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 January, we’re doing the first season. Check back daily for the latest review.
Acquisition feels like a misstep for the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise.
It’s not the worst episode of the season. In fact, it falls rather comfortably into the show’s “big middle” – the random and generic episodes that take Star Trek clichés and execute them in a competent manner while overlooking the opportunity to do something a bit more novel and exciting. Acquisition ranks with failures like Civilisation or Sleeping Dogs or Rogue Planet. It is competently executed and contains a few moments of merit, but there’s a feeling that this has all been seen before.
“Take us to your leader.”
Of course, Acquisition serves to foreground a number of pressing concerns about the production of Enterprise. It’s something of a lightening rod to certain aggressive elements of fandom. Bringing back the Ferengi for a guest appearance proves that the show is more of a prequel to Star Trek: The Next Generation than to the original Star Trek. Glossing over continuity issues by refusing to name these marauding aliens demonstrates that the show clearly doesn’t care about continuity at all. Trying to do a comedy episode featuring the Ferengi demonstrates the producers have no idea what does and doesn’t work in Star Trek production.
All of this is, of course, nonsense. Acquisition isn’t a bad episode because it plays with continuity, or because it features the Ferengi. It’s a bad episode because it’s a comedy adventure that isn’t particularly funny or exciting.
“Hey, at least we got here before the Borg…”
Filed under: Enterprise | Tagged: Brannon Braga, comedy, continuity, deep space nine, ds9, enterprise, Ferengi, Ira Steven Behr, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: enterprise, the last outpost | 13 Comments »
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