New Old Star Trek

Scott Hardie | December 31, 2001
Since Kelly and I don't have television at home, I was hoping, while on vacation, to catch an episode of "Enterprise." (That alone is the title of the show, if I saw the opening credits correctly.) I finally managed to do so last night, when the episode "Terra Nova" aired as a rerun.

It's weird watching Star Trek again. I haven't watched it since DS9's last episode in the summer of 1999. (Ironically, that same episode was on after Enterprise, and I enjoyed the first ten minutes of it.) Just as Enterprise is old and new and familiar and strange all at the same time, so it was like for me to just watch Trek again.

The storyline was kind of pat. Good concept: The first extra-solar human colony disappeared seventy years earlier, and since Enterprise is the first ship to leave the solar system, it has been ordered to investigate. But within the first fifteen minutes, we've learned that the colonists are gone, and there are strange primitive people running around. Gee, do you think they're mutated versions of the original colonists? Do you think they'll attack the crew at first? Do you think the crew will communicate to them that they're the actual human colonists, but only one will listen? Do you think a member of the crew will heroically save one of them to establish a bond? Do you think the one sympathetic mutant will convince the others of the truth?

Star Trek has had what, 600, maybe 700 episodes? I understand that formulas tend to develop over time. But some deviation would be helpful. Maybe the mutants kill members of the crew and Starfleet orders the crew to abandon them (Starfleet doesn't have a lot of experience at this point in history). Maybe the mutants move aboard the ship to live there. Maybe the mutants aren't humans after all, and the crew was completely wrong the whole time. Maybe some members of the crew decide to join this colony. Do something different! Shake things up! Change the crew and this could easily have been a Voyager episode. I think the best way to go is to not have the colonists turned into mutants at all. That's so, well, Star Trek. Go a completely different route.

I don't know why I'm complaining. I don't watch the show anyway. All complaining aside, I was entertained for an hour, and it was good to see Trek again. Now if I can just get that rpg going...

Matthew Preston | December 31, 2001
I have to say that that was the worst episode of Enterprise there has been so far, a real stinker. I hope that your impression of it isn't set in stone now. There were spectacular episodes before and after this one that dealt with much of the crew and the beginnings of all of the relationships between species. I remember actually laughing till near tears once when they met the klingons for the first time. Now that was a damn good episode. Give it another shot sometime, I am sure you will like it as it is nothing like Voyager....

Scott Hardie | January 1, 2002
The plot synopses on startrek.com are interesting and helpful. I know which episode you mean, with the Klingons. But the quality of an episode is usually not reflected in the plot, so a simple description of the events doesn't tell me whether an episode is good or not. If I have time this coming Friday night I'll watch one more episode.