“Shadows of P’Jem”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 1, Episode 15
Production episode 014
Original air date: February 6, 2002
Date: October 2151
Captain’s star log. On Earth, Soval informs Forrest that the Andorians have destroyed the monastery, and the secret listening post, on P’Jem. Soval blames Starfleet for the Andorians discovering the post and announces that he’s being recalled to Vulcan and all joint High Command-Starfleet operations are being suspended.
Forrest contacts Enterprise and informs Archer of what happened, which means, among other things, that T’Pol is being reassigned. Archer is very upset; T’Pol takes it with her usual equanimity.
She has time for one final mission: Enterprise is heading to Coridan, a thriving planet that has an impressive shipbuilding industry. The Coridan chancellor has invited Archer and one other to visit. Archer takes T’Pol with him rather than Tucker (who is eager to see the shipbuilding) so he can have one last mission with her, and maybe convince her to fight to stay on board.
Unfortunately, when they take a shuttle down to the surface, they’re attacked and taken prisoner by revolutionaries led by a Coridanite named Traeg, who assumes that T’Pol is the superior officer. T’Pol plays along by saying that Archer is the ship’s steward and they were preparing a meal for the chancellor. Traeg has no love for the Vulcans, as they support the current government that he’s fighting against.
The Vulcan vessel Ni’Var arrives early to pick up T’Pol. Tucker reluctantly informs Captain Sopek that Archer and T’Pol have been kidnapped. The Coridan chancellor is less than helpful to Enterprise, but is more than happy to let Ni’Var take charge of investigation and rescue.
Archer and T’Pol manage to get out of their bonds and try to escape, but are quickly recaptured. Traeg then sends a ransom demand to Enterprise: forty phase pistols like the ones Archer and T’Pol were carrying. The chancellor had advised them against dealing with the terrorists, and Reed agrees: leaving aside that they don’t have as many as forty phase pistols, there’s no guarantee that giving them away would free the captain and sub-commander.
Sopek plans to do a commando raid to rescue Archer and T’Pol. Tucker is less than thrilled with the high risk factor there, so he orders Reed and Sato to try to locate the shuttle. Once they find what they think is it, Tucker and Reed go down—only to also be captured, but not by the Coridanites, but instead by Andorians! Shran and Tholos inform them that, had they actually gone to the shuttle pod, they’d have been ambushed, as it was a trap. They’re there because Shran has been losing sleep over his being indebted to Archer. He plans to rescue him by way of repaying that debt. Shran has an informant among Traeg’s people, and he has that informant smuggle in a communications device to let Archer know what’s coming.
Shran, Tholos, Tucker, and Reed effect a rescue just as Sopek’s commando raid happens, and there’s a big-ass firefight. Shran gives T’Pol back the scanner she gave him at the end of “The Andorian Incident,” and then he argues with Sopek about treaty violations.
Traeg was wounded in the firefight, but he manages to fire a shot at Sopek, which T’Pol jumps in front of, saving the captain’s life. Over Sopek’s objections, Archer brings the unconscious T’Pol to Enterprise, where Phlox treats her. Archer pleads with Sopek to advocate on T’Pol’s behalf to stay on Enterprise. Either way, he can’t take her on the Ni’Var, as Phlox declares her too badly injured to be moved. Sopek says that he will speak to the High Command.
The gazelle speech. Archer has gone from wanting to knock T’Pol on her ass to fighting tooth and claw to keep her on board in a mere six months!
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol points out that her initial assignment to Enterprise was only supposed to be eight days and it would be illogical to expect it to last that much longer anyhow.
Florida Man. Florida Man Makes Racist Remarks Toward Vulcan Captain While Asking Him For Help.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox points out that T’Pol is the only Vulcan who has served aboard a human vessel for more than a few weeks. The others all couldn’t handle the rampant emotionalism.
Ambassador Pointy. Soval has many disparaging remarks to make about Archer on his way out the door.
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… Vulcan is sufficiently cranky about the destruction of P’Jem that they suspend joint operations with Earth.
Buy the Book
Until the Last of Me
Blue meanies. The Andorians were kind enough to give the monks (and spies) on P’Jem fair warning before blowing it up, so everyone survived. (Interestingly, T’Pol is the only one who asks if the relics were saved, and Archer doesn’t know—and we never do find out…)
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. When they’re trying to extricate themselves from their bonds, at one point T’Pol falls on top of Archer, her breasts smushed into Archer’s face. That speaks so well of what the producers thought of their primary audience…
More on this later… The planet of Coridan was first introduced in the original series’ “Journey to Babel,” where the conference to which the Enterprise was ferrying various diplomats was to decide whether or not the planet should join the Federation. It wasn’t established until TNG’s “Sarek” that they did, in fact, join the Federation.
I’ve got faith…
“Your people took something away from my father that meant a lot to him. They’re not going to do the same thing to me.”
–Archer first explaining why he’s so bitchy toward Vulcans and then showing how much he’s been able to move past that to appreciate T’Pol.
Welcome aboard. Gary Graham returns as Soval (last seen in “Broken Bow“) and Jeffrey Combs and Steven Dennis are back as Shran and Tholos, respectively (last seen in “The Andorian Incident“), officially making all three characters recurring. Graham and Combs will both continue in their roles to the show’s conclusion; this is Dennis’s final appearance. Graham will next appear in “Shockwave, Part II,” Combs will be back in “Cease Fire.”
Vaughn Armstrong is back for the second week in a row, this time in his more familiar recurring role of Forrest, who was last seen in “Fortunate Son.” He’ll be back in “Fusion.”
Gregory Itzin plays his fourth of five guest roles on Trek as Sopek, having previously appeared in DS9’s “Dax” and “Who Mourns for Morn?” and Voyager’s “Critical Care.” He’ll next appear in Part 2 of “In a Mirror, Darkly.” Barbara J. Tarbuck, last seen in TNG’s “The Host” as a Pelian, plays the Cordian chancellor. Jeff Kober, last seen in Voyager’s “Repentance” as a murderer, plays Traeg.
Trivial matters: This episode is a direct sequel to “The Andorian Incident.” It also takes place six months after “Broken Bow.”
The Vulcan vessel Ni’Var is named after the novella “Ni Var” by Claire Gabriel, which was originally published in the fanzine Quartet in 1974, then professionally reprinted in the 1976 anthology The New Voyages. The starship Ni’Var is also seen in Hidden Universe Travel Guide: Vulcan by Dayton Ward. Discovery‘s “Unification III” will establish that the Vulcan and Romulan people will unite some time between the twenty-fourth and thirty-second centuries and the planet Vulcan will be renamed Ni’Var.
Captain Gardner is mentioned as Soval’s preferred choice to have captained the Enterprise. He’ll be mentioned a few more times, later promoted to admiral and taking over for Forrest when the latter is killed in season four. His Mirror Universe counterpart will be seen in “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II,” played by John Mahon. He was named after a friend of co-writer Phyllis Strong’s who died in the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
Coridanites will continue to be seen on Enterprise, and also on Discovery.
It’s been a long road… “She’s still my science officer.” This is about seventy-five percent of an excellent episode. My biggest problems with it are that it should have been immediately after “The Andorian Incident,” not eight episodes later, and the completely unconvincing ending.
While television has gotten looser in this regard over the last decade or so, as a general rule a person’s name in the opening credits means they’re going to continue to be a part of the show. So building an episode around the second-billed person in the opening credits possibly leaving the show doesn’t exactly put the “art” in artificial suspense. There are ways of doing this that are convincing and interesting—for example, the EMH’s tragic reasons for not leaving Voyager in “Virtuoso.” Unfortunately, “Shadows of P’Jem” falls more into the same weak-sauce category as the original series’ “Operation—Annihilate!” (with the out-of-nowhere revelation about the Vulcan inner eyelid enabling Spock to stop being blind and continue to serve) and TNG’s “The Icarus Factor” (where Riker just provided a poor last-minute excuse for not accepting the Aries that pretty much boiled down to “I’m in the opening credits, I can’t leave”).
T’Pol’s remaining on board boils down to appealing to Sopek’s feelings of sentiment for the person who saved his life, and while it’s possible they could’ve picked a less convincing reason for a Vulcan to do something, it doesn’t spring readily to mind. There’s nothing in Sopek’s character—he’s all-business and snotty even by Vulcans’ high standards—that indicates that he’d be at all interested in advocating for T’Pol. And even if he does so, Archer’s belief that it’d be enough to convince High Command to leave her be is specious to say the least.
It’s too bad, because up until the ending, it’s a good episode. This is the sort of thing Enterprise is best at: humans stumbling out into the galaxy and getting caught up in the chaos of the pre-Federation Alpha Quadrant politics. The opening with Soval and Forrest is excellent, setting the stage nicely. Jeffrey Combs remains magnificence itself as Shran, and I love the fact that he wants to repay his debt to Archer, not out of some sense of honor or duty or anything like that, but because being indebted to some schmuck of an alien annoys the shit out of him and is keeping him up at night.
Though there are other issues, as well. I know the intentions of the producers were to show Vulcans as the bad guys and humans as the victims of them being big meanies, but watching Tucker be an asshole to Sopek just has the opposite effect. Sopek is just doing his job, and Tucker is defensive and quick to think the worst of the Vulcans, and pretty much comes across as racist. Yeah, Sopek’s a pompous ass, but that’s not a good enough reason for Tucker’s attitude.
And T’Pol falling boobs-first on Archer was just cringe-inducing.
Still, this episode moves the political chess pieces around some, gives us some more insight into a world introduced in passing on the original series, shows how much Archer has come to appreciate T’Pol, and has Combs being awesome.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges folks to support the anthology The Fans are Buried Tales, edited by veteran Star Trek novelist Peter David and Kathleen O. David, to which Keith is one of the contributors. It features cosplayers telling stories in character for whoever they’re dressed as, and other contributors include fellow Trek prose stylists Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, Rigel Ailur, Robert T. Jeschonek, and John Peel, and tons more besides. Here’s the link to the anthology’s Kickstarter, which will only last until tomorrow night.
So, what did we learn today?
The humans are not alone in fitting blinkenlights to their covert ops communicators. Another few centuries of R&D, and they’ll cut it down to perky chirps. And the shuttles are armed. Is that new?
I’m not sure how I think about the Vulcan approach to planetary sovereignty. How they deal with their dissidents is up to them, it seems, as long as they take their Vulcan advice meekly. And how did the Vulcans ever keep their reputation that they don’t lie?
Was the getting-out-of-the-ropes sequence supposed to be eye candy? If they had spent less time speaking and more time working the knots, they might have gotten out in time … to get killed, maybe.
@1: “Hey, Vulcans, do you lie?”
“No.”
“Is that a lie?”
“Since we do not lie, logic dictates that it must not be.”
“Huh… checks out. Hey everyone, Vulcans never lie!”
I found this episode rather unfocused. It’s got some cute business with Shran wanting to repay his debt so he can get some sleep — it establishes that he has integrity, but in a way that maintains his irascibility and unfriendlines. But unfortunately, the part that stands out most in my memory is the sophomoric bondage sequence. This show’s producers had a terrible approach to sex appeal, contriving to put the female leads in accidentally revealing or (supposedly) titillating situations, which took away their agency and consent and was thus rather prurient. There’s a lot about TOS we justifiably see as sexist, but at least the female characters there were usually trying to be sexy and seductive, so they had more agency than T’Pol getting Archer’s face mushed against her chest or Hoshi in the season finale losing her top when she drops out of a vent.
It occurs to me I haven’t mentioned how miscast I felt Gary Graham was as Soval, at least initially. I first got to know Graham as the lead of the Alien Nation TV series from 1989-97 (counting the revival movies), and he did a great job there playing a very emotional character, a constantly angry guy who had a sensitive soul and wore his heart on his sleeve. But I felt for most of ENT’s run that he did a poor job dialing back his emotional intensity enough to be convincing as a Vulcan. It wasn’t until season 4 that I felt he finally got a handle on Vulcan acting, and after that he was quite good at it.
Although as the series went on, a lot of other actors would have similar issues, playing Vulcan characters with far too much emotionality — Robert Foxworth as Administrator V’Las in season 4 in particular. But by then, it kind of worked in the stories’ favor, since it was established that the Vulcans had lost touch with Surak’s true teachings.
I first saw Gary Graham in the legendary, thoughtful, nuanced, artistic triumph known as… Robot Jox. He was pretty emotional there, too.
@4/Delos: Oh yeah, Robot Jox. Not a bad film, actually, for what it was. It had a pretty smart script by noted SF novelist Joe Haldeman, though it got somewhat dumbed down in rewrites.
Yup, Robot Jox is fun, in sort of that boffo social commentary school of sci-fi flick. Paul Verhoeven must’ve been a fan, I would imagine.
I believe it’s free to watch on Tubi or one of those other streamers right now.
I’m not going to lie, that bit with Captain Archer & T’Pol almost managing to wriggle their way out of their restraints struck me as a first-rate bit of physical comedy … right up until they made a boob of the ending (Although seeing those terrorists rush in right after Our Heroes got loose gave me the strong impression that those guards had been watching the entire time, quite possibly taking bets and maybe a bit TOO distracted by their surprise at these two ‘guests’ actually making a go of their escape).
Also, it’s absolutely delightful to see T’Pol get her due after being absolutely indispensable for so many episodes (Possibly even better than seeing Shran back in town, though it’s a close-run thing either way); it’s also amusing to see that Doctor Phlox’s tendency to pilfer from the plates of others alive & well (I’m beginning to suspect that the Denobulan sense of personal space extends no further than the outer limits of their skin!).
One interesting question this episode presents us is “What might have become of NX-01 with Captain Gardner in charge?” (While Ambassador Soval’s support for the man suggests somebody perhaps a little too in awe of the Vulcans, I doubt the Good Captain was anything but an exemplary professional – something Captain Archer occasionally struggles to be).
@3. ChristopherLBennett: In all honesty the fact that Vulcans are not actually emotionless (except for those who’ve pursued Logic all the way to Kolinahr) strikes me as adequate justification for some Vulcans being at least a little emotive – especially by comparison with Mr Spock, who (let us remember) has always had more to prove than most when it comes to walking the Way of Surak and was for much of his more life more a ‘Model Vulcan’ than a completely representative one (Very much in the same way Mr Worf was a ‘Model Klingon’).
To be honest I think the ideal Vulcan performance is controlled, not genuinely passionless (A balance that Ms. Blalock has proven herself to be rather good at striking thus far in the rewatch; in all honesty that’s something I missed on my first encounters with ENTERPRISE, during it’s initial run), although I do agree that sort of feeling is better kept simmering beneath the surface than bubbling up around the edges.
“And T’Pol falling boobs-first on Archer was just cringe-inducing.”
So very cringe. Bakula talking to John Stewart about it is also cringe:
https://www.cc.com/video/09l92h/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-scott-bakula
At the time I didn’t care much for T’Pol, but rewatching the series I can only commend Blalock for doing as well as she did with such limited material.
@7/ED: Of course Vulcans aren’t emotionless, but my point is that there’s a right and a wrong way for an actor to emote as a Vulcan. The right way is the way Nimoy did it, by internalizing the emotion and expressing it subtly beneath a surface of control and discipline. Tim Russ and Jolene Blalock did it fairly well also. When they wanted to convey irritation, for instance, they did it with a subtle tension to the voice, a slight narrowing of the eyes or lips. Compared to that, Soval’s shows of irritation in seasons 1-2 were practically J. Jonah Jameson tantrums.
I thought Russ was particularly excellent. Not to slight Nemoy at all, but to carve his own way in an alien species so well established by a legendary actor, without departing or being derivative, took real skill.
@5 – “”it’s as if I’d had a child who started out well and then sustained brain damage.”” Joe Haldeman on Robot Jox.
And yet, seven years later and with a whole new production crew, they still had Kirk grabbing Uhura’s breasts and grinning at her during the bar fight. Instead of her silly pushing him off of her, she should have been the one to deck him and knock him out cold.
It seems that Star Trek never learns.
Watching this makes me wonder how the galaxy wasn’t in a state of perpetual war until Archer and the rest of the humans showed up. Nobody seems to get along with anyone else without at least the suggestion of force. It would have been interesting to see what happens when Starfleet screwed up but good. How would humanity react? How would the crew? The Vulcans? But. our intrepid crew are the ones in the credits so they always have to come out on the right side of things, even though mistakes happen in the real world.
Let’s see Archer doing what he things is the right thing and pushing an alien race to do something that turns out horribly wrong because he didn’t fully understand the situation or the races invited and how they would react. Show us something going so badly that it brings in the Prime Directive.
Instead, we get these guys versus those guys versus those other guys with Archer in the middle working it all out 5 minutes before the end of the episode so we have time for the tag.
Yes, this is a follow up to a prior episode but the destruction of the monastery plays a surprisingly small part. Mostly, it’s played to give Shran a chance to get out of Archer’s debt. And speaking of Shran, has he been following the Enterprise, just waiting for such a chance? If not, then space, which should be very, very big is shown as very, very small.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the higher-ups at UPN were specifically trying to attract the sorts of viewers who were fans of “Baywatch.” That sounds kind of like an urban legend to me, but Enterprise‘s flailing attempts at sex appeal are almost enough to make me believe it.
So, is it fair to say that T’Pol was a’pall’ed at all the rampant emotionalism?
@10 There’s a version of this show that does for pre-Federation politics what TNG/DS9 did for Federation-Klingon politics, and in that version it would have been fantastic to learn that the Vulcans have deliberately kept the Alpha Quadrant bubbling like a crab pot, no one species strong enough to challenge their fleets, and everyone pulling down everyone else, as a ‘logical’ way of managing the level of galactic aggression.
Because the way the Vulcans deal with the Andorians & Humans in this episode is a case study in how not to do international diplomacy. In this episode alone, we see that Shran is willing to open up a line of dialogue with Archer. Suspending joint Vulcan-Human operations is just asking them to pivot to the Andorians as new patrons.
@11/Iacomina: There’s nothing wrong with Star Trek being sexy. TOS certainly was, and DS9 could get fairly racy at times. The problem with ENT, as I said, is how they went about it — instead of letting the characters choose to be sexy or pursue romance, they contrived sophomoric scenarios that put characters into titillating or compromising situations in nominally non-sexual contexts, and it was just clumsy and voyeuristic.
Of course, it was hard to let them choose to be sexy when there were only two female regulars and one was stoic and detached, and when Rick Berman was maintaining an absolute “gay people don’t exist” policy.
@14- I think this hits it, really. The reboot movies struck me this was more than Enterprise, probably because I was just a wee lad when Enterprise came out, but there’s a sense of the sex appeal being at the female characters’ expense rather than something they get to participate in.
@13. chieroscuro: That strikes me as a bit ‘High-Risk, High-Return’ for the Vulcans – consider that Great Britain practiced a broadly similar policy in Europe (and elsewhere) then spent much of the early to mid-20th Century paying a thoroughly nasty price for it.
@9. ChristopherLBennett: That’s true enough, but “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” still applies to Vulcans; I would, in all truth, be rather worried were one & all of them to express their emotional control/repression et al in an identical style (They can’t ALL be Spock, after all).
@16/ED: I’m not talking about Vulcans in-universe, I’m talking about actors, directors, and their performance choices. I’m not advocating Spock impressions, I’m just saying that few Vulcan guest actors really get a handle on how to play Vulcan behavior convincingly. As I said, Gary Graham did finally figure it out by season 4, but in earlier seasons he hadn’t dialed it in yet. He didn’t come across as someone who’d spent his whole life learning to contain his emotions, but as someone quick to irritation and barely holding it in.
Having only seen this episode once many years ago, the one thing I also clearly remember is the T’Pol’s breasts mashing Archer’s face scene. It seems the show was written with 16 year old boys in mind.
@14/CLB: I’d say Voyager was also pretty sophomoric in the situations it came up with meant to be sexually titillating. I’d also argue that T’Pol had some agency in her sexuality by, beginning in the 3rd season, wearing more revealing outfits and changing up her look in general. TNG also was pretty good with giving it’s female characters sexual agency, particularly with Tasha Yar and Deanna Troi.
“You’re running away because you’re afraid to become one of us.”
It’s true that there’s no real fear from the audience that T’Pol might actually leave the ship, much less die, but in a sense that’s not the point. The point is the effect it has on the characters. Archer, by this point, has definitely started viewing T’Pol as one of his rather than one of theirs and is determined to keep her in the family as much as possible. And T’Pol, whilst not once breaking the Vulcan stoicism, is clearly trying very hard not to admit that she’s become rather fond of these silly humans. I did smile at Phlox’s blatant lying-by-omission during the closing scene, which rivalled Archer winding up Tucker as a fun moment.
It’s interesting that neither the Vulcans nor the Andorians are portrayed as being entirely wrong or right. The Vulcans are being hypocrites, and launch a so-called rescue mission that seems more concerned with killing as many terrorists as possible than freeing the hostages (including the one trying to help them, which involves firing blindly through the wall of the building Archer and T’Pol are in), but the final scene shows that Sopek isn’t entirely incapable of gratitude. The Andorians destroy an illegal monitoring station but are clearly indulging in espionage of their own and come across as quite paranoid. Our heroes pass no judgement on the Coridan government, who the rebels consider to be a Vulcan puppet state: They’re just interested in getting themselves out alive.
Archer mentions T’Pol saved his life once: I’m possibly forgetting something, but it might refer to her keeping Enterprise by the Suliban Helix to beam him aboard in “Broken Bow”. Curiously, with the four senior officers absent, Sato seems more obviously in charge than Mayweather even though “Cold Front” implied him to be next in line: She seems to be reporting to him at one point but then she addresses Sopek herself.
cap-mjb: I believe Archer is referring to “Broken Bow” when he said T’Pol saved his life, yes.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@18/garreth: “I’d say Voyager was also pretty sophomoric in the situations it came up with meant to be sexually titillating.”
Perhaps on some later occasions, largely with Seven, when the show was run by Brannon Braga, as ENT was. Not so much earlier on. VGR’s approach to sexuality was generally to have characters actually feel or pursue romantic or sexual interests — Neelix loving Kes, Tom having a crush on Kes or pursuing the Delaney sisters, Janeway and Chakotay having their subtle romantic tension, Harry having a crush on Seven, etc. It’s totally different from what I’m talking about, where the writers inject titillation into things that are totally non-sexual situations for the characters, like decontamination or escaping captors. It’s like they want to ogle the bodies but are afraid to engage with the actual emotions, and that’s what makes it immature and incongruous.
@19. cap-mjb: Thank You for reminding us of Captain Archer’s little joke at Trip’s expense; it’s quite possibly the funniest bit in the series so far, I really should have remembered to mention that in my thoughts on the episode.
Also, @krad, it has just struck me that Sopek’s willingness to put in a good word for T’Pol makes perfect sense in terms of self-interest (possibly even enlightened self-interest); an officer willing to put herself between a colleague and an energy blast is someone you want to keep around, not condemn to obscurity (After all, if the in question colleague was you once upon a time, it might well be you next time as well).
Though that logic might well lead to a desire to keep such a useful meat-shield on your own ship, rather than leave her on NX-01, a line of thought that might lead to future episodes (and represent a greater degree of serialisation than ENTERPRISE cared to pursue at this time).
ED and cap-mjb: I feel the opposite about the Archer-Tucker captain’s mess scene where Archer tricked Tucker into thinking he wouldn’t take him down to check out the shipbuilding facilities. I honestly thought the scene went on too long and didn’t quite land (which is why I didn’t even really mention it in the rewatch entry).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Not as good as The Andorian Incident, but an effective followup nonetheless. Either the Archer/T’Pol prison gymnastics are cringe-inducing, or an unintended bit of Keaton-esque physical comedy. It could go either way, but I prefer the latter, as it makes me laugh.
Shadows of P’Jem‘s terrorist plot itself involving the Coridans is standard Trek fare we’ve seen plenty of times before. But having the Vulcan and Andorian chess pieces moving across the board makes the plot a delight to watch all the way through. And I’m glad we finally get Archer standing up for his first officer. It’s about time T’Pol is given her due respect and defense.
And Shran is never not fun to watch. Of course he’d treat owing Archer a favor as a burden.
@3/Christopher: I’ve always noticed Soval’s overly emotional outbursts, but never made the connection to Graham and Alien Nation. I’d forgotten Matt Sikes was very much the hyper-emotional one on the Sikes/Francisco pairing.
This episode made me like Shran as a charecter. In “Shadows…” he was Really Angry Blue Alien. Here he gets to be his own thing more. I especially like how he makes it clear that he’s not helping Archer out of simpathy, but because he needs to sleep. And it’s great they managed to make him just as interesting as Weyoun but completely unique (although Weyoun remains my favorite Combs charecter).
@25/Eduardo: “I’d forgotten Matt Sikes was very much the hyper-emotional one on the Sikes/Francisco pairing.”
Yes. The best moment in the main title sequence (debuting in episode 2) is right at the end when the music abruptly pauses for a clip of Matt screaming and pounding the steering wheel and roof of his car while George watches calmly from the passenger seat. It summed them both up perfectly.
I remember being fond of and and enjoying Alien Nation back when it ran on FOX. I assumed it was on for several years and I lost interest after the first season or so, but looking it up online I was shocked to discover it only ran for one season! It’s probably the subsequent TV movies that aired (which I can’t recall seeing) that gave me the false perception that the TV series was on for more than one season. Anyway, it was a good premise and I enjoyed the characters.
Three of the main leads on Alien Nation went on to guest star on various Trek spin-offs: Eric Pierpoint (TNG, DS9), Michelle Scarabelli (TNG), and obviously, Graham (VOY, ENT).
@28/garreth: Tim Russ had a bit part in the Alien Nation TV pilot movie — oddly enough, playing what was supposedly the same character played in the feature film by an actor 42 years older than he was. Another Trek veteran playing a recast character was Susanna Thompson, who appeared in the first revival TV movie as a character (a short-term romantic interest of Matt Sikes) who’d been played by a different actress in the series.
Also, Brian Thompson (Klag from “A Matter of Honor,” Admiral Valdore from ENT season 4) was the only actor to appear in both the feature film and the TV series (not counting archive footage), although as different characters (both aliens).
Oh, and Armin Shimerman appeared in the series as a crooked alien accountant, which was definitely typecasting (it was before Quark, but after his two TNG Ferengi). The same episode featured Beverly Leech, who would appear in VGR: “Nightingale.”
There was one of the Alien Nation revival TV movies that I rewatched over and over again (it seemed to repeat every week). It was Alien Nation: MIllennium. It was 1996, and it was the first movie I recall dealing with the imminent turn of the millennium that really caught my attention, the story taking place circa December 1999 – the story itself was mostly about a suicide cult that brainwashed Francisco’s son. But the notion that we were less than four years away from the festivities was a big reason I kept rewatching that film.
@29/CLB: Nice.
I believe Soval was always intended by the Enterprise writers to be, while not a baddie, the jerk that audiences would love to root against because he was obviously opposed to our heroes. But as the series would progress, his attitude would soften and he’d become a prominent ally as we’d see by the 4th season. It was nice to see Graham’s softening portrayal of Soval as this shift occurred. But my absolute favorite performance by Graham as Soval was actually when he was portraying his Mirror Universe counterpart in “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II.” There was a line he delivered comically that was perfect and cracked me up – one of my favorite moments in that whole two-parter which I love in general.
ED and krad: To be honest, I think the joke didn’t quite land either. I think the reason I found it funny is I ended up laughing at the wrong joke. Archer says he’s taking Hoshi with him and Tucker looks like he’s been told he has to do his homework before he can go out and kick a ball around, so Archer starts winding him up about the great shipbuilding facilities they have and how they’ve got ships even faster than the Vulcans. I thought the joke was that he was making all that stuff up to teach Tucker a lesson for being a sook…but from the rest of that conversation, it seems it was all true (!) and he was only pretending he wasn’t taking Tucker, which…didn’t make as much sense.
Re Soval: To be fair, it’s there in the script for his first appearance when Archer says “When your logic doesn’t work, you raise your voice? You’ve been on Earth too long.” So possibly it’s less a case of Gary Graham not playing him like a proper Vulcan and more a case of him being scripted as not a proper Vulcan. Whilst I suspect that the Season 4 “Vulcan renaissance” storyline was a retcon when Manny Coto took over, the first two seasons do tend to portray Vulcans as not living up to their ideals. Perhaps Soval has learned to show controlled emotions around humans because he thinks they’ll respond to it.
@32. cap-mjb & @24. krad: I see your point, but must say that the joke still made me laugh (Trip is, in some ways, very much Captain Archer’s little brother-from-another-mother and it’s amusing to see the Good Captain use that level of Love & trust to tweak his Chief Engineer a little).
@25. Eduardo S H Jencarelli: I agree that the Archer/T’Pol escapology sequence is easiest to like as a bit of physical comedy (and certainly the final flop only makes decent sense as a poorly-considered extension of such a comic bit).
Also, I have only ever seen bits & pieces of ALIEN NATION, but I know just enough to wonder what the characters & setting have been going through in the years since the last production in that franchise – hopefully they’ve had slightly better luck than our timeline has!
I watched this for the first time several weeks ago, and I already can’t remember almost anything about it (except for Combs complaining that he can’t sleep). So I guess I didn’t think much of it.
I didn’t really get how T’Pol “saved Sopek’s life” by taking the phaser hit. She survived it, if Sopek had been hit, he likely would have as well, maybe even had a better time being treated by Vulcan doctors on his own ship. Maybe it’s just the thought that counts?
@36 Maybe if Traeg had hit where he was aiming, he’d have got a vital organ rather than a shoulder blast?
I enjoyed this episode. Afterwards, I would say “Oh good, Shran is in this one.” every time I saw Jeffrey Combs.
In this episode we learned the Andorians destroyed the listening post/monastery uncovered in The Andorian Incident. So, are we meant to take from that knowledge that the Vulcans continued operating the facility after its discovery, in open violation of the treaty? Does the treaty even still exist anymore? Neither party is seeming to give it any respect.
Also, was no one else nauseated by the sight of Archer trying to eat that hugely unappealing bowl of food?
@13, Chieroscuro, – it would have been fantastic to learn that the Vulcans have deliberately kept the Alpha Quadrant bubbling like a crab pot, no one species strong enough to challenge their fleets, and everyone pulling down everyone else, as a ‘logical’ way of managing the level of galactic aggression.
That sounds like exactly the kind of logical stupidity Vulcans would indulge in. And it makes their fears about humans even more understandable. Here we are crashing around their careful balance of terror like bulls in a china shop.
Humans are like large breed puppies, clumsy but very friendly. We had our fill of war in the last century. What we want to do is meet people and make friends. We’ve also had several millennia of dealing with different cultures and world views and a very recent lesson on the value of flexibility and tolerance. Not only do we find it easy to identify with aliens but they find it startlingly easy to identify with us. Humans make Vulcans nervous because we remind them of their pre-Surak selves on steroids and as Andorians get to know us better they start to see us as pink skinned versions of themselves.
While it’s nice to see Capt. Archer’s desire to keep T’Pol as one of his crew, wouldn’t a Vulcan vessel have better medical facilities to treat an injured Vulcan than a Denobulan working on an Earth vessel?
I always felt an interesting way they could have approached ENT was to set up the “power blocks” that were more clearly defined in the TNG era. The Andorians, Vulcans, and Tellarites all have a chunk of the Alpha Quadrant. But humanity comes and starts talking them into getting them together.
@42/C.T. Phipps: You’re basically describing how ENT actually did approach it, albeit mostly in seasons 1 & 4.
Also, the TNG era did nothing with the Andorians and Tellarites beyond a few passing mentions, and not much with the Vulcans.
Yes, but TNG was also deliberately avoiding retouching any of the old races at the start. Vulcans and Klingons and Romulans only slowly got reintroduced.
@44/C.T. Phipps: Yes, that’s the point. They weren’t “clearly defined in the TNG era,” because they were mostly ignored in the TNG era. They weren’t clearly defined until ENT. Even Vulcan’s role in the Federation was ambiguous in TOS. It was only apocryphal that Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar were founding members until ENT made it canonical.
It’s interesting how action-oriented this series is compared with other Trek, which tends to mete out action set pieces every four episodes or so. It is a good episode all things considered. Though with the regularity this crew is captured, you’d think Malcom would take a page from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and build little escape kits in the heels of their boots.
Speaking of escape, the eroticized rope scene is inexcusably bad though and really makes no sense with these characters.