^It's spelled "Malik". Not to be confused with Malic the 24th century Orion male in the Orion Syndicate.
The Great Chronological Run-Through
- Thread starter Deranged Nasat
- Start date
So it is, my mistake. "Malic" is only a letter short of "malice", though, and therefore seems appropriate. Also, it's very close to "magic", which Malik obviously is, because he gets aboard Enterprise somehow as his bird-of-prey disintegrates around him. I guess we have to assume emergency transport, though somehow the beam wasn't detected. Maybe the augments used their brain power to improve the Bird-of-Prey's transporters to render them stealthy?
"The Augments"
The final part of the story arc at last provides some answers, of a sort, when the issue of genetic predisposition comes up in discussion. However, I'm not sure that anything truly conclusive was offered to us. Soong begins plans to reengineer the unborn augments to be less aggressive, though it still isn't certain whether they were originally designed to be more aggressive than other Humans or whether the "mistake", the "defect", exists only in his own perspective now that he's trying desperately to reconcile his realization of how dangerous his children are with his original priorities. With all his talk of "improving" Humanity, he might have simply decided that aggression itself was a bad thing, since elimination of aggression would let him keep his fracturing worldview somewhat intact. To repeat myself, if it were as simple as having the augments be genetically programmed for heightened aggression why is everyone having arguments about the dangers of enhancement? The answer in that case is simply "let's make them without that part". The dilemma doesn't work unless you can't choose and the heightened aggression is an inevitability. Soong does note that genetic engineering was "in its infancy" when the augment embryos were created (itself not very believable if they made legitimate superhumans - some infancy!), but if aggression was not a desired trait but a mere side-effect, why were other useful traits like patience or empathy not enhanced? Superior ability leads to superior ambition? We learned that when Albert Einstein launched his campaign of world domination, desiring to crush all non-geniuses beneath his steel boot. Is the issue that the super-Humans were augmented or that someone decided to press the "Agression" button repeatedly while creating them?
Mention is made of Botany Bay and Khan Noonien Singh, with the former dismissed as a myth by Soong and the legend used quite deftly by Malik as an example of where his brothers and sisters back on Earth went wrong. For all the power of his name, Khan's tale has been left with a nebulous and inconclusive finale because he chose to retreat rather than fight on. The reasons for that decision will be explored in The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, which we'll get to in due time.
In all, this three-part arc is very watchable, but I just don't think the augments make much sense. Again, though, this is really about Soong, and his character arc is handled well.
First Appearances of Things That Are Important
The Briar Patch, AKA Klach D'Kel Brakt. Dialogue in Insurrection seemed to suggest that the region was newly discovered and had only just been named (unofficially), but here Soong finds the Patch and applies a label that apparently sticks two centuries prior to that. I guess someone at Starfleet went through the old records and liked the reference? "They're calling this whole area the Briar Patch". Of course, the inclusion of the Briar Patch is simply a not-entirely-sensible cute reference, just like the episode's ending, in which it's suggested that Arik Soong began the process that Noonian Soong completed.
Next Time: "The Forge". The Vulcans come to a crossroads.
I think that's too black-and-white. The dilemma exists because of what people believe and feel about genetic engineering, which often trumps hard scientific fact when it comes to legal and policy debates. There could be differing schools of thought over whether increased aggression/ambition/superiority complexes are a fault in the design or an inevitable outgrowth of enhancement. After all, since genetic augmentation has been outlawed, there are no test cases beyond the original Augments, so there's no experimental evidence to settle the question one way or the other. So it could be that Soong was right, but he wasn't given the chance to prove it.
It could be that the heightened aggression was an unexpected consequence of enhancing physical strength, metabolism, and the like. Or a side effect of some seemingly unrelated enhancement. The thing about genes is that the cause and effect aren't straightforward, with gene A affecting trait 1 and gene B affecting trait 2 and so on. Any given trait is the product of the interaction of multiple genes, and if you tweak a gene to alter one trait, it will also change other traits in the process. So it could be that the designers of the Augments simply failed to realize that heightened aggression would emerge as a side effect of the other enhancements they made.
Maybe Admiral Dougherty was not a history expert and mistakenly believed that the name was recently coined. There's a thing called the Recency Illusion where we assume that things are recent even though they've been around for generations (like Hollywood doing tons of sequels and remakes, or people using "literally" to mean "figuratively").
I liked the characterization of Arik Soong.
Does the whole "leftover embryos from the Eugenics Wars" mesh alright with Greg Cox's Khan trilogy?
Does the whole "leftover embryos from the Eugenics Wars" mesh alright with Greg Cox's Khan trilogy?
If you squint a little. If you insist on taking every word as literal and inviolable, then there's a minor inconsistency, but the same can be said about countless things in Trek, both canon and tie-ins.
Or perhaps they were two separate regions named a couple of centuries apart, but in both cases the person naming them used the same literary reference?
If so, it's possible that the 24th century Federation just knows the original area as Klach D'Kel Brakt, and the "Briar Patch" name could be used without any confusion, and perhaps without anyone even being aware it used to refer to something else 200 years ago.
^I think that's a needlessly complicated explanation, since it's far simpler to assume that Admiral Dougherty had been too busy with more important matters to become intimately familiar with the nomenclatural history of a given region of space. It would be unrealistic if nobody ever made a mistake.
Conceded. I think, though, that the episodes should have been clearer on whether we were supposed to take what is believed about augments as fact or simply as common prejudice/majority theory. We're not given enough information to come up with our own informed ideas, and the full context of Earth's aversion to the augments is unclear. It's not even entirely clear what exactly Soong is rebelling against, except for a blanket belief on Earth's part that genetic engineering in general should be buried because the augments - as products of a previous genetic engineering program - were apparently dangerous. Is he objecting to the former idea (the blanket ban just because one attempt went wrong), the latter (augments as dangerous), or both? Even if his augments are dangerous, that shouldn't have any impact on his pursuit of genetic augmentation in general, he might argue, though he's hardly doing his cause any favours if his plan is to resurrect the "failed" past rather than create something new. Later he seems to consider that there's a biological cause for the problems he has with his augments, talking of mistakes and defects and the infancy of the science - recent events have presumably made him more sympathetic to the standard theory, we assume, but still, if it was really so widely accepted that the augments were biologically pre-destined for aggression, in that case surely he was was damaging his own interests by focusing on existing augments rather than creating new ones? Pick your battles wisely, doctor. Seek the victory within potential reach, not the hopeless cause. Granted, there's the fact that he sees this batch as his children; he's a parent, not just a scientist, and that's informing his decisions and perspectives too. I guess what I'm saying here is that while Soong is a delightfully complex and compelling character, the issue of the augments themselves and what's being argued over doesn't seem very clear to me.
If there had actually been exchanges touching on what you post above, the issue would have been of more interest to me. Something like:
Archer: "Augments are inherently aggressive; those embryos are wired for it. Heightening reflexes enhances the threat response, it's unavoidable. All legitimate studies support this conclusion, doctor. You must know that".
Soong: "No, captain. Most researchers simply gave in to political pressures and parroted back the politic conclusion. Now I grant you the theory has merit, but it is not conclusively proven, not by a long shot. There are plenty of studies that challenge the accepted theory, but when people like me try to pursue these findings, the government quashes our efforts because it fears a public backlash".
I mean, this is basically the sort of thing that Archer and Soong were doing anyway; it just needed to actually touch upon the apparent belief that augments are aggressive and dangerous and tell us why they're popularly supposed to be that way (whether it's true or not). Is it simply because they went rogue and murderous and people assume it must have been "heightened ability leads to heightened ambition", or is there cause to assume it's biological? If there's no biological basis for it - or there are arguments from some quarters that there's no biological basis, and that it was the political climate or the people who raised them that imparted certain values that explain their behaviour - why not discuss this? If Soong believes that the idea of the augments being inherently dangerous is wrong, why does he believe it's wrong? What is his scientific rationale for that? What justification do the Human majority use to say that it's so - even though we'd be dealing with feelings and politics there would still be at least the insistence or pretence of an objective rationale. What is it?
As it is, I don't think there's much here beyond, "he says thing one, the other says thing two". The episodes suggest that one and not two was right, but again we don't know why that should be the case.
The fact that Humans in Star Trek are somewhat irrational about the issue of genetic augmentation is a detail I enjoy - it gives them a distinct national and racial character that's otherwise sometimes lacking. I just think that the epsiodes of the augment arc simply didn't probe deep enough to be truly successful to the degree they could have been. There is some interesting ambiguity in the episode; like I say, it's not clear to me whether Soong's idea of reducing aggression in the new embryos is an actual "correction" of a genuine flaw or just an effort to turn off normal aggressive instincts as a desperate attempt to make augments that are acceptable to the masses, justification for keeping the pro-augment position legitimate in light of what he's been forced to accept about his children. I don't think the episodes really explain it, though. Perhaps they don't need to, since to be fair Soong carries the story on his own.
I think the trilogy did touch on the ambiguity in Archer's discussion with Phlox. Since Denobulans have managed to genetically engineer themselves without creating world conquerors, that suggests that humans may be overreacting because of one bad experience. As for Soong, the ambiguity about whether he's in the right or not is, I think, more a feature than a bug. It's often better for a story to raise questions than to give answers. Audiences think and talk about a story more if they have ambiguities to debate than if everything is neatly spelled out.
I agree; I've praised other episodes of the series precisely because they sought to question rather than answer.
I just happen to think that in this case, the episodes would have been strengthened had there been a few more objective points to latch on to. As it is, it's difficult to know where to start. These definitely weren't bad episodes by any means, but they don't quite get the mileage they should from the augments. Or so I'd argue.
Perhaps the difference is that humans are more likely to produce a Khan that the Denobulans are.
"The Forge"
The episodes of the "Vulcan trilogy" are probably my favourite of the series. They're of immense importance to the meta-story and they really get under the skin of the most important and heavily-featured alien race. They're not perfect by any means, but I find it easy to overlook any flaws when we're given episodes that so readily delve into the established content of the setting, justifying the story in terms of what the rest of the series has established about this universe, and challenging it.
We finally get an examination of the Human/Vulcan relationship in frank terms, in which Forrest and Soval are used to offer an unflinching account of why the frustration and obstructionism exists to begin with. Soval's acknowledgement that Vulcans are afraid of Humans because they see Humans as reminiscent of Vulcans is at once completely understandable and successful at casting new light on their previous interactions. The trope of Humans developing quickly or being super-adaptable is a rather tired one, and not one I'm particularly fond of, but it's used well here, probably because it's tied in with the idea of Humans being essentially a more free-spirited version of the early Vulcans. Vulcans fear uncontrolled indulgence and exuberance, and after Tolaris and the Trellium zombies and the Menos/Wanderer incidents we know why. It falls quite neatly into place when we consider that Humans aren't merely one of the many protectorates of Vulcan (e.g. Mazar, Coridan, Agoran, Trill) or a potential agitator (Andor) but in addition to these roles they also fill the role of Vulcans themselves. We know by now that Vulcans fear themselves, that they're truly convinced that unleashed and uncontrolled they're harmful - inevitably so. They're like the augments in that regard, only self-aware and self-questioning to a degree that the augments supposedly aren't. Humans are the rise of the Vulcans but far more rapid, far more ambitious and motivated. Superior ability breeds superior ambition? Who knows, but the Vulcans might agree. In which case, containing and gentling Humans is an assumed necessity.
From what the series has shown us so far, it makes sense what Soval is saying. Forrest can see it too - it's clear that something crystalizes for him in that exchange, that he thinks he might begin at last to understand. Then he dies, of course, and that leaves Soval to take up the cause of Human-Vulcan partnership. After all that Forrest has done to accommodate and capitulate to the Vulcans, even when his sympathies lie with Archer and the other go-getters, it's great to see Soval reciprocate out of respect.
After Soval's surprising and welcome thawing in "Home" - where he thanked Archer and announced that he'd been wrong to oppose his assignment to Enterprise - he now moves from being an obstacle to being an asset, with the High Command having overstepped itself, and Soval unwilling to play along. We might wonder if Soval's long professional exile on Earth led to his estrangement from the rest of the High Command. He's no longer within the loop, and returning to the tight ranks of the highest halls after that absence he can see how things have changed, and not for the better.
The High Command wastes no time in trying to lay blame for the Earth embassy's bombing on Andoria, before focusing on the Syrranites instead (a nice piece of foreshadowing - V'Las has several objectives in mind). I particularly like the assertion from V'Las and the High Command - a claim that Soval isn't buying for a moment - that the Syrranites are violent. That's all too often an accusation levelled at those who oppose a government or its majority policies, even when the accusation in practice makes little to no sense. In reality, I'd say that it's the threat to the government's claimed monopoly on violence that provokes the accusation. A projection, one might say; an assumption that the priorities of others are the same as your own, a telling indictment of what the governing authority values, or else an effort to define the narrative by reinforcing the sense that only the government can hold legitimate control or power, and thus dissenters are inherently illegitimate. It's the pretence of holding a debate when really you're the one outfitting the environment in which that debate is to be held, ensuring that the opposition is between a rock and a hard place, and both of them are you. The argument unfolds on your terms, so that you win. The High Command cannot abide those who challenge it, and so those who challenge it are violent, because violence is illegitimate unless it serves the High Command. A mistake, in practice, because Soval is among those who finds the accusation impossible to accept. He may dislike the Syrranites, believe them to be misguided or foolish (we can assume, since T'Pol clearly believes it) but he knows that they're not given to violence.
In the case of Vulcan, this becomes more fascinating than being a straightforward case of a government out of control, because suppression and repression as a means to quell violence, or any sort of "acting out" is the very foundation of the Vulcan state religion. Again, this all makes sense to me - we can understand how things got to be the way they are on Vulcan, because used and interpreted in a certain way, Surakian culture can easily become a justification for what we see unfolding here. The High Command isn't unpleasant for the sake of it, it's an outgrowth of who the Vulcans are and what they've tried to become. Taken down one path of many, that is.
Simply seeing the environment of Vulcan also gives a feel for who these people are and how they developed. The hilarious Sehlat conversation, T'Pol and Syrran quietly enduring where Archer struggles, the history of Surak: We're immersed in Vulcan to a degree that allows us to place them in context. They're a harsh people, strong by necessity, knowing that they must master themselves and/or their surroundings or they will fall. At this point in the chronology, we know who the Vulcans are, not just what either they or people like Archer would want us to see in them. As with the Xindi, the Vulcans have moved from being obstacles to being a people whose fate is intertwined with Earth's whether they like it or not, and who are beginning to realize they've been lured down a dangerous path. And we're invested in them.
I note that Syrranite hair is unkempt and varied, in contrast to the conformist Vulcan bowl-cut exhibited elsewhere.
First Appearances of Things That Are Important
Katra. As an extension of their suppressed telepathic potential, the Vulcans can transfer the "essence" of a mind to the brain of another. It's ambiguous as to what that means in practice, but it's accepted that it allows the living to, in some manner, "touch the mind" of the dead. Memories and personality both survive, apparently being duplicated within the brain of the recipient.
T'Pau. Despite the intentions of "First Steps", this can't be the same individual we met on Trill a century ago, as this T'Pau is in her early thirties. In practice, this doesn't present any problems, as there's nothing but the name to suggest that the two should be the same person. So this is a new T'Pau, and she'll be an important character going forward.
Continuity
The incident at P'Jem is mentioned, with Archer's identity on Vulcan still tied to it. In retrospect, "The Andorian Incident" was one of the most important episodes of the series. It cast a shadow of significance over every Human-Vulcan interaction from that point on, and introduced the conflict between the Vulcans' contemplative culture and paranoid government, both of which are beginning to splinter here even as they start to butt heads in open conflict.
The idea of mind-melds as deviant behaviour is one of many previously-established Vulcan-related concepts included here. The relevance of Koss and T'Les is another.
Mention is made of "those who marched beneath the raptor's wings", who wished to "return to savagery". Although there's no indication of it here, we've already met the descendants of these people. Ironically enough, as we come to learn more about their society we'll see that they too were moved to embrace controls and boundaries designed to keep their societies functional and their passions in check - rather than internal control, defined through meditation and self-awareness, the Romulans have gone in for rigid caste systems, honour codes and a unifying nationalism that promotes the empire over the individual or the clan. There's not so much difference as might be supposed, and of course Vulcan is starting unknowingly to model itself after Romulus.
Next Time: "Awakening".
The episodes of the "Vulcan trilogy" are probably my favourite of the series. They're of immense importance to the meta-story and they really get under the skin of the most important and heavily-featured alien race. They're not perfect by any means, but I find it easy to overlook any flaws when we're given episodes that so readily delve into the established content of the setting, justifying the story in terms of what the rest of the series has established about this universe, and challenging it.
We finally get an examination of the Human/Vulcan relationship in frank terms, in which Forrest and Soval are used to offer an unflinching account of why the frustration and obstructionism exists to begin with. Soval's acknowledgement that Vulcans are afraid of Humans because they see Humans as reminiscent of Vulcans is at once completely understandable and successful at casting new light on their previous interactions. The trope of Humans developing quickly or being super-adaptable is a rather tired one, and not one I'm particularly fond of, but it's used well here, probably because it's tied in with the idea of Humans being essentially a more free-spirited version of the early Vulcans. Vulcans fear uncontrolled indulgence and exuberance, and after Tolaris and the Trellium zombies and the Menos/Wanderer incidents we know why. It falls quite neatly into place when we consider that Humans aren't merely one of the many protectorates of Vulcan (e.g. Mazar, Coridan, Agoran, Trill) or a potential agitator (Andor) but in addition to these roles they also fill the role of Vulcans themselves. We know by now that Vulcans fear themselves, that they're truly convinced that unleashed and uncontrolled they're harmful - inevitably so. They're like the augments in that regard, only self-aware and self-questioning to a degree that the augments supposedly aren't. Humans are the rise of the Vulcans but far more rapid, far more ambitious and motivated. Superior ability breeds superior ambition? Who knows, but the Vulcans might agree. In which case, containing and gentling Humans is an assumed necessity.
From what the series has shown us so far, it makes sense what Soval is saying. Forrest can see it too - it's clear that something crystalizes for him in that exchange, that he thinks he might begin at last to understand. Then he dies, of course, and that leaves Soval to take up the cause of Human-Vulcan partnership. After all that Forrest has done to accommodate and capitulate to the Vulcans, even when his sympathies lie with Archer and the other go-getters, it's great to see Soval reciprocate out of respect.
After Soval's surprising and welcome thawing in "Home" - where he thanked Archer and announced that he'd been wrong to oppose his assignment to Enterprise - he now moves from being an obstacle to being an asset, with the High Command having overstepped itself, and Soval unwilling to play along. We might wonder if Soval's long professional exile on Earth led to his estrangement from the rest of the High Command. He's no longer within the loop, and returning to the tight ranks of the highest halls after that absence he can see how things have changed, and not for the better.
The High Command wastes no time in trying to lay blame for the Earth embassy's bombing on Andoria, before focusing on the Syrranites instead (a nice piece of foreshadowing - V'Las has several objectives in mind). I particularly like the assertion from V'Las and the High Command - a claim that Soval isn't buying for a moment - that the Syrranites are violent. That's all too often an accusation levelled at those who oppose a government or its majority policies, even when the accusation in practice makes little to no sense. In reality, I'd say that it's the threat to the government's claimed monopoly on violence that provokes the accusation. A projection, one might say; an assumption that the priorities of others are the same as your own, a telling indictment of what the governing authority values, or else an effort to define the narrative by reinforcing the sense that only the government can hold legitimate control or power, and thus dissenters are inherently illegitimate. It's the pretence of holding a debate when really you're the one outfitting the environment in which that debate is to be held, ensuring that the opposition is between a rock and a hard place, and both of them are you. The argument unfolds on your terms, so that you win. The High Command cannot abide those who challenge it, and so those who challenge it are violent, because violence is illegitimate unless it serves the High Command. A mistake, in practice, because Soval is among those who finds the accusation impossible to accept. He may dislike the Syrranites, believe them to be misguided or foolish (we can assume, since T'Pol clearly believes it) but he knows that they're not given to violence.
In the case of Vulcan, this becomes more fascinating than being a straightforward case of a government out of control, because suppression and repression as a means to quell violence, or any sort of "acting out" is the very foundation of the Vulcan state religion. Again, this all makes sense to me - we can understand how things got to be the way they are on Vulcan, because used and interpreted in a certain way, Surakian culture can easily become a justification for what we see unfolding here. The High Command isn't unpleasant for the sake of it, it's an outgrowth of who the Vulcans are and what they've tried to become. Taken down one path of many, that is.
Simply seeing the environment of Vulcan also gives a feel for who these people are and how they developed. The hilarious Sehlat conversation, T'Pol and Syrran quietly enduring where Archer struggles, the history of Surak: We're immersed in Vulcan to a degree that allows us to place them in context. They're a harsh people, strong by necessity, knowing that they must master themselves and/or their surroundings or they will fall. At this point in the chronology, we know who the Vulcans are, not just what either they or people like Archer would want us to see in them. As with the Xindi, the Vulcans have moved from being obstacles to being a people whose fate is intertwined with Earth's whether they like it or not, and who are beginning to realize they've been lured down a dangerous path. And we're invested in them.
I note that Syrranite hair is unkempt and varied, in contrast to the conformist Vulcan bowl-cut exhibited elsewhere.
First Appearances of Things That Are Important
Katra. As an extension of their suppressed telepathic potential, the Vulcans can transfer the "essence" of a mind to the brain of another. It's ambiguous as to what that means in practice, but it's accepted that it allows the living to, in some manner, "touch the mind" of the dead. Memories and personality both survive, apparently being duplicated within the brain of the recipient.
T'Pau. Despite the intentions of "First Steps", this can't be the same individual we met on Trill a century ago, as this T'Pau is in her early thirties. In practice, this doesn't present any problems, as there's nothing but the name to suggest that the two should be the same person. So this is a new T'Pau, and she'll be an important character going forward.
Continuity
The incident at P'Jem is mentioned, with Archer's identity on Vulcan still tied to it. In retrospect, "The Andorian Incident" was one of the most important episodes of the series. It cast a shadow of significance over every Human-Vulcan interaction from that point on, and introduced the conflict between the Vulcans' contemplative culture and paranoid government, both of which are beginning to splinter here even as they start to butt heads in open conflict.
The idea of mind-melds as deviant behaviour is one of many previously-established Vulcan-related concepts included here. The relevance of Koss and T'Les is another.
Mention is made of "those who marched beneath the raptor's wings", who wished to "return to savagery". Although there's no indication of it here, we've already met the descendants of these people. Ironically enough, as we come to learn more about their society we'll see that they too were moved to embrace controls and boundaries designed to keep their societies functional and their passions in check - rather than internal control, defined through meditation and self-awareness, the Romulans have gone in for rigid caste systems, honour codes and a unifying nationalism that promotes the empire over the individual or the clan. There's not so much difference as might be supposed, and of course Vulcan is starting unknowingly to model itself after Romulus.
Next Time: "Awakening".
The Vulcan Civil War trilogy is indeed one of the high points of the series, if not the franchise. That opening Forrest-Soval conversation is a truly classic Trek moment -- kudos to Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens for that.
However, it does showcase something I both like and regret about the fourth season, the extreme indulgence in continuity porn. I liked the way the prior seasons set up a 22nd-century Vulcan culture that was distinct from what we saw in later centuries, because it makes sense that a culture would evolve over time; look how profoundly America has changed in its gender and racial vaues in the past 100 years. But this trilogy's effort to turn them into TOS/TNG-style Vulcans in one fell swoop is just a little too pat. It's an effective story in its way, and given that this was the last season (not known for a fact at the time, but surely suspected), it makes sense to resolve the question here rather than through a more gradual transformation; but it does feel a bit too much like an effort to "fix" something that wasn't really broken.
As for how the Romulans coped with their inherent savagery, Myriad Universes: The Tears of Eridanus suggests that it was by embracing S'task's philosophy of mnhei'sahe, the Romulan code of martial honor. So still a form of discipline, just one that doesn't entail suppressing emotion.
Which leads me to wonder if you're going to cover the Myriad Universes tales in this chronological read-through.
However, it does showcase something I both like and regret about the fourth season, the extreme indulgence in continuity porn. I liked the way the prior seasons set up a 22nd-century Vulcan culture that was distinct from what we saw in later centuries, because it makes sense that a culture would evolve over time; look how profoundly America has changed in its gender and racial vaues in the past 100 years. But this trilogy's effort to turn them into TOS/TNG-style Vulcans in one fell swoop is just a little too pat. It's an effective story in its way, and given that this was the last season (not known for a fact at the time, but surely suspected), it makes sense to resolve the question here rather than through a more gradual transformation; but it does feel a bit too much like an effort to "fix" something that wasn't really broken.
As for how the Romulans coped with their inherent savagery, Myriad Universes: The Tears of Eridanus suggests that it was by embracing S'task's philosophy of mnhei'sahe, the Romulan code of martial honor. So still a form of discipline, just one that doesn't entail suppressing emotion.
Which leads me to wonder if you're going to cover the Myriad Universes tales in this chronological read-through.
That's a fair point. With full knowledge of how Vulcans are portrayed across the franchise (knowledge which of course I'm inconsistently and randomly pretending I don't have as part of the experiment), it is a bit hard to move past the sense that this is an excessively self-aware exercise in bridging the portrayals and closing the gap, which might make it a bit clinical. Also, given the frequent complaints that it was wrong for Vulcans to act the way they did in the early seasons of Enterprise, for all that these episodes serve to legitimate those portrayals by crafting a good story out of the Vulcans' identity struggles, they can just as easily read as the admission of a mistake, playing to the opinion that the show's Vulcans were a misfire, albeit one that was successfully "rescued". (Myself, I think they were definitely the strongest and most successful aspect of the series and its setting).
I am. The Myriad Universes draw from the novel 'verse as much as the canon and in one case - your own Voyager tale - are directly relevant to the main continuity. Since alternate realities are a recognized part of the Trek 'verse, I consider Myriad Universes tales to be, for the purposes of this project, legitimate chapters that simply happen to take place elsewhere, and which thematically work to strengthen the core narrative. After all, a story of "meanwhile, in another quantum reality" is basically the Trek version of a chapter in a novel that explores "meanwhile, in a distant land"; it's there to illuminate the rest, it isn't actually disconnected or there's no point to it existing, I presume.
This is the pinnacle of ENT and the promise the series had. I firmly believe that if these had been the types of stories told, it would have lasted for 7 seasons.
But most of the TOS-era novels aren't overtly linked to the modern novel continuity, which seems to be the focus of DN's run-through as I understand it. Otherwise we would've seen reviews of the past portions of books like Strangers from the Sky and Federation by now.
But why should a series run for seven seasons? Why continue a tradition that is not dramatically necessary?
But this is a wonderful high point, and it's a shame that stories like this rather than the time war were the focus of the series. But ah well, we wouldn't have had the fascinating crescendo of the DTI books without the time war
TV decisions are based on profit, not drama. The cast and crew get contractually mandated raises every season, and after seven seasons they're usually too expensive to keep. Generally the only shows you see running longer than seven seasons are those that rotate most or all of their cast, such as Law and Order or Smallville (which by season 10 had only one of its season 1 regulars remaining, and had shrunk its total regular cast to only four people).
If you're asking why a series couldn't end sooner, certainly it could, but again, money comes first in network decision-making, and if a show is a proven moneymaker, a network would rather keep it around than gamble on something new -- which is why so many shows keep going beyond the point where they should've ended. (Supernatural's story was originally meant to wrap up in three seasons, then in five. It's now about to begin its tenth season. And, yes, it defies the pattern since it still has its original leads, but there are only two of them, so it's not as bad as trying to hold onto a whole 7- or 8-person ensemble.)
In the case of Enterprise, though, there are story reasons for wishing it could've run longer, since if it had gone on another year or two, it would've gotten into the Earth-Romulan War and really started laying the groundwork for the birth of the Federation. Well, that and the fact that, in many fans' eyes, it didn't really start to get good until season 4. (Although season 1 is my personal favorite.)
Yes I wanted it to continue because there was so much story there. The Romulan War and the rise of the Federation. All of these things I wanted to see. Honestly if there was ever a time for a Star Trek series to have more that 7 seasons it was ENT.
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