Everyone Gets On Edge As The Enterprise Approaches A “Singularity!”

The Good: Interesting general idea
The Bad: No real character or consequences based on how the episode becomes a pretty standard possession story, No superlative performances
The Basics: Enterprise delivers its first possession episode with “Singularity, “ an episode that does not even give the performers successful variations on their characters to play.


As a conceit of the genre, it was to be expected that at some point, Enterprise would present an episode that found the crew being possessed by some form of alien life form or they experience a condition which seems to fundamentally alter their personalities. That episode comes with “Singularity.” While many of the Star Trek possession episodes use the opportunities to tell a creepy story that introduces a new alien threat, others try to explore the characters who have become familiar to the viewers. Only one or two actually use the possession to present a wholesale replacement of the crew and “Singularity” follows that model, despite there not being an actual possession from an alien force. Very similar to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “Dramatic Personae” (reviewed here!), “Singularity” has the crew of the Enterprise slowly becoming preoccupied with tasks that seem innocuous enough before they become obsessed with tasks that redefine their characters.

“Singularity” does not do what “Dramatis Personae” did, in that it did not afford the performers to truly play different characters. Reed and Phlox, for example, seem simply to be more themselves as opposed to truly being new or replaced characters. Instead, the performers play their characters as if they were focused on a single task and the sense of focus does not allow the actors to shine. They just become focused, then irritable and that is hardly revealing of the actors’ process or their characters.

Opening with T’Pol narrating a log on how the crew is unlikely to survive their encounter with a nearby black hole, “Singularity” flashes back to T’Pol’s story of events in the two days prior. When Archer diverts the Enterprise toward a black hole, it affords the crew time to deal with lingering issues. Archer struggles to write a piece about his father, Trip tries to adjust the Captain’s chair to make it more comfortable for Archer, Reed begins developing new battle readiness plans, Sato tries cooking a family dish for the crew, and Mayweather visits Sick Bay to deal with what Phlox worries might be lingering effects from his near-death experience at the repair station. Even Porthos seems on edge, barking at Archer as he narrates his father’s tribute.

But what seems like it could just be a case of the crew’s nerves getting frayed becomes something else Phlox takes Montgomery hostage in Sick Bay by knocking him out. Reed and Trip butt heads in Engineering and when Reed performs a battle drill that shocks everyone, the situation comes to a head. T’Pol realizes that the crew is acting erratically and she comes to believe it is caused by radiation coming from the nearby trinary star system. She and Archer must fly the ship through the anomaly to save the incapacitated crew.

While not a true possession episode, “Singularity” acts like one and given that the cause of the crew’s odd behavior is simply radiation, it is a far more plot-centered than character-driven episode. Sato, for example, is not stuck with wanting to be a chef; she was just preoccupied for filling in at the galley when the radiation peaked. Similarly, Mayweather is not so obsessed with being punctual and afraid of the Captain that he would honestly believe that Archer would react super-negatively to him being late to his station for medical reasons. In fact, the only characters whose focus at the moment of the effective radiation dose was on characteristic activities are Reed and Phlox. And there is nothing revealing about Reed wanting better military protocols on the ship or Phlox working to maintain the health of the crew (in this case, Mayweather).

On the acting front, “Singularity” is nothing extraordinary either. Scott Bakula has played Archer as both focused and uncertain before and Reed has been played by Dominic Keating as irritable and on edge. As a result, the initial intrigue of “Singularity” fades fast and the episode becomes a mundane episode without any twist ending where each member of the crew focuses on their own (mostly pointless) activity which consumes them. It is not, however, enough to consume the avid viewer.

The two biggest gaffes in “Singularity:”
2. Reed has to work on a battle protocol. This is utterly ridiculous as StarFleet is modeled off of a naval system and the navy has had Yellow and Red Alert protocols for decades. Why an officer would be expected to make these on the fly is utterly ridiculous,
1. When using power tools on the bridge, T’Pol gets annoyed. As Trip notes, Vulcans are supposed to have mental disciplines which, as Tuvok and Spock amply illustrated (but T’Pol denies), can manage her biological responses, like how her superior hearing affects her.

[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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Political Intrigue And Somewhat Emotional Vulcans Make For An Intriguing “Fallen Hero.”

The Good: Decent plot, Good character development
The Bad: Erratic acting from the main cast overshadowed by a wonderful guest star (who performs wonderf.
The Basics: “Fallen Hero” continues the idea that Vulcans are involved with sophisticated political intrigue with an interesting Ambassador who is hardly Vulcan!


It is easy to see why so many fans of the Star Trek franchise are split on Enterprise. After all, Enterprise has a number of inconsistencies – not minutiae, but entirely different characterizations of major Star Trek races, not the least of which were the Vulcans. Vulcans in Enterprise are a whole lot more emotional than in other incarnations of Star Trek and that is troubling to the die-hard Trekkers. In fact, the stories that focus most on political intrigue – at least up until the episode “Fallen Hero” – have the Vulcans as political schemers who cannot be trusted. In fact, there are a number of similarities between the Enterprise Vulcans and the Minbari from Babylon 5 (reviewed here!). On Babylon 5, the consistent refrain about the Minbari is that they never tell you the whole truth. Despite how illogical that approach often is, that is how the Vulcans on Enterprise act.

“Fallen Hero” almost makes that re-characterization of Vulcans worthwhile. The straightforward mission, which finds the Enterprise ferrying a disgraced Vulcan ambassador out of enemy space, is well-plotted and has a dramatic tension that almost excuses how emotional some of the Vulcans in the episode are. While guest actress Fionnula Flanagan is a surprisingly good Vulcan, presenting a façade of emotionlessness, series regular Jolene Blalock once again falls down on presenting T’Pol in an emotionless and truly Vulcan way.

Shortly after T’Pol recommends that Enterprise divert course to the nearby planet, Risa, for much-needed shore leave (given that there has been a 3% loss of efficiency in the crew’s performance), Admiral Forrest hails Archer and requests the Enterprise head to Mazar. The Mazarite government is expelling the Vulcan ambassador, V’Lar, and picking her up is a top priority. While Tucker prepares to head off to Risa, the Enterprise diverts to Mazar where they pick up the ambassador (who has already left the planet). Archer quickly learns that V’Lar is not the typical Vulcan and he is shocked when T’Pol insinuates that the charges which have forced her to flee Mazar are charges the older Vulcan is guilty of!

When Enterprise is attacked by a Mazarite ship, V’Lar’s position seems especially precarious. When V’Lar refuses to tell Archer why she was forced off Mazar, Archer decides not to risk the ship and turns Enterprise around to return the ambassador to Mazar. Though T’Pol feels she has been betrayed by her hero, V’Lar, she talks with the ambassador and becomes convinced that V’Lar’s desire not to be returned to Mazar is legitimate and important. After she convinces Archer to not return V’Lar, the Enterprise is besieged by Mazarite ships.

Once again, Enterprise introduces a new Star Trek race and it seems like one of the big purposes of “Fallen Hero” is to expose the crew to an alien race that has traditional shields, like the ones seen in future incarnations of the franchise. Outside the energy shields the Mazarites utilize, there is little lasting consequence (in the franchise) for “Fallen Hero.”

On the character front, “Fallen Hero” again puts the Enterprise in a position where they have good reason not to trust the Vulcans. T’Pol, however, for the first time makes an impassioned plea for Archer to trust her and that shows development that would be significant had Jolene Blalock not been smirking her way through much of her performance of the Vulcan science officer throughout Enterprise thus far. Poor John Rubinstein, who seems to be typecast frequently as a villain, is stuck in “Fallen Hero” as yet another adversary, this time as the Mazarite Captain pursuing Enterprise. He is fine in the role, but it is not a particularly distinctive role for the performer, who usually is able to add more subtlety and menace to his brief parts.

The whole idea that T’Pol has a form of hero worship for V’Lar is drastically underdeveloped in the episode, though T’Pol works hard to convince V’Lar to help the crew. Her attachment to V’Lar is very understated and completely neglected in the episode’s resolution.

“Fallen Hero” begins well with the discussion of the importance of sex for humans and the musings that Enterprise’s ten months in space means the crew is either violating regulations or really needs to get laid. Beyond that, the episode is largely significant for the first reference to Risa and the new recurring quest in subsequent episodes to get there. And while the performances by Scott Bakula (who plays Archer as slowly developing a trust with T’Pol) and Fionnula Flanagan are good, they are not enough to make the episode into more than a pretty simple chase episode, which is what “Fallen Hero” ultimately is.

The three biggest gaffes in “Fallen Hero:”
3. Archer and Trip seem shocked to learn that V’Lar is old and T’Pol is much older than she appears. After 100 years of knowing Vulcans, no human has figured out they have significantly longer lifespans?! Where is the logic in the Vulcans withholding that information?
2. T’Pol casually mentions the terms of pon farr in the episode. Dr. McCoy had no idea about pon farr in “Amok Time” (reviewed here!) and the EMH on Star Trek: Voyager was similarly ignorant of pon farr. How that was kept secret for a hundred years makes no real sense if T’Pol casually talks about it in Enterprise.
1. Risa is a fairly new planet to the Federation in “Captain’s Holiday” (reviewed here!). Risa is close enough to Deep Space Nine, such that it does not take significant time to travel there and when fundamentalists take over the planet, they reference it as a far less important world than the core worlds of the Federation, like Earth, Vulcan, etc. Those things insinuate that Risa is actually a significant distance from Earth and early Federation space. That the Vulcans have been to Risa and it is close enough for the Enterprise to visit makes no real sense. It should be far, far, beyond the realm of the NX-01 Enterprise. In the first aired episode of Star Trek, Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet is referenced; why wasn’t that used?!

[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!]

For other works with Fionnula Flanagan, please check out my reviews of:
Lost
A Christmas Carol
The Invention Of Lying
Yes Man
Four Brothers
“Inheritance” - Star Trek: The Next Generation
“Dax” – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
The Ewok Adventure

5.5/10

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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