It’s been a couple days since the most recent Enterprise episode, “Civilization“, and I hadn’t been able to come up with much to say about it. After working on it for a bit, I think it’s just because there really isn’t much to say — while it wasn’t a really bad episode, it certainly wasn’t really good, and was definitely nothing new. It basically felt like a retread of episodes that every Star Trek series have done at least once or twice at some point during their run, all around the same “Enterprise officers interacting with a primitive society, trying to hide, and failing miserably” theme. Decently done, but not exactly treading new ground.
There were a couple cool bits that I caught, though.
T’Pol looks really good with long hair — since long hair on women is within regulation for Starfleet and we’ve seen quite a few Vulcan women with long hair in the past (T’Pring and T’Pau in Amok Time, Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the priestess seen in the background on Vulcan in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, for instance), I say T’Pol should grow her hair out. Hey, Worf did it between seasons two and three of Star Trek: The Next Generation (if I remember correctly), so there’s precedence, right?
The use of the Mallurians as the antagonists was an interesting choice. While I didn’t pick up on this at first (it was pointed out in various threads over at the TrekBBS), the Mallurians were wiped out by the space probe Nomad during Kirk’s time, as shown in the Original Series episode “The Changeling“. It’s a nice tip of the hat to established Star Trek canon.
Trip really should have ended up in the brig — or at least severely reprimanded — for his actions on the bridge while the Enterprise was being attacked by the Mallurian ship. Countermanding T’Pol’s orders while she was in command, to the point of threatening to vent the nacelles and thus preventing the ship from being able to warp away — that was insubordination at best, and possibly mutiny. As with T’Pol’s secret transmission in “Breaking the Ice“, there just doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a real command structure on this ship — or if there should be (as I’d suppose, as Starfleet has always been shown to be a very quasi-military outfit, from what I know most similar to the Navy), it’s not being enforced. Not a good way to start, there.
And lastly, I loved the exchange between T’Pol and Archer as they prepare to go to the planet. As T’Pol explains that it would be best to set their shuttle down in a relatively unpopulated area to avoid too much cultural contamination if they are seen, Archer remarks that, “this must be why there were so many alien sightings in Kansas cornfields.” Just priceless — one of the best lines I’ve heard yet.
So, definite moments that were worth seeing, but taken as a whole, an unimpressive episode. As always, tune in next week…same bat time, same bat channel.
Random bit of trivia I stumbled across this past week — Kim Darby, who played Jenny Myer (Lane’s mom) in the classic 80’s John Cusack comedy Better off Dead had, much earlier in her career, played Miri in the Star Trek Original Series episode “Miri“. Most likely, people like Royce and I are about the only ones who will really think that that’s cool, but it got my attention when I stumbled across it.
That’s it for now. Buh-bye!