Caltrops - Star Trek: A Final Unity





	[quote name="In Broadcast Order"]<b>Season 1, Episode 13: Dear Doctor</b> <i>Data's Day</i> with Dr Phlox, who looks like a cross between Neelix and the EMH, but when written well is actually more like a cross between Odo and Bashir - curious, open-minded, hungry, horny, ethical to a point, and unsentimental to a fault. Probably the fourth-best character, after the sexy Vulcan, the sexy hick, and Jeffrey Coombs. This was the first time Enterprise felt like Star Trek to me, and by that I mean the Star Trek I choose to remember, instead of the Star Trek that accounts for about 90% of all actual Star Trek. <b>Season 2, Episode 22: Cogenitor</b> <i>The Outcast</i> done right. Or at least, as right as you can do a very special episode of Star Trek about gender confusion. This is the second of three or four episodes on this list in which Captain Archer is called upon to make a big ethical decision, which he does in his trademark "I don't like the situation, I don't understand the situation, but this is what I'm gonna do because I honestly can't think of any other options" style. Picard always made the right call, Kirk didn't believe in the no-win scenario, Sisko carried the weight of every compromise he ever made, and Janeway... is an admiral now. Archer's just in over his head, and he's the first one to admit it. You couldn't ask for a nicer captain. <b>Season 3, Episode 8: Twilight</b> Apparently this was originally written for Janeway and Chakotay instead of Archer and sexy Vulcan, but it's hard to tell because so many episodes of Enterprise seem like someone found them at the bottom of a droor marked 'in case of eighth season'. I imagine it wasn't used on Voyager because it was too derivative of <i>Year of Hell</i>, not to mention <i>Future Imperfect</i> and <i>All Good Things</i>, but those were all good episodes and so is this one. Enterprise went back to the bad future well thirteen episodes later with the <i>Yesterday's Enterprise / Children of Time</i> homage <i>E Squared</i>, and it didn't work nearly as well. I'm thinking you only get one of these per series. <b>Season 3, Episode 10: Similitude</b> <i>Tuvix</i> done right. I love unethical superscience, and so does a gleeful Dr Phlox. Archer doesn't like it, as usual, but if there's any other way please point it out to him because he's just flailing around here. Sexy Vulcan and sexy hick get to do some nice character stuff; their relationship is one of the most believable on any Star Trek, and that's in spite of the writers changing its parameters every few episodes. Archer doesn't cross the moral Rubicon here like Janeway did in Tuvix, instead he sort of stumbles backwards onto a moral skateboard that rolls down a big moral hill while he covers his eyes and thinks of Earth, it's awesome. <b>Season 4, Episode 22: These Are the Voyages...</b> I agonized over which episode to put in this spot, since I really only liked four in total and this is number five. I considered 4x17 <i>Bound</i>, which was fucking terrible but had a good message about men's rights (we are the real orion slave girls). I also considered just putting some random episode with Jeffrey Coombs in it, to recognize how his Andorian Commander Shran was the sole bright blue spot in so many hours of gunmetal gray garbage. In the end I went with the series finale, because it was just such a slap in the face to everybody involved in the production of Enterprise and anybody at home who might've somehow gotten emotionally invested in this four season failure. Two characters from a series people actually liked and watched - Troi and Riker - squeeze into their old skintight spandex uniforms (and squeeze is the operative word, Riker's gained at least sixty pounds while Troi's had a not entirely unflattering combination of menopause and breast augmentation) and stomp around a holodeck recreation of Scott Bakula's Pathetiprise laughing at how quaint and small everything is. Plus they literally and unceremoniously BLOW UP the guy who just one episode prior had delivered the most heartbreakingly emotional performance of the entire series (in the middle of a big pile of drek, natch). The most insultingly dull possible ending to the most insultingly dull possible version of this series. At least they didn't bring up the Temporal Cold War.[/quote]