After all, it looks like Earth and therefore is perfectly safe, right?
Hey, Kirk led his team down many times with preliminary info and decided it looked fine. Otherwise, what kind of fun would they have?
You're absolutely right. And when people were killed or injured, Kirk gave a damn, especially when he made the decision that led to grave consequences. He acknowledged his recklessness.
When the crew was Trippin' in SNW, T'Pol could have been killed. Does Archer say one damned word to anyone acknowledging that his rashness led to the situation? No. He showed no respect for T'Pol's considerable experience and no respect for his own complete lack of it.
Archer tended to get crabby and irritable when his officers, in the course of doing their jobs, dared to question the wisdom of his decisions or raise inconvenient realities that he didn't want to hear.
I really loved this about the character. It made him human. And I think the example brought up, Trip deserved a little yelling at. One of the weaknesses that made Trip fun was that he questioned authority.
It made him human? Are you kidding? His hand-picked chief engineer keeps trying to warn the captain that something is amiss and Archer's response is to do NOTHING. That might have been tolerable back when all of the officers were operating in new territory, but after nearly four years? Doesn't experience teach Archer
anything?
Here s what would have made Archer "human" for me: Feeling a little guilt for ignoring Trip when it might have made a difference. Feeling a little compassion for the family of the DEAD. CREWMAN., who is dead because Archer's so-called friends lied to Star Fleet and to Archer -- and now the captain still wants to stick around (even after T'Pol is also injured).
Don't recall the specific early season 3 episode: Malcolm raises the issue of getting careless about plans to go boldly again where angels fear to tread and Archer gets snotty and annoyed that Malcolm would even bring it up.
Don't remember that, but I think the core source of conflict between Archer and Reed was "playing it safe." I mean, it made Shuttlepod One fun. Reed, very persnickety when it comes to rules and regulations, had given up the possibility they could be saved while Trip refused to.
I went back and checked. It was the first scene in "The Xindi." Archer, T'Pol and Reed are in the command center. Reed wants to be cautious when they get to the mining colony.
Archer (sarcastic): "Where are we, Malcolm? This room -- what did it used to be?"
Reed (confused): "Uh, a storage bay, sir ... conduit housings, I believe."
Archer: "But it got retrofitted. Starfleet went to a lot of trouble to turn it into our new command center. Why is that, Malcolm?"
Reed: "Because of our mission, sir."
Archer: "To find the Xindi, right?"
Reed: "Right."
Archer expositions the technobabble: "We don't have the luxury of being cautious anymore!"
So, being well familiar with Reed's cautious nature, Archer should be able to respond to his concerns with a civil tongue in his head. And a reasonable degree of caution is called for. After all, there are two ways for Enterprise to fail: Being destroyed before they can do any good is one them.
He invites Porthos along, but forgets to bring newspapers for him to pee on. Porthos has unsafe sex with Kretassia's Sacred Tree and end up with a nasty case of contrived plot, upsetting Archer to the point that Dr. Phlox finally has to distract him by waving T'Pol's breasts in front of him. Archer has trouble sleeping, so he gets up to watch Phlox groom himself, hunt bats and go jogging. Nothing helps. All the time blaming everyone but himself for his own stupidity.
Not true. Actually the point of the plot was that he knew he was to blame, realized that and apologized. To everyone.
Oh. You know, maybe Archer was written as a little
too human. After all, others in the crew managed to make mistakes, suffer the consequences, accept responsibility and do it all without taking it out on everybody around them.
And geez, Archer has sexual desire - OMG, what are we to do?! This plot makes him human. Archer's humanity (and foibles) was under the microscope - the point of the plot.
I don't care that he has a sex drive. I don't care that he gets the hots for T'Pol. I object to Phlox coming up with this "explanation" for Archer's agitation. Like he can't honestly be concerned about Porthos. That he can honestly be pissed off about the Kretassans. He can't honestly be angry with himself. That it all really and trully and actually came down to Archer's crotch.
Maybe that's what separates me from some of the other posters here. I like characters who don't have it all together and learn from their mistakes. By the end of ENT, I feel Archer has come the farthest -- left his prejudice, contained his irritability (for the most part) and increased his diplomacy.
Well, I'll give you that. After all, he did have the farthest to go.
A beef I have with ENT is that not everyone, or really much of anyone else, advanced along with the plots ... and that's a shame.
Well, let's see if you're right:
In Trip's first appearance filling in for the captain (The Seventh), he can't make decisions on trivial matters like distributing necessary medication to the crew and overhauling systems on the ship that need to be overhauled; next time (Cease Fire), he stands up to the fleets of both Andoria and Vulcan to buy time for Archer to settle things on the surface; and finally (The Vulcan arc), he makes decisions that go against orders, put Earth's relationship with Vulcan at risk and could get him court-martialed. Sounds like he came a long way since his days as the comic relief, despite very few opportunities to be in charge.
Trip begins as outspoken; rash, driven by his emotions; isn't particularly comfortable with aliens; yet he worked with Soval and Shran to prevent a war and later fights to save the coalition in Terra Prime; he even learned to forgive and mourn the architect of his sister's death. He's a serious, thoughtful, intelligent officer by the end of the series.
is that the dislike of Archer can be noticeably emotional, intense, passionate, even vitriolic. It's as if the dislikers are deeply, personally offended by the character. It's not something I have noticed occasionally, but often. Sure, I've run across characters that don't work for me in TV, movies, fiction. But I don't comb the thesaurus for new and more horrible insult-words for them. I haven't suggested that they be replaced--or worse, killed off. I just don't get it.
