Mayweather Gets An Episode For No Particular Reason In “Horizon.”

The Good: Moments of character development, Special effects are fine.
The Bad: Terrible acting! Banal plot.
The Basics: Ensign Mayweather’s second season episode is the entirely unremarkable “Horizon.”


The secondary characters in the Star Trek franchise have had it tough since the original Star Trek. Because Star Trek was dominated by Kirk and Spock (with an occasional story that focused on McCoy), the subsequent series’ had a tendency not to focus on any more than three characters in a significant way in a season. In all of the Star Trek spinoffs there were at least two characters who were generally neglected and kept as supporting characters. Gates McFadden once noted at a convention that there would never be a Dr. Crusher movie. Similarly, Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager was lucky to get two episodes in a season that focused on him. On Enterprise, the series is dominated by Archer, T’Pol and Tucker and characters like Ensign Travis Mayweather are very much pushed to the back burner.

Yet, the producers made a passing effort to develop all of the characters and in the second season, the Mayweather episode is “Horizon.” It is easy to see why actor Anthony Montgomery would be excited by “Horizon.” The episode gives him the chance to shine, but unfortunately “Horizon” is a fairly uninspired episode and it gives very little room for Mayweather to shine. While the episode has decent character conflict for Mayweather, in the form of competing with his brother, the situation seems generic and the episode has a very weak plot.

Opening with Mayweather sitting on the ceiling in the Enterprise’s “sweet spot” (a null gravity area in a turbolift shaft) when he is recalled to the Bridge. The Enterprise is being diverted to explore a geological fireworks display some thirty light years behind the ship. Mayweather realizes that the detour will take the ship near to his family’s cargo ship, the Horizon. While T’Pol struggles with socializing when Tucker bugs her into coming to movie night, which is now every night on Enterprise, Mayweather learns that his father has died and his homecoming to the Horizon is going to be a bittersweet one.

Mayweather instantly butts heads with his brother, Paul, who is now the acting captain of the Horizon. Paul is jealous of Travis’s StarFleet position, though some of the other members of the crew are curious about Mayweather’s exploring the galaxy. When Travis makes upgrades to the Horizon, Paul has a fit, which comes after the Horizon is attacked by pirates. While Travis rejects giving in to the bullying pirates, he struggles to save the Horizon from Paul’s inexperience and the menace represented by the pirates.

“Horizon” is seriously marred by some of the worst acting of the series. The episode feels like it must have been about ten minutes short, so Bakula and Anthony Montgomery make painfully long and inorganic pauses between key portions of their clauses in sentences. The staggered way they speak is painful to listen to and the episode feels . . . amateurish as a result. Guest actress Joan Pringle shines so brightly as Mayweather’s mother largely because she speaks like a normal human being.

The character conflict with Mayweather is a pretty generic one. Much like Luke Skywalker at the end of Return Of The Jedi (reviewed here!) never plausibly seems like he might go over to the Dark Side, the viewer never honestly believes that Travis Mayweather will leave Enterprise for the Horizon. Far worse for the viewer is the T’Pol b-plot. T’Pol goes from being bratty about movie night to being something of a punchline, making jokes that reference Frankenstein.

That same b-plot, with the Enterprise hanging out watching a planetary fireworks display is nothing more than a cheap excuse to show off the special effects. The special effects department does a decent job in “Horizon” with both the space battle and the spatial phenomenon, but they are good CG effects supporting an otherwise mundane plot with a painfully generic plot (it’s like “Prodigal Daughter” from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine without the engaging murder/conspiracy).

Ultimately, Travis Mayweather and Anthony Montgomery deserved something better than the one-shot “Horizon.” It feels like exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to use one of the oft-neglected characters from the show.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophmore season here!
Thanks!]

1.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Influencing Cultures Humorlessly, “The Communicator” Is A Decent Episode.

The Good: Tone, Acting, General concept
The Bad: Not at all original idea, Light on character development.
The Basics: Archer and Reed find themselves embroiled in a political conflict when they must return to a pre-warp civilization to recover Reed’s lost communicator.


When it comes to Star Trek Enterprise, there are some ironies that make me smile, even now, years after the show is off the air. Enterprise worked very hard to mortgage the original Star Trek fan base and create a new audience. The ironic element of Enterprise was that while it worked very hard to create a new audience, it had no serious issues with stealing ideas from prior incarnations of Trek when it suited its purposes. Such is what happened with “The Communicator.”

“The Communicator” takes the basic idea as “A Piece Of The Action” (reviewed here!), but with far less compelling consequences or execution. “A Piece Of The Action” explored the idea of what happens when more advanced societies influence less technologically and socially-developed worlds. “A Piece Of The Action” used humor and it worked (perfectly) because the less advanced culture the Enterprise was sent to investigate had been characterized as “extremely imitative.” “The Communicator” creates a dramatic, politically tense story based more on the insinuation of a threat than an actual cultural contamination. Actually, “The Communicator” may steal a pretty cool idea from the original Star Trek, but it does so in a way that makes the resulting episode feel surprisingly fresh and new.

Archer, Reed, and Sato return to the Enterprise after visiting a pre-warp culture and Reed is excited because he had never visited a planet like that. Upon completing decontamination, however, Reed discovers that he has lost his communicator. Determined to get their advanced technology back before it influences the planet’s culture, Reed and Archer return to the planet where they are promptly captured by a political faction who recognizes their technology is beyond theirs. The situation goes from bad to worse when T’Pol tries to contact the captain on his communicator.

During their interrogation, Reed is exposed as an alien and the officers interrogating them freak out to learn that their captives may be worse than just the opposing political faction. Trip and Mayweather work to bring the Suliban ship they still have in the docking bay and its cloaking device online, with terrible consequences for Trip. While the natives of the planet discover more about Archer, Reed, and their technology, they are menaced with the possibility of being dissected. With the clock ticking, T’Pol must risk the Enterprise to recover the two lost officers before they are killed.

“The Communicator” seems like a vast overreaction considering it precedes “A Piece Of The Action” by about a hundred years. “The Communicator” has Reed and Archer reacting as if they know what the consequences of a cultural contamination would be without StarFleet having encountered one before. About a hundred years prior to this episode, the Horizon visited Sigma Iota and contaminated the culture there, but it would take another hundred years before StarFleet realized it had been contaminated. The point here is that Archer and Reed have no reason to honestly believe that the loss of a communicator would actually affect a pre-warp culture the way it does.

Writer Andre Bormanis has a decent sense of irony, then, as “The Communicator” creates a plot based not on the initial mistake, but rather on the attempt by Reed and Archer to rectify the mistake. It is only in returning to the planet that the inhabitants actually learn what the communicator is.

As far as the execution of “The Communicator,” the performances are generally good. Scott Bakula and Dominic Keating play off one another well in the episode and given that their characters are not given an adversarial position in this episode, this is new ground for them to explore. They have decent on-screen chemistry as they play off one another and they make scenes that could be dry exposition or philosophical debate seem actually interesting. Bakula is not stiff in the episode and that helps make the viewer care more about the fate of Archer and Reed.

What character development there is in the episode is minimal, but interesting. For a change, Reed is not the pessimist or realist. When he and Archer are imprisoned, he gets a rash of actual idealism that is an interesting change for the character. Archer takes on a more philosophical role than usual and that plays well for the character. At least as important, he and Reed take moral stances and have an actual intellectual debate over what it might mean to be truthful with the aliens they have found themselves among. That elevates the plot-based episode into something more.

“The Communicator” may not have a terribly original idea, but is has a good execution of the familiar concept and it makes for one of the better episodes of Enterprise.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophmore season here!
Thanks!]

8.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Reed Whines His Way Through A Romulan Attack In “Minefield!”

The Good: Good character development, Special effects.
The Bad: The epitome of stiff acting, Huge continuity problems, Obvious progressions/plot assembly
The Basics: In an annoyingly improbable first contact with the Romulans, “Minefield” gives Reed the chance to develop his character more, but does little else well.


In my guts, I liked “Minefield,” the episode of Enterprise wherein the NX-01 Enterprise has an encounter with multiple Romulan ships as well as an entire cloaked minefield. I want to like Malcolm Reed, the reticent Armory Officer (security chief in every other incarnation of Trek), and “Minefield” puts him front and center. Unfortunately, his place as the focus of “Minefield” is to whine so vociferously as to attempt to distract the viewer from the fact that the first contact with the Romulans is occurring in a painfully problematic and formulaic way. Add to that mediocre performances all the way around and what could have been an intriguing character study quickly degenerates into a blasé thriller that serves more to undermine Enterprise and its place in the larger Star Trek pantheon than it does to flesh out the history of StarFleet.

So, rationally, I loathe “Minefield” and my feelings for the episode diminish somewhat fast when I consider that Reed goes from being an interesting fatalist and realist to a whiny, annoying pessimist with very little to substantially contribute.

An incredibly awkward breakfast shared by Captain Archer and Malcolm Reed is interrupted by a call from the bridge. A nearby M-Class planet has been discovered and the Enterprise reroutes to investigate it. On the way there, a portion of the saucer section explodes and the crew realizes they have hit a mine. Shortly thereafter, using the device they used to find the cloaked Suliban outpost (in “Shockwave”), the crew discovers there is an undetonated mine attached to the hull and that they are stuck smack dab in the middle of a minefield.

Reed, having the most experience with ordinance disposal, goes out in an environmental suit to deactivate the mine while Trip comes up with an alternate way of saving the Enterprise; jettisoning the panel upon which the mine is attached, which will allow is to explode away from the ship. But when the ships that laid the mines appear out of nowhere and Reed is impaled through the leg by the mine he is trying to defuse, the situation becomes even more perilous. With Archer out on the hull trying to complete Reed’s work while Reed tries to relieve the captain of the pressure of trying to save his life and the ship, T’Pol, Trip, and Ensign Sato work to negotiate with the Romulans on their way out of the system.

As much as I want to like Reed, one of the biggest issues with “Minefield” is the acting of Dominic Keating. While usually he is able to make Reed, a character characterized largely by a lack of sharing information with other characters, interesting. While he begins “Minefield” caught in an interesting situation – having a personal code that makes it virtually impossible for him to loosen up with Captain Archer or any other superior officer – Reed rapidly loses the sense of intrigue, despite Keating being given pages of characterization and exposition to deliver. Keating’s purposeful stiffness (a reticence within the character that serves to underscore the character’s sense of internal conflict) quickly gives way to the sense that Keating is just having trouble finding a way to make the character interesting in the episode. To wit, when the mine impales Reed, Keating does not emote at all and it makes it very hard to believe his character is suffering. The result is that his sudden willingness to die comes across as an unfortunate variation of melodramatic and whiny.

While the special effects are decent, they serve a story that is anything but. Just as with “Acquisition” (reviewed here!) that sought to get around the fact that the Ferengi were not introduced until centuries later to “local space” simply by not saying that the Ferengi who appear in the episode are Ferengi, John Shiban gets around the Romulans appearing by never showing a Romulan. When the Enterprise hits a mine, I was instantly attentive to the fact that one of the characters was Hoshi Sato. This made me believe that Shiban was actually going to make an intelligent episode. After all, with Sato wounded, she could not translate Romulan. With her not present to translate Romulan, there was no one to note that Romulan shares a root grammatical structure with Vulcan, which was established very firmly in “Unification, Part 2” (reviewed here!). But no, despite Sato being removed from the Bridge, she is back in action and translating just fine before the end of the episode . . . and not noting that Romulan and Vulcan are very close languages. While this preserves the “surprise” for the first episode of Star Trek in which the Romulans appear, it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of either this first contact or the larger franchise. In other words, if Romulan and Vulcan are such similar languages and Sato is translating Romulan, by the 23rd Century, it ought to be no surprise whatsoever that Vulcans and Romulans are related (the obvious way around this would have been for T’Pol to “suddenly develop an aptitude” for translating for this episode and have her translate Romulan and as the series built toward the Romulan War, Vulcan communications specialists serve on all StarFleet vessels. Alas, nothing so clever or considerate for the canon here!).

Ensign Mayweather gets his chance to prove he is actually an ace pilot in “Minefield” and it is cool to see Anthony Montgomery’s character showing his efficiency. Unfortunately, the starship Enterprise is outfitted with (I kid not) a joystick that he uses in this episode to fly the ship and that is just groanworthy bad.

What could have been a tense drama or a compelling character study is robbed by long sequences where very little happens or what does flies in the face of reason. The Romulans in “Minefield” are characterized as neither particularly cunning nor overtly threatening. They simply have possession of a previously unexplored system and Enterprise is forced to withdraw from it. Given that, it is almost hard to imagine how the Romulan War ever began. After all, if StarFleet is so respectful of other race’s territory, what could possibly have gone wrong between them?

The three biggest gaffes in “Minefield:”
3. The Romulans in “Minefield” are clearly a significant distance from home (otherwise, Romulus would be vastly closer to Earth than it appears in Star Trek: Nemesis and every other incarnation of Star Trek. How the Romulans got pushed back so far to where the Neutral Zone will later be established is unfathomable given that Earth has (at this point) one Warp Five capable ship, uncertain allies and not very many of them,
2. T’Pol once again lies, albeit by omission, when she does not volunteer anything she knows or suspects about Romulans and their ties to Vulcans,
1. Cloaking technology was a new invention by the Romulans when Kirk’s Enterprise encountered it in “Balance Of Terror” (reviewed here!). Kirk seemed alarmed by the technology and Spock pointedly noted that the new tactical advantage would give the Romulans a devastating advantage over StarFleet. Yet, in “Minefield,” the Romulans already have fully-developed cloaked ships and mines!

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophmore season here!
Thanks!]

3.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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More Humor Than Substance, “Carbon Creek” Revises Star Trek’s Memorable First Contact.

The Good: Fair acting, Good humor
The Bad: Somewhat preposterous concept in the overall franchise, No real character development.
The Basics: T’Pol tells the real story of first contact between humans and Vulcans.


One of the most consistent aspects of Star Trek: Enterprise was that the producers had absolutely no problem with saying to hell with the history of the Star Trek universe. Every now and then, their sense of revisionist history created an episode that was interesting on the surface, but when one scratches at the surface of it, it becomes far less pleasant. “Carbon Creek” is one such episode. While the episode is generally enjoyable, even in the context of the episode there are some truly annoying facets for those who actually appreciate the Vulcans. Chief among these issues is that the Vulcan Stron says many things are “impossible” when they are anything but (if Spock can assemble a working computer in the 1940s, Stron should be able to use 22nd technology and 1950s tech to build a subspace transceiver.

Beyond that, “Carbon Creek” is the negation of the significant climax to Star Trek: First Contact (reviewed here!). The episode hinges on the idea that the official First Contact between humans and Vulcans was not actually the first contact between the two races. While the Star Trek franchise does comedy from time to time well, “Carbon Creek” is not one of the better Star Trek comedies. As well, the ultimate resolution to the episode is somewhat hard to buy and seems cheap as opposed to meaningful.

While talking about the crew evaluations, T’Pol is asked by Archer and Trip to share a story. Archer is curious as to why T’Pol would take leave in Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania during her tour of duty on Earth. T’Pol tells the story of her great grandmother, T’Mir. T’Mir was part of a four-person Vulcan ship that was damaged in 1957 near Earth. The ship sets down near Carbon Creek and the three Vulcan survivors including T’Mir, Mestral and Stron. After going through their rations and days of starving, the Vulcans opt for visiting the nearby settlement. There, T’Mir and Mestral meet with citizens and earn enough money for food by playing pool.

Stuck on Earth for months, Mestral starts watching television and dating the local bartender, Maggie. When the local miners are caught in a cave in, the Vulcans assist in rescuing them. T’Mir, influenced by Mestral’s example, helps Maggie’s son Jack get the funds to go to college.

“Carbon Creek” features Vulcans who hardly act like Vulcans and it is hard to complain about the acting as the writing for the Vulcans is so problematic. Mestral has an interesting character arc and if the character was anyone other than a Vulcan, who is trained from early childhood to repress their emotions, it would work. Strom, on the other hand is a decent Vulcan.

Jolene Blalock plays T’Pol’s great grandmother T’Mir well, though without any distinctive performance differences from how she plays T’Pol. Ann Cusack and J. Paul Boehmer give decent guest starring performances as Maggie and Mestral. Even Hank Harris does all right as Jack, though the young actor is not given a character with an exceptional amount to do.

Ultimately, “Carbon Creek” is a fun on the surface episode that is largely unremarkable and, at the same time, works so hard to undermine the established history of the Star Trek universe.

The three biggest gaffes in “Carbon Creek:”
3. The Vulcans in the episode use an inordinate number of contractions. While that is not a hard and fast rule with the Vulcans, Spock seldom used contractions and for Vulcans, there seems something illogical about creating a language that would require or encourage a simpler form of speech, like contractions. Perhaps more substantively, T’Pol constantly complains about how humans smell; not one of the Vulcans in the episode even note that.
2. Mestral lies repeatedly in the episode. Vulcans aren’t supposed to lie . . . even to one another!
1. T’Pol tells Archer and Tucker the story of Vulcan’s real first contact with humans in the 22nd Century. How does this secret remain secret then through (at least) the 24th Century when the Enterprise-D’s crew still attribute first contact to Zephram Cochrane. This concept becomes less and less logical as time passes as keeping such a secret becomes more of a liability than a “state secret.”

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophmore season here!
Thanks!]

4.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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“Data’s Day” For Enterprise Is “Dear Doctor.”

The Good: Moments of concept and philosophy, Moments of character, Generally decent acting
The Bad: Completely drops the moral and scientific arguments, Derivative plot
The Basics: In the first Enterprise medical episode, Dr. Phlox proves himself to be competent as a doctor, but more complicated as a scientist than any of the other Star Trek doctors.


In creating something that wrestles with an original issue in the Star Trek franchise, writers Andre and Maria Jacquemetton create a huge continuity problem for themselves. The episode of Enterprise where they unwittingly create an issue is “Dear Doctor,” an episode that feels less fresh than it is because it bears a number of stylistic similarities to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Data’s Day” (reviewed here!). While it continues to raise Prime Directive issues (this is set before the Prime Directive is created), much like “Civilization” (reviewed here!) before it, “Dear Doctor” plods along with a “character narrates a story to their ‘pen pal’” narrative technique like “Data’s Day” did.

The complex medical concept that Dr. Phlox ultimately raises makes sense for an Enterprise episode . . . save that it is never revisited or even hinted at in any subsequent Star Trek series. In addition to not having many planets that subsequent series’ visit where there are two dominant species, the Star Trek franchise never presents a moral dilemma where a physician is bound by a Medical Prime Directive that prevents them from curing a disease because it might influence a planet’s evolution. In fact, in several episodes of Star Trek (throughout the franchise), Chief Medical Officers actively eliminate diseases to save planets that evolution is otherwise dictating ought to wipe out the planet’s inhabitants . . . without any moral quandary.

Dr. Phlox arrives in Sickbay where he feeds his many animals and plants before he starts to dictate a letter to Jeremy Lucas. Lucas is his human counterpart in the alien medical exchange program and is serving on Denobula. When Enterprise encounters a derelict alien ship that has two weak lifeform readings. The ship is brought aboard and Dr. Phlox discovers the astronauts are suffering from a debilitating disease. The Enterprise journeys to Valakian homeworld where Dr. Phlox sets to trying to cure them of their debilitating disease.

As Phlox negotiates a burgeoning relationship with Crewman Cutler, Ensign Sato inadvertently reveals the presence of a second humanoid species on Valakia: the Menk. The Valakians are advanced, whereas the Menk are primitive, but Phlox believes that the Menk may be the key to curing the Valakians. As Phlox, Sato, and Cutler work to cure the Valakians, Phlox realizes the problem is genetic, not viral and he develops a moral quandary which puts him in conflict with Archer.

“Dear Doctor” has so much potential, but it drops almost all of it. So, for example, there is a huge lull in the episode as the Menk serve Phlox and his team some food. The lines seem to be loaded; explicitly they state that the Valakians provide them with all they need. I kept waiting for a “Solient Green is people” moment, but it never came. So, there is this crazy moment when the episode stops dead for a payoff that simply never comes.

In a similar fashion, the episode raises a moral quandary: the genetic disease is unique to the Valakians, but the Menk live on the planet as well. Phlox is convinced, for most of the episode, that the Menk are the key to curing the Valakians. The sensible direction for this concept to go is the revelation that the Valakians inbreeding over hundreds of generations have led to this and now they need genetic diversity . . . from the Menk. This would also fit smartly with the episode in that Dr. Phlox reveals to Cutler that he has three wives, all of whom have two other husbands. The implicit concept here is that Denobulans smartly value genetic diversity in their offspring and from their marital relationships. Yet, these concepts are entirely dropped and left utterly underdeveloped.

What is exchanged for this concept that is built into both the personal and plot-based elements of the episode is a moral dilemma that seems flimsy at best. Phlox does not want to cure the Valakians of their genetic disorder because he believes that it is evolution at work and that if the Valakians die off, the Menk might rise to the evolutionary challenge of becoming the dominant species on the planet. Given that neither race is ever seen again in the Star Trek franchise, it is very much hard to care about the moral dilemma or even the concept of medically influencing evolution to save one species over another.

What does work in “Dear Doctor” is the acting and the characterization of Dr. Phlox. Phlox is presented as a caring physician and a diligent scientist. He is also characterized here as having a sense of ethics that is unique to the Star Trek Universe. His chemistry with Crewman Cutler is good and John Billingsley presents Phlox as a subtle and complex character. At Phlox’s quiet moments, Billingsley portrays the character as if there is quite a bit going on behind his eyes.

What makes far less sense on the character front is T’Pol – who has a cavity in this episode – and Hoshi Sato. Sato learned Klingon in about five minutes in “Broken Bow” (reviewed here!) and has been characterized consistently as the antithesis of an explorer. And yet, here she is struggling with the Denobulan language, has no issues with walking into a plague zone, and is referred to by Phlox as having a real explorer’s spirit. As well, the initial encounter with the Valakians raises the question yet again of “Just what are the directives StarFleet has at this point?!” When the Enterprise encounters a ship adrift, not knowing anything about the people inside or their condition, they bring it aboard, potentially exposing the crew to a contagion instead of boarding the alien ship in environmental suits.

Ultimately, “Dear Doctor” is fair, but does not live up to its potential.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete First Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the premiere season here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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