I have little to say about this one. As Elliott points out, the themes of this episode are very important. The bioengineering is mostly there as metaphor; for the real world equivalent of "creating a perfect soldier," think not genetic engineering but the training as represented in (e.g.) Full Metal Jacket, where in order to become perfect killing machines people are stripped of their individual identities and "reprogrammed" through intensive training. The split personality within Danar also hits many of the points associated with soldiers suffering from PTSD after the war is over (or even milder forms thereof), of one part of them never really leaving the battlefield while they try and try to reclaim their identity otherwise; and Danar's scenes with Troi do help get across his conflicts, and his absolute recognition that he can kill any moment and has killed. The government's disinterest in making any real effort to help "deprogram" or reverse the bioengineering of their soldiers is also believable and on point, since while soldiers are publicly honoured upon their return the medical and psychological damages wrought by the war are no longer so important once the soldiers' use to society as a whole has ended.
I do think that the Angosian prime minister (James Cromwell!) and the society he represents are not given enough depth. It certainly is plausible that the bioengineered soldiers would have trouble adapting and that there would be large outbreaks of violence upon their return; but we don't get a real sense of scale of how bad this was that the Angosians went to the idea of resettling the ENTIRE soldier force away from society. This works best as an allegory if we consider this to be representative of soldiers on Earth being socially ostracized and feeling no longer at home, but this social ostracization is often unconscious or contributed by both sides, and one doesn't have to kill to get out of it. The allegory is certainly more effective than something like "Symbiosis," but I think that while there is an attempt to portray both why Danar is dangerous and why he needs sympathy and understanding, there is very little effort to present the prime minster as anything but smug, condescending, and cowardly. This probably is done so that the pat ending can feel less unearned than if he was actually portrayed sympathetically (the way, for example, the police chief in the following episode, "The High Ground," is, despite a somewhat similar function in the episode), in which Picard leaves him and his to be held at phaserpoint by prisoners who *did* use the Enterprise to get back to the planet.
I think that the show is worth watching, up til the point where Sorbo thinks he should have creative control of the show. At that point the show would have been better served without him and probably would have made more sense and had better continuity.
I honestly thought this was a good episode. It has a solid plot and I like the fact that the crew has to decide between obeying the society's rules or doing what's morally correct. I find the whole bit about the "prime directive" kind of stupid though. There's a difference between interfering in a society's affairs and not following society's rules and then leaving. Still this deserves a 3 out of 4 stars as it really wasn't a bad episode.
The poor guy only ever plays deranged jerks, it seems, although I think I saw him in some movie in which he was a sympathetic character. I really like him as an actor.
I hate time travel in movies. It's never done right. People who write time travel stories never seem to be clever enough to think the damn thing through properly. (Primer is the only good one I can think of right now.) But setting my hatred for time travel aside and also setting aside the car door unlocking tricorder, I liked this episode. I'm glad they didn't get into silly fish-out-of-water stuff and just stuck to the story.
Lt. Yarko - Tue, May 21, 2013, 2:28am (USA Central)
I have to admit: This is the first episode of Enterprise that moved me. Yeah the science made no sense and the ethics were questionable, but accepting all that, I was moved by Sim's predicament and his choice to place the needs of the others above himself. It seemed like the thing Trip would have done. And who can't be happy about a guy getting his dream kiss? :)
Lt. Yarko - Tue, May 21, 2013, 1:35am (USA Central)
Good episode. It felt like a callback to TOS-style morality plays when Gene was trying to get his messages past the censors (my favorite example being the classic "Day of the Dove").
Janeway didn't really carry much charisma at the end though - as pointed out in this review her final judgement felt kind of arbitrary. I also question the away team's cavalier approach toward getting a medical check upon returning - they obviously have not seen enough Trek episodes ("The Naked Time", for instance ;) ) And does Paris have any interests at all outside of old Earth stuff? Is the 24th century really that dry?
But this is still a good episode. 3, I might even go as far as a 3.5.
navamske - Mon, May 20, 2013, 7:34pm (USA Central)
"One thing I would like to point out though...the Doctor seems superior to a regular crew in everyway...so why not have a whole ship made up of Doctors?"
I'm not sure if you're talking about a ship full of EMHs or a ship full of capable EMH-like holograms who serve nonmedical functions. In the latter case, the crew (of holograms) would never be able to leave the ship, except maybe in a shuttle; whether this limitation would be a significant impediment to a Starfleet ship's being actually useful, I can't say. In the former case, it might be useful to have a ship crewed entirely by Doctor holograms, functioning as a sort of roaming medical facility for the use of any ship that passes by and has the need.
A beautiful episode. I love the ending's implication that what we saw may itself have been revisionist history. I know the episode's message is ultimately positive, but it's still fun to think that maybe they did put the Doc on trial and decompiled him to restore order, then covered it up when writing the history.
Yes, have to admit I was amused by the drawing of the Crystalline Entity with people running from it with "scared" expressions... Hmm, perhaps this might mean something.
Just thinking about the oversized comm badges and collar pips cracks me up. They are just the perfect size to be both understated and hilarious. Any bigger and they would have been too slapsticky. One of the best visual gags in any Trek comedy episode.
bow-locks!
yeah, don't destroy the borg when you have a chance, let them live, the poor things, even if they will come back to bite your sorry ar...
if a vulcan was there, he would have seen how illogical it would have been not to take the chance: you spare their species, and how many other species will then be wiped away by the borg thanks to you in the next few centuries? and possibly yours too!
bumfingerers!
their "justification", the hope that hugh's individuality will change them, is one of the most stupid things you can come out with!
they constantly assimilate individuals, never been a problem, has it?
they could have tried, the borg would have survived because they are... well, the borg, and everyone's a winner.
but no.
there is a line between compassion and stupidity, and they crossed it.
by several kilo-parsecs ffs!
not a bad episode though.
at least is not filled with damn kids like too many episodes in season five.
Ugh, the "relationship" between Kes and Neelix in these early episodes is creepy as all hell. Only abusive men are as jealous and posessive as Neelix is, and like him, they don't let the woman have male friends.
Lt. Yarko - Sun, May 19, 2013, 4:29pm (USA Central)
>> I don't blame the actors. I am not sure what the writers, directors, and producers were thinking with this show.
>> I can't understand why she got out of uniform.
The producers were clearly selling sex on this show (and the later Voyager) which was just dumb. But even the original series had sexy girls, you say? Yes. And that was dumb too. Clearly, this approach didn't help either series.
The warning is from Trek itself that we took as mere storytelling rather than mankind's own issues. Exploration is not merely about exploring new star and nebulas, it's about exploring the uncharted possibilities of existence as Q had pointed out at the end of TNG's All Good Things....
Who among us that lived in the 90's could deny that we were overly hopeful. That we held too much heart with our technological progress creating a world that may resemble Star Trek. Yet, the dream ended, futurist like Fukyama and others forgot one important truth, mankind is not merely just a species, a nation, or a group, we are individual people making choices that affected everyone around us.
We need a new way to create the vision, because unless we have a bloody World War based on ideologies as Gene predicted, we would not have peace. Don't forget that Gene's vision of mankind's future also included a decmiation of half the world population.
Lt. Yarko - Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:36pm (USA Central)
To the commenters speculating on Garak's contract with Quark. I think you are taking it too seriously. I don't believe Garak ever had any intention to kill Quark. Why would he risk getting into trouble with his Federation/Bajoran hosts? To do Quark a favour? He doesn't seem motivated by money. He probably just went through the assassination scenarios for fun and suggesting he could kill Quark at any moment, again for fun. Am I the only one who thought this obvious?
Great character insights into Paris in this episode. We learn, finally, that he wants to be a pilot. He enjoys flying spacecraft, in that he prefers to man the helm. He also wants to control the trajectory of spaceborne machines, to "fly" them as it were. Deep, previously unexplored stuff here.
Lt. Yarko - Sun, May 19, 2013, 10:08am (USA Central)
I hate the DNA change episodes too. But, what annoyed me most about this episode is that it was totally disconnected from the Xindi storyline. They start out going to the planet because their Xindi data informed them it was the last place the Xindi ship visited. But then there is no explanation given as to why the Xindi ship had been there. The entire episode is a throw-away unless somehow it plays into a future episode. I suspect it won't, however.
This episode had the potential to be one of Enterprise's very best episodes but was ruined by the morally bankrupt ending. Captain Archer's decision to return the cogenitor to the Vissians was the wrong decision plain and simple. He basically sent a sentient being back into slavery and the individual chose suicide over continued nonexistence as a slave with no name and no rights whatsover.
Let's not sugarcoat this decision with ridiculous talk about the moralities of alien civilizations. There are no alien civilizations that we know of at this point in time. This is a work of fiction. The only moralities we can look to in this situation our human moralities. And by those standards Archer's decision to return the cogenitor is morally wrong.
And please no more talk about the prime directive. As a 40 plus year fan of Star Trek I can say with certainty that the prime directive does not apply to warp capable civilizations. Captain Archer is within his rights to consider a request for asylum from the cogenitor as he himself points out to the Vissian Captain. His big mistake was not to grant asylum in this instance.
Trip was wrong to interfere in Vissian affairs without getting the permission of the Captain or the First Officer. But he was not ultimately responsible for the death of the cogenitor. The Captain was responsible. It was his decision. The buck stopped with him. He made a command decision as Captain and he has to live with the consequences. To throw all the blame on Trip was cowardly and reflected very poorly on his leadership ability.
I have little to say about this one. As Elliott points out, the themes of this episode are very important. The bioengineering is mostly there as metaphor; for the real world equivalent of "creating a perfect soldier," think not genetic engineering but the training as represented in (e.g.) Full Metal Jacket, where in order to become perfect killing machines people are stripped of their individual identities and "reprogrammed" through intensive training. The split personality within Danar also hits many of the points associated with soldiers suffering from PTSD after the war is over (or even milder forms thereof), of one part of them never really leaving the battlefield while they try and try to reclaim their identity otherwise; and Danar's scenes with Troi do help get across his conflicts, and his absolute recognition that he can kill any moment and has killed. The government's disinterest in making any real effort to help "deprogram" or reverse the bioengineering of their soldiers is also believable and on point, since while soldiers are publicly honoured upon their return the medical and psychological damages wrought by the war are no longer so important once the soldiers' use to society as a whole has ended.
I do think that the Angosian prime minister (James Cromwell!) and the society he represents are not given enough depth. It certainly is plausible that the bioengineered soldiers would have trouble adapting and that there would be large outbreaks of violence upon their return; but we don't get a real sense of scale of how bad this was that the Angosians went to the idea of resettling the ENTIRE soldier force away from society. This works best as an allegory if we consider this to be representative of soldiers on Earth being socially ostracized and feeling no longer at home, but this social ostracization is often unconscious or contributed by both sides, and one doesn't have to kill to get out of it. The allegory is certainly more effective than something like "Symbiosis," but I think that while there is an attempt to portray both why Danar is dangerous and why he needs sympathy and understanding, there is very little effort to present the prime minster as anything but smug, condescending, and cowardly. This probably is done so that the pat ending can feel less unearned than if he was actually portrayed sympathetically (the way, for example, the police chief in the following episode, "The High Ground," is, despite a somewhat similar function in the episode), in which Picard leaves him and his to be held at phaserpoint by prisoners who *did* use the Enterprise to get back to the planet.
I think all in all 2.5 stars sounds right.
I think that the show is worth watching, up til the point where Sorbo thinks he should have creative control of the show. At that point the show would have been better served without him and probably would have made more sense and had better continuity.
I honestly thought this was a good episode. It has a solid plot and I like the fact that the crew has to decide between obeying the society's rules or doing what's morally correct. I find the whole bit about the "prime directive" kind of stupid though. There's a difference between interfering in a society's affairs and not following society's rules and then leaving. Still this deserves a 3 out of 4 stars as it really wasn't a bad episode.
Dayumn, that Lokirrim woman got back. That booty is kaBLAM.
@duhknees
"the Reset Button mentality of TNG"
Examples, please
Janeway: "Unfortunately extinction is often the natural end of evolution."
Four words: WHAT THE FUCK, BITCH???
"Leland Orser"
The poor guy only ever plays deranged jerks, it seems, although I think I saw him in some movie in which he was a sympathetic character. I really like him as an actor.
I hate time travel in movies. It's never done right. People who write time travel stories never seem to be clever enough to think the damn thing through properly. (Primer is the only good one I can think of right now.) But setting my hatred for time travel aside and also setting aside the car door unlocking tricorder, I liked this episode. I'm glad they didn't get into silly fish-out-of-water stuff and just stuck to the story.
I have to admit: This is the first episode of Enterprise that moved me. Yeah the science made no sense and the ethics were questionable, but accepting all that, I was moved by Sim's predicament and his choice to place the needs of the others above himself. It seemed like the thing Trip would have done. And who can't be happy about a guy getting his dream kiss? :)
This was old-school Trek, and I loved it!
Good episode. It felt like a callback to TOS-style morality plays when Gene was trying to get his messages past the censors (my favorite example being the classic "Day of the Dove").
Janeway didn't really carry much charisma at the end though - as pointed out in this review her final judgement felt kind of arbitrary. I also question the away team's cavalier approach toward getting a medical check upon returning - they obviously have not seen enough Trek episodes ("The Naked Time", for instance ;) ) And does Paris have any interests at all outside of old Earth stuff? Is the 24th century really that dry?
But this is still a good episode. 3, I might even go as far as a 3.5.
@Bravestarr
"One thing I would like to point out though...the Doctor seems superior to a regular crew in everyway...so why not have a whole ship made up of Doctors?"
I'm not sure if you're talking about a ship full of EMHs or a ship full of capable EMH-like holograms who serve nonmedical functions. In the latter case, the crew (of holograms) would never be able to leave the ship, except maybe in a shuttle; whether this limitation would be a significant impediment to a Starfleet ship's being actually useful, I can't say. In the former case, it might be useful to have a ship crewed entirely by Doctor holograms, functioning as a sort of roaming medical facility for the use of any ship that passes by and has the need.
"It's Ponfarr night at the Vulcan nightclub." is still the best and most perplexing sentence ever uttered.
A beautiful episode. I love the ending's implication that what we saw may itself have been revisionist history. I know the episode's message is ultimately positive, but it's still fun to think that maybe they did put the Doc on trial and decompiled him to restore order, then covered it up when writing the history.
Yes, have to admit I was amused by the drawing of the Crystalline Entity with people running from it with "scared" expressions... Hmm, perhaps this might mean something.
The the crossing showed so much promise but only left me with heart break at it's failure...
Just thinking about the oversized comm badges and collar pips cracks me up. They are just the perfect size to be both understated and hilarious. Any bigger and they would have been too slapsticky. One of the best visual gags in any Trek comedy episode.
bow-locks!
yeah, don't destroy the borg when you have a chance, let them live, the poor things, even if they will come back to bite your sorry ar...
if a vulcan was there, he would have seen how illogical it would have been not to take the chance: you spare their species, and how many other species will then be wiped away by the borg thanks to you in the next few centuries? and possibly yours too!
bumfingerers!
their "justification", the hope that hugh's individuality will change them, is one of the most stupid things you can come out with!
they constantly assimilate individuals, never been a problem, has it?
they could have tried, the borg would have survived because they are... well, the borg, and everyone's a winner.
but no.
there is a line between compassion and stupidity, and they crossed it.
by several kilo-parsecs ffs!
not a bad episode though.
at least is not filled with damn kids like too many episodes in season five.
Ugh, the "relationship" between Kes and Neelix in these early episodes is creepy as all hell. Only abusive men are as jealous and posessive as Neelix is, and like him, they don't let the woman have male friends.
Not a bad episode.
>> I don't blame the actors. I am not sure what the writers, directors, and producers were thinking with this show.
>> I can't understand why she got out of uniform.
The producers were clearly selling sex on this show (and the later Voyager) which was just dumb. But even the original series had sexy girls, you say? Yes. And that was dumb too. Clearly, this approach didn't help either series.
>> She looks like a 12 yo girl
Not.
The warning is from Trek itself that we took as mere storytelling rather than mankind's own issues. Exploration is not merely about exploring new star and nebulas, it's about exploring the uncharted possibilities of existence as Q had pointed out at the end of TNG's All Good Things....
Who among us that lived in the 90's could deny that we were overly hopeful. That we held too much heart with our technological progress creating a world that may resemble Star Trek. Yet, the dream ended, futurist like Fukyama and others forgot one important truth, mankind is not merely just a species, a nation, or a group, we are individual people making choices that affected everyone around us.
We need a new way to create the vision, because unless we have a bloody World War based on ideologies as Gene predicted, we would not have peace. Don't forget that Gene's vision of mankind's future also included a decmiation of half the world population.
Vulcan zombies! Sweet! The strobing lights were way too much tho. A little of that goes along way.
This is a different Chris to the one above.
To the commenters speculating on Garak's contract with Quark. I think you are taking it too seriously. I don't believe Garak ever had any intention to kill Quark. Why would he risk getting into trouble with his Federation/Bajoran hosts? To do Quark a favour? He doesn't seem motivated by money. He probably just went through the assassination scenarios for fun and suggesting he could kill Quark at any moment, again for fun. Am I the only one who thought this obvious?
Great character insights into Paris in this episode. We learn, finally, that he wants to be a pilot. He enjoys flying spacecraft, in that he prefers to man the helm. He also wants to control the trajectory of spaceborne machines, to "fly" them as it were. Deep, previously unexplored stuff here.
I hate the DNA change episodes too. But, what annoyed me most about this episode is that it was totally disconnected from the Xindi storyline. They start out going to the planet because their Xindi data informed them it was the last place the Xindi ship visited. But then there is no explanation given as to why the Xindi ship had been there. The entire episode is a throw-away unless somehow it plays into a future episode. I suspect it won't, however.
This episode had the potential to be one of Enterprise's very best episodes but was ruined by the morally bankrupt ending. Captain Archer's decision to return the cogenitor to the Vissians was the wrong decision plain and simple. He basically sent a sentient being back into slavery and the individual chose suicide over continued nonexistence as a slave with no name and no rights whatsover.
Let's not sugarcoat this decision with ridiculous talk about the moralities of alien civilizations. There are no alien civilizations that we know of at this point in time. This is a work of fiction. The only moralities we can look to in this situation our human moralities. And by those standards Archer's decision to return the cogenitor is morally wrong.
And please no more talk about the prime directive. As a 40 plus year fan of Star Trek I can say with certainty that the prime directive does not apply to warp capable civilizations. Captain Archer is within his rights to consider a request for asylum from the cogenitor as he himself points out to the Vissian Captain. His big mistake was not to grant asylum in this instance.
Trip was wrong to interfere in Vissian affairs without getting the permission of the Captain or the First Officer. But he was not ultimately responsible for the death of the cogenitor. The Captain was responsible. It was his decision. The buck stopped with him. He made a command decision as Captain and he has to live with the consequences. To throw all the blame on Trip was cowardly and reflected very poorly on his leadership ability.