“First Flight”
Written by John Shiban & Chris Black
Directed by LeVar Burton
Season 2, Episode 24
Production episode 050
Original air date: May 14, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Enterprise finds what may or may not be a dark-matter nebula. Archer and T’Pol’s good-natured argument on the subject is interrupted by Sato, who says that Forrest is calling. He has bad news: Captain A.G. Robinson has died in an accident while mountain climbing.
Tucker has jiggered some explosives that need to be deployed, and which will allow them to definitively know if this is really a dark-matter nebula or not. Archer takes a shuttlepod to deploy them, refusing Tucker’s company, though the engineer, too, is bummed at Robinson’s death. T’Pol, however, bullies her way on board, reminding Archer of the Starfleet regulation that the captain should never leave the ship unaccompanied.
It’ll take almost three hours to get to the coordinates for deploying the explosives, and so Archer opens up to T’Pol. When they were both commanders, Archer, Robinson, Duvall, and Gardner were the four candidates to be the first to fly a human-built ship past warp two.
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Commodore Forrest informs Commander Archer that Robinson is the one getting to do the first flight. Later, Archer drowns his sorrows in the 602 Club, but he does allow Robinson to buy him a drink. Robinson also bluntly tells Archer that the reason why he didn’t get the gig is because he’s too by-the-book, and was trying too hard to get the nod. Starfleet isn’t just looking for pilots, they’re looking for future starship captains.
Two weeks later, Robinson is flying in NX-A, with Archer in charge of mission control. After nailing down an issue with the stabilizers, Robinson finally gets to go to warp. He makes it to warp two, but she gets shaky as he approaches warp 2.1. Both Archer and Forrest order Robinson to abort, but he insists on getting it to warp 2.2. The ship then falls apart around him and he barely is able to eject. The NX-A explodes.
When he returns to Earth, Robinson thinks it’s an engine problem. Tucker—one of the lieutenants on the engineering team—insists that the engines are fine, they’re just still trying to find the right intermix ratios.
Later, Archer sees Tucker in the 602 and they introduce themselves formally and share a drink. Forrest joins them shortly thereafter, getting Tucker to buy him a beer, and informing the pair of them that the Vulcans want to suspend the NX Project indefinitely. Archer and Tucker are both livid, especially since the Vulcans share Robinson’s belief that it’s the engine that’s the problem. Archer—whose Dad built the engine—and Tucker—who’s been working on the engineering team—both disagree loudly. Later, Robinson shows up in the bar and Archer confronts him, wanting to know what he told the Vulcans during his debrief. Archer is incensed that Robinson didn’t even cop to the possibility of pilot error, not to mention the fact that he disobeyed a direct order to disengage.
Naturally, this ends in a fistfight.
After they’ve both cooled off, Archer convinces Robinson that they shouldn’t give up. Yes, he’s not entirely objective about his Daddy’s engine, but he’s sure that the problem is just getting the intermix ratios right. They still have the NX-B, and Robinson suggests taking it out for an unauthorized flight. Archer has to be talked into that, as it’ll risk his career, but they both think it’s worth it—as does Tucker, who agrees to serve as their one-person mission control.
Their heist is successful, as is the flight itself, with NX-B making it all the way to warp 2.5, a new record. Robinson returns to Earth, and all three are arrested. Forrest tears them all six or seven new assholes, and while they are able to avoid a court-martial—mainly because the flight was successful in saving the NX Project—but they’re all suspended for three months. NX-D would break warp three eight months later, with Duvall in the cockpit, and five years after that, they laid the keel for Enterprise.
In the present, Archer and T’Pol determine that it really-o-truly-o is a dark matter nebula. T’Pol suggests naming it after Robinson.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently, in 2143 humans couldn’t fly faster than warp two but were able to figure out how to safely eject a pilot seat from a ship at warp speeds. Sure.
The gazelle speech. Archer was a lot more obsessive, by the book, and unfriendly as a commander than he would later be as a captain. He attributes his personality improvement to Robinson’s influence.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol recognizes that Archer needs to talk about Robinson to someone rather than stew in a shuttlepod all by himself, so she bullies her way onto the shuttle and gets him to open up.
Florida Man. Florida Man Risks Career To Aid In Illegal Flight.
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… The Vulcan observers are ready to completely shut down the NX Project because of one disaster, which is a bit extreme.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Allegedly, Ruby had the name of her kids picked out since she was ten years old, and has promised to marry whoever guesses them. We see Tucker trying his luck (Cyrus and Rosalie are his guess).
More on this later. By the twenty-fourth century, dark matter nebulae were commonplace, encountered by the Enterprise-D in “In Theory,” Voyager in “Cathexis,” and the DS9 crew on a stolen Jem’Hadar ship in “Rocks and Shoals.”
I’ve got faith…
“You remember what Buzz Aldrin said when he stepped onto the moon?”
“No.”
“Nobody does—because Armstrong went first.”
–Archer explaining to Ruby why coming in second sucks.
Welcome aboard. The big guest here is the great Keith Carradine as Robinson. In addition, Brigid Brannagh plays Ruby and Michael Canavan plays the Vulcan advisor. Canavan previously played a Maquis in DS9’s “Defiant” and a Ramuran in Voyager’s “Unforgettable.” Plus, recurring regular Vaughn Armstrong is back for the second week in a row as Forrest; he’ll return two episodes hence in “The Expanse.”
In addition, three sailors who were awarded “sailor of the year” from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) have small walk-on small roles: Aviation Maintenance Administrationman 2nd Class James D. Frey, Navy Counselor 1st Class Kathleen J. Grant, and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Thomas P. Hunt.
Trivial matters: Most of this episode takes place ten years previous, serving as both a sequel to First Contact and a prequel to “Broken Bow.”
Only four of the opening-credits regulars appear in the episode: Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, Connor Trinneer, and Linda Park, the latter for only one very brief moment with only one line.
This is the first appearance of Ruby and the 602 Club, which were both discussed by Tucker and Reed in “Shuttlepod One.”
Tucker’s CO on the engineering team is Captain Jefferies, a nod to Matt Jefferies, who designed the Enterprise for the original series, and after whom the “Jefferies tubes” are named (both in-universe and out of the box).
Archer and T’Pol’s discovery of a dark matter nebula is at odds with Archer mentioning seeing a dark matter nebula years previous in “Breaking the Ice.”
Robinson obviously doesn’t live long enough to be the captain of the NX-02, the Columbia. That honor will go to Captain Hernandez, as we’ll see in “Home.”
This is the first time we’ve seen a character with the rank of commodore since the original series. We’ll meet another in Picard in the person of Commodore Oh. None of the other spinoffs have shown anyone with that rank.
The other warp two flight candidates are Gardner and Duvall. The former, presumably, is the same Gardner whom Soval preferred for command of Enterprise over Archer, as mentioned in “Shadows of P’Jem,” and who will later be the admiral who takes over from Forrest after the admiral is killed in “The Forge.” The latter, presumably, is the same Duvall who was established as being promoted to captain the Shenandoah in “Silent Enemy.”
When first speaking to Archer, Tucker explains his nickname of “Trip.” It’s funny, I knew from the moment he was established as “Charles Tucker III” that the nickname “Trip” was short for “triple,” as that’s a common nickname for people who are the third straight person to carry a name in a family. But when the episode aired, lots of people wrote about it like it was this big revelation, at which point I remembered that not everybody is familiar with the nickname habits of pretentious white people…
It’s been a long road… “We all wanted the first flight.” I really wanted to like this episode. I love this sort of look back to see where the characters were before the show started. And bits of this are wonderful, like seeing Archer and Tucker first start talking and especially seeing Scott Bakula play the much more uptight Archer of a decade prior who starts bar fights because someone insulted his old man and who is hyperfocused solely on making his Daddy’s engine work right. And it’s really hard to go wrong casting Keith Carradine, who is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best actor of the Carradine clan (and I don’t say that lightly, given how much acting talent there is in that family).
But so much in this flashback makes absolutely nothing like sense. We start with the notion that the four people who were in line to pilot the warp two engine are also the same guys who would later be tapped to captain starships, and what the what? The two skills are completely unrelated! Being a test pilot is a very particular skill set, and while there’s some overlap in the Venn diagram of that and a starship captain, it’s not that much.
And then we have Robinson and Archer stealing a ship, in essence, aided by Tucker, and even though it proved that the engine was viable, there is absolutely no way, none, that the three of them would’ve remained in Starfleet after that—or if they did, they’d be transferred to desk jobs on Pluto or something. Hell, it strains credulity that Archer and Robinson weren’t severely disciplined for the bar fight, or that Robinson wasn’t disciplined for disobeying an order that was immediately followed by his ship blowing up. And yes, I know, characters in TV shows and movies pull this kind of bullshit all the time and never suffer any consequences for it, but my patience for that trope has never been all that great, and it’s diminished as I’ve gotten older.
The script varies wildly in quality, from the workable clichés (Archer’s Buzz Aldrin comment to Ruby) to Forrest’s reaming of Archer, Robinson, and Tucker (a rare case of the usually calm Forrest cutting loose, and which would’ve been more impressive had there been any real consequences attached to it) to Robinson’s pathetically awkward speculation about future starship missions (the exact line is “When the first warp five starship is built, its captain won’t be able to call home every time he needs to make a decision. He won’t be able to turn to the Vulcans, unless he decides to take one with him,” and I half expected Carradine to turn and wink at the camera at the end there).
This should’ve been a really great episode, and it wound up being such a disappointment…
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido is selling autographed copies of several of his books. Check out what’s available in this blog post.
I’ve heard that the original plan for Enterprise was for the entire first season to be this sort of The Right Stuff pastiche. I kind of wish that the network had let them go ahead with that format.
When I just watched this, Starfleet and discipline were also on my mind, but in a different way.
The Commodore is chewing some underlings out, and suddenly a bunch of Vulcans walk in? Wasn’t there a yeoman in the front office? Or where the Vulcans able to walk past that administrative sentry, with not even a warning? Add to that how the Vulcans were apparently able to shut the program down, and I wonder just how professional (and just how powerful) Starfleet was in 2143.
I mean, they are struggling with a two-seater Warp craft, while 40 years prior the Earth Cargo Service commissioned the Horizon, an interstellar craft. So are we witnessing an era where Starfleet consisted of a commodore on top and roughly four commanders, and where the denial of Vulcan support would be a death blow to any project? Basically they’re making it all up as they go along, from very humble beginnings to the NX-01, whose jurisdiction over ECS craft is still very much in question.
While this is probably nonsense, it would nicely explain how Archer could remain in Starfleet and get the captaincy of the Enterprise. As of 2143, Starfleet seems to be desperately short of heroes to capture public imagination and thus funding, and desperately short of officers who could command a starship because they are not even close to having a starship. We got a front row seat on how Starfleet started to outmaneuver the ECS …
I’m not going to lie, one of my abiding impressions from this episode is that Ruby shines like a diamond (Whatever their faults as swains, in this respect Mr Tucker & Mr Reed share impeccable taste): the other is that it’s quite intriguing to wonder how ENTERPRISE might have fared with Mr Carradine, rather than Mr Bakula in the Big Seat (though I actually quite like the latter’s Captain Archer as ‘Starfleet Mk.1’).
Other than that, one would sum this episode up as passable but not quite able to light a spark.
…
Also, I’m still wondering if any Nebula-class vessel was ever named for the late AG Robinson.
I found this one mediocre, and annoying in that it perpetuated ENT’s unfortunate insistence on trying to emulate the wrong part of The Right Stuff by having Starfleet’s pioneers be entirely white American men.
Keith Carradine didn’t do much for me, but I was glad to see Brigid Brannagh.
“I really wanted to like this” seems to be a theme of this rewatch. ;)
Nathan E. Miller: You’re not wrong.
Christopher: One of the four dudes who was up for the test flight was Black, but you’re not wrong either.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Interesting that Voyager instead mostly seemed to be “they should have made better choices.”
“Tucker has jiggered some explosives that need to be deployed.”
@krad. What does “jiggered” mean in this context? I’ve only ever heard this word used to describe damage. My dad would frequently say something like “Ouch. I jiggered my back”.
@8/Maat: According to the dictionary, the verb “jigger” means either “to interfere with,” or “to manipulate or alter, especially in order to get something done illegally or unethically.” I’m not sure either of those is what Keith meant, though it’s closer to the latter. I think he was going for something more like “rigged up.”
Maat (and Christopher): Tucker modified existing explosives to do a particular thing, hence “jiggered.” I’m using the “to manipulate or alter” part of the definition.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Maybe getting the ejector seat right was one of the reasons it took as long as it did to break the warp 2 barrier, because I can’t imagine that Starfleet would send somebody out to make that flight if there was no way to survive a malfunction. Nobody will ever forget Apollo 1!
“We didn’t build this engine to make test runs round Jupiter. We built it to explore! If my father were alive today, he’d be standing here asking: What the hell are we waiting for?”
Well, someone finally got to do Star Trek:The Right Stuff. I seem to be the only one but I found this pretty good. Robinson has just the right balance of obnoxiousness and determination to make his growing friendship with Archer seem plausible. The only really tiring scene is Archer and Robinson getting into a fist fight to shoehorn some action into the episode, which might be the sort of thing that always happens in this type of story but that just makes it a dull cliché. We also see the beginning of Archer and Tucker’s friendship: Archer obviously immediately appreciates Tucker’s willingness to be blunt where the Vulcans are concerned.
It’s hard to tell if things would have been different if Robinson had obeyed the order to abort, but at least he was willing to work for a solution, with a bit of prodding from Archer. Their stunt is justified by the fact they were willing to sacrifice their careers to pave the way for others (even if things do work out for them because plot armour). Archer makes a better speech than the one he made at the start of the season, probably because he keeps it simple. Forrest seems more willing to kowtow to the Vulcans that he is in the present day, although his irritated “Perfect!” when they walk in on Archer and Robinson’s unauthorised flight gives him a bit of personality.
The framing sequence of Archer and T’Pol is at least as good as the A-story, as every moment between them sparkles. Whilst Tucker was willing to follow Archer’s orders and give him space to brood, T’Pol knows what he really needs and invites herself along to give him a therapy session, probing him to tell the story and expressing her usual guarded fondness for him (“Was that a compliment?”/“An observation”). There’s a lovely moment when Archer insists T’Pol step away from the sensors and come up the front to watch the lit-up nebula with him and her expression just screams “Well…oh-kay, if it’ll make you happy…”
The DVD info subtitles managed to completely wreck Archer’s “No-one remembers what Buzz Aldrin said on the moon” argument by revealing what he said! (To do the same, I think it was something like “Magnificent desolation.”)
o.m.:Couple of pedantic points. First, the Vulcans don’t walk in on the middle of Forrest disciplining two of his officers, they’re there for the whole conversation. (It’s him monitoring the unauthorised flight that they walk in on.) Second, the Vulcans don’t technically have the authority to shut down the programme. Officially, they’re an advisory committee, but Starfleet just seem to do everything they say anyway.
krad: I feel culturally and pedantically obliged to point out that no pretentious white person from my country would ever have a name like “Charles Tucker III”. Roman numerals are strictly reserved for monarchs! (Also…feels like there’s quite a few non-white people from your country who don’t seem to bother thinking of a new first name for generations?)
I wanted to like this one a lot more than I did, for a lot of the reasons that Keith mentioned, but it’s worth watching for Brigid Brannagh. She was awesome in a relatively minor role.
Apparently Buzz Aldrin’s first words on the moon were “Magnificent Desolation” in response to a comment from Armstrong about the beautiful view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL_SrBMBRCc&t=1283s
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-aldrin-idUSKCN1UC01P
@12 cap-mjb: My best friend when I was ten was a pretentious white person by the name of A— C— III. He was proud of the ‘III’. But he went by A—, not by Trip. [western USA]
I like flashback stories if they’re done right and interesting but I found this one to be rather bland. And I found it rather distracting with this “The Right Stuff” homage that here we are in the 22nd century and Starfleet, judging by the makeup of the pilots and “mission control” are nearly all white males. Doesn’t feel like a very progressive future for mankind.
When I watch Scott Bakula in Enterprise, I find myself constantly wondering how someone who was so charming in Quantum Leap could be such a…bland dope on this show. Is it character or the actor? Or both? Hard to say.
As for the prevalence of white males…yeah, that doesn’t age well. But I’m much more offended by the lackluster writing and inane plotting. There’s just no point to this show; blandly going where others have gone before, indeed.
I loved the obvious design lineage from Cochrane’s Phoenix to the NX prototypes. The episode itself I thought was decent even amongst its flaws, but I definitely could have done without the testosterone-laden barfight between Archer and A.G.
@16 & 17: Not just the preponderance of white males, but of Americans with surnames originating in the British Isles. Trek has always had that problem, tending to depict “Earth” as if it were just the United States, but this show is the worst offender. I’m so glad the streaming-era shows have done a better job depicting a diverse humanity.
I liked this one a bit more, but I can still see the clichés. I’ve never seen The Right Stuff myself, but you can tell Shiban and Black were trying to emulate NASA space program vibes when crafting this story. It plays like a classic sports competition story with all the same story beats, right down to the bar fistfight.
I find it ironic that a show that was designed as a prequel to the rest of the franchise ended up getting a prequel episode of its own. For what it’s worth, Carradine more than carries his weight as Robinson, making for a more than worthy adversary to Archer and Tucker (even more charismatic than the ones we’re supposed to be rooting for), and that alone makes this one at the very least a watchable episode.
But I agree that Starfleet brass gives Archer/Tucker way too much leeway with their transgressions. I keep wondering if this is an oversight or is actually intentional by the writers – a way of showing that Starfleet as a military organization was still learning how to enforce the rules on its officers. Or maybe there was an Archer-esque spirit of competition against the Vulcans among the higher-ups that made them treat the lower ranked officers with less of a firm hand than they would in the later Trek shows.
@20/Eduardo: “I keep wondering if this is an oversight or is actually intentional by the writers – a way of showing that Starfleet as a military organization was still learning how to enforce the rules on its officers.”
Earth Starfleet wasn’t meant to be a military at all (despite the ranks), but a strictly scientific organization, more like NASA and less like the Navy than the Federation Starfleet would become. We’ll see this coming up soon when the actual Earth military, the MACOs, are introduced for the Xindi mission and are contrasted with Starfleet.
Eduardo: Every military organization in the history of the world has known how to enforce the rules on its officers. It makes no sense that Starfleet would struggle with it….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@21/Christopher @22/Krad: I was definitely thinking of Starfleet more along the lines of NASA. NASA astronauts may technically hold “military” rank, but I always get the impression they’re not as subject to the strict discipline as other branches of the military are, being coddled and protected on every step instead. After all, they’re the ones out in space, more acutely aware than anyone that one false move means they’re dead.
And good point bringing up the MACOs. It sheds a light on just how laid back Archer’s command has been in comparison to Hayes’s firm leadership during the Xindi arc (not unlike the Picard/Jellico comparisons from before).
There’s a real missed opportunity for someone to point out to Archer that he may be taking the Vulcans’ advice to take a slow and deliberate approach a bit too personally. I understand why Archer feels the recommendation to take a cautious approach as a personal attack, but I don’t understand why those around him seem to accept or agree with that view. One of the things that has bothered me about this show is that we don’t ever see anyone telling him that the warp 5 program isn’t all about the Archers. Obviously a number of humans seem to value and want to follow the Vulcans’ advice because they do so repeatedly, but none of those humans ever justify why they think it prudent to do as the Vulcans suggest. Perhaps if there were some women or nb folk, or some humans from other cultures that place a higher premium on patience and communal achievement…
It is established in this episode that it took the Vulcans 100 years to go from warp 1 to warp 2 because of the way that they approach research and discovery. Vulcans in-universe have a long life span and patience. We see that they work on the same project for decades. Some of their caution is based on their own history and their desire for that history not to be repeated. There are obvious advantages to proceeding with care and diligence, just as there are advantages to being willing to try, accepting the risk of failure. There’s so much potential richness in people with fundamentally different approaches making a strong case for their way of doing things. This episode was perfectly set up for that and instead we got a bar brawl.
“First Flight” is one of my favorite episodes of ENT but I also think it absolutely proves that there was no way that a Prequel set on Earth would have been anything more than watching paint dry. There’s barely enough storyline to sustain this episode and it says something that I remember Ruby (who I recognize from KINDRED: THE EMBRACED and ANGEL) more than I remember any of Archer’s [bleeping] contest with his old friend.
It was also a very white male dude looking group. TOP GUN 2 was more diverse.
There’s also the fact that the whole warp drive situation is WEIRD and never adequately explained. On Earth, the Space Race was motivated by creating new technology and pushing the envelope of what was possible. Here, The Vulcans have been in space for 2000 years and there’s apparently contact with other aliens (Phlox has shown up and is hanging around enough that he’s not a major curiosity). I mean…can’t just go to some planet and buy a Warp Drive? At least better than Warp 2?
If the Vulcans refuse to give advanced technology to even a Post-Warp civilization, that’s fine, but it’s never been stated.