I feel a little like I'm writing a mini-series sequel to a long-running TV program, 10 years after that program's cancellation. It's very strange.

SPOILER WARNING: This post and its fellows contain spoilers for episodes of the first season of Enterprise. If you're concerned about any episodes being spoiled for you, I suggest skipping this post.

I. The Characters and Actors

I wonder sometimes why actors would sign on for a voyage on the Starship Enterprise, since it seems to sound a death knell to their careers. NextGen featured several fine actors - Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn - but only Stewart seems to have had a notable career outside of Star Trek since the series ended. Star Trek seems to have been a similar career-limiting-move for the casts of Deep Space Nine and Voyager - even for Avery Brooks, who actually had a career before Star Trek.

Has Jolene Blalock delivered a Vulcan death grip to her career?

Anyway.

Since the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek series have striven to be "ensemble cast" series, not focusing on a few characters in depth, but working with the whole ensemble in tandem. This has generally worked astoundingly badly, since the writers have generally had little idea how to write for an ensemble cast (as opposed to series such as Babylon 5 or Homicide: Life on the Street, both of which did so well, particularly the latter). As a result, the best stories still feature just a few of the characters (probably because the writers put their best efforts into the best characters rather than due to a desire to move away from an ensemble cast approach), but precious episodes are squandered focusing on the second-tier characters. It's the worst of both worlds.

Ultimately, second-generation Trek has tended to rely on the conceit (not really deserved) that sheer acting skill alone can lift it artistically above its predecessor and the competition.

So it's ironic that the cast of Enterprise takes an ensemble approach, and features one of the least distinguished arrays of cast and characters of any Trek series.

Let's take a look:

CAPTAIN JONATHAN ARCHER (Scott Bakula): Archer's character and Bakula's casting seem almost to come from a desire to "do James T. Kirk right this time": A rugged explorer figure with a strong moral compass leading his crew into the unknown.

Ironically, Bakula isn't (at least in this series) any better an actor than William Shatner was. While his phrasing isn't as easily caricatured as Shatner's, his constantly furrowed brow, constantly even-tempered demeanor and easy-going manner of speaking all add up to a performance which seems too clinical, too emotionless. With Shatner, at least, there was intensity, even if it was sometimes misplaced.

SUB-COMMANDER T'POL (Jolene Blalock): T'Pol's title for some reason seems Romulan rather than Vulcan. She's on the Enterprise essentially to keep the humans in line and provide them with information they need to keep themselves from getting killed (or getting anyone else killed, either).

Blalock's performance rarely seems quite right, as she often seems not quite as dispassionate as a Vulcan ought to, but one might reasonably blame the scripts or directing for this, especially since other Vulcans in the series display a similar flaw. It's hard to tell. She does have moments of fine acting, notably her sequence of being tortured and the aftermath in the second half of "Shockwave".

T'Pol is far and away the strongest character on the show, however. Intelligent, rational, usually right, and willing to concede when she's wrong, she's an entirely likable person. Oddly, this likability comes at the expense of Archer: When T'Pol is right, she's usually right in a situation where Archer is astoundingly, stupefyingly and obviously wrong (e.g., "Strange New World"), and when she's wrong it's in a subtle situation where her divided allegiances are in conflict (e.g. "Fallen Hero"). The show would be much the worse without her - and that's a scary prospect.

CHIEF ENGINEER CHARLES "TRIP" TUCKER III (Connor Trinneer): Tucker's character is hard to fathom. It seems like his stereotype is that he's a southern hick who's so much more than a southern hick. His behavior at his best seems drawn directly from that of Dr. Boyce in "The Cage" and Gary Mitchell in "Where No Man has Gone Before": He's Archer's friend, buddy and confidante. He's also the radical figure on the bridge, challenging Starfleet and the Vulcans to let them go farther, do more, and be better. He's the crusading spirit of human exploration. He's also something of a hothead.

These characteristics aren't especially well-integrated into a single character, and it seems like Tucker shifts moods and demeanors like a chameleon. To Trinneer's credit, he handles just about everything handed to him deftly; it's not his fault that Tucker is hard to read or understand. One really ought to give Tucker the benefit of the doubt and figure that he'll get better and more cohesive as the series progresses.

If one keeps watching that long.

LIEUTENANT MALCOLM REED (Dominic Keating): Reed is basically Tucker's opposite number: Quiet and cautious, though self-confident, it's kind of unfortunate that Enterprise takes the obvious approach of putting the two of them together periodically (especially in the woeful episodes "Shuttlepod One" and "Two Days and Two Nights"): it's pretty easy to throw two opposite numbers together and have them play off each other; it's harder to take characters who are at right angles to each other and make their relationship work.

I find Reed to be something of a cipher. He doesn't strike me as especially driven, or particularly deep. He's just there, and occasionally has a good line or two. The digging into his character in "Silent Enemy" unfortunately showed just how shallow a figure he is.

ENSIGN TRAVIS MAYWEATHER (Anthony Montgomery): Admittedly I missed "Fortunate Son", which seems to have featured Mayweather more than any other episode. From the episodes I have seen, Mayweather is pretty much a non-character. The naive young ensign filling a role similar to that of Wesley Crusher on NextGen. He's neither an asset nor a liability to the series, as either a character or an actor, and I don't really have anything more to say about him.

ENSIGN HOSHI SATO (Linda Park): Hoshi is probably the most annoying character on the show, exceeding even Archer. Accomplished in her field, persuaded to join the Enterprise crew by Archer, she's not at all suited to space travel, or high-pressure situations, and is wracked with self-doubt. Starfleet couldn't find an adequate translator who's more suited to the environment of the mission? Couldn't the Vulcans have supplied someone? Her very presence on the mission seems implausible.

Hoshi's gradual overcoming of her limitations have not been fun or entertaining to watch, and have consistently felt like preamble for the character. There are only two ways her story can resolve itself: Either she'll overcome her problems and become an asset, or she won't and she'll have to be discharged. Neither thread is original, interesting, or exciting, and the writers don't seem intent on doing anything new or different with her. She's been frustrating at best.

Linda Park (who oddly has the same name as the wife of the comic book superhero The Flash) has not especially distinguished herself in my mind as an actress, though much of that might be the awful role she's in. It sometimes seems like that's what she's thinking when Hoshi's being forced to jump through yet another hoop.

DOCTOR PHLOX (John Billingsley): The irrepressibly upbeat Phlox is always fun to see. One of the rare consummate professionals among the show's characters, he's capable, confident, and cheerful. He has yet to encounter a real challenge to his character, and his background and race are still something of a mystery. He's an asset to the show, but he's not central to the milieu.

a. Aliens

VULCANS: The portrayal of the Vulcans in Enterprise is very peculiar. The Vulcans, although bound strongly to tradition, have never seemed especially conservative or cautious; think, after all, of the various radical decisions made by Spock in the original series. They were considered, but not timid like the Vulcans of Enterprise seem to be. The Vulcans' caution regarding letting humans out into the galaxy doesn't seem to be based on logic; the Vulcans seem oddly emotional in their disposition towards the humans, often seeming to (as the proverb goes) "protest too much".

It's an interesting turning of the tables to portray the Vulcans as (sort of) the heavies, the ones who aren't so wild about the Enterprise's mission. Their objections are never very or deeply well-presented, which is unfortunate since the larger galactic implications of humanity's emergence into the stars could be fascinating. Enterprise keeps focusing on the small implications, which fits better into hour television but is decidedly unambitious storytelling.

KLINGONS: The Klingons haven't appeared much, but their portrayal has largely been consistent with the NextGen Klingons: Fiercely (if self-destructively) honorable, a warrior race. I've never found this purloining of the Romulans' tragic honorability very interesting, and I've always rather preferred the barbaric Klingons from Classic Trek, being forced into positions where they have to overcome their limitations and behave like the galactic citizens they claim to be ("Errand of Mercy", "The Day of the Dove").

In Enterprise, the Klingons are simply an emotionally erratic race which the humans encounter from time to time. There hasn't yet been a significant Klingon guest star with a strong story arc, so I don't have much more to say here.

ANDORIANS: Originally from Classic Trek, the blue-skinned, antennae'd Andorians were not well fleshed-out in their two episodes of that series. Here they're cast as a testy warrior race (or, at least, what we see of them are their warriors) and are foils for the Vulcans, and effective ones. Fairly emotional and volatile, they're also not stupid. Why they're as aggressive as they are is unclear, though they might have good evolutionary and/or social reasons.

What makes the Andorians interesting is that they show that the Vulcans are not all-knowing or perfect, and they give the feeling that the humans have fallen into the middle of a situation between the two races that isn't well-understood. Growing up into an independent race obviously will entail escaping the overpowering influence of the Vulcans. But how long will we have to wait?

SULIBAN: The new race in Enterprise are these peculiar genetically-modified aliens. The members of the "Cabal" don't look especially different than their basic genetic stock (as we saw in "Detained"), but that's fine. They have special abilities such as being able to scuttle around all the surfaces of a room under full gravity, and turning effectively invisible. And they're being manipulated by (and, I think, owe their genetic technology to) the mysterious figure from the future who's responsible for the "temporal cold war".

The Suliban don't strike me as especially innovative in a cultural or behavioral sense. The stock Suliban are pretty generic. The Cabal don't seem to have any unusual goals; they're just accumulating power on their own behalf, and to serve their futuristic benefactor. They're a means to the "temporal cold war" story arc, and not much more.

b. History

Taking place well before Classic Star Trek, Enterprise fits into Trek continuity in a unique way. Of course, as all other second-generation Trek series have (excepting a few episodes of Deep Space Nine), Enterprise largely ignores the original Star Trek series.

After all, the Vulcans are fairly well-known and discuss subjects like mating only once every seven years freely, whereas Vulcans were still fairly mysterious in Classic Trek, not because they're cagey (as they are in Enterprise), but because they simply hadn't intermingled with humans very extensively. Kirk was neither provincial nor a fool, but he was continuously learning new things about Spock. Some of this can be written off as the haphazard continuity of the day, but since ignorance of Vulcan culture was central to some of the best episodes (e.g., "Amok Time"), one must infer that Vulcans were still integrating into Federation culture during Kirk's time.

While the Andorians were sketchily portrayed in Classic Trek, the Klingons were not, and the Klingons of Enterprise, as I indicated above, are made from the NextGen mold, not the Classic Trek cast.

No, Enterprise really owes its continuity to Star Trek: First Contact and related artifacts of NextGen. The goal of the series (inasmuch as there is one) is to illuminate how humanity got from First Contact to Picard's time; Kirk's era is incidental at best.

NEXT: The Episodes

hits since 4 November 2002.