Next year, Star Trek is fifty years old. We have some special stuff planned for that, but – in the meantime – we’re reviewing all of Star Trek: Enterprise this year as something of a prequel to that anniversary. This April, we’re doing the second season. Check back daily for the latest review.
The second season of Star Trek: Enterprise is a strange beast, breaking down into roughly three sections.
The first section runs from Shockwave, Part II through to A Night in Sickbay. There is a nice energy to these episodes, with the first appearance of the Romulans in Minefield and nice internal continuity between otherwise stand-alone adventures like Minefield and Dead Stop. Carbon Creek is a fun diversion and A Night in Sickbay at least tries to do something novel and exciting – even if the show can’t quite pull it off. This stretch of the season feels like an organic development from the first season, a collection of episodes of variable quality; balancing the desire to try new things with nods to the franchise’s strengths.
The final stretch runs from Judgment to The Expanse. The third season looms large over these episodes, with a sense of impending change in the air. These episodes seem to bid farewell to a version of Star Trek that has existed since the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Judgment gives the Klingons one last epic story, Regeneration checks in on the Borg. The Breach offers a traditional Star Trek morality play, while Cogenitor brutally subverts it. Even episodes like Horizon and First Flight call back to the earliest episodes of Enterprise, as if to offer one last reflection on what might have been.
However, the second season is dominated by a long middle stretch – episodes running from Marauders through to The Crossing. While episodes like Future Tense provide an occasional reprieve, this middle stretch of the season is workmanlike and functional. This is the first two seasons of Enterprise as they are often dismissed: a lite version of Star Trek: Voyager in the same way that Star Trek: Voyager is a lite version of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In that long and dull middle stretch, it feels like the writing staff might as well be blowing dust off of scripts written for the seventh season of The Next Generation.
Unfortunately, while the first and third sections of the season have a lot to recommend them, it is the middle stretch that sets the mood for the season. The second season of Enterprise has more than a couple genuine stinkers – Precious Cargo, The Crossing and Bounty come to mind – but the season never hits the sustained lows of the third season of Star Trek, the first and second seasons of The Next Generation or the second season of Voyager. However, there is long string of episodes that are just dull and uninspired; formulaic and familiar.
In that extended run in the middle of the season, there are episodes that can be easily reduced to “[earlier episode or pop culture reference] by way of [earlier episode or pop culture reference]” without missing anything much. Marauders is “The Magnificent Seven by way of Star Trek”, The Communicator is “A Piece of the Action by way of First Contact”, Singularity is “Bliss by the way of The Game”, Vanishing Point is “Realm of Fear by way of Remember Me”, Precious Cargo is “Elaan of Troyius by way of The Perfect Mate”, Dawn is “The Enemy by way of Darmok.” And so on.
The result is a second season that is exhausting and draining. Watching it on original broadcast was a disheartening experience; each week seemed to bring more of the same. The long stretch from the end of October to the start of April was unforgiving; each week seemed to offer more evidence that Star Trek was tired and played out, a franchise disengaged from not only the world around it but also from the changing rules of its own medium. Coupled with the spectacular (but entirely foreseeable) failure of Star Trek: Nemesis, the second season of Enterprise seemed to seal the franchise’s fate.
There is a very real tragedy to all this. For all that the tail end of the second season sees a massive up-swing in quality and energy, it is perhaps too little and too late. By the time that Judgment had begun a late-season revitalisation, Rick Berman had already announced a bold new direction for the third season. That last stretch is a lame duck. In a way, the second season of Enterprise plays like a microcosm of the series itself; a dramatic upswing in quality and ambition at a point where fate has already made its decision.
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Filed under: Enterprise | Tagged: continuity, enterprise, episodic, history, production, serialisation, star trek, star trek: enterprise | 3 Comments »
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