Sights

Of this bunch, T”Pol and “Trip” deserve their own sub-category: Characters We Already Love to Hate. Trip is the most down-home, gung-ho, action-ready member of the crew and also the most clueless. He doesn’t know how to operate machinery at crucial moments, and he thinks nothing of camping on unfamiliar planets, oblivious to inherent dangers such as other creatures, ecological disturbance, or, in the case of the show’s third episode, crew inhalation of hallucinogenic pollen.

While this makes for some funny situations, these tendencies are also what make him annoying. He is clearly set up as a foil for the reserved, protocol-loving, intellectual, vegetarian T”Pol, who isn’t without her own issues. Though more emotionally reserved than the crew (and more inclined to actual thought), T”Pol is, however, problematic as a Vulcan. In the first episode alone, she smirks, she gets frustrated with other crew members and she gets sexed up with Trip in a decontamination chamber, where, unbelievably, she lets him feel her ears! Plus, she’s physically endowed in a distracting way that makes viewers wonder if the show’s creators just wanted a Vulcan replacement for Voyager’s Borg character, Seven of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan, who is now titillating high school students on Boston Public).

Despite all these flaws, however, Star Trek fans keep tuning in. Enterprise has even topped the ratings in the new drama category among viewers in the 18 to 34 demographic, succeeding where more likely successes have failed. Even though there’s much to mock about the new series (see the Enterprise recaps and forum discussions on Mighty Big TV for some excellently snarky and intelligent commentary about the show), there are good reasons to keep watching.

As most Trek fans know, the Star Trek saga has always operated on at least two levels. It’s an action/adventure/sci-fi/fantasy show, and it’s also a place where social commentary and critique are made in the guise of weekly space adventures. Both characters and viewers are provided with a fantastic arena in which to encounter and negotiate difference (whether they are between races, species, genders or humans and their cyborg counterparts). This new incarnation is no different. While we may not particularly like Captain Archer and his crew, watching Enterprise provides us with the opportunity to see current national concerns pushed through the Star Trek looking-glass and examined in space.

In the show’s pilot episode (aired in the U.S. on Oct. 3), the Enterprise crew is hastily assembled after an alien ship with a Klingon hostage crashes into a plot of farmland in Broken Bow, Okla., an event later described by a Starfleet official as an attack that “happened on our soil.” The enemy alien species responsible for this offense were the Suliban (rhymes with “). Archer and crew aren’t big on diplomacy in the process of getting the Klingon hostage back to his comrades. Rather, they rely on weaponry and bravado to save the day, over the objections of T”Pol, whose role on the ship is much like that of the Vulcans’ on Earth: to check humans’ violent, impulsive tendencies in their interplanetary policies and actions.

Still, for all its daring to engage in social commentary, Enterprise tends to rely on non-fantastic, uncomplicated plot resolution, which is frustrating for fans who have grown accustomed to Trek’s usual risk-taking through speculative fiction. In this latest incarnation of Star Trek, American nationalism and patriotism — thinly veiled as global pride, since the characters usually define themselves as being from “Earth,” rather than from any particular nation — aren’t deeply critiqued.

Humans remain the most sympathetic of the show’s characters, the ones who’ve been sent into space to make contact with alien species on Earth’s behalf. Though the Vulcans make regular appearances on the show in which they criticize the humans’ methods and perspectives (as well as body odor, see “The Andorian Incident,” which aired Oct. 30), these critiques are ultimately undermined as each episode’s resolution involves some sort of Vulcan compromise.

In the case of the pilot episode, T”Pol decides to remain on Enterprise and work with the human crew, deciding she should give Archer the benefit of doubt after she defies her Vulcan logic and protocol to help return a Klingon to his home. At the end of “The Andorian Incident,” we learn that the Andorian species, who suspected the Vulcans were using an ancient monastery as a front for a spying operation, were indeed correct, as the Enterprise crew discovered the secret station behind a monastery tapestry.

More recently, at the end of “Breaking the Ice” (original airdate Nov. 7), after T”Pol discusses the status of her arranged marriage with other crewmembers and a visiting Vulcan official, a discussion that focuses on the humans’ valuation of personal liberty and freedom, we are treated to a closing shot of T”Pol meditating over a piece of pecan pie. In each of these episodes, human (or, American) values are discussed and debated, but this debate only services a final, predictable triumph for the Earthlings and their ideologies.

We expect Enterprise to offer non-traditional approaches to contemporary, ‘real” situations and issues, and for each episode members of my household have watched (all of us Trek fans to varying degrees), we’ve hoped for old-school Trek endings. We got excited when Trip was impregnated by an alien female and grew nipples and started showing, thinking that maybe Enterprise would be tackling issues surrounding reproductive choice. Or, even better for long-term narrative possibilities, Trip would keep the “baby” and raise it on the ship. Instead, the alien fetus was removed from Trip’s anatomy and allowed to gestate in incubation on its mother’s ship. As with the pilot, the Enterprise writers offered us the hope of a challenging narrative, but in the end took a safe route and delivered a predictable, easily-resolved product.

For now, the Trek fans in my house watch Enterprise with ambivalence. We still haven’t decided if we find ourselves in front of the TV every Wednesday night because we really like the show, or because we like to hate it. I think that we want to like it. Borrowing from The X-Files, another of our household fan obsessions, we want to believe — I’m just not sure we will.

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Related Sites
The UPN Web site is rather limited, but there’s no shortage of great fan sites for Enterprise or the earlier shows. Start at the official Star Trek site. Here’s an extensive bibliography of scholarly Trek materials, including articles on race, gender, the military and religion.