Disillusioned
Commander
The double standard is nothing new either , considering how Trip was basically raped in "Unexpected" and everything was played for laughs in that episode, too.
TheGodBen Revisits Enterprise
- Thread starter TheGodBen
- Start date
You know, HIV interpretation is only most obvious to anglophone countries. Granted it's what the creators intended, but for me Stigma worked on that "being an ethnic or religious or political minority - outside of what society accepts as normal" level. Being part of hated ethnicity that has lived as long on that country as the mainstream ethnicity, being a liberal christian amongst evangelicals, being a socialist in a country where Milton Friedman is Jesus, being a widow in 17th century New England, thinking that Dalton was a good Bond... sometimes the status quo even makes a broad connection between those - when you're a liberal, you're also *bad ethnicity* and want to destroy our way of life. Social stigma is a common phenomen that involves very diverse victims, not just gays. I liked that the vulcans were not above this. But I love Enterprise vulcans and their official misinterpretation of their religious heritage as the truth.
I can see that from the GodBen perspective this episode fails because it doesn't explore the mechanics behind social stigma... just says that "victims of social stigma are people too, despite what the status quo says." But oh well, sometimes preaching to the choir feels nice. Besides, I was bitching throughout season 2 that all the suliban, vulcans and andorians had suddenly dissappeared, so I was just happy to see vulcans again.
I can see that from the GodBen perspective this episode fails because it doesn't explore the mechanics behind social stigma... just says that "victims of social stigma are people too, despite what the status quo says." But oh well, sometimes preaching to the choir feels nice. Besides, I was bitching throughout season 2 that all the suliban, vulcans and andorians had suddenly dissappeared, so I was just happy to see vulcans again.
Last edited:
Yes, it's a lonely torch borne by we few, we happy few...
(But Brosnan, I waited for Brosnan to be Bond for years. Adored him.)
And I liked "Stigma" too.
Yeah...but...nah.
You make a good observation, but the medical component of the story - the Vulcan's unwillingness to cure a disease that kills people they don't like - is fairly restricted to the HIV/AIDS allegory and stops me from seeing the episode any other way.
Disillusioned
Commander
For me it was just the way the people behind the show constantly hyped that the episode was an AIDS allegory for a long time in advance and a long time after the show aired.
Cease Fire (**½)
Before I proceed it is important to note that this episode's score was not affected due to its writer being called Chris Black. I do not discriminate based on the colour of people's surnames, the episode would have received the same score if the writer was called Chris White, Chris Hispanic, Chris Asian or Chris Middleeastareaperson. I would only have deducted points if he was called Chris Jew.
The episode has a lot of promise and my biggest complaint is that it fails to live up to a lot of it. In a way this is one of the most important episodes of the series, it is about humanity getting involved in interstellar affairs and bringing the warring Vulcans and Andorians together into some sort of United Federation of Star Systems. Unfortunately for such an important episode a lot of it feels routine; Archer talks to Shran, Soval agrees to meet Shran, there's a shuttle-crash and Archer ends up in a fight. To be honest, I would have been happier watching the negotiations than watching yet another boring Trek shuttle-crash, but that's partly because I'm an exceedingly dull person when I'm not feigning racism.
Ultimately, this episode doesn't come to mean much if my memory serves me well, MA says that the planet is mentioned again in season four but that's it. The conflict on Weytahn is one manufactured for this episode and isn't seen again, and Archer's great diplomacy skills don't even seem to happen on-screen. This is another episode where I admire what the episode is trying to be but feel that it ended up very ordinary.
Before I proceed it is important to note that this episode's score was not affected due to its writer being called Chris Black. I do not discriminate based on the colour of people's surnames, the episode would have received the same score if the writer was called Chris White, Chris Hispanic, Chris Asian or Chris Middleeastareaperson. I would only have deducted points if he was called Chris Jew.
The episode has a lot of promise and my biggest complaint is that it fails to live up to a lot of it. In a way this is one of the most important episodes of the series, it is about humanity getting involved in interstellar affairs and bringing the warring Vulcans and Andorians together into some sort of United Federation of Star Systems. Unfortunately for such an important episode a lot of it feels routine; Archer talks to Shran, Soval agrees to meet Shran, there's a shuttle-crash and Archer ends up in a fight. To be honest, I would have been happier watching the negotiations than watching yet another boring Trek shuttle-crash, but that's partly because I'm an exceedingly dull person when I'm not feigning racism.
Ultimately, this episode doesn't come to mean much if my memory serves me well, MA says that the planet is mentioned again in season four but that's it. The conflict on Weytahn is one manufactured for this episode and isn't seen again, and Archer's great diplomacy skills don't even seem to happen on-screen. This is another episode where I admire what the episode is trying to be but feel that it ended up very ordinary.
Disillusioned
Commander
I have to admit that I liked Soval and T'Pol's crack about the human obsession with Vulcan ears. 
It's too bad Soval had to go and ruin the moment.
It's too bad Soval had to go and ruin the moment.Disillusioned
Commander
Honestly I think the episode where Shran steals the Xindi weapon probably has as much claim to that as "Cease Fire" does. What happened in them gets mentioned briefly, but nothing from them really has that much importance to the plot.
No, I mean that Archer shows that he does not favour one side over the other, so that both the Vulcans and the Andorians trust him. Later, Soval trusts the Enterprise crew to "find the truth" in The Forge and in Babel One/United, it's Archer who, again, bridges the distrust between the Tellarites and the Andorians. He establishes in Cease Fire that he is willing and able to bring two sides together fairly.
Cease Fire's not bad. Andorians make everything better and seeing the Vulcan and Andorian ships face off made me happy.
Cease Fire had that great shot where you saw the Andorian shadow didn't it? That was very neat.
Also anything with Soval in it is win. Soval is a great Vulcan character and the use of him in ENT was excellent. I wish they'd used the actor to play Sarek in STXI though I guess this would have annoyed some.
Also anything with Soval in it is win. Soval is a great Vulcan character and the use of him in ENT was excellent. I wish they'd used the actor to play Sarek in STXI though I guess this would have annoyed some.
Anyone would've been better than who XI got to play Sarek. He was competent, but he had no screen presence.
Probably my favourite moment in Cease Fire was Trip placing the Enterprise between the Andorian and Vulcan ships in a stand-off. Ballsy move.
Every race of people has some "dirty little secrets" in it's past. Why should the Vulcans be depicted any differently? Frankly, I like that ENT showed us the all mighty Vulcans' less than perfect past. It made them that much more believable as a race to me.
And BTW, I'm no fan of Stigma. I thought it was one of the most heavy handed of the Trek "message" episodes.
Future Tense (*****)
I could list all the random things which didn't actually appear or happen in this episode, but I'm not going to do that because I'd just be wasting everybody's time. I mean, you guys comes online to a Trek message board because you're successful high-flyers with incredibly busy social-lives, and I wouldn't want to take away any of the important time you spend changing the world by listing stupid and random things. So all I'm going to say is that Mike Sussman wrote a fantastic script in spite of the fact that Phyllis Strong made him an unusually poor coffee. Good work, Mike.
Future Tense (***½)
And we finally break the string of poor to average episodes, in my opinion this is the first solidly good episode since Minefield half a season ago. In some ways this episode reminds me of TNG's Time Squared (not enough to detract a point) because it has an interesting temporal mystery about a ship out of time and in the end there is no definitive answers given. This episode doesn't suffer as much as other Tasty Coma Wife episodes that don't have an explanation, but I still wish more could have come from it.
One thing hugely in this episode's favour; Tholians! At long last the Tholians are back, and this time their ships are able to move faster than 8km/h. I always loved the look of the Tholians and their ships long before I watched TOS, and I think TNG missed something by not including them. This episode also has some great action sequences which don't feel forced, there's a cool battle sequence involving multiple Suliban and Tholian ships with Enterprise stuck in the middle. I'd also like to single out the moment when Enterprise arrives at the vulcan ship to find it disabled, that moment shocked me when the episode first aired and it still shocked me when I watched it now.
I could list all the random things which didn't actually appear or happen in this episode, but I'm not going to do that because I'd just be wasting everybody's time. I mean, you guys comes online to a Trek message board because you're successful high-flyers with incredibly busy social-lives, and I wouldn't want to take away any of the important time you spend changing the world by listing stupid and random things. So all I'm going to say is that Mike Sussman wrote a fantastic script in spite of the fact that Phyllis Strong made him an unusually poor coffee. Good work, Mike.
Future Tense (***½)
And we finally break the string of poor to average episodes, in my opinion this is the first solidly good episode since Minefield half a season ago. In some ways this episode reminds me of TNG's Time Squared (not enough to detract a point) because it has an interesting temporal mystery about a ship out of time and in the end there is no definitive answers given. This episode doesn't suffer as much as other Tasty Coma Wife episodes that don't have an explanation, but I still wish more could have come from it.
One thing hugely in this episode's favour; Tholians! At long last the Tholians are back, and this time their ships are able to move faster than 8km/h. I always loved the look of the Tholians and their ships long before I watched TOS, and I think TNG missed something by not including them. This episode also has some great action sequences which don't feel forced, there's a cool battle sequence involving multiple Suliban and Tholian ships with Enterprise stuck in the middle. I'd also like to single out the moment when Enterprise arrives at the vulcan ship to find it disabled, that moment shocked me when the episode first aired and it still shocked me when I watched it now.
That's Mike Sussman in a nutshell. This becomes particularly obvious in season four - the guy really is a fanboy at heart. Which is cool.
I think one can chalk that up to TNG trying to consciously distance itself from the original series (aside from the big three - Vulcans, Klingons and Romulans - there are very few TOS aliens on the show) and perhaps the difficulties of actually depicting such an ambiguously defined alien as the Tholians while seeming more convincing then, well, "The Tholian Web".
Anyway, I remember not thinking too much of this episode because it's another temporal war episode about vaguely defined groups fighting some sorta war for some reason. It's clear that the war itself is just a huge MacGuffin, a plot point to keep things moving that the characters are interested in but we're not.
Which I had a problem with - a more developed myth arc about what the cold war is, who the factions are, what their agendas are, and so on, would have really made ENT's rather haphazard pre-S4 attempts at story arc more worthwhile.
Similar threads
