Trek-a-Day Episode 1: Broken Bow
Series: Star Trek: Enterprise
Broadcast Date: September 26th, 2001
Synopsis:
In April of the year 2151, an alien is injured after being shot by a farmer in Oklahoma, while trying to escape from several other aliens pursuing him. Humans’ allies in the early days of space exploration, the Vulcans, inform the newly formed Starfleet that the injured alien is a Klingon. As Humans have never encountered Klingons before, the Vulcans offer advice that seems out of the question — a mercy killing and sending his body back to his homeworld. When Starfleet balks at the idea, the Vulcans explain Klingons are a warrior race with a strict code of honor, which would frown upon one of their own being on life support. The Klingon code of honor, it is explained, requires an injured warrior to die rather than live in a potentially debilitated state. Captain Jonathan Archer convinces his superiors in Starfleet to spare the Klingon, and allow his newly commissioned starship, Enterprise, to start its mission early and return the Klingon to his homeworld themselves.
Archer’s crew is quickly assembled and the Vulcans send an advisor, Sub Commander T’Pol. Shortly after the ship’s departure, the Klingon is taken from sickbay by a mysterious alien race, and Archer and his crew must determine who the Klingon-knappers are, rescue him, and return him to his homeworld as planned.
The crew discovers the Klingon was abducted by a race called the Suliban, who were dispatched by a mysterious figure to take information the Klingon carries that is crucial to stopping an impending Klingon civil war.
After rescuing him, the Enterprise begins her originally planned mission of exploration. T’Pol decides to remain on board after Captain Archer requests it of her.
Review:
Right off the bat, the first images we see in the opening of this two part pilot is Archer as a child, building a model starship with his father, a Starfleet engine designer. Anyone that spent time as a kid building models (especially Star Trek ones, like I did!) will instantly get the warm fuzzies. Immediately after the conversation the young future captain has with his dad about space exploration, we are whisked away to 30 years later and the action starts up. It’s a fun and short sequence where we see the Klingon cleverly take out the Suliban pursuing him, only to be shot by farmer Moore for blowing stuff up in his Oklahoma cornfield. Apparently, good ol’ boys still exist in the 22nd century and as always, they shoot first and ask questions later. So far, so good.
Then comes the theme song. The imagery of the title sequence is rather nifty as it shows the history of Human exploration — starting with nautical vessels, transitioning to the early NASA space program, then to warp drive experimentation, and finally the launch of the first Starfleet vessel named Enterprise. This is all perfect, except for the theme song itself. What our ears are subjected to is a cover of a Rod Stewart number from the Patch Adams soundtrack performed by some no-name that I’m pretty confident was never heard from again. The song is far from rousing or exciting, to the point of sounding like the sort of inane soft-rock played on the radio of some doctor’s office receptionist’s desk. Awful. Just awful.
During the exposition about the Klingon’s origin and the Vulcan’s advice, we are given the very strong impression that Vulcans have quite a bit of disdain for Humans, and the Humans rather dislike being patronized. In short, Vulcans are dicks and seem to have taken it upon themselves to limit Human exploration of the stars and our contact with many other civilizations because they have deemed us as “too primitive” by comparison. The tension between Humanity and our condescending visitors makes for some good drama.
When we’re introduced to the crew of the brand new starship Enterprise, there are really only four who stick out for me:
Jonathan Archer is the Captain, portrayed (by Quantum Leap’s Scott Bakula!) as a man that’s always been interested in space, due to his dad’s work on the warp five engine. Enterprise is the first Starfleet vessel to be equipped with his father’s design, which adds a nice personal connection between the Captain and his ship. While he seems plenty bright eyed and eager to explore the vast wonders of the final frontier, Archer carries a grudge with the Vulcans. It seems his father never lived to see his super fast design come to fruition and Archer blames the Vulcans and their suppression of our exploration for this. Archer very clearly resents the way Vulcans have been carefully steering Humanity in the century they’ve been on Earth, out of their concern for our perceived unreadiness. By the time we reach the conclusion of the episode, we see a softening of this attitude and he invited T’Pol to stay onboard so they can work together to get past their own preconceptions. Archer shows lots of potential and leaves the impression he’s going to be a good, if inexperienced Captain.
T’Pol, the Vulcan adviser sent to observe Enterprise on the mission to return the Klingon, seems to share the attitude of her fellow Vulcans. She has an open and abrasive disdain for us, and an unwillingness to acknowledge many redeeming qualities about Human kind. At one point, while eating dinner with the Captain and his chief engineer, she takes it upon herself to lecture them both about how primitive and asinine it is to eat animal flesh. Great, even futuristic alien vegetarians are super annoying and preachy. As she works with them to recover the Klingon and investigate the Suliban, she begins to warm up to the idea that perhaps Humans aren’t so bad after all. Eventually she even learns to cooperate with Enterprise’s crew and so while I completely despised her at the beginning, I’m glad she chooses to stay onboard by the conclusion.
Hoshi Sato is a linguist and serves as the ship’s communications officer. She seems to be very frightened by every little noise and shake of the ship, which seems a little out of place for someone that signed up to fly in a giant sardine can and explore space. However, she has absolutely no qualms about standing up to T’Pol and her arrogance. Between her rigid display of spine and her interesting linguistic abilities, she has potential for some good development down the road.
Dr Phlox is an alien physician that is onboard as part of an interspecies medical science exchange program. He’s bright and chipper, really rather charming. He’s certainly confident in himself and provides some positive alien perspective towards Humans, which helps to even out T’Pol’s condescension nicely.
Besides those four, we’re introduced to three fairly uninteresting and underdeveloped crew members. There’s Travis Mayweather, the ship’s pilot that mentions he was raised on a civilian freighter in space and is thus completely at home on the space ship; tactical and security officer Malcom Reed. He’s seemingly British. And… well, he’s British. That’s about all the development we get out of him in his introduction Lastly, we are introduced to Charles Tucker III, the chief engineer, known by his nickname, Trip. Another good ol’ boy, he’s got a classic southern drawl, and seems to be about as excited about exploration as his Captain. Beyond that, there’s really not much for him to do on this outing.
The ship itself looks fantastic. Being that this is set 135 years in our future, but 114 years before the exploits of one Captain James T. Kirk, the production design does a great job of being futuristic while also feeling like something our current technology could eventually become. It feels very grounded in the way things are designed now. The interior of the ship has a very small and utilitarian look to it. Enterprise is not a ship built for luxury, it’s built to explore deeper in space than any ship before it. As such, it has an almost tight-spaced submarine feel to it.
The story has plenty of action, enough to keep interest up until the very end. The scene where the Suliban board the ship and abduct the Klingon is particularly exciting, with just a touch of paranoia in the atmosphere. Action aside, there are plenty of confusing elements that left me scratching my head. It is revealed that the Suliban are not the big bads, they are in fact the henchmen of an unshown, shadowy person that is giving them directions. Apparently, they are taking these directions in exchange for genetic enhancements that give them super powers, essentially. To what end? The episode doesn’t even come close to giving you any clue, except for a quick mention of a Temporal Cold War. That is, the shadowy bossman is someone from the future, attempting to change the past to his benefit. The handling of this exposition is confusing and clunky. This is easily the weakest part of the story.
Enterprise’s creative team also felt the need to titillate viewers with a completely unnecessary scene where T’Pol and Trip have to strip down and rub decontaminating oil on each other because… reasons? It’s a classic example of a disjointed effort to inject sexuality to draw viewers and it just jarred me out of the narrative. There’s no point to the scene at all, and the episode loses some points with me for it.
All said and done, Broken Bow is a pretty good start. It’s an exciting story with good action sequences and visual effects that hold up rather well. The acting is good, there’s enough engaging characters to keep things interesting, despite the confusing plot elements.
In giving the episode a score, I rate it a 7/10 as a solid introduction to the Star Trek universe.
