TV #9 of 2023:
Star Trek: Enterprise, season 2
I will grudgingly allow that this sophomore season represents a degree of improvement over its shaky predecessor. While the early 2000s Trek prequel series remains the weakest iteration of the franchise that I’ve seen to date, the typical episode in this second year generally approaches the baseline quality level of the previous shows. In other words, the writers are figuring out how to tell decent science-fiction stories with this cast, even though those characters remain jingoistic and xenophobic in a way that doesn’t always feel like an intentional creative choice. They assert that their human morality gives them the right to meddle with the rest of the universe’s intelligent species, and make no mention of how it doesn’t seem to have progressed much from America’s attitude of a century-and-a-half before (most egregiously in the episode where Trip is dumbfounded by the concept of beings with a third gender and refuses to use the correct pronouns for it, which the script frustratingly treats as a brave stance on his part). Sometimes, the parallels are so direct that it hurts, as when the season finale introduces a surprise attack on earth framed very much like 9/11 — although I imagine I’ll have more to say about that as it influences the plot going forward.
The hour when Archer is on trial before a Klingon tribunal is pretty good, as is the one where he helps negotiate a Vulcan/Andorian ceasefire. Against these, however, you’d have to weigh the absurdities around space princess Padma Lakshmi in “Precious Cargo,” or how the camera continues to sexually objectify Hoshi and T’Pol, gratuitously filming them naked or nearly so on multiple occasions. The latter figure, easily the second-most important role on the program, additionally sees her telepathic assault from 1×17 revisited and its subtext as rape reemphasized, all for a clumsy but probably well-meaning AIDS allegory. It’s a show with a lot of problems.
But I’m halfway through it at this point, and I’ve heard that it gets even better later on. I’m not happy that it’s taking this long to reach that stage, especially so soon after the serialized highs of Deep Space Nine, but at least things are moving in the right direction. Two-and-a-half stars, rounded up.
[Content warning for gun violence and suicide.]
★★★☆☆
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