Category: Trekathon

Phlox is kidnapped by someone who needs his medical expertise. Ever since *Star Trek: The Motion Picture*, Star Trek fans have been plagued by one question – why do the TOS Klingons look different? For a long time the accepted explanation was ‘they didn’t’, and that the TOS appearance should just be thought of as…

Stopping the Romulan ship means finding an Aenar to help. Dammit, does everyone except humanity have a secret subspecies? We might be feeling a bit left out. A mysterious, half mythical, blind and telepathic species at that. Well, I don’t suppose I can say we’ve seen enough of the Andorians to expect to have heard…

Archer assembles a fragile alliance to hunt down the Romulan probe. One of my narrative weaknesses – I love a good origin story. It’s clear now that this season is focusing much more on the origin story of the Federation – how did those four races settle their differences, and become a united force. I’m…

Enterprise escorts a Tellarite ambassador to a conference with the Andorians. Back onto the dangerous ground of *Minefield* – can we have an episode about the Romulans without breaching continuity. You can see the writers struggle with it, but they have succeeded so far. The first Romulan war is meant to be very soon in…

Trip and Hoshi catch a really nasty alien virus. An ambitious episode that ultimately falls short of its goals. It was interesting to see these observers inhabit different people, and assemble their views on humanity. But it’s not at all clear what they were trying to learn from this, or why this will tell them…

The inventor of the transporter comes aboard for a mission. The first entirely standalone episode Enterprise has done since *Bounty*, 35 episodes ago. Let’s just say they should stick to the bigger stories. For a large part of this episode it danced on the edge of ‘awful’, before plunging over the edge with a dreadful…

The Vulcan High Command launches an attack on Andoria. With the exception of administrator V’Las, I thought this worked very well as the reconciliation between TOS and later Vulcans and the Vulcans of Enterprise. V’Las, though, just goes too far over the edge. Maybe that’s meant to be a hint to his affiliations, but he…

Archer becomes the Vulcan Martin Luther. Well, it’s a good thing this appears to be the ‘Vulcan reset button’ story. Because if it wasn’t, I’d be pretty annoyed by the portrayal of the high command. They simply are not acting like the Vulcans we know from later series. Apart from being plainly based on the…

Vulcan terrorists blow up the Earth embassy. The portrayal of Vulcans in Enterprise has been controversial. They are, with no question, not the Vulcans of later series – they don’t act the same, or have the same beliefs. Personally I’ve been happy to let that be, on the basis that the writers were going somewhere…

Archer has to stop the augments before they destroy a Klingon world. In the great debate of nature versus nurture, this episode comes down relatively solidly on the side of nature. We’re told that the augments are this aggressive and dangerous because of their genes, rather than their upbringing. I would have preferred a bit…