an opposing group, as in Desert Crossing. From Archer’s point of view he was just playing an alien sport with some guy he met in space, but from Trellit, our ‘Chancellor of the Week’ character, doing so is only a few steps away from being an act of war, as it turns out Zobral is thought of as a terrorist. Imagine if aliens made first contact tomorrow, but with Russia and Putin as Earth’s emissary. If that amount of technology, knowledge and weaponry suddenly fell into Russian hands, the entire world would be in a panic, extraterrestrial visitors would be declared an enemy by many nations and we’d be in a whole bunch of a mess. Whereas (as with Archer) our nameless extraterrestrial visitors would perhaps just think they’d met a cool guy in the name of exploration and not understand what all the fuss was about.

"Why? Because without us to hate, there'd be nothing to hold them together. So the Party has built us into a threat, a disease to be wiped out."

Also, considering again the time it was made in and that Desert Crossing makes specific reference to Detained, we are back in nuanced territory in terms of examining exactly what it means to be a terrorist. Amidst the jingoistic rhetoric that permeated US politics following the tragic events of 9/11, in Desert Crossing we have an episode which looks at terrorism (at least tangentially) from the point of view of partially deconstructing the concept, as in Detained. But where Detained went down the path of rightfully pointing out that though terrorism is something that’s usually connected with ethnicity and how its’ wrong to assume everyone of that ethnicity is a terrorist, in Zobral we have a character who is given motivation and justification for his (perceived, as we never really see him commit acts of terror) actions.

What we end up with is a story that massively avoids making any kind of silly blanket statements such as ‘all people who fight for their rights are bad’ or ‘all terrorists are evil'. We have here an episode that blurs the line between the word ‘terrorist' (which in most contexts tends to have incredibly negative connotations) and the word ‘rebel’. Remember that commonly in Science Fiction it’s the rebels that tend to be coded as the ‘good guys’. An obvious example would be Star Wars in which the Empire are in every sense presented as a monolithic, totalitarian regime and the rebels are plucky do-gooders. However, Desert Crossing averts this by pointedly refusing to answer the questions it raises. We hear from both sides of this episode’s conflict and both sides give justification for the other being morally-abhorrent. Zobral’s people have been systematically oppressed for centuries, yet according the other side this is not the case, as the Zobral has been waging terror attacks on innocent people. Who’s the good guy here and who’s the bad guy? In a sense we as the audience are pulled towards Zobral, but then maybe that’s because we see him gift Archer a wall hanging and witness him cavorting in the desert heat to play a board game…

In fiction, where is the line between terrorist and rebel? We cheer when Luke Skywalker takes down the Death Star, but we don’t stop to think about the people onboard. Thousands I guess, all or most of who'm presumably have family, friends… Is Luke Skywalker the Hero of the Rebellion or a Mass Murderer?

Like I said, no easy answers and crucially no judgements. Zobral has committed crimes and by doing so he is labelled as a terrorist, but his character is humanised enough to give that word some nuance. At the same time, for Star Trek to be asking these kinds of questions in a post 9/11 world… Well, it’s the right thing for Star Trek to do. It’s easy to point a finger. It’s easy to say terrorists are bad… but Desert Crossing sidesteps the obvious in order to go deeper and ask “Why?”:

This is terrorism as a matter of perspective then, which is a much more complex way to look at the whole concept, especially when it’s done through the mouths of two, biased and unreliable narrators. Zobral’s People and the Torothans both think of the other as the danger, as the ‘other’ and as the enemy. In this instance I don’t find it even remotely frustrating that we are not given the answers. The concept of an ‘enemy’ is by its’ nature a fluid one. Sure, the Torothans come across as less than pleasant, but would we have felt differently if the NX-01 had made contact with them first? Would we have felt less inclined towards Zobral’s people if we hadn’t seen Archer and Trip playing weird desert hockey? Right and wrong, good and bad, these binary notions are next to useless in terms of exploring complex topics and in Desert Crossing Star Trek rightly opts for the middle path, forming a story that is layered and makes the viewer ask uncomfortable questions.

Finally, Archer has to turn tail, having learned that his actions in Detained, however justified, had greater consequences than he could imagine. Space is big, but not so big that other races don’t take notice, and the NX-01 has been drawing a lot of unwelcome attention. The Archer of Broken Bow may have been less reluctant to fall in line with Zobral, but in Desert Crossing our Captain, a Captain who remember, usually defines himself as an explorer, finds himself cast as a warrior and is embroiled in a conflict that he barely understands as a result. Finally his hubris pays him back with interest and he nearly ends up dead with Trip in the desert as a result.

So in summary, one of the seasons stand out episodes. A good guest star, a moral quandary, some great location work… what’s not to like here?

Happy times and places,

Richard S. Ta.

All images reproduced with the permission of Trekcore.com

 

I think part of the reason that I felt that way re the first season (and the second to an extent) is that I went in with fairly low expectations. I’ll be interested to see what my thoughts are when I watch it next, given that my expectation levels will be significantly higher going into the next viewing.

Agree re Jolene, I thought she was just fabulous. I know it was generally the point, but those three; Bakula, Blalock and Trinneer really were the driving force behind most things good. It was a dynamic that harkened back to the glory days of TOS with Kirk/Spock/McCoy. I don’t even think TNG or DS9 had that going. That’s not a sleight against those shows, their respective casts worked together in much more fluid dynamics, particularly DS9 who’s depth of cast (including the peripheral/minor/secondary characters was just utterly ridiculous in a good way).

I felt a bit sorry for Anthony Montgomery as I felt he was the one, out of all of them, that kind of got screwed by the change in direction between seasons 1 and 2. He didn’t get a great deal to do after that, although there were brief highlights, like his stint in the Mirror Universe episodes. Linda Park, from memory, got a couple of “Hoshi” episodes across the first few seasons, Montgomery I think got one (the same number as Porthos! ) And then that was it, Xindi arc and no time for another one. It would have been nice to see him given more to do, and obviously had the show had another 3 years, I’m sure he’d have had them.

 

Great review--- saw this one a couple weeks ago and agree that it blurs the lines, no easy answers or judgments. So many stories about getting caught in another planet's civil war, before the Prime Directive is drafted--not that it made much difference. I thought the desert-survival ordeal was overdone a bit, in fact the scene where Archer is keeping Trip awake is the longest unbroken shot ever filmed in Trek. Ironic that Trip as a Florida man would be so susceptible to the heat.

 

As someone who was born in Florida (Miami) and lived here my whole life, I can tell you Trip doing badly in the heat is believable.

Florida heat has a level of humidity that makes it feel worse than it really is. Plus, being on the coast, we get the ocean breeze, even though it only mitigates it slightly. Desert heat is very dry, which makes a big difference, particularly since the temperature actually goes above 100 degrees instead of just feeling like it.


Plus, I am just like Trip... I HATE the heat. There's a reason why one of my nicknames at my previous job was 'Frosty Paws'.

 

Interesting....I was in grad school in Gainesville, yes very humid. Also worked one summer in Arizona but the dry heat was nothing like the Yuma desert.
Trip and T’Pol were my favorite characters in ENT.

 

I didn't enjoy Desert Crossing all that much and I think my problem with it is that it's premise is more interesting than its content. The first third is Archer and Trip finally meeting someone friendly and hanging out in the desert waiting for the other shoe to drop, then the second half is all desert survival. There's nothing for the two characters to discover or achieve and we don't learn anything about them. In fact Trip is barely there by the end of it.

Meanwhile the Enterprise crew deal with another unfriendly government again as they try to rescue the captain again. It's starting to become a bit of a pattern. Though on the plus side, Clancy Brown!

 

I've been doing a 'cherry pick' rewatch of Enterprise over the past few weeks, and it's been a little disturbing how many episodes I've skipped over. I remember not particularly liking the show during it's run, but it did eventually grow on me a bit, and S4 was pretty good right before it died. Still, I'm skipping more than half the show, which ain't a ringing endorsement.

One thing I do like about it on subsequent re-watch is the production values- I thought they were pretty good, especially the ship fx and the designs of the Andorians, Aenar, and Tellarites. In the Mirror Darkly eps, the Defiant was probably the best looking Connie we'd ever seen in CGI.

Anyway, my .02.

 

It's a highlight of the first season. TBH I was just in for it as soon as Clancy Brown came onscreen. The desert filming looks great. Enterprise should have looked like that more often in it's first season. And for all the reasons you say. Archer/Trip. Bakula and Trineer have built that together and their whole relationship feels real and earned. I believe they have history together.

I like this and I'm going to think about this more at some point. I believe of all the 'Berman' era shows, loosely including TNG in that, that Enterprise comes closest to recreating the dynamics of Kirk/Spock/Bones. And they are together the powerhouse that drives the show forwards. I feel any other character could be replaced by the end of Season 1, but not so for Archer, Trip and T'Pol.

I didn't know that! I just read that on MA now.

I don't know. I think we and Archer learn that the universe is smaller than we thought. I think Archer gets a big dose of 'actions have consequences' and 'behaving like a cowboy is wrong' to swallow. Whether or not the show follows it up, I will see, but I thought Archer's own legend was an uncomfortable thing for him to have to face.

It always works for me.

It still looks slick. I say below, it looks like an old show, but it doesn't look like a cheap old show.

ENTERPRISE: EPISODE 25

TWO DAYS AND TWO NIGHTS



* See that? It looks just like that it does. Yes, just like in the painting! *

" The need was apparently desperate"

Ah, poor Risa. The pleasure planet that is doomed to have all its’ pleasures take place off-screen. That’s right boys, girls and those of unfixed gender, it’s the penultimate episode of the season and all the money has run out. Welcome to Two Days and Two Nights in which Travis has a mountain climbing accident (offscreen), Archer eats seafood straight off the deck of a fishing ship (offscreen), while Hoshi enjoys an (offscreen) scenic spot and Trip plus Malcolm describe and ogle various (offscreen) aliens. Less a complaint, more an observation. Risa here is represented by one matt painting and a series of hotel based locations and the rest is cleverly written around. I think the hope must have been that as long as the focus characters change regularly enough from scene to scene then it would be less noticeable. It kind of works. Kind of.

So, let’s start with positives. The cast all get a moment. Even Porthos has a standoff with another dog. Phlox hibernates and plays a comedy part. Hoshi gets laid and makes some non-too subtle euphemisms to make it clear she had a great time. Trip and Malcolm get robbed and left in their underwear (though Risa is probably a decent planet to suffer a misfortune like that upon). Archer has to deal with a spy. They even dust Crewman Cutler off and give her a moment in the sun. Strangely, T’Pol is largely kept out of proceedings, but… eh. T’Pol had plenty to do this season.

"A capability, I'm afraid, out of the reach of most humans"

And then… Well, negatives. For a start, by trying to be an ensemble piece, the episode ultimately serves nobody. A little focus for each character results in an episode with no central focus of its’ own. Then, as mentioned above, each character is sent off on a mini-adventure, but then because its’ the end of the season then they don’t have the money to depict any of the vignettes that the plot sets up.

I understand, the money had run out. Enterprise was not a cheap show. To this day, it still doesn’t look like a cheap show. Enterprise looks like an old show, but not a cheap old show. I don’t think this is a ‘terrible’ episode, but set within the bigger picture its’ an episode that is doomed to be forgotten and that’s a shame. This should be ‘The NX-01 hits Ibiza’ or something. It should be raucous and fun. We should have packed clubs, beach parties, sea frolicking and breathtaking landscapes. Travis in the mountains, man vs. the elements... Hoshi enjoying a Risan Steam Pool, Archer eating seafood from a little boat that sails into the bay every evening… They sound like great scenes. Memorable scenes.

But the money ran out.

"Allow me to test the water first, Doctor"

So this will be a short one. There’s not much to unpack here. That Archer is being grilled about the Suliban was obvious to me, with a neat callback to the Tandarans. It serves as a light capstone to events with the Suliban this season. Hoshi’s romance is believable, the guy was not a creep and Hoshi seemed to be, not to be crude, but on top of things. Trip and Reed get to cement the rapport they began to build up in Shuttlepod One. Mayweather, in what can only be interpreted as some kind of mean-assed writer-led meta-dagger gets this gemstone:

Well, yes. Indeed.

So, an episode with big ideas that happens to have the misfortune to be placed in-between an episode which had an expensive location shoot and the season finale with whatever that entails in terms of budget. A place like Risa has a lot of potential, both visually and narratively. But when you don’t have the money, what can you do?

The best I can say about Two Days and Two Nights is it zips along. It’s always moving and has the sense to write itself around its’ budgetary deficiencies. It’s just sad that there was potential for a distinctive looking episode here, scuppered by circumstances. Sometimes this happens to any show. The money ran out, there was nothing to show, but they had to show something. It’s just a pity that the casualty here is Risa, which, having been built up for several to resemble a sort of ‘Space-Brothel/Casino Complex’, ends up looking like a near deserted chain-hotel for lonely singles over 30. The bits of it we see feel so safe and there’s little sense that any of the areas that we see are one contiguous space.

I’m torn, you know? I wonder, would it have been worth pulling out the desert filming from Desert Crossing in order to have some proper location work in Two Days and Two Nights? I really enjoyed Desert Crossing but they could have found another way to do that. Maybe not a desert. Something that they could do in studio so that they could go and have beaches and vistas for Two Days and Two Nights.

"And we are definitely on the inside"

I can imagine this as a two-parter with a bit more budget thrown at it that really shows us say, Hoshi having a nice time and learning a language and romancing with a guy. You know, her character having made a journey from reluctant genius, lacking in self-esteem to the genius who’s standing on a distant planet, using her skills to have an inter-species weekend romance. Or Mayweather Vs. The Mountain. Trip and Reed in a comedy subplot about getting back to Enterprise in their underpants and finding uniforms without getting caught and yeah, sure Phlox can hibernate and then you can put Archer in the hotel with his sketchy Tandaran romance on top of all of that… That’s a tremendous 2 part story.

But in 40 minutes, there’s not enough room for all that. A pity then. What we got is perfectly serviceable, I guess. But I can’t help feeling there was a lot of lost potential here. I think a Two Days and Two Nights where we actually see Archer swimming out to sea, one where we saw Hoshi’s eyes light up in wonder in a steam cave, one when where Travis climbs a mountain… I think that version could have been a classic.

In the words of Chris Black, staff writer:

Well, that about wraps it up then. They did what they could and what they could is pretty good considering what they were under. They’d have loved to have done more and I would have loved that too, but it is what it is.

And you know, next is the finale and I really can’t remember anything about it… then after over a year, I will finally have finished Season 1!

Happy times and places,

Richard S. Ta.

All images reproduced with permission of Trekcore.com

 

Great review, glad you are continuing with these.
Thought this was probably the best Risa episode, though as you point out not much is seen. Enjoyable light hearted humor….Hoshi and Ravis seemed perfect for each other, and I liked Dey Young in all 3 of her Trek roles. The misadventures bring to mind a couple lines from VOY-
Janeway: Remember the old story? A man goes to Risa, where he meets a beautiful woman who invites him over for an evening of passion...
Chakotay: He wakes up in the morning, feeling wonderful, until he discovers he's missing a kidney.
Michael Dorn who directed this also did DS9 “In the Cards” – he’s good with comedy.

 

This, mostly. That was my complaint about it as well. I kept waiting for all those little stories to connect to each other in a way at the end. They didn't. Also, Phlox, while he was funny, also creeped me out somehow.

It was my first introduction to Risa. It let me down. Also, funny side-note, there is a city called Riesa nearby where I live and it always reminds me of that!

Weren't they all in the shuttle together at the end? When they ask Hoshi how she enjoyed her stay and she just smiles and doesn't tell?
So yeah, at least a scene of them meeting all at the shuttle and giving them some curious looks, if not some teasing.

I was also missing a scene of Archer with Porthos on the beach, throwing a ball... I had to set it up with my action figures. I'll post it in the figure thread!

 

Yes. In contrast to Archer and Hoshi who I think we are told in the pilot know each other and are friends but I never really got that impression in later episodes.

I think that was intentional. And for all that Enterprise sometimes contradicts TOS, the people I knew who were massive Enterprise fans when it was first on tv, liked TOS best out of all the Star Trek shows and felt that Enterprise captured the spirit of TOS.

I hadn't really thought about how much is offscreen in this episode. It's a nice filler episode. I think Risa in the 22nd Century might be quite different to Risa in the 24th Century simply because 200 years have passed. It threw me out of the episode a bit that there's another dog. How would another dog have got to Risa? Archer trusts T'Pol enough to leave her in charge of the ship while he has a holiday - the relationship between them has improved a lot over the first season.

 

What I meant was he didn't learn anything during the scenes of desert survival in particular. There were no secrets uncovered, no extra insight gained.

I'm glad you came away from it at least moderately satisfied, but that wasn't really my experience.

I've been going through a bunch of Trek series simultaneously, alternating each episode so I watch all the episode 1s, all the episode 2s and so on. This means that by the time I reached Two Nights and Two Days I'd already seen something like 80 episodes in three months, which is far more season one Star Trek than the human body is built to stand. I'd sat through stories like Mudd's Women, The Alternative Factor, Code of Honor, Angel One, Cathexis, Terra Nova, Fusion, Rogue Planet... and I'd rewatch any of them before I ever put Two Days and Two Nights back on.

It's my least favourite episode of my least favourite season of Trek. The only reason I sat through it to the end is because I wanted to say I'd seen every Enterprise episode and I thought I might write about it, otherwise I would've just turned it off halfway through. But I just looked for my notes and it turns out I either didn't take any or I threw them out, so I haven't actually got much to say about it. I do remember that my favourite part was the Phlox plot but I geniunely can't remember if I'm thinking of the scenes in the episode or the outtakes.

 

I would say maybe this final line in "Desert Crossing" sums up what Archer absorbed...though I can't recall if he actually put it into practice later on --
T'POL: What you told him was correct. Decisions to get involved in the conflicts of other worlds should be left to governments, and not starship captains.

 

So is this thread going to continue, or is it done?

 

It isn't over until I say it's over...

 

A good, proper response.

 

Looking forward to reading them whenever you get around to it.