I'm of two minds on "Marauders"... what are your thoughts?

[Quinton O'Connor]

I've always been torn right down the middle on this one. When it originally aired I was 15 and eager to see more Klingon conflicts after being weened on TNG and DS9 storytelling, and I recall being positively giddy that they were in the episode. But I also recalled being kind of let down with the episode itself, and I could never remember why.

Well, here I am in 2015, and I've finally rewatched the damn episode, and... wow, I'm surprised I didn't remember more of the reasons I was left so confused about how to react to it.

It just feels so utterly... well... schizoid, I guess? There's some great, great material in here, but seldom do I see an episode of television at such odds with itself; there's some pretty bad material in here, too.

First off, let's praise Mike Vejar's directing, because as usual, he gets the tone, flavor, and depth down pat. I wish I could remember the forum member here who had those super-popular Babylon 5 reviews like four or five years ago, because every time Mike Vejar directed, his enthusiasm about that fact was absolutely contagious. Anyway, rightfully so. Vejar is good stuff.

The characterization of the lead Klingon is also enjoyable, and the believability of the sets, and the music (goodness gracious, ENT had such consistently superior scores to its predecessors) and the overall message. And taken individually, some of these scenes just sing. T'Pol surprising Archer by agreeing with him on the matter of helping to defend the locals, T'Pol and Mayweather training them in martial arts, Bakula selling the whole "Archer is contemplating" schtick... quality all-around.

But then... I don't know, guys. Is it the climax that sort of ruins it for me? It feels so goofy somehow. Is that a me thing? Or is this the general perception? They run around taking heavy risks at every turn, one of the miners throws a stone at a Klingon (what is this, Final Fantasy Tactics?) and then they corral themselves into a shallow trench and Reed lights a fire around the Klingons. Archer is all, "bullies are bad, m'kay!" The end! Everything about this sequence feels really silly, like... I get it, I understand the compulsion not to want to kill the Klingons. Totally. But the amount of dumb luck required to ensure no one gets shot, all the Klingons conveniently move practically in single file, and then just... the big "gee, whiz" moment being a Ring of Fire... it feels off.

There's more, though. If it were just that, I wouldn't be making this thread. I'd file away my thoughts as, "solid episode otherwise, but bad finish." There's an overarching vibe to "Marauders" that I can't seem to quantify. Maybe it stems from Archer's overly obvious "teach a man to fish" line? Maybe that wasn't as overly obvious in 2002? (I doubt it.) Maybe the whole episode feels like a weird, probably-better version of something we might have seen in, say, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues? Except this time The Legend is Continuing in Space? Maybe that's what it is; maybe I just find the "let's help the cornered schoolkids deal with bullies" plot kind of insipid, uninspired.

I just don't know. All I know for sure is that I can't for the life of me decide whether I like or dislike this hour of Trek.

Enough rambling aimlessly from me. I'm here for alternative opinions. What do you think? Is this a great episode? Is this an awful episode? Is this... an episode?

Are these two cute together as guerrilla warriors or what?

 

[Dukhat]

You'll have to forgive me as the last time I saw this episode was when it was originally broadcast. But based on your summary, I do remember thinking how disappointed I was seeing the Klingons. Not only did they look like TNG Klingons (which we'd already gotten in Broken Bow anyway, but still), but now they're acting like a bunch of petty thugs who are easily stopped by a "ring of fire" as you put it. Why couldn't they have been, like, Orion pirates or something? Use some TOS lore instead of just reusing the same old shit that DS9 constantly had.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Oh yeah, that's a fair point as well. Actually the script makes it known that these particular Klingons are likely unaffiliated with the Empire (which is really just a convenient way of ensuring that viewers don't ask what would otherwise be a Big Question: "wouldn't the Klingon Empire just hit this planet hard in retribution for its people's little revolution?") but then a new question sort of arises, and it feeds into what you said: "if we're not even getting more development on the 22nd-century Klingon Empire, why not use someone else entirely?"

I think that went over my head at 15, but I do remember having combed the net by then trying to figure out why the heck the Klingons had forehead ridges. Up until the fourth season I'd come to the conclusion that maybe Klingons were just retroactively always like this, nevermind the tongue-in-cheek dialogue about it in DS9.

 

[T'Girl]

Despite their self-identification as "warriors," Klingon warriors really aren't soldiers in a professional military. In this episode especially they're more like a street gang robbing a local business. It's totally understandable that they would possess little knowledge of tactics.

Archer's desire not to kill the Klingons is just him being his usual clueless self.

As Enterprise goes, I thought it to be an okay average episode.

 

[Dukhat]

The example of using Klingons in this episode instead of Orion pirates is just a symptom of a much bigger problem ENT had. Mainly, that the writers couldn't get out of their mode of making the show "TNG Jr." instead of a real prequel to TOS. Between TNG Klingons, Ferengi, Borg, Risa, a hero ship that looks like the Akira class, Romulans wearing post-Nemesis uniforms, Remans, and a Vulcan chick that looks suspiciously like a Borg chick from 200 years in the future, the show was really a prequel to TOS in name only.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Some of the examples of the writers attempting to make up for all that by reinforcing that this is a show set prior to all the rest lead to rather frustratingly winky dialogue, too, heh. I'm doing this rewatch with a friend; I introduced her to Trek beyond the new movies beginning roughly 18 months ago and she's blitzed through TNG and DS9 before starting ENT. (Yeah, it's kind of an odd order, but whatever.)

She's always facepalming when one of ENT's crew is all like, "one day we'll have a directive that will make these decisions for us. Until then . . ." There are quite a few of those moments, and the "directive" bit is even done repeatedly. Both times, without missing a beat, she blurts, "boy, that'd be prime!"

I do seem to remember the show's fourth season being the point at which it actually begins to feel like it's set before TOS rather than "after First Contact, but also, this is TNG's illegitimate love child, too." And of course the third season is very much its own thing as well, but I'm trying to refrain from speaking too loudly about how much I liked the Xindi arc when it originally aired until I rewatch it for the first time and make sure I still feel that way. I think it dragged for a while early on, for example; that might hamper things.

First two seasons, though? Totally. The Vulcan/Andorian tensions are nicely relevant and as I'm enough of a fan of ENT to have fully enjoyed several episodes up until this point I'm glad to be rewatching even its first, relatively weak half, but... the idea that it started off as a show that was failing at its alleged mission statement isn't one I would disagree with.

 

[eyeresist]

For me the highlight of Marauders is Trip's friendship with the kid. The weakest part is the whole plot resolution, the way the klingons are dealt with, and how they respond.
The klingons are shown to be utterly incompetent at combat, which is bizarre when it's supposed to be their thing. And the way they give up and leave is ridiculous. Why not just beam out of the fire circle, and then kill everyone?
The miners are obviously not going to have the Enterprise crew to protect them all the time, they are still lousy fighters ("drop and roll" is a combat technique of limited usefulness), and they can't just repeat the "moving the camp" trick every time.
Really, the only effective way to end the threat would be to kill the klingons, or destroy their ship (effectively killing them).

She's always facepalming when one of ENT's crew is all like, "one day we'll have a directive that will make these decisions for us. Until then . . ." There are quite a few of those moments, and the "directive" bit is even done repeatedly.

It's not like they did it every episode. I think they only did it two or three times over four years.

stuff

Yeah, you hate ENT. We already knew that.

 

[2takesfrakes]

The Klingons were just bullies in TOS, as opposed to the spiritual, honourable people they are in TNG (and to a lesser extent in the TOS movies, starting with TSFS). Unfortunately, this episode takes the bully analogy a little too literally and we end up with an episode not too different from the half white/half black aliens of TOS. The unremitting message of it isn't necessary, it just plays down to the audience. But in television, especially, STAR TREK writers don't want to be made to work any harder than they have to. Yes, bullies need to be contained, as if in a Ring of Fire, and dealt with appropriately ... that's not a bad idea for a show, but use some imagination. Always with the Klingons ...

 

[Melakon]

When I first saw it, the big plan to fool the Klingons immediately reminded me of how the Johnson clan of Rock Ridge fooled Hedley Lamar's gang in Blazing Saddles.

 

[Christopher]

There's an overarching vibe to "Marauders" that I can't seem to quantify. Maybe it stems from Archer's overly obvious "teach a man to fish" line? Maybe that wasn't as overly obvious in 2002? (I doubt it.) Maybe the whole episode feels like a weird, probably-better version of something we might have seen in, say, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues? Except this time The Legend is Continuing in Space? Maybe that's what it is; maybe I just find the "let's help the cornered schoolkids deal with bullies" plot kind of insipid, uninspired.

Try The Seven Samurai. Or The Magnificent Seven. Or Battle Beyond the Stars. Or Three Amigos. Or "The Magnificent Warriors" in the original Battlestar Galactica. Or any of the three thousand other TV episodes and movies that have used the exact same plot. "Marauders" is just a by-the-numbers rehash of one of the most overused plots around. There's nothing particularly interesting about it.

Although I have found its depiction of civilian Klingon raiders to be useful to draw on in my Enterprise novels. (I was going to use Korok, the lead Klingon from "Marauders," as an antagonist in the opening chapter of Tower of Babel, but I decided I had enough established show characters in the book already and it would be too coincidental, so I changed the character name to Lokog. Though that doesn't rule out a later appearance by Korok if I find the right opportunity.)

It's also annoying for perpetuating the abuse of science begun in VGR: "Demon," treating deuterium as something rare that has to be mined from planet surfaces, rather than an isotope of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. Although the way "Marauders" treats it makes relatively less nonsense, because at least they treat it as a flammable gas. ("Demon" was written with dilithium as the rare substance in mind, but the producers did a search-and-replace with deuterium because they liked the joke of the ship "running out of gas.") I can almost rationalize the "Marauders" version by assuming that there are deposits of some kind of radioactive element that produces deuterium as a decay product, creating pockets of concentrated deuterium that are marginally more cost-efficient to mine than it would be to collect large quantities of hydrogen or water and refine them to extract the small percentage of deuterium they contain. But it's still an annoying bit of bad science.

 

[Mage]

its depiction of civilian Klingon raiders

Which was perhaps my favorite aspect of this episode. For some reason or another, we mostly see the military aspects of a certain culture/race in Star Trek. The Cardassian military, the Romulan military, the Klingon military.... Every now and then we would see some civilian scientists, and on one occasion even a Klingon chef.
But what about the rest? So yeah, the idea of civilian raiders was great, wish we could have had more of that.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

But it's still an annoying bit of bad science.

Heh, I think I've considered that before, too. You're certainly not wrong. It's odd.

It's interesting that you almost brought this Klingon bloke back for one of your novels. Thanks for sharing!

As for your first point... yeah, true enough. It's all about the execution, I think. This reminded me of an obscure episode of the Kung Fu sequel series in particular because of some of the dialogue involved.

 

[Mach5]

There's nothing particularly interesting about it.

Fun Fact - Jolene Blalock appeared in two different works of televised sci-fi named Marauder(s), and they both sucked.

 

[Praetorian]

The ending was utter rubish.

Instead of an epic fight to the death, with bat'leths clashin and kung fu fightin, we get a lame ass solution lifted straight from the A-Team.

Worse, after beaming up, the Klingons would have simply nuked the entire colony from orbit. Only way to be sure.

Archer and crew killing a bunch of Klingons could have paved the way for the worsening of Human-Klingon relations...but no...

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, it's typical of the second season, in that it's unambitious and meandering and ultimately rather purposeless. The first season of ENT is better than is generally recognized, because it had a real arc to it, a progression from beginning to end with Enterprise and humanity gradually establishing themselves as a player in the interstellar community, taking actions that had ramifications later on, and with Archer and T'Pol going from an initial rivalry and mistrust to a real friendship. But the second season is much more directionless, just wandering around doing random stories that don't advance the universe or the characters all that much (with a few exceptions). It's largely a season of filler, and "Marauders" is one of the filleriest of the lot.

Not that I think they should've ended things with violence, though. That's not a very Trekkish solution. But the ending we did get was kind of weak. As were the beginning and the middle.

 

[eyeresist]

Thanks for the info on deuterium, Christopher.

I didn't mind the obvious lift from Magnificent Seven, except that as Melakon point out they seem to have watched Blazing Saddles instead. I suppose it's possible the lame "solution" to the plot was a result of studio interference, i.e. "the good guys can't kill anyone."

What alternate solutions could they have used? Here are some suggestions:

1. They move the camp onto a deposit of flammable stuff and blow it up, causing the Klingons to think the miners have destroyed themselves.
2. Enterprise fires at the planet and pretends to kill them that way.
3. Phlox gets the miners to fake the symptoms of a terrible plague (bonus points if it's one especially dangerous to Klingons).
4. Archer claims the planet in the name of Earth? A whole lot of interesting political implications there.

 

[Goji]

Marauders is a fairly lame and forgettable episode, but it has the benefit of following A Night in Sickbay. By comparison it comes off pretty well. It has some nice location shooting too.

 

[eyeresist]

I much prefer A Night in Sick Bay, because I enjoy the character-based comedy. The story of Marauders could be told with any characters, it's so generic.

 

[Goji]

It also doesn't have junior-high level sexual "tension" forced between the show's main leads, who have only a platonic based relationship in every one of the show's 97 other episodes.

 

[eyeresist]

The "tension" was entirely on stressed-out Archer's part.

Also, at that point the writers were considering an Archer/T'Pol romance. Obviously that didn't go anywhere...