“Silent Enemy”
Written by André Bormanis
Directed by Winrch Kolbe
Season 1, Episode 12
Production episode 012
Original air date: January 16, 2002
Date: September 1, 2151
Captain’s star log. Enterprise is dropping a couple of subspace amplifiers to make long-distance communication easier. They also encounter an alien vessel, which has a sensor-proof screen and which doesn’t respond at all to hails.
Now that they can contact Earth more readily, Archer has Sato put a call through to Reed’s parents. The armory officer’s birthday is approaching, and the captain wants to surprise him with his favorite food. However, the Reeds—who don’t even know what Reed’s position is on Enterprise—have no idea what their son’s favorite food is.
Archer puts Sato in charge of learning Reed’s favorite food, but conversations with his sister, best friend, aunts, and uncle yield no useful intel.
The alien ship returns and still ignores hails. This time it fires on Enterprise, and the weapons fire comes dangerously close to a hull breach that would’ve killed a dozen of the crew. Reed was able to briefly scan the ship, and found fifteen bio-signs, but the life form is unfamiliar to the Enterprise database, and to T’Pol.
Archer decides that they’re not really ready to defend themselves properly from threats out here. They have ports for phase cannons, but they weren’t installed because they buggered off to bring Klaang home. Archer orders Mayweather to turn around and head home to Jupiter Station to get the cannons installed, but Reed and Tucker both think they can do it themselves. Archer doesn’t agree to let them do it all out here, but does permit them to at least get started so they can save time in spacedock.
At T’Pol’s suggestion, Sato tries the direct approach by asking Reed himself, which the latter misinterprets as her asking him on a date.
Tucker upbraids Reed for tying the phase cannons’ power to the impulse engines, as that risks power surges that could cause catastrophic damage. Reed insists that that risk is minimal, but Tucker insists he not go through with it, and since Tucker’s the commander and Reed’s the lieutenant, the former wins that argument.
The alien ship pursues them at warp and attacks again, hitting them with a damping field that brings them out of warp and kills main power. The aliens board the ship, render two crewmembers unconscious, prove resistant to phase pistol fire, and then leave, damaging a nacelle on their way out.
Buy the Book
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The two subspace amplifiers have been destroyed by the aliens, so Enterprise can’t call for help. (They can, actually, it’ll just take a while for help to hear the call…) Archer tells Tucker that they’re still going back home once warp power is back—the next time they leave Earth, they won’t do it until they’re ready. Tucker reminds Archer that everyone on this ship wants to be there and knows the risks. He also reminds him that the earliest space explorers took off from Earth with exploding hydrogen under their asses, but they took that risk, too.
Tucker then goes to Reed and tells him to go ahead and hook up the phase cannons to the impulse drive.
Two days later, they test the shiny new phase cannons on a small mountain on a moon. But instead of taking a bit off the top of the mountain, they pulverize the entire mountain, leaving a crater behind, and blown-out relays on the ship. While effecting repairs, T’Pol finds a surveillance device left behind by the aliens when they boarded.
Sato goes to sickbay to see that the two crewmembers have been discharged and are recovering in their quarters. She asks if Phlox knows what Reed’s favorite food is. His negative answer so dismays Phlox that he violates medical ethics by revealing that Reed takes shots to deal with a bromelain allergy, which enables him to eat pineapple. He wouldn’t get the shots if he didn’t have a fondness for the fruit.
The aliens return, and this time Enterprise fights back with the phase cannons, this time working at normal output. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any damage, so Archer orders Reed and Tucker to re-create the malfunction on the moon. That works, albeit with some damage to the Enterprise, and they follow up with some torpedoes. The aliens beat a hasty retreat.
Since the cannons work just fine (more or less), Archer decides not to head home, and they resume their previous course. And then, during what’s ostensibly a toast to celebrate the successful implementation of the cannons, Sato brings out a birthday cake for Reed that has pineapple filling. Reed is thrilled, as that’s his favorite, and how did they know???
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? If you use the gravity plating to channel energy into the structural integrity field, your hyper-powered phase cannons won’t blow up the ship. Probably.
The gazelle speech. Archer is tired of Enterprise getting its ass kicked and wants to go home and put in bigger guns. Instead, his crew puts in bigger guns, and all is well. Or something.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. Archer mentions that T’Pol’s latest attempt to use chopsticks has been a hilarious failure, prompting Tucker to refer to her struggle with the Asian implements to be “dinner and a show.”
Florida Man. Florida Man Gets Dear John Letter From Girlfriend in Pensacola.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox saves the day by revealing Reed’s pineapple allergy.
Good boy, Porthos! Archer and Tucker converse while the former is walking the pooch through the corridors of Enterprise. One wonders how, exactly, they deal with the output from those walks…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Besides Tucker’s girlfriend Natalie breaking up with him over subspace, we have Reed mistaking Sato’s attempt to learn his favorite food to be flirting.
I’ve got faith…
“What are Malcolm’s duties on your ship, Captain?”
“He’s my armory officer.”
“Well, his grandfather would be pleased. He was an ordinance officer himself in the Royal Navy.”
“It must be in Malcolm’s blood.”
“The Reeds have been navy men for generations.”
“Until Malcolm decided to join Starfleet. I suppose the ocean wasn’t big enough for him.”
–Reed’s parents discussing their son with Archer, and being very disapproving and stuff.
Welcome aboard. The amusingly named Paula Malcolmson plays Reed’s sister, John Rosenfeld (last seen as an alien in Voyager’s “Friendship One”) plays Reed’s friend, and Jane Carr plays Reed’s Mom. Robert Mammana (last seen as a Quarren in Voyager’s “Workforce”) plays Eddie the engineer.
And then we have this week’s Robert Knepper moment, to wit, Guy Siner—probably best known as Lieutenant Gruber on ‘Allo ‘Allo!—as Reed’s Dad.
Trivial matters: This is the only Enterprise episode directed by Winrich Kolbe—one of the franchise’s best and most prolific directors—and also the last Trek episode he would direct. He retired from directing a year after this, and took a position as a professor of film & television at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He retired from that in 2007 and died in 2012.
Tucker and Archer discuss the events of “Broken Bow” at some length when the captain starts getting cold feet.
The episode was originally titled “Call to Arms,” but was changed when they realized that title had already been used by a DS9 episode.
The date on this episode is actually one week prior to the date given for the previous episode, “Cold Front,” which first aired two months before this one did.
Latrelle’s speculation that Reed hates fish is contradicted both earlier in the scene when Reed’s sister mentions his love of octopus, and again four episodes hence in “Shuttlepod One,” where the first of the emergency rations Reed goes for is sea bass.
The aliens in this episode are never seen again onscreen. They do show up in Star Trek Online, where they’re named the Elachi, and are seen as allies of the Romulans in the twenty-fifth century. They also appear as the antagonists in regular commenter Christopher L. Bennett’s Rise of the Federation novel A Choice of Futures, where they are named the Vertians.
It’s been a long road… “We have our sources.” This is a perfectly cromulent episode of Enterprise. I really like the fact that we never really find out what’s up with the aliens. Writer André Bormanis said in an interview with StarTrek.com in 2010 that he wanted them to stay unknown and confusing, because he truly believes that “our earliest encounters with alien life forms will leave us utterly baffled.” And he’s got a point…
And I like the attempts by Archer to do something nice for Reed that winds up being way harder than expected because Reed’s taciturn nature is way worse than anybody could have imagined. Also, Guy Siner and Jane Carr are perfection as the stiff-upper-lippy Reed parents.
Still, a lot of the episode falls a bit flat. For one thing, there was no indication prior to this that Enterprise went out underequipped. In fact, the whole argument at the top of “Broken Bow” was that Enterprise was past ready, but the Vulcans were trying to delay the launch further.
Even if we buy the premise that—like the third Federation starship to bear the same name—it went out before everything would be installed on Tuesday, if they had the fixin’s to install at least one phase cannon on board, why the hell didn’t they do it after they got their asses kicked in “Fight or Flight“?
And as much fun as it is watching Sato try to figure out Reed’s favorite food, the scene between Reed and Sato in the mess hall is a rhapsody in awkward that dances all over the line between amusing and painful to watch. It is far from the finest moment for either Linda Park or Dominic Keating.
I do like how Scott Bakula plays Archer’s growing insecurity about whether or not he did the right thing in telling the Vulcans to pound sand and flying off to Kronos with Klaang against their wishes, and I mostly like Tucker’s pep talk about the early astronauts (the caveat “mostly” necessary due to the continued tired racism regarding Vulcans).
Still, it’s a decent episode, all told…
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s other pop culture commentary includes essays in all three of The Subterranean Blue Grotto Essays on Batman ’66 from Crazy 8 Press, including the forthcoming volume on the third season, entitled OOOFF! BOFF! SPLATT!, in which he discusses the series’ final episode, “Minerva, Millionaires, and Mayhem“; an essay on how poorly the three commanders were served on Stargate Atlantis in the soon-to-be-released Unauthorized Offworld Activation: Exploring the Stargate Franchise from Sequart; an upcoming monograph on the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter “Birthright” as part of The Gold Archive series from Obverse Books; and TV and movie reviews on his Patreon.
“One wonders how, exactly, they deal with the output from those walks [with Porthos].”
To paraphrase an earlier episode: not the (dog) poop question! Still, this gets my nomination for best “Good boy, Porthos!” of the season.
As always, I think my thoughts on this particular episode are best summed up by SF Debris:
“It’s like there was somebody at Paramount who had the job of hunting for suspense so they could gun it down and hang it up on the wall as a warning to others.”
Seriously, Chuck Sonnenburg’s stance is ironically the same as Keith: When the episode works, it’s actually pretty good. But the bad outweighs said good.
I’m not going to lie, finding out that the indefatigably-competent T’Pol of Vulcan has difficulties with chopsticks (Join the club, Sub-commander, and enjoy those knifes & forks) almost made this episode worthwhile all by itself: If nobody ever seized on this quote for a comic sketch (illustration or live action) I shall be deeply, deeply disappointed.
Also, there’s the suggestion in a minor key that Lieutenant Reed is SO VERY BRITISH because he comes from a family of expats (and either has to compensate for something or – this would be my preferred theory – he has to base his notion of ‘British’ as much on fiction as on personal observation) and his boyish delight at finally being found out as a pineapple-fancier, both of which absolutely delight me in their turn.
Oh, and it seems STAR TREK took the old joke that “In the future there will be only a handful of monarchs with any significance – the King of Hearts, the King of Clubs, the King of Spades, the King of Diamonds and the King of England” quite seriously, given there seems to have been a Royal Navy as late as the 22nd Century (and it’s very difficult to have a Royal Navy without a Royal Sovereign), which also made me chuckle.
Concerning those aliens, I must agree that they’re effectively … other and eerily hard to puzzle out (My best guess is that they saw NX-01s signal boosters as either a disrespectful violation of their sovereignty or somehow distasteful – like a cat marking it’s territory with something other than it’s claws), to a degree that makes it very easy to understand why Mr Bennett picked them up for the purposes of his continuation novels.
I’m not sure this episode gets the most out of their alien-ness (In all honesty they felt more like the B-plot than the focus of this particular episode), but what it has works rather well.
As for Enterprise being called “Beyond ready” despite not having taken delivery of those cannons, I’m assuming that this was based partly on the relatively limited experiences of previous Earthly expeditions leaving them a little overconfident and raw “Let’s go already!” enthusiasm burning through minor reservations (If nothing else, Starfleet may have assumed that having torpedoes AND cannons would be ‘belt & braces’ redundancy rather than stark necessity).
As for why NX-01 failed to whip up it’s very own home-made cannons after an earlier embarrassment, remember that Captain Archer had Serious Reservations about letting anyone other than the actual experts on Jupiter Station rig up the ship’s guns – and as this episode shows via that little ‘Mount Mckinley* go bye-bye’ moment, not without solid grounds for concern.
*I wonder if the ‘Mount Mckinley’ mentioned should be read as some mountain on a human colony world, rather than a minor-key example of ENTERPRISE being made prior to the AD 2015 official recognition & adoption of the name Denali? (Makes one wonder who the ‘Mckinley’ for which the mountain was presumably named might have been; perhaps there’s a range of Alien mountains called ‘The Presidents’ or perhaps Mr Scott wasn’t the first human with a braw Scots name to leave his mark on Human Space?).
One more for Trivial Matters, Keith: I brought back the “Silent Enemy” aliens as the primary antagonist in my first Rise of the Federation novel, A Choice of Futures. The book was published in July 2013, shortly after STO debuted their “Elachi” version in May 2013, so naturally I had no knowledge of their approach when I was writing. I interpreted them in a totally different way and ended up calling them the Vertians, identifying them with the mute species from Gamma Vertis IV that Spock mentioned in “The Empath.” Naturally I didn’t give them a name for themselves, since their whole defining attribute is their complete silence, so I don’t know where the name “Elachi” is supposed to come from in STO’s version.
While this isn’t the greatest of plots overall — the Malcolm stuff was a sitcom plot that did nothing for me — I did find the aliens intriguing. I appreciated it that the series was willing to experiment with non-humanoid CG aliens — something I wish the current live-action shows would do more of, now that the tech should make it much easier — and it created an engaging mystery that I was glad to build on in my novel.
I like more about this episode than I dislike. But I also bumped on the whole “we left Earth before we were fully equipped” retcon. They could have just as easily explained that the encounter with the aliens meant that they needed to upgrade their weapons, thus leading to some technical creativity on the part of Reed and Tucker’s engineering crew. They still could have had Archer be introspective about whether or not they were truly ready for all the challenges of setting out on their own.
I wonder if Archer had Sato make coffee during staff meetings as well.
I don’t think there’s any inconsistency with the issue of the ship’s readiness at the time of launch. After all, it’s a recurring theme over the course of the series, pretty much beginning here, that the crew of NX-01 expected to go out and be explorers and diplomats, not to get into battles. Earth Starfleet is not a hybrid scientific/military force like the Federation Starfleet, but more of a pure exploratory agency like NASA. So their definition of being “ready” when they started their mission did not include combat-readiness. The point of the episode is about the crew having to face the reality that it’s a more dangerous galaxy than they thought and that they need to be heavily armed after all.
I’m willing to skip over the bad in this episode because I was quite entertained by it. And the “bad” parts weren’t exactly bad, just bog-standard. I love how the insufferably perfect T’Pol can’t master chopsticks, and the idea of setting buoys to relay faster-than-light signals back home is both a good way to explain real-time communication and create a liability if one gets destroyed. My one big squabble with this one is minor: ever since the first episode, it seems the crew has completely forgotten their plasma cannons? They used what appeared to be scaled-up versions of their hand-held glowy projectile guns in the finale of Broken Bow, but they were (to my knowledge) never seen again, and the crew just through up their hands and resigned themselves to torpedoes. This is especially seen in the second episode where Archer acts like the ship is completely defenseless if they can’t get the torpedoes working. I can buy that the torpedoes are much better, but at least it’s something! As to this one, they could have at least acknowledged their existence. Does anyone know if the plasma cannons (or whatever they are called) are mentioned in any tie-in material, or in any other episodes of the show?
@6: Yeah, that jumped out at me too during my recent rewatch. It’s very not-22nd-century to expect Sato, the one human woman in the senior staff, to be responsible for setting up the birthday celebration. To me, it’s a reflection of the relative conservative-ness of Enterprise — the same impulse that had “hey, let’s have white American dudes be in charge of everything again!” after the previous three series at least made attempts at representation.
Christopher: Thanks for the heads-up about A Choice of Futures. It’s been added to that paragraph.
And while I approve of your general notion that combat readiness isn’t the main consideration they had when going out, that’s not how Archer phrased it in the episode, he said that they went out before everything was finished, and that the phase cannons would’ve been installed if he hadn’t insisted on going out with Klaang — which doesn’t quite track with what actually happened in “Broken Bow.”
Brent and elcino: That’s a most excellent point. While in general it makes sense that the person in charge of communications is the one who, well, communicates with Reed’s family, it is yet another example of Enterprise being mired in stereotypes that were outdated in 2001, much less two decades later….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@@@@8. Ecthelion of Greg – The plasma guns aren’t seen / mentioned again. I always assumed they were a limited forward firing gun in the same vein as were mentioned that ECS freighters had in ‘Fortunate Son’ – only really good for shooting asteroids rather than moving starships (they didn’t seem to be effective against the Suliban in the pilot) which became unnecessary or even disconnected when the phase cannons superseded them.
I agree it’s a serviceable episode, was quite a nice one on first viewing with the unexplained aliens and desperate need to build the weapons being a bit different than what came before. Another early episode that at least have some character development (though not entirely successful) to a cast member outside the main three.
@8/Echthelion of Greg: ” I love how the insufferably perfect T’Pol can’t master chopsticks”
I don’t know… isn’t it just more of Enterprise‘s ethnocentrism to assume that a Vulcan would have an easier time mastering Western utensils than Asian ones? I just did a bit of Googling, and it seems that the percentage of humans worldwide who use chopsticks routinely is about the same as the percentage who use a knife and fork routinely — either a little higher or a little lower depending on the site, but pretty close. So why would offworlders have chosen to learn the Western style of utensils but not the Eastern one? Logically, if they learned one, they should’ve learned the other. Sure, T’Pol was based in San Francisco, but there’s no shortage of Asian restaurants there.
Really, given Vulcans’ discipline and precise motor control, I’d think T’Pol shoud’ve had have an easier time mastering chopsticks than, say, I have on those few occasions when I’ve attempted it.
@9/elcinco: “It’s very not-22nd-century to expect Sato, the one human woman in the senior staff, to be responsible for setting up the birthday celebration.”
I figured it had more to do with her being the communications officer. Although I suppose it would’ve made more sense to delegate it to the chef or the quartermaster or something.
I have no memory of this episode whatsoever so it might be in the episode, but in asking all these people about Reed’s favorite food, did they ever consider asking the chef?
Bobby
I always thought the bit about no one knowing his favorite food was pretty good. If you ask my sister, my aunt, my friends, you’ll get different answers. And none of them likely correct.
Bobby: In fact, when Sato was trying to get out of being the one to figure out Reed’s favorite food, her first suggestion was to have Chef do it, but Archer’s reply was, “We’re talking about a delicate assignment, Hoshi. It needs your finesse.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I would say ready for a limited duration shakedown cruise going to known destinations (Terra Nova) and to explore objects up close that humanity had only seen with unmanned probes to this point. Even in war, few new build ships are just thrown into battle as soon as they leave drydock.
The ship had the parts for the first Phase Cannon because it was most likely scheduled to be installed shortly. Remember that the launch was moved up due to the events of Broken Bow. My guess is that the prototype would have been installed by the scheduled launch date, and part of the shakedown cruise would have been to do weapons tests.
@15. Yikes!
@12 ChristopherLBennett: Good point. I wonder, though, IDIC not withstanding, that whenever we see Vulcans on Vulcan or official representatives of Vulcan, they all seem to be part of the same culture. Sure, there are black/white/brown Vulcans, but they seem to have merged their cultures into one, centered supremely around Logic. They all dress similarly, even civilians, and all have similar philosophical views. It also appears that the planet has been unified much longer than Earth has. Is it possible, considering we see T’Pol eat with “western” utensils in other episodes, that this is the only Vulcan method? She also refuses to touch her food, and the manner in which she declines the offer of using her fingers (“Vulcans do not touch their food” as opposed to “my people” or “my culture”) seems to support the unified culture theory. All that to say, Vulcans seem to resist change, and so is it a surprise that T’Pol gravitated towards familiar utensils? And I seem to remember her saying she very rarely left the Vulcan compound. And yes, Vulcan’s have finer muscle control, but that’s why I enjoyed it. All people have certain things that give them trouble the first time; Vulcans just don’t like having trouble so they hide it when they do.
“We’re not here to make enemies, but just because we’re not looking for a fight doesn’t mean we’ll run away from one.”
After a run of episodes where Enterprise has seemed able to go head to head with anything the universe throws at them, we’ve back to them seeming worryingly vulnerable. By the end of the episode, they’re in a better shape to defend themselves, but if the aliens didn’t like playing with their food (or whatever it is they consider the Enterprise crew), they’d probably all be dead. Still, it’s a nice solution, with an accidental discovery being duplicated. As in “Fight or Flee”, the aliens remain distant and alien: We do briefly see them in person, but we don’t learn their names or anything about them, and they only communicate with an edited recording of Archer. (Their ship does look a bit like a TNG-era Romulan vessel but that’s probably a coincidence…)
One article suggested the episode undermines Archer’s credibility as a captain, claiming that Tucker and Reed disobeyed his orders and were congratulated instead of disciplined. That seems to be a misunderstanding of the episode, since Archer actually tells them to do everything they can. They just did more than he expected.
Another article (or possibly the same one), talking about the sometimes inconsequential nature of Star Trek B-plots, joked about trying to make a birthday cake during an attack, then remembered that’s actually this episode. There is a bit of mood whiplash involved, but it’s a nice look at the community forming on Enterprise and what a closed off character Reed is, even where his family’s concerned.
Guy Siner’s another name on the list of actors who’ve been in Star Trek and Doctor Who (someone once rather cruelly quipped that Doctor Who fans might not realise that because it was only Enterprise). Although probably best known for his regular role in ’Allo ’Allo, ironically he also had a small guest role as a German technician in Secret Army, the serious drama that they were spoofing.
Nice touch that Archer goes to the bridge out of uniform when the aliens turn up the second time. He’s a bit passive aggressive towards T’Pol at times, although as in “Breaking the Ice”, he’s prepared to swallow his pride and ask the Vulcans for help when lives are at risk. (He’s also pretty relieved when the option’s taken off the table.) With Reed off the bridge, T’Pol is seen manning tactical for the first time. Archer gives Enterprise’s crew complement as 81 humans, one Vulcan and one Denobulan: Contrary to what I said at the time, this matches the figure of 82 that Tucker gave in “Strange New Worlds” (which presumably omitted T’Pol).
Given that, with dogged cultural imperialism, I’ve always insisted that the United Kingdom and the British honours system still exist in some form in the 24th century (although I did acknowledge other monarchs exist too), it’s quite gratifying to have it pointed out that they apparently made it to the 22nd century at least…
I’d like to think that while the title of “Monarch of the United Kingdom” (or at least England) might still exist by the 22nd century, it has passed so completely out of all relevance that only weird hobbyists could even tell you who the title even belongs to.
Malcolm’s tedious enough as it is; seems harsh to expend an entire B-plot on his boringness
I really don’t see the problem with Hoshi being assigned this task. If she is the most communicative one and the best one at being discrete, why shouldn’t she be assigned? It’s not a demeaning task or something like this. Should every time a female is assigned a task that is “traditionally” female be determined as problematic? I am female and I often get assigned to organize outer curricular activities in the office, but I see this as a recognition that I am better at organization and coordination that my (mostly male) colleagues, not as an offence or sexism.
@18, while I don’t buy that the Vulcans are all one culture, doesn’t it seem . . . logical . . . that they would be one culture after 2000 years of pure logic training?
That said, we know from ST:V that Vulcans who don’t follow The Path are ostracized from society. Spock’s half-brother, who seemingly came into existence only for this movie, was never spoken of and I’d bet was never invited to Thanksgiving or Christmas at his parent’s house.
I’d speculate that Vulcans who don’t follow logic are few and far between and live in separate communities. They probably aren’t allowed to represent Vulcan on councils and such and given how few Vulcans we see running around the Federation in general, probably few people have ever met a non-logical Vulcan.
@23/ragnar: “while I don’t buy that the Vulcans are all one culture, doesn’t it seem . . . logical . . . that they would be one culture after 2000 years of pure logic training?”
Not at all. Vulcans value Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations; how, then, could it possibly be logical for them to aspire to the eradication of diversity? A population without diversity cannot adapt to change, so uniformity is a stupid and self-destructive thing to aspire to.
Besides, logic is not an answer, it’s a process for arriving at answers. It tells people how to reason and decide for themselves, not what conclusions to blindly follow. So different people applying logical methods to different situations and contexts should logically arrive at different solutions and approaches.
The problem, of course, is that Trek routinely does stereotype entire species as having monolithic cultures. Although ENT delved deeply enough into the Vulcans that it managed to give them a somewhat greater range of diversity than we’d seen before, with things like the V’tosh ka’tur and the Syrannites.
@20: Oh, I’m sure that if the monarchy does still exist in 130 years time, then they’ll have even less political power than their 21st century counterparts: After all, if there’s a United Earth government, then presumably there’s no British prime minister or parliament to swear in. Still, I think there’ll always be appeal in a ceremonial figure, and many people see a monarch as a more respectable national representative than the latest transient political leader.
(Of course, thanks to “The High Ground” and “Yay, Irish terrorism”, I can never quite decide what a 22nd century United Kingdom would actually consist of…)
@25/cap-mjb: “After all, if there’s a United Earth government, then presumably there’s no British prime minister or parliament to swear in.”
That doesn’t follow. The states of the US still have their own separate legislatures, and the cities have their own mayors and councils. Local governments don’t vanish just because they join into a larger government; rather, they remain as a lower tier of organization, taking care of local affairs and leaving the higher tier free to focus on more global issues.
@6. Brent Leatherman: Of course not, that’s what stewards are for (Assuming Chef trusts with his cappuccino machine).
@9. elcino: In all fairness Ensign Hoshi is a junior officer who’s entire purpose in life is to get people to talk, so it’s hardly unreasonable to expect that she’d be the one asked to ferret out the facts from the rather uncommunicative Lieutenant Reed (Who is one of her colleagues on the bridge to boot).
Also, isn’t it a junior officer’s lot in life to run minor errands for their captain, regardless of sex?
@12. ChristopherLBennett: My dear Mr Bennett, the very fact that Vulcans are normally such impressive specimens of poise is exactly what makes the joke work so well – after all, watching a dog make a fool of itself is amusing, but watching a cat make itself look like an idiot is hilarious.
Also, for what it’s worth, my reading of the joke was that Archer & Trip find “dinner and a show” so amusing because they can use chopsticks and actually prefer to eat Asian or Asian-fusion dishes with them (Suggesting that the joke is less “Chopsticks are hard” and more “Vulcans really are creatures of habit”).
The jokes becomes especially amusing if T’Pol is perfectly free to use other utensils, but nonetheless persists with chopsticks because anything humans can do Vulcans should be able to do with ease.
@15. krad: I’m not going to lie, that line gave me the amusing mental image of Chef (I can’t decide if he should look like William T. Riker or the older Mr William Shatner) strolling over to Lieutenant Reed and casually proclaiming “Your favourite food is – insert dish here -!”, with poor Malcolm digging in, but remaining completely noncommittal (Chef’s face falls like the capital of an Empire EVERY TIME).
EVEN BETTER – The running gag climaxes with Chef asking Lieutenant Reed into the galley, gives him a millisecond to spot the smorgasbord of dishes spread out before him, then proceeds to lock the door and growl “You have a favourite dish and I am gonna feed it to you”.
@27/ED: It’s not “Ensign Hoshi,” it’s Ensign Sato (though a few of the early tie-in novels made the same mistake). Like most Japanese people in Anglophone contexts, she uses Westernized name order with the given name first. Hoshi is a common Japanese given name, while Sato is the most common Japanese surname. If she were in Japan, she would go by Sato Hoshi, and would be addressed by rank as Sato-shoui (at least that’s what most of the Internet claims is Japanese for “ensign”).
@26: It’d be nice to think that, but Star Trek has always had a hard time deciding whether or not there’s planetary governments within the Federation, let another local governments within planets. Hence Earth has a Federation President on it who appears to be the only political authority on the planet.
@29 – It’s possible that Earth is in a similar position as the District of Columbia is, the seat of government that has limited self governing power. That could be the price Earth pays for hosting Starfleet, the Council and the office of the presidency. Hence, the Federation President making the planetary distress call in TVH. United Earth would be much like the DC city council.
In Diane Duane’s Spock’s World, there’s still a President of the United States in the 23rd century, although it’s a largely ceremonial post. The President likes Sarek so much that she asks whether it’s possible to amend the Constitution so he can be her running mate when she runs for re-election! (But who would add the amendment to the parchment on Omega IV? …)
I mostly enjoyed this episode, though I did find it odd that, with the ship under attack and the whole mission possibly scrubbed, Hoshi was still diligently plucking away at trying to figure out Malcom’s favorite food. But I also like pineapple cake, so its fine.
Kolbe retiring was certainly a loss to Trek, but at least he went out directing a pretty decent episode.
Silent Enemy is an interesting case. Up until this point, Bormanis was mainly known for writing science-heavy plots (which makes sense given his background). But this episode is primarily a collection of character moments, similar to Breaking the Ice and Cold Front.
Yes, there is the threatening mystery ship plot, which does involve a fair amount of technobabble and engineering involving the Enterprise’s weapon capacity, but its heart is still very much in the smaller moments like the crew trying to get to know Reed’s tastes. But as it is, Bormanis would become more and more accostumed to writing pure dramatic scenes in later seasons (namely the excellent Vulcan arc in season 4 involving T’Pol’s mom).
The character moments do feel a bit disconnected from the main action, but overall both aspects work pretty well. The Enterprise launching in Broken Bow without being fully prepped and tested had to eventually be addressed. It’s nice to see some consequence from that. (personally, I never bought their grievance that the Enterprise was ‘past ready’)
Even if we buy the premise that—like the third Federation starship to bear the same name—it went out before everything would be installed on Tuesday
@krad: Wasn’t the Enterprise B technically the fourth ship to bear the name? There was also the ENT-A, and that’s not counting any other potential Enterprises between the NX-01 and the NCC-1701.
Eduardo: I said “Fedration starship” specifically. Archer’s vessel is not a Federation starship, it’s an Earth starship. The first Federation starship with the name is NCC 1701 that was commanded by (at least) Pike and Kirk, then there’s NCC 1701-A commanded by Kirk, and then NCC 1701-B, the third one, commanded by (at least) Harriman.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@34/krad: Point taken. I tend to overlook the fact that there was no Federation at this point.
@34/krad: “The first Federation starship with the name is NCC 1701 that was commanded by (at least) Pike and Kirk”
And Willard Decker during its refit. And Spock, for some time prior to TWOK.
@24, if Vulcans value IDIC why do we see them ostracize other Vulcans who don’t conform to the norm? Sybok. The Vulcan officer in ENT who tries to “corrupt” T’Pol. Sarek, who clearly has problems with his son non-conforming to Vulcan norms by joining Star Fleet.
@37/ragnar: No population lives up perfectly to its ideals, and some always do better than others. There are many ways that Vulcans fall short of the perfect logic they claim to aspire to, and that’s far more realistic than if they were just a bunch of cookie-cutter stereotypes behaving exactly like it says on the tin.
Although there is more to it than that. The Vulcans adopted logic and emotional control because their runaway passions almost destroyed them. They fear what they’re capable of if they allow their control to lapse. In their view, Vulcans acting emotionally isn’t just different, it’s dangerous.
@19:
Guy Siner’s another name on the list of actors who’ve been in Star Trek and Doctor Who (someone once rather cruelly quipped that Doctor Who fans might not realise that because it was only Enterprise).
Of course, when Enterprise was first broadcast, Doctor Who was an obscure long-cancelled show whose fans were grateful for the most glancing of references… but that’s a subject for a future tense. Guy Siner might have been better-known at the time for his appearance in Babylon 5.
@39/John Elliott: Doctor Who was never obscure, at least not in the UK, or among the US fan community. As for “long-cancelled,” the Paul McGann TV movie was only five years in the past at the time Enterprise premiered.
Also, an actor in common is not a “reference,” it’s just an actor doing more than one gig.
I watched Enterprise for the first time about a year or so ago, and literally the only thing that stood out to me from this episode was recognizing Jane Carr (Reed’s mother) from that 90’s sitcom Dear John where she played a singles’ support group leader, and she constantly asked “Were there any… sexual problems?”
Was she? That’s great. That line still runs through my head when people mention their breakups to me.
@34/36: And Robert April according to TAS.
@41: That’s her?! [Checks Wikipedia] Ahhh, the American remake, not the British original from the 80s where Rachel Bell played that role. That makes more sense…
@28. ChristopherLBennett: GrumblegrumbleGrumble…. Oh well, if languages were easy, Hoshi by any name & title would have much less to do with her career. (-;
@6/Brent Leatherman: Oh, Archer definitly has Sato make the coffee. He ordered Sato to find out what Reed’s favorite food was, for fucks sake. Sato even says to Archer, Hey, dipshit, I’m the communications officer, I have actual communication work to do, y’know setting up these comm buoys. Yep, skilled linguist, instructor, comm officer, and she spends the episode…finding out Reed likes pineapple. Yep. That’s definitely why Hoshi spent four years at Starfleet Academy.
Mayweather probably would have made more sense to give this dumb task. He’s closer to Reed, and it would have given Travis something to do, as he’s pretty much nowhere in this episode besides just sitting at the helm.
Gosh, this show…
Poor Hoshi.
Speaking of Reed, I had a thought as I watched this. Reed should have been the Captain. He’s far more competent, focused, and disciplined than Archer or Tucker, yet he’s outranked by both of them. Dominic Keating played Reed with enough nuance to make him an interesting character even this early on. I mean, if you just have to have the Captain be a white guy, at least let him be interesting, and, you know, competent.
The producers probably would have said “We already had a British Captain.” No, you had a British actor playing a Frenchman with a British accent.
I don’t know, this show isn’t giving me much.
I absolutely loved the design of the aliens! I thought they were super cool looking and creepy as hell! The way they strode around with their lanky bodies was really unnerving to me. I get why they were kept anonymous, but I really wanted to learn more about them.
@34/krad: “The first Federation starship with the name is NCC 1701 that was commanded by (at least) Pike and Kirk”
@36/CLB: “And Willard Decker during its refit. And Spock”
And Robert April was 1701’s commissioning captain, yes? He was established in TAS, which may or may not be canon, but he’s also name-checked in Discovery, which I’d think no one would deny is canon.
That alien device T’Pol found was “putting out a lot of energy” (paraphrase), and Archer thought it was a good idea to shoot it with a phase pistol? Did no one else think that was a tremendously dumb thing to do?
The cake did look delicious.
@46/terracinque: TAS is as much a part of the canon as everything else, although “The Counter-Clock Incident” is such a dumb episode that I prefer to disregard it, as I do with others like “The Alternative Factor” and “Threshold.”
And there certainly are people who deny that DSC is canon, just as there have always been people who denied that any new Trek show was canon. There are probably still a few people who don’t accept that TNG is canonical. There were people back in the day who didn’t accept TOS season 3 as canonical, though “canon” hadn’t become a buzzword yet.
I always felt the Elachi (which I shall call them for no other reason than they have no name) could have been a breakout character from the setting. While they don’t have them communicate and that would have made them difficult to use, they are easily one of the few original creations of the Enterprise era that had genuine MENACE.
I would have used them as ongoing antagonists throughout.
Not that I disliked Christopher Bennett’s book on them where it’s just a case of miscommunication on a massive scale.
@48/C.T. Phipps: They do have another name; I called them Vertians in A Choice of Futures.
The line about T’Pol not being able to use chopsticks stuck with me from when I first saw this episode 20-odd years ago as being quite anti-Vulcan so I was surprised to see her using them in the epilogue to Terra Nova during this re-watch.
@42 & 46: Of course, Strange New Worlds has re-established Robert April as the Enterprise‘s first captain since our discussion above.
@50/rwmg: Incidentally, I mentioned in an earlier comment how I was never able to get the hang of eating with chopsticks. That’s based on my infrequent attempts decades in the past. But recently, while watching a Japanese TV show where people were eating, I remembered that I still have a pair of chopsticks stashed in my folder of notes from college Japanese class. So I took them out, emulated the way they were being held in the show, and tried picking up small items from my desk with them — and it was incredibly easy. I just needed to know the right way to hold them, and then it came naturally. (Although I imagine it might be a bit trickier with something slippery like ramen, say. But the same probably goes for a fork or spoon.)
So I think the episode’s assumption that chopsticks are intrinsically harder to figure out than Western utensils is an ethnocentric stereotype. It may be that my own trouble with them in decades past was based on my assumption that they were something strange and alien and hard to figure out. Now that I watch so much Japanese TV and movies, it’s demystified eating with chopsticks and removed the mental block I might have had about learning it.
@51. Well, i actually think that westerns utensils are significantly more advanced than two sticks that you hold together. maybe i’m just biased, but they are just so much more specialised in design that it makes it pretty obvious to me that they can objectively make it easier to eat with them. However we’d need some neutral research group of humanoids who haven’t used either and then we could run some experiments to see which utensils are easier to use for someone without any cultural background/home education etc. :)
@52/th1_: I think that’s a very unfair and, yes, biased characterization. Chopsticks aren’t just random sticks, they’re sticks with a precise design, every bit as specialized and refined for their task as a fork or a pair of scissors. And as I said, all I had to do was look at how an experienced user held them and replicate that grip, and it became very easy to do. It’s a short learning curve. It probably took me longer as a child to learn how to swirl spaghetti on my fork, or to use a knife and fork together to cut meat. Everything seems easy after you’ve mastered it and hard before you’ve tried it.
@53./ChristopherLBennett: maybe. to me they seem to be more sophisticated in design to have special functions. With chopsticks you are limited to food that does not need to be cut and you also can’t eat liquid with them…so maybe i’m biased, but i think a fork-knife-spoon combo covers more usecases more efficiently (and more elegantly, but that of course is purely a cultural thing what we consider as eating etiquette).
@54/th1_: “With chopsticks you are limited to food that does not need to be cut and you also can’t eat liquid with them…”
Which is why something like ramen is eaten with the bowl held in one hand and the chopsticks with the other; you eat the solid ingredients with the chopsticks and sip the broth directly from the bowl. Just because you aren’t aware of their solutions doesn’t mean they don’t have them.
And of course they do have knives to cut the food, but that’s done before it’s cooked, e.g. with yakiniku, where the raw meat and vegetables are cut into small pieces that the diners can then use chopsticks to put on the grill piece by piece, cooking them to taste. Or with sushi, where the ingredients are prepared in a form easily picked up by chopsticks. Our system isn’t better, it’s just that the foods we eat are tailored to work with the utensils we use, just as much as the foods in any other culture.
I thought this was a mighty fine episode, balancing the more action-oriented tone the show was trying to achieve along with the day-to-day of ship life that it did rather well. It was the first episode that even had effective sentimentality. This episode actually felt tense. And I enjoyed seeing an actual repair in progress with a welding torch. Repairs on Trek shows are always magically behind the scenes.
And, yes, fantastic to have “aliens” whose true motives are unknown, though I do wonder why they let themselves be sitting ducks in that last confrontation. Maybe this is all about how they study humans.
Yeah, they should have laid the groundwork for the phase canons. Or, if they were to introduce this factor now, say that the technology wasn’t fully ready for prime time, but perhaps was then. Still, that seems like a minor thing to me, given how episodic shows were written.
Quibble with the review: Octopus is not a fish.