Ent:Detained (aka, Fornicating Recta of the World, Unite!)

[SuccubusYuri]

Political allegories aside, what always got me about this episode was that it introduced Grat and the Tandarans and made them seem like they would be major players in the Temporal Cold War and the Suliban conflict, and then the show did nothing with them ever again. Well scratch that, I think a Tandaran spy tried to seduce Archer in the B-plot of a completely forgettable episode later in the season, but otherwise we never see or hear about them again.

Starfleet insisting on forming some kind of alliance with the Tandarans to battle the Suliban over Archer's objections could've been an interesting storyline, but I doubt it was even considered. That to me just shows how really poorly thought out the whole TCW storyline really was.

I can actually see the conversation they have with Forrest.

"Your captain Archer attacked one of our installations!"
"He did? Wow we would make great allies!"
"...What?"
"Oh yeah, Vulcans, human civilians, Andorians. If Archer attacks it, we're usually pretty sure we should endorse everything about them. We tortured and brainwashed him into hating anything rational and intelligent. We called it "diplomat training", like there's a fucking school for that!"
"You tortured one of your own officers to attack your potential allies?"
"Oh don't worry he's harmless, we shined lasers in his eyes until his hand-eye coordination was fucked up beyond repair. We tried explaining it to him as needing find friends for mankind but then he brought in this Beagle...this way was easier, trust me."

[Madner Kami]

[CharlesPhipps]

Hey, episode requester here.

I am probably a minority opinion that I think this is one of the better episodes of Enterprise and actually felt relevant to the then-current (and still current) War on Terror which the show accidentally blundered into. I had to wonder what the writing staff thought when they decided to make the villains a bunch of terrorists based on the Taliban only to find those becoming household words with massive baggage while they were just trying to make the least offensive or interesting adventure show possible for UPN.

Mind you, this wasn't a critique of Guantanamo Bay because it was about them being Suliban and not suspected terrorists (though those poor Chinese Muslims would argue the difference wasn't that great in the end) but it did nicely take a stand. It also led to the Star Trek episode where "nothing" happened but Archer deciding NOT to get involved with the Clancy Brown episode "Desert Crossing."

I also think this illustrates the biggest problem with Archer is that he was written inconsistently versus actually not having the chops. I like the idea of a cowboy Prime Directive defying sort of character who gradually learns the value of staying behind. I also am inclined to put the onerous on the Tandarans (who I agree were wasted since a "Space United States" has a lot of value). They were the ones who kidnapped (sorry, extraordinarily renditioned) Archer and company in the first place before starting enhanced interrogations.

Honestly, I think Archer did the right thing even if it probably had a lot of consequences for the Tandaran-Earth relationship in the future. In simple terms, "Would Kirk have stood for this?"

The answer is no.

[SotF]

I'm just making a bit of historical reference to the Japanese Internment that was one of the major reasons it happened when and how it did.

The big thing that led to it was the major mix of things that made up the Bombardment of Ellwood and the Battle for Las Angeles from WW2, not to mention the various bombardments and submarine operations along with the invasion of the Aelutians...along with other things and the attempted infiltration on the east coast by german agents...

For why it didn't come down on the German Americans, a good chunk of that was due to WW1 where there was a concerted de-Germanification effort across the continent where pretty much every german area made an effort to, well, not be german. Something that exterminated a lot of cultural bits and pieces in many of those areas who were then proud to have eliminated as many traces of their history as they could.

On top of that, a lot of the people who did identify as of German heritage were, essentially defectors or Intel...and even there, you had situations were some of the Americans who worked intel got in massive trouble during the war. One of which had, well, infiltrated the german infiltrators due to being stuck in Germany when the war started so that he could both get back home and wreck the infiltration...only to spend the war in prison for it.

The Japanese American groups hadn't really done that, which was both their own desire to keep their heritage and a lot of the legal nightmares of the time that kept them from doing so...

As a bit of trivia, fortune cookies were originally a product of the Japanese American community that was taken over by the Chinese Immigrants during the internment...

[CharlesPhipps]

On my end, I just put it up as a much simpler, "America was really racist in the 1930s."

[excalibur]

I'd like to voice my distaste of using the made up term "White Privilege" since Archer's line of "Then why are you here" is more of systemic racism, which Chuck has pointed out.

My dad is a Chinese immigrant. My mom's family has been in America for over 150 years. We can trace our line back to part Irish/Chinese immigrants, so I understand from my family history about racism way back when everybody hated the Irish.

I point out systemic racism that Archer's stupid line the actor was forced to read from a comment my dad's mentality of how he still kinda dislike the Japanese and that's from being raised in a Communist controlled China where nonstop propaganda of anti-Japan still persist today. I asked him why the hate for Japan? and he pointed out WWII, but I shrugged it off because...why should he or even I hate a people for something their forefathers did and the current generation of said people had nothing to do with it? His racism against Japanese is so strong, it is hard to reason with him.

Everyone has a bit of profiling when it comes to your circumstances. If you visit a jail and asked everyone why are they doing here and some kept on insisting they were innocent, a lot of people might say "Then why are you in jail?", naive to the idea that people can be wrongfully imprisoned.

I personally like the potential of the Enterprise series. Oh how it tried to relate to present day, but failed a lot because the writers don't know how to translate the near future humanity, especially writing meaningful dialogue.

In fact, this scene of "Then why are you here" response is only considered racist because Archer was profiling them because they are the same species as his enemy. This scene is so cliche that it doesn't have one single race to be of origins of. I've seen this exact stupid ignorant line in many different movies, series and books that I face palm every time I have heard it uttered because whoever wrote that must think the main character

So, I would not call this scene Archer brought "White Privilege" to space. It's whoever wrote the line clearly thought Archer was a complete racist and wouldn't consider for a second that there are innocents on the other side and whoever wrote this episode wanted to shove allegory to our history and think he's being smart about it

[GandALF]

On my end, I just put it up as a much simpler, "America was really racist in the 1930s."

Well everywhere was racist in the 1930s. American exceptionalism doesn't have to apply to absolutely everything.

[CharlesPhipps]

Not slamming America in that sentence beyond the fact it was their actions specifically and I think motivated by xenophobia.

Edit:

It's a shame the Temporal Cold War arc was clearly something they had no interest in exploring as you could have used the Tandarans as a sort of "anti-Federation" like they implied was going on with the Vulcans. It would have been a nice opportunity to see how a somewhat more liberal government which let aliens settle on their world betrayed its values over fear. I think Archer sleeping with one of their agents was the last time we ever saw them, though.

[Antiboyscout]

Is it racist or cultural chauvinist?

Ether way, when you are at war xenophobia is the name of the game. If you do not hate the other how can you fight the other?

[Admiral X]

I'd like to voice my distaste of using the made up term "White Privilege" since Archer's line of "Then why are you here" is more of systemic racism, which Chuck has pointed out.

So, I would not call this scene Archer brought "White Privilege" to space. It's whoever wrote the line clearly thought Archer was a complete racist and wouldn't consider for a second that there are innocents on the other side and whoever wrote this episode wanted to shove allegory to our history and think he's being smart about it

Plus with the reference to Travis, I have to wonder - isn't the entire point of Star Trek that humanity is past the whole racism thing? So why would Travis know any different either? Shouldn't all humans be kind of innocent in a way? I guess my read wasn't so much that Archer was prejudiced against Suliban so much as he's a moron and actually believed the people running the camp that only members of the Cabal were imprisoned there. I mean, Archer did show prejudice against Vulcans throughout the show, so we know he's capable of it, I'm just wondering if that was the case here since it's been forever since I watched it for myself. Have to admit that the use of "white privilege" made me cringe, though.