Perhaps the most interesting episode is the two parter "The Gambit." In it there is an interesting interaction with the Vulcan investigators too, and they are not always so forthcoming, if I recall correctly.
Enterprise's take on the Vulcans was fascinating...on paper.
The problem was that the execution was often very dubious, with much of its issues interwoven with the fairly unimpressive writing of Archer in the first two and half seasons. Far too frequently they were simply written as a strawman to make him seem right, even when very questionable acts like the ending of the Andorian Incident made him come off as far worse. The potential to really present a more nuanced take on them was there, but the constant self-righteous arrogance by so many Vulcan characters without much depth to counter it meant it didn't really live up to that until season 4.
Look at something like DS9 as a contrast. It also examined the Klingon Empire and as the show went on underlined its fundamental flaws, including corruption, gender politics, and issues of a high-born/low-born culture. But it also had fleshed out characters like Martok to give a broader portrayal of Klingons, and in many ways served to somewhat counteract the increasingly narrow space viking characterization TNG and other shows were reducing them to.
That's the kind of exploration the Vulcans could have used on Enterprise if the concept wasn't so bogged down by the constant need to make them the philosophical nemesis to be taken down a peg in the story. There are moments with Soval in pre-Coto era that get there on occasion (and Gary Graham does a heck of a lot to give him more depth than the writing often seemed to), but that only did so much.
I appreciate the idea; I just wish the show had lived up to it.
The problem was that the execution was often very dubious, with much of its issues interwoven with the fairly unimpressive writing of Archer in the first two and half seasons. Far too frequently they were simply written as a strawman to make him seem right, even when very questionable acts like the ending of the Andorian Incident made him come off as far worse. The potential to really present a more nuanced take on them was there, but the constant self-righteous arrogance by so many Vulcan characters without much depth to counter it meant it didn't really live up to that until season 4.
Look at something like DS9 as a contrast. It also examined the Klingon Empire and as the show went on underlined its fundamental flaws, including corruption, gender politics, and issues of a high-born/low-born culture. But it also had fleshed out characters like Martok to give a broader portrayal of Klingons, and in many ways served to somewhat counteract the increasingly narrow space viking characterization TNG and other shows were reducing them to.
That's the kind of exploration the Vulcans could have used on Enterprise if the concept wasn't so bogged down by the constant need to make them the philosophical nemesis to be taken down a peg in the story. There are moments with Soval in pre-Coto era that get there on occasion (and Gary Graham does a heck of a lot to give him more depth than the writing often seemed to), but that only did so much.
I appreciate the idea; I just wish the show had lived up to it.
So, you didn’t care for V’Lar from “Fallen Hero” or the group of Vulcans from “Fusion” I take it?
Also, ENT did have someone like Martok. Her name is T’Pol, and a great deal was made that she stayed onboard with humans for years instead of mere weeks of her predecessors and that she had affinity towards humans. There was a plan to retcon her as being half-Romulan in S5 to explain her emotions, when the path of rediscovering what it means to be Vulcan in the aftermath of the discovering of the Kir’Shara as established in S4 was a much more interesting path to follow if the goal was to explain her emotions. Since Vulcans do have emotions, they just suppress them, as that was Surak teaches them to do.
In reality, what was missing in ENT was learning about other Vulcan philosophers beyond Sarek that influenced Vulcan thinking. Like S’task, a student of Sarek’s (though Sarek refused to teach him at first) that taught and encouraged Vulcans to properly release emotions instead of suppressing them, and left with the other Vulcans to Romulus. With that, the Vulcans as displayed in ENT would make more sense.
And while its understandable that Archer and Trip wouldn’t know S’task, preferring to wear their hearts on their sleeves, someone like Hoshi should be curious about Kir’Shara and bond with T’Pol and T’Pau over Vulcan philosophy and learn about S'task in passing. Or Admiral Forrest, being around Soval as much as he was, should have been familiar about Surak and S’task and other Vulcan philosophers and mention him to Archer. Of course, it’s possible Forrest did in the years before Enterprise was launched and Archer brushed it off.
Thank goodness that didn't happen. As you say, Vulcan emotional control is learned, not genetic. And Vulcans and Romulans are biologically the same species, just different nationalities within it. So it makes zero sense to think that being "half-Romulan" would make a Vulcanoid any more emotional. That's why the makers of TWOK dropped that bit from Saavik's backstory -- because they realized it didn't make sense. (And Vonda McIntyre justified it in the novelization as being due to Saavik's feral upbringing rather than her genes.)
Not at all. It makes perfect sense that groups which purport to follow a philosopher's teachings would get them wrong or twist them to suit their own agendas. It happens all the time. Look at so-called "Christian" nationalists in America today, for example.
A lot of people here have pretty much said it all already, so I have very little of value to add, other than to say that I don't agree that the show treated Vulcans poorly. If anything, I think it added nuance and realism to humanity's first contact with another ("superior") race, and the relationship ups-and-downs that naturally come with that.
It wasn't perfect, but I liked it a lot.
It wasn't perfect, but I liked it a lot.
Interesting way to describe a parent-child relationship between Vulcans and humans if they weren't given some challenge as you described. However, it got me thinking, why not make it where humans are like the children of the Vulcans (talking relationship and not genetically)? That might add even more credence to Spock joining Starfleet or even the all-Vulcan crew of the Intrepid on TOS. When I read your sentence it made me think of the Vorlons and the other races on Bablyon 5. I thought that was handled fairly well.
One of the better episodes of "Enterprise" was Season 1's "Dear Doctor"; I liked how Archer said he understood the Vulcans a bit better when humans were themselves accused of being arrogant jerks because of their refusal to share technology with the Valakians.
I mean, 7 was great, but I'd hardly say Voyager added "color" to the Borg. It made them pretty toothless.
Wow. One of my absolute least favourite episodes of Star Trek ever. One day maybe I'll find a T-shirt with a picture of the aliens Phlox let die, Phlox's medical degree from the Denobulan school of alternative medicine and auto repair, and "Never forget" printed on it...
By colour, I just mean they were fleshed out. For better or worse, YMMV.
Everyone exaggerates this. The species still had 200 years to find a way to save themselves; Phlox just objected to a solution that would alter the Valakians' evolution, because it was too big an intervention for them to make with so little knowledge of its ramifications. And Phlox did develop a treatment that would ease the symptoms and save Valakian lives in the near term while they searched for another solution. Which is more than, say, the Enterprise-D crew was willing to do in "Homeward."
I agree and like the episode, but this discussion rarely ends well in my experience... It seems the episode really does trigger some.
It's a deliberately nuanced and ambiguous moral dilemma, and some people want everything to be clear-cut and black-and-white. "Tuvix" gets the same kind of heat for the same reason.
Although to be fair, "Dear Doctor" is flawed by its implausible evolutionary premise that an entire species can have a finite life expectancy programmed into its genes. It was trying for a sci-fi analogy with end-of-life care and how medicine is sometimes about accepting and easing the inevitability of death rather than fighting it. But since the analogy of individual death to species death didn't make much sense, it weakened the case the episode was trying to make, and lent itself to misunderstandings.
I can shrug it off because it's an alien species and maybe evolution does work that way there. Hypothetically, if a planet's evolutionary process had some kind of built-in apoptosis on a species level, if species dying off on schedule to open a niche for new species were necessary to its balance, then you could fairly ask whether disrupting the process to save lives now would harm far more lives in the future, and whether a single starship captain has the right to take on that burden without a lot of serious debate with experts, scientists, philosophers, and policymakers first. You have to be willing to buy into that implausible hypothetical first, but to me it's no more absurd than humanoid aliens in general, interspecies breeding, telepathy, evolution into energy beings, etc.
If you check out my Enterprise marathon in my signature, you’ll see I like it. But you’ll also see the hot shitstorm that followed me liking it.
I’m just not getting into it again… But for what it’s worth, I agree with you. About Tuvix too.
Hmm, didn't realize that "Dear Doctor" was so controversial--though I can understand why, given the points made above. I guess the most memorable thing to me in that episode (and the reason I mentioned it in this thread) was Archer being put in the awkward position of "superior alien" for the first time, after years of playing second fiddle to the Vulcans. I thought that aspect of the episode, at least, was fairly well-handled, and tied in well to Enterprise's core premise.
Proving Phlox understands evolution about as well as the consultant on Voyager understood Native American culture.
Invoking another horrible episode doesn't help defend this one.
There's...not an emoticon here to express how this comment makes me feel.
But it is clear cut and there's nothing nuanced about it. The aliens had a sickness, Phlox developed a cure and then he and Archer decided to withhold the cure because "evolution" except that's not how evolution works, evolution isn't some process with a build in timer for one species to allow the next to thrive, evolution is just a bunch of conincidences and mutations, some beneficial most not but that all happens by chance, evolution doesn't have a plan and it doesn't always lead to a species becoming more intelligent or dominant as an end goal.
From an evolutionary standpoint the Menk were a very successful species, they weren't the dominant species and were subservient to the Valakians but in that niche they thrived.
From a moral standpoint the treatment of the Menk was wrong but the episode couldn't really say that because from a moral standpoint letting the Valakians die is also wrong and most people would immediately understand that so the writers brought up evolution despite clearly not knowing shit about it and hoped that the audience could be fooled into thinking Phlox and Archer and not immoral douchebags.
The Valakians were sick, Phlox found a cure. There's no moral dilemma, the only right choice was to give the Valakians the cure and withholding it is morally bankrupt. The Menk didn't even factor into this.
This just proves that you don't understand evolution either. You cannot alter a species evolution because there is no plan or predetermined path, that's just not how evolution works.
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Humanoid aliens aren't how evolution works. Interspecies breeding isn't how evolution works. Humanoids turning into glowing balls of energy isn't how evolution works. Why are viewers able to suspend disbelief about all the other evolutionary and scientific nonsense in the franchise but draw the line at this? I've never understood that.
It's fiction. Within the alternate reality of the show, this is how evolution works on this particular alien planet. Science fiction is about asking "What if?" questions. If such-and-such a thing existed, or if the universe worked a certain way, what would be the consequences? What would be the impact on people's lives, the moral dilemmas they had to cope with? The what-if premise doesn't have to be realistically possible, it just has to create an interesting puzzle or dilemma. "Dear Doctor" wasn't entirely successful at doing so, but I respect what it was trying to do.
See above. A discussion of how things work in a fictional universe is not a discussion of how things work in real life. The two are entirely separate conversations. Star Trek has never claimed to be an exactly accurate portrayal of reality, because it has warp drive and telepathy and gangster planets and omnipotent Great Gazoos who can rewrite the universe by snapping their fingers.
Why did Archer go along with Phlox’s understanding of evolution in the first place? Was he being open minded of evolution occurring differently on other worlds, or was he just as ignorant about the theory overall? Since he could have corrected Phlox right there, and I’d imagine that Earth education is much better in the 22nd century compared to now.
Also, I’d like to add that its just interesting in light of how Archer reacted in “Observer Effect” a few years later when it came to the Organians initially withholding a cure for a couple of members of his crew.
First, I agree, phlox and archer should have given the cure. Nothing in the episode gives a good reason not to. Them surviving doesn't mean the menk die.
As said, usually 2 species on 1 planet, 1 is destroyed by killing or breeding them out. But they coexisted .
The menk is evolving better cognitive functions but even now there not dumb. But have nothing to do in withholding the cure.
As said, usually 2 species on 1 planet, 1 is destroyed by killing or breeding them out. But they coexisted .
The menk is evolving better cognitive functions but even now there not dumb. But have nothing to do in withholding the cure.
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