Day 1 - The Journey Begins

Hey all you cool cats and kittens! (Star Trek isn't the only thing I have binged recently...) Yesterday I began the Star Trek saga, and I'm more excited than ever to continue the trip. I watched the first five episodes of Enterprise (Broken Bow 1 and 2, Fight or Flight, Strange New World, and Unexpected), and I have some thoughts.

I was fortunate enough to watch these episodes with my wife and our roommate, which changed my perceptions a bit. While my wife has seen various incarnations of Star Trek before (most of her family are big fans), she hasn't ever gotten into it. In addition, she's never seen any of Enterprise. As for our roommate, he had never seen any Star Trek. We were all in for an experience.

The first thing that both of them commented on was the intro theme song. For those that haven't seen this one, here's a YouTube video.

Both were, shall we say, fairly intrigued by the theme song. Our roommate commented that it seemed very different from what he expected Star Trek themes to be. My wife said that it sounded like the intro to a campy teen drama on the CB. It is worth noting however that she enjoyed it so much that she wouldn't allow me to skip the intro theme once during our 5 episode marathon. It was, in fact, a very long road.

As I watched these first five episodes, I quickly realized (remembered) that Captain Jonathan Archer and his crew are kind of jerks - at least compared to the Star Trek ideologies with which I grew up. They are brash, quick to violence, and seem almost proud of their ignorance. I'm beginning to see the relevance of the theme song though. All of the Utopian philosophies that are so prevalent in The Next Generation (and to a somewhat lesser

extent The Original Series) are in the process of being forged through Enterprise. Enterprise is telling the story of a fledgling StarFleet - of a toddler. And toddlers mess up. They hurt themselves. They hurt other people. (The same process happens again during adolescence, but this is a Star Trek blog not a growth and development blog). There's a vague sense of what StarFleet will become, but most of its energy is spent just figuring that out.

That seems to me to be a good metaphor for the whole world during the pandemic. None of us really have any clear idea what the world is going to look like on the other side. We only know that it will likely be different. And I imagine that a lot of us are going to spend a good amount of energy in the coming months trying to figure out who or what we can become. This is a pretty good reminder for me personally. It can be stressful for me to not clearly feel my place in the world. Jobs, skill sets, values to society - these things are all in flux. And what I'm going to choose to take from the diplomatic blunderings of Captain Archer and crew is that it is ok to figure it out. It is ok to make mistakes. It is ok to mess up. The caveat of course being that it is ok as long as I learn from those experiences. (Experiential Education anyone? No! Bad Chris! Not an education blog! [It probably will be though, at least in part.])

So what specific Star Trek thoughts did I have as I watched these episodes? Well, first of all, it seems that Enterprise is kind of banking on their audience being experienced Star Trek fans. I spend a good amount of time explaining to my wife and our roommate why various things were important. They could clearly tell that an object or an interaction was meant to be important, but they didn't know why. Things like the holodeck technology seen in the episode Unexpected, the introduction of a "phase pistol" with a stun and a kill setting that was introduced in the episode Fight or Flight, or the references to the First Contact Star Trek movie in both the intro theme and during the first episode. There was a huge amount of Star Trek lore Easter eggs hidden in these first few episodes. I can totally see that as being confusing for the new to Star Trek viewer. For them, it might be better to watch the saga in production order rather than stardate.

I actually enjoyed the Easter eggs though. For me, it was a reminder that all of this chaos is moving towards something great. But, as aforementioned, it wasn't always great. In order to become great, the Federation philosophies had to be tested, and they had to fail. I can't be sure, but I feel that John Dewey would have appreciated Enterprise over all of the the other Star Trek canon simply because it shows the process rather than just the end result. (Alright, this is probably going to be more and more an education blog too. Turns out I can't help that.)

I do want to talk about one episode a bit more before I sign off today. The last episode I watched, Unexpected, has a bit of stuff to unpack. In this episode, the Chief Engineer Charles "Tripp" Tucker accidentally gets impregnated by an alien, and while the crew is trying to track down the alien Tripp is undergoing physical changes and trying to come to terms with what the responsibilities of having a baby on a starship might be. It is an interesting premise, and has the potential to get at some fairly profound ideas. Once word gets out, there are questions and jokes about Tripp's character and promiscuity. There are challenges with maintaining a normal work routine as the pregnancy progresses, and a brief discussion about what Tripp's responsibilities might be and how they might need to change on the Enterprise if they cannot find the alien. Alas, this episode was made in 2001 and as soon as anything controversial or profound starts to happen the plot is steered back to the mundane.

Tripp asks possibilities of removing the embryo, but always adds the caveat "safely". There is a clarification that this particular species of alien reproduces only using the DNA from the female, and not the male, thus making sure the viewers knew that this wasn't Tripp's "real" baby. There are jokes about mood swings, appetite, and hormones. In a moment of desperation, Tripp says "I don't want to be a single working mother", which is met by laughter from the Captain and the First Mate. During the big reveal, when Tripp has to show the whole crew and the Klingons that he is pregnant, everybody laughs. The Klingons, who probably represent the extreme end of toxic masculinity in the Star Trek universe laugh uproariously, and Tripp visibly is shamed.

If I could see one episode remade in the modern era, it would be this one (so far). I think that a lot of media now recognizes that a message can be profound and entertaining at the same time. Admittedly though, it does make me excited to get to Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard. I haven't seen any episodes of either show, and I can't wait to see how the essence of Star Trek translates to 2020.

That's all the Star Trek stuff I have today. Happy trails everybody! Be sure to let me know if you'd like to watch anything with me, or if there are other medias that I should include (afterall, I probably shouldn't watch TV all the time). Also, I love it when people comment, share, or argue my posts. Feel free to engage as you see fit.

-Chris