“The Forge”
Written by Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Directed by Michael Grossman
Season 4, Episode 7
Production episode 083
Original air date: November 19, 2004
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. We open seventeen years ago, with a lone Vulcan going through a cave and unearthing an old artifact. He mutters Surak’s name as he uncovers the writing on the artifact.
Forrest meets with Soval at the United Earth embassy on Vulcan. Forrest is hoping for good news from High Command about joint missions between Earth and Vulcan. Soval, to Forrest’s surprise, also doesn’t know the High Command’s final decision. However, the ambassador urges the admiral not to get his hopes up. Vulcans are concerned at how complicated and fast-moving humans have been. Vulcans took a millennium-and-a-half to go from savage and warlike to peaceful explorers. It only took humans a century. Humans are a provocatively dangerous mix of Andorian arrogance, Tellarite stubbornness, Klingon emotionalism, and Vulcan logic.
And then a bomb goes off. Forrest is killed protecting Soval.
Enterprise is summoned to Vulcan to investigate, since the embassy is Earth soil, and therefore in Starfleet’s jurisdiction. Archer and T’Pol meet with the battered and bruised Soval, as well as the head of High Command, V’Las, and an investigator, Stel. Stel says there are two suspects: the Andorians and the Syrrannites. The latter are a sect of Vulcans who believe in a radical version of Surak’s teachings.
Reed and Mayweather comb the wreckage. (Why the alpha-shift pilot aids Reed when there’s an entire security staff on board is left as an exercise for the viewer.) They’re able to download some security footage, and they also find an explosive device that didn’t go off for some reason. Reed is able to scan it for a bit before it arms, and they’re beamed out before it explodes.
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Reed’s scan picked up Vulcan DNA on the explosive, and Phlox’s examination reveals that it belongs to a woman named T’Pau. She’s a Syrrannite. At this point, the Vulcans take over the investigation, Stel saying that if they find anything of interest to Earth, they’ll let Soval know.
Archer stands in the cargo bay with all the coffins containing the human victims of the bombing. Soval joins him, crediting Forrest with saving his life, and also informing Archer that there is no reason for the Syrrannites to bomb the embassy. He urges Archer to continue investigating on his own, to not trust the High Command, and he also promises support from his office in this.
Koss comes on board and gives T’Pol a gift from her mother, who has gone missing. It’s an IDIC pin; T’Les told Koss that it’s an old family heirloom and it’s now time for T’Pol to take care of it. Koss also reveals that T’Les is a Syrrannite…
T’Pol goes to Archer immediately. The pin isn’t an heirloom—she’s never seen it before. But it also has a holographic map inside of the Forge, a brutal desert. The path on the map is the same one that Surak supposedly walked two millennia previous.
The Forge itself is full of electrical sandstorms, and the region is one that sensors and communications can’t penetrate. Nonetheless, Archer and T’Pol beam down, aided by Soval, who provides a guide to beaming down without Vulcan security detecting it.
On Archer’s instructions, Phlox checks the DNA on the bomb more thoroughly, which reveals that the DNA signature in question is from someone barely developed. It’s likely taken from the sample of T’Pau’s DNA taken shortly after birth. On top of that, the surveillance footage Reed and Mayweather retrieved showed that someone entered the embassy with a package but avoided having their face seen. However, that person’s face was seen by a corporal at the security desk—who survived the bomb, but who is in a coma and probably won’t live much longer. They can’t question him—but they can mind-scan him.
Tucker pleads with Soval to find a Vulcan who is willing to do a mind-meld. Soval eventually agrees to do it himself, to everyone’s surprise. The person who planted the bomb turns out to be Stel. However, V’Las and Stel refuse to accept Soval’s evidence, coming as it does from a mind-meld. (Not that Stel is likely to admit to his guilt in any case…)
Archer and T’Pol trek across the Forge. They encounter a wild sehlat, and have to hide on a ridge—sehlats don’t climb, apparently—and then a Vulcan named Arev drives them off. Archer says he’s learning Vulcan ways from T’Pol. When Arev asked when he started this particular quest for knowledge, Archer actually tells something like the truth: Since he first met T’Pol. Arev is suspicious, but before he can act on those suspicions, a nasty sandstorm hits. They hide in a cave, and Arev sees the IDIC symbol, recognizing it at T’Les’.
At this point, Archer and T’Pol drop the act, especially since Arev knows exactly who they are—and respects them, particularly for what they did at P’Jem. He promises to lead them to where the Syrrannites are hiding. Archer, in turn, tells Arev about the accusations.
Arev also tells them that it is believed that the Syrrannites have found Surak’s katra and one of the Syrrannites is carrying that katra and that any who mind-meld with him will be able to meld with Surak. This will probably be important later.
Another sandstorm hits, and both T’Pol and Arev are injured—the latter fatally so. Arev briefly melds with Archer, saying “Remember” in Vulcan.
Archer and T’Pol continue to the sanctuary that Arev was leading them to. Archer is acting strangely, including thinking he doesn’t need water and having to be reminded by T’Pol that he’s not Vulcan. When they arrive, they’re surrounded by Vulcans, though Archer seemed to know they were coming.
To be continued…
The gazelle speech. Archer is mostly passive in this one, as things happen around him and, while he does take action, even in the Forge, T’Pol and Arev are doing most of the heavy lifting. It’s weird.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol has to remind Archer at one point that she is part of a species that evolved on Vulcan, so she’s way more suited to wander across the Forge than his human ass. One of the things she mentions is the nictitating membrane, or “inner eyelid,” something Spock needed the better part of a day to even remember he had…
Florida Man. Florida Man Talks Alien Into Mind-Probe!
Optimism, Captain! Phlox is apparently a basketball prodigy, able to make perfect nothin’-but-net shots while just standing there. In the game we see on Enterprise, he is constantly traded back and forth between teams. (He also compares it to a particular alien mating ritual, except humans leave their clothes on, which, he adds, is probably for the best.)
Ambassador Pointy. Soval is very obviously humbled by Forrest’s selfless gesture, and he rebels against the High Command from the minute they start accusing Andorians and Syrrannites of the bombing.
He also admits to being able to do mind-melds.
Good boy, Porthos! When Archer expresses disbelief that Vulcan children have sehlats as pets, T’Pol reminds Archer about Porthos. Archer’s riposte is that Porthos won’t eat him if he’s late with dinner, to which T’Pol replies that Vulcan children are never late with their sehlat’s dinner. (Well, at least not twice, anyhow…)
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… We learn of another disliked sect of Vulcans, but unlike the V’tosh ka’tur, the Syrrannites are on Vulcan and in hiding.
Blue meanies. Stel initially mentions the Andorians as suspects in the bombing, though Archer pokes holes in that notion pretty quickly, as humans have remained neutral in the Vulcan-Andorian conflict.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. T’Pol is hilariously disinterested in seeing Koss. When they do the two-finger-touch thing that Vulcan couples do, you can tell by Jolene Blalock’s body language that she’s only doing it by rote and breaks contact as fast as she possibly can.
More on this later… Arev’s dying mind-meld with Archer is similar to that done by Spock on McCoy before the former sacrificed his life in The Wrath of Khan, with Arev also saying, “Remember” before transferring his katra.
Surak dying on Mount Seleya explains why the Hall of Ancient Thought, where katras are deposited, will wind up there, as seen in The Search for Spock.
T’Pau will be a major figure on Vulcan in the twenty-third century, as seen in “Amok Time,” known at that point as the only person to turn down a seat on the Federation Council.
I’ve got faith…
“You keep saying ‘supposedly.’ You don’t believe Surak did the things they said he did?”
“He brought logic to Vulcan, in an age we call the Time of Awakening. But his writings from that period no longer exist.”
“There must be some record of it.”
“Over the centuries, his followers made copies of his teachings.”
“Let me guess—with the originals lost, whatever’s left is open to interpretation.”
“You find this amusing?”
“I find it familiar.”
–Archer and T’Pol discussing Surak.
Welcome aboard. Robert Foxworth plays V’Las; he last appeared as Admiral Leyton in DS9’s “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost.” Larc Spies plays Stel, while the great character actor Michael Nouri plays Arev.
And we have three recurring regulars who were all last seen in “Home”: Vaughn Armstrong, making his final appearance as Forrest (though he will return as Forrest’s Mirror Universe counterpart in “In a Mirror, Darkly”), Gary Graham as Soval, and Michael Reilly Burke as Koss.
Foxworth and Graham will return next time in “Awakening.” Burke will be back in “Kir’Shara.”
Also, while Kara Zediker doesn’t make a credited appearance as T’Pau, her image is seen on Phlox’s viewscreen after the DNA scan. She’ll appear for realsies in “Awakening.”
Trivial matters: This starts Enterprise’s second three-parter in a row, as the story will continue next time in “Awakening” and conclude after that in “Kir’Shara.”
This is the first script by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who were hired as executive story editors in season four, and who got their start in the franchise writing Trek novels. Among their credits are the original series novels Memory Prime and Prime Directive, the first original series/TNG crossover novel Federation, the DS9 trilogy Millennium, and collaborating with William Shatner on all ten of his Kirk-focused novels. This is the second time someone has been hired to the writing staff after penning Trek fiction, the first being Melinda M. Snodgrass, who parlayed writing the original series novel Tears of the Singers into being in the writers room for TNG’s second and third seasons. The next will be Kirsten Beyer, author of eleven novels, and a producer on Picard (which she also co-created), Strange New Worlds, and Discovery.
The titular Forge was first seen in the animated episode “Yesteryear,” as the desert Vulcan youths go across as part of the kahs-wan ritual. It was mentioned as a potential honeymoon spot by Worf to Dax in DS9’s “Change of Heart,” and will later be seen in both Spock’s and Burnham’s memories in Discovery’s “If Memory Serves.”
Surak was established as the person who brought Vulcans on the path to logic after their violent history in the original series’ “The Savage Curtain.”
Sehlats were established in the original series’ “Journey to Babel,” where it was also established that Spock had one as a pet as a child. That pet, I-Chaya, was later seen (and killed) in “Yesteryear.” We learn in this episode that T’Pol—despite her previously stated disdain and confusion regarding Archer having Porthos—also had a pet sehlat as a child. This is the first appearance of a feral sehlat.
Koss and T’Pol touch their first two fingers to each other upon greeting, which was established as the method by which spouses greet each other on Vulcan in “Journey to Babel.”
The IDIC symbol was established in the original series’ “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” Vulcan’s “inner eyelid” was established in the original series’ “Operation: Annihilate!”
The test questions Arev asks Archer are both from the quizzes that Spock was taking as memory aids at the beginning of The Voyage Home. Arev later congratulates Archer and T’Pol on their exposure of the misuse of the P’Jem monastery in “The Andorian Incident.”
It’s been a long road… “Are Vulcans afraid of humans?” The episode starts with yet another non-teasing teaser, as some random Vulcan dude walking through a cave to uncover a statue does absolutely nothing to make me care about what happens next. They’d have been much better off having Forrest and Soval’s meeting be the teaser and ending it with the explosion.
Forrest’s death is a total shock—this isn’t the kind of character who’s killed in his fourteenth appearance—which makes it extremely effective, and ups the stakes. It also helps continue the sea-change in Soval, who has gone from obdurate bureaucrat in “Broken Bow” to rebellious ally here. Gary Graham’s performance has also improved in concert with the character’s.
The obvious purpose of this trilogy was to address some issues with how Vulcans had been portrayed, some of which weren’t actually issues at all. But that’s not really part of this particular episode, which is a taut thriller that sets everything up beautifully. And it’s clear that the whole nonsense about mind-melds being forbidden and verboten is at least being dealt with.
Casting Robert Foxworth as your politician bad guy is never a bad choice, though it points to V’Las being dodgy from the moment he walks into the door. Alas, casting Larc Spies is less effective, as he makes the mistake far too many Vulcan actors make, mistaking emotional control for emotionlessness. Luckily, he won’t be returning for Parts 2 or 3. Neither will Michael Nouri, which is more of a disappointment, as he brings a certain gravitas to Arev.
Jolene Blalock is particularly good in this one, from her utter indifference to Koss to her subdued passion in wanting to search for her mother to her having to hold Archer’s metaphorical hand pretty much the entire time they’re in the Forge. Really, Archer’s the biggest problem here, as there’s no reason, none, why he should be coming along, except He’s The Hero and that’s what The Hero does. Snore. T’Pol should’ve taken the trip alone. Meantime, as I said above in the captain’s section, he’s entirely passive in this one, until the very end, anyhow. And that’s not so much Archer as who else is running around his cranium…
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido reminds everyone that there’s not much time left in the “Picking Up Steam!” crowdfund from eSpec Books, which is funding three steampunk anthologies and one steampunk short story collection. The former includes A Cry of Hounds, stories inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and which will have a Professor Challenger story by Keith; the latter is by Keith’s erstwhile collaborator on the ”18th Race” trilogy, the late great David Sherman. Check it out!
“I’ve dealt with the High Command. Vulcans can lie and cheat with the best of them.”
Yes, good old Enterprise. Your choices for a pre-credit sequence to hook the audience this week are the bombing of an Earth Embassy with two familiar characters caught in the blast or some random Vulcan finding some random figurine in a cave. You go for Option B.
For anyone that made it through the credits, this actually isn’t bad. Whatever else you can say about the reformatting this season, the new characterisation of Soval (building on the hints of depth we saw in ‘Cease Fire’) is a good move: He works a lot better as a rather caustic ally than as a somewhat one-note antagonist. He has some good conversations with Archer and Forrest here, as he finds himself increasingly aligned with Starfleet against his own people, and his non-verbal “Get out of my personal space” at Tucker raises a chuckle.
It’s not really a surprise that T’Pau isn’t a mad bomber, given that she’ll turn up a century hence on reasonably good terms with Starfleet, and V’Las and Stel are practically carrying signs saying “untrustworthy”. The secretive Arev intrigues a lot more, so it’s a shame he falls victim to this season’s habit of killing off characters so they don’t require an extra episode fee.
The opening basketball game and Phlox managing to be a game decider by just standing there is vaguely amusing, and while there’s no real reason for a sehlat to turn up, it does allow a lovely discussion between Archer and T’Pol about their respective attitudes to pets, with the exchange noted in the review. There’s some subtle foreshadowing and we also realise that there was a lot more to T’Les being out of favour with the Vulcan authorities than her association with T’Pol.
This marks the first time Forrest’s first name, Maxwell, has been used on screen, although apparently it was in the script for ‘Broken Bow’. I’d only seen this episode once before (I missed it on Channel 4 because I misset the video and got Stargate SG-1 instead) so I’d completely forgotten Koss appeared here: It makes his return at the end of the storyline work better to have us reminded of his existence in this episode.
This arc is when season 4 started to really click for me. “Storm Front” had been less horrible than I’d expected, “Home” had been a great but isolated standalone story, and the Augments arc had been pretty okay; but the Vulcan Reformation arc was the first time, practically since “The Andorian Incident”, when I felt like Enterprise was actually contributing meaningfully as prequel. In retrospect, I agree that not all of the “discrepancies” with the Vulcans were things that actually needed to be corrected, but we get some nice and much needed worldbuilding for Vulcan, we get some nice and much needed character development for Soval, and Forrest’s conversation with Soval before the embassy bombing is right up there with the “root beer” conversation from “The Way of the Warrior” in terms of establishing how other species view humans. My only complaint is that so many of the stories in this season are driven by crisis or political necessity rather than exploration.
What are Captain Archer and Commander T’Pol doing on Vulcan?
a) Finding T’Pol’s mommy.
b) Investigating a possible terrorist attack by a Syrranite Vulcan against the embassy?
c) All of the above.
I find it entirely logical that they’d send another Starfleet officer along, considering how T’Pol’s testimony could be dismissed as biased by any interested party. She is neither a Vulcan officer in good standing (having taken a Starfleet commission), nor is she credible for a large part of the human population (as we have seen in Home) …
Regarding the mind-meld, and what we know at this time, it is only Soval who told us that it was Stel. If they had trusted Stel to do the mind-meld, he could have confirmed it was T’Pau, turning the DNA evidence into a double-bluff. It sounds quite reasonable that rule-of-law-abiding Vulcans would see telepathic testimony somewhere between of hearsay and a seance.
I love this trilogy, so I’m quite keen to revisit it. While T’Pol likely could’ve done this solo, I’m a firm believer in DBUTT, Don’t Break Up The Team. They don’t know what they’re going into, so having back up is meaningful. Now, it would likely have been more logical to send Trip, as he’s emotionally attached to T’Pol, but like the man said, Archer is the hero. I do think that since Forrest was his friend he wasn’t keen to sit on Enterprise. He may have made a different decision if he knew what was coming next.
Soval and Forrest’s conversation is the type of conversation that puts the brains in seats. While this trilogy is meant to correct a lot of the issues people had with Vulcans, that probably weren’t all that serious overall, this conversation by itself provides wonderful contextualization to Vulcan behavior as demonstrated over the first two seasons.
Well given that sehlats are explicitly based on cats – that is, I’chaya was based on a particularly well-loved Fat Cat, and the rest of his breed therefore flows from the same wellspring – it actually makes even more sense that T’Pol would regard a dog owner with pity, confusion and mild disgust. (-;
Also, at this point I think we can all agree that Doctor Phlox producing Mad Skills from out of nowhere has become a running joke and therefore his unexpected Basketball genius deserves to be received in the same spirit … especially if there’s apparently a weird sex angle involved.
On a far less cheerful note, the sheer treacherous arrogance of the Vulcan High Command is horrifying – bad enough they they exploited United Earth’s desire to strengthen ties as a way of making the arrangements for their False Flag Operation all the easier, but using a very senior member of Vulcan Security Services IN PERSON to set up the bombs bespeaks a particular cynicism and a disgustingly strong conviction that, whether his work goes undetected or not, there’s no real way for United Earth to hold either him or Vulcan to account (With the strong undertone that, even if an outraged Earth sides with Andoria, it’s no real loss to the High Command or any real gain to the ‘Blues’).
Especially if a sufficiently convincing scapegoat can be scared up (and loose ends covered up, then spun sufficiently well).
Honestly, if it weren’t for the good work of Ambassador Soval and T’Pol, one would be tempted to vote Terra Prime purely on the strengths of this despicable False Flag operation (Thankfully this episode is excellent proof that, whatever their faults, a proper Vulcan, for very logical reasons, take Friendship extremely seriously).
Also, in all fairness to Captain Archer, given what he and his crew are rising by pursuing an investigation on Vulcan against the wishes of the High Command it makes perfect sense that T’Pol be accompanied by a human officer too senior and far too famous for any ‘disappearance’ to be hushed up without causing a full-blown Diplomatic Incident (Even if further evidence of the High Command’s treachery had not been uncovered).
…
Oh, and I really liked Arev even after sadly brief exposure: he’s definitely one of those rare Vulcans who strongly suggests genuine serenity, rather than emotional repression (It doesn’t hurt that there’s a strong hint of good humour under those solemn features).
This three-parter is one of the absolute high points of the show. It not only looks forward in terms of giving us a look at what the Vulcan civilization will evolve into but also why it presented as more militaristic in past seasons of this show.
Really enjoyed performance of Soval in this. His casual conversation with Forrest before the bombing showed that he had an if not friendship then at least a clear mutual respect for him. His later talk with Archer around the bodies I think showed that Forrest’s sacrifice had deeply affected him and it seemed as if he was struggling to contain his anger at the events. Really gave a strong start to the storyline.
I was surprised to learn Spock’s pet’s name was supposed to be pronounced EE-chai-ah. I just learned that the other day.
This is one of the best episodes of ENTERPRISE. Hiring the Reeves-Stevens’ to write for the show was a very smart move. Unfortunately, as I recall, they didn’t write the sequels to this episode, and the succeeding writers seemed to flounder as they tried to figure out out to resolve the story, and stretched out what probably should have been a two-parter into a three-parter.
But the opening scenes of this episode are especially good, with Forrest’s death coming as a true shock, and Soval being deeply moved. The two ambassadors were two of my favorite characters on ENTERPRISE, and I always thought Graham generally gave the best performance of a Vulcan on the show (excluding Blalock)
Archer HAS to be on the trip to the Forge and NOT because he’s the hero. The bombing killed multiple Humans including the Senior Starfleet mission with the Vulcans. There really aren’t any other crew members on Enterprise that are appropriate to accompany T’Pol. Trip’s emotional link makes him unsuitable, Reed or a MACO would be seen as Earth meddling in Vulcan affairs, Hoshi lacks the survival skills needed, Mayweather is too junior to be accepted by the Vulcans. Archer is the Senior Starfleet/UE representative on scene. Also Archer does have some experience with hot, dry conditions as seen previously on Enterprise.
As far as T’Pol, she CAN’T go alone. Even though she’s on the outside with High Command, she believes that the Syranites are Radicals and Extremists. Given that attitude, T’Pol is going to the Forge with a preconceived idea of what she’ll find. Archer is one of the few crew members able to get T’Pol to think outside of the box and consider the alternatives before reaching a conclusion.
Socal definitely works better as a somewhat reluctant Ally than a 1 note bureaucrat. It’s taken him decades (remember that as a child, Archer knew of Soval), but he’s realized that Humans are a complex species that can’t be pigeonholed into a neat little box.
As far a Earth only taking a century to go from WW3 to being ready to explore the Galaxy, IMO some of that may well be due to Vulcan influence. Consider that Earth launched the Friendship 1 probe only 4 years after Zefrem Cochrane built Earth’s first Warp Capable spacecraft. That probe may have been WHY Vulcan didn’t want Earth to push too far, too fast in moving into the Galaxy. I don’t think that late 21st century Earth on a societal basis would have been prepared to initiate contact with other Sentient Species. Would Vulcan have defended Earth in the late 21st century had there been a disastrous encounter with another Warp Capable Species (Klingons, Malurians, Tellarites etc)?
Of course that leads into a problem with “Broken Bow”. Starfleet wanted to turn Enterprise loose without even a proper shakedown cruise. IMO, had Starfleet said let’s let Enterprise follow the course of Friendship 1 for a few months to work the bugs out of a new ship, the Vulcans might have been more receptive to letting it happen (with a Vulcan on board to report to High Command as necessary.
Charles: given that it’s a search mission, you are 100% wrong in that Reed or the MACOs shouldn’t go. They’re, in fact, exactly who should go as they’re trained for this stuff.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad in 11,
from a tactical viewpoint, they should have given T’Pol an entire squad of MACOs. A leader, a medic, a scout, a bunch of grunts to carry extra water. But this is not a tactical mission. They’re sneaking around on Vulcan. A (nominally) allied, advanced civilization. And they are about to get invoved in very messy domestic politics.
I think that consideration should override everything.
Do not send the Marines, unless you want them to do Marine stuff.
@11. krad: I agree that a wilderness mission in potentially hostile territory is definitely a job for the MACOs, but I’m not sure Mr Reed is diplomat enough for the job of contacting the Syrrannites: I also most definitely agree with @12. o.m. that sending the ‘Space Marines’ on a secret mission on an allied world is exactly the wrong move.
After all, it hands the High Command a big old stick to beat Starfleet with (“You mounted a military expedition on our territory?”), one quite possibly heavy enough to sweep almost any evidence they could hope to acquire from the Syrrannites under the rug (If only by raising enough dirt to muddy the waters or just making enough of a racket to drown out United Earth’s counter-points).
Sending in Archer and T’Pol alone is unquestionably a risk, but at least it has the virtue of plausible deniability (“My friend wanted to find her mother in the Forge and I, as her friend, decided to help her – by the way, did you know I’m the most famous Starship Captain in human history?”).
“The Forge” begins my favorite of the three-parters. Gary Graham is finally hitting it out of the park as Soval. The thought of the High Command being responsible for the bombing is causing Soval to hit 11/10 on the Rage-O-Meter while staying perfectly Vulcan during the scene over Forrest’s casket. The little moment of Soval tapping the casket during his thought process makes it seem like he’s reaching for Forrest even after death as Vulcans are a species of touch-telepaths.
Archer tags along with T’Pol down to Vulcan because while the latter is now a Starfleet officer, the former undoubtedly is taking the death of his direct superior and close friend personally. He leaps at the chance to bring those who ostensibly perpetrated the act to justice. It also makes sense why he would be passive; this isn’t his planet, it’s his XO’s and he trusts her to take the lead. As both E.D. and o.m. mention, sending T’Pol with a squad of MACOs would have made tactical sense, but mounting a military operation on Vulcan would tick off the High Command exponentially more than just sending T’Pol and Archer.
I agree (and have said so before) that T’Pol should definitely have been the hero of this story, not just because she’s better suited to the climate, but also because this whole arc is about salvaging Vulcan and Vulcan history and so, since you’ve got a Vulcan as one of your three lead characters, you should probably let the Vulcan be the hero.
@15 Part of the purpose of this arc, though, is to further solidify the Earth-Vulcan friendship. Having a human (unwittingly at first) spark a civilization-wide reformation that would in a thousand years result in Romulan-Vulcan reunification shows why the Vulcans would be willing to follow humanity’s lead in forming the Federation.
Apropos of very little, I would just like to throw in my burning desire to see a Big Friendly sehlat depicted in some Love Action STAR TREK series using animatronics: CGI shapes many wonders, but nothing says ‘cuddly’ like a giant muppet of a puppet.
I should mention that my novel Rise of the Federation: Uncertain Logic is something of a sequel to this trilogy.
The Vulcan Civil War trilogy is one of the high points of the series, if not the franchise. I love the opening scene of “The Forge” so much. The conversation between Forrest and Soval adds a lot of nuance to the question of human vs. nonhuman attributes. Soval speaks of the other races in terms of stereotyped traits, and Forrest resists that, insisting that you could find the whole range of attributes in all the different sapient species. And Soval admits that the real reason the Vulcans find humans so alarming… is because we remind them of themselves. Which neatly undercuts the conceit of humans having special qualities that Vulcans lack.
I also agree that this is where Gary Graham finally got into the groove of playing a Vulcan, when I always found him too angry and snide before. Though at the same time, this trilogy features two of the most overemotional Vulcan performances I’ve ever seen, from both Robert Foxworth and John Rubinstein.
However, the trilogy does showcase something I both like and regret about the fourth season, the extreme indulgence in continuity porn. I liked the way the prior seasons set up a 22nd-century Vulcan culture that was distinct from what we saw in later centuries, because it makes sense that a culture would evolve over time; look how profoundly America has changed in its gender and racial vaues in the past 100 years (well, more than half of America, while the other half has clung fanatically to the bigotries of the previous century). But this trilogy’s effort to turn them into TOS/TNG-style Vulcans in one fell swoop is just a little too pat. It’s an effective story in its way, and given that this was the last season (not known for a fact at the time, but surely suspected), it makes sense to resolve the question here rather than through a more gradual transformation; but it does feel a bit too much like an effort to “fix” something that wasn’t really broken.
It’s weird that the episode featured a wild sehlat as the predator in Vulcan’s Forge instead of a le-matya, which would’ve made more sense.
I wonder if they had discussions about Kara Zediker impersonating Celia Lovsky’s accent. I figure the reason T’Pau doesn’t have an accent here is because we’re hearing her lines through the universal translator, while in “Amok Time” she’s actually speaking English.
Incidentally, this was the second time in 2004 that Kara Zediker played the past version of a pre-existing series character, the first being the Charmed Ones’ grandmother Penny Halliwell on Charmed.
@5/ED: Who said sehlats were based on cats? In “Journey to Babel,” they were described as teddy bears with 6-inch fangs, and the “Yesteryear” design is sort of a cross between a bear, a dog, and a lion. I-Chaya’s behavior in “Yesteryear” was quite doglike, and there was very much an Old Yeller quality to how his story played out. It was the le-matya that was more overtly felinoid, albeit with reptilian features.
@9/Jeremy Erman: “Hiring the Reeves-Stevens’ to write for the show was a very smart move. Unfortunately, as I recall, they didn’t write the sequels to this episode, and the succeeding writers seemed to flounder as they tried to figure out out to resolve the story, and stretched out what probably should have been a two-parter into a three-parter.”
That’s not how a TV writers’ room works. Usually, the entire writing staff breaks (plots out) the stories together, then individual writers are assigned specific scripts, but they’re all involved together in revising the scripts, and the showrunner does the final draft to keep things consistent. And there are weeks between the conception of a story outline and the start of filming, so probably all three scripts would’ve been written back to back and revised together before the first episode began production. At least, it would be surprising if they hadn’t done it that way.
“The Forge” is definitely one of the all-time best parts of ENTERPRISE and the trilogy as a whole really is everything the series was meant to be. We get to see a massive cultural upheaval on the Vulcan homeworld and also pay a lot of homage to past stories while casting new light on old ideas. The best part is the story is applicable to real life and we have some very interesting actual social commentary versus the somewhat ridiculous “Chosen Realm.”
The Syrranites are people easy for the Vulcans to cast as religious fanatics and violent extremists because, of course, Earth has plenty of familiarity with that. However, like RL protest groups, there’s also the fact the label of violent fanatic is applied by authorities who hate their ideas. Antifa, Black Panthers, and BLM are whatever the media wants them to be. Yes, I went there.
The fact they went with a direct Jesus parallel to Surak was also without subtelty and the story wouldn’t be nearly as effective if it wasn’t. We’ll also see the Syrranites aren’t perfect and have their own prejudices compared to their founder but they’re well-intentioned and a lot closer than the Vulcan High Command.
@18 said: I wonder if they had discussions about Kara Zediker impersonating Celia Lovsky’s accent. I figure the reason T’Pau doesn’t have an accent here is because we’re hearing her lines through the universal translator, while in “Amok Time” she’s actually speaking English.
It has been a while since I rewatched Enterprise (just bought the complete Blu Ray set on Amazon this week, though, thanks to this rewatch), but I do remember hearing her seeming to have a slight accent at several points.
I disagree with the person who says that T’Pol should be the “hero” of this particular story. I think the story is really about the two societies coming together and looking to trust each other – and you need to have the ultimate demonstration that that trust can work out that Arev’s meld with Archer gives.
@20/twels: Even so, why would a “slight” accent get so much thicker in 100-odd years? You’d think her accent would diminish with practice.
@21 said: @20/twels: Even so, why would a “slight” accent get so much thicker in 100-odd years? You’d think her accent would diminish with practice.
Maybe she’s not had so much practice, what with all the officiating she does at murder-weddings and whatnot.
If there’s one regret I have over Enterprise’s abrupt cancellation is that it cut short the promising tenure of writers/producers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens on the live-action filmed part of the franchise. Well-established Trek novelists (I still own a copy of The Return, which they co-authored with Shatner) who have a strong grasp of character and world-building like few others, as well as being longtime Trek fans with a ton of knowledge of franchise lore. I often wonder what Berman-era Trek would have been like had they joined sooner, like say, Voyager season 6 or so. Probably we would have had a few more interesting and unique episodes sandwiched in the midst of that 1999-2003 period of stagnation.
Needless to say, “The Forge” kicks off a trilogy that not only represents some of Enterprise’s best moments, it easily ranks up there with Trek’s best. Ironically, I’ve always felt this story was crafted more to reconcile fans’ misconceptions that early ENT Vulcans were inconsistent with Nimoy’s TOS portrayal than anything else. While I don’t agree with that assessment, I like it that the writers crafted the tale of a Vulcan civil war that will inevitably spearhead the social progress that will lead to the TOS era. This is world-building done well, and the perfect approach to doing a prequel to original Trek. A dramatic tale with consequences.
Part 1 plays like a classic road movie, for the most part. Even though it’s mostly a setup episode, it still has one of Trek’s best inciting incidents: the bombing that kills Forrest. I love it that it also pushes Soval to a different emotional place – one where he needs to collaborate with Archer and humanity to find a solution rather than continue to play classic bureaucrat antagonist.
@18/Christopher: It’s interesting that Foxworth played the character so broad and emotional. You don’t think of him as a that kind of actor. Both DS9’s Admiral Leyton and Babylon 5’s General Hague were very low-key contained performances.
@23/Eduardo: And of course, Robert Foxworth played the title android in Gene Roddenberry’s The Questor Tapes, the precursor of Data. So that was definitely an emotionally understated performance, though not completely emotionless.
@18. ChristopherLBennett: Mr Bennett, my original remark was that I-Chaya specifically was based on a cat once owned by D.C. Fontana, but that since he’s the first (and was for some years the only) Sehlat actually seen, the species therefore has a feline element at it’s core.
Albeit they look rather more like the now-extinct Smilidon lineage (Which also had unusually long canines and stubby tails) than the modern Felis.
This episode was a big step up from the “evil lizards allied with Nazis” drek of the previous episodes.