ENT - Stigma

[MerelyAFan]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/e140.php

As soon as I saw that video length, I knew we were getting a return of Angry Chuck for this.

Honestly, of all of Enterprise's wasted opportunities, the Vulcan depiction is up there. A more nuanced exploration of them hadn't really occurred in earnest since the TOS/Movie era, and even Tuvok's material on Voyager felt relatively bland at points. The fact that B and B felt they needed an antagonistic group for Archer to rail against could have worked, but placing the Vulcans in that role was only going to succeed if the writing as willing to let them be more than one note strawmen for the righteous captain to yell about or as sociopathic bigots for the aesop episodes.

[clearspira]

OOH, lets get into dodgy political ground here... I have always agreed with Riker and Pulaski killing those clones because I am an individualist - I agree with what Riker said afterwards ''one Riker is unique, even special''. He is diminished by that clone's existence. Its why I also agreed with the death of Tuvix come to that because imo Tuvok and Neelix should come first, not the man born from a transporter accident.
And if this IS an abortion allegory, then Riker just aborted someone that came from his cells that were forcibly taken from him AKA rape. That's the way I see it, i'm sure many won't.

[clearspira]

The Denobulan woman is a good example of the ''its funny when it happens to men'' attitude that ENT had. Reverse the genders on how sexually uncomfortable she was making Trip and see if the ''their culture is different'' argument sticks.

[FaxModem1]

Yeah, this episode is bad. The only things I consider good about it is that we got to see some neat Vulcan props and sets, showing off their culture, which is sadly the only good part of the Vulcans this week.

[Mecha82]

Could this episode be worst one in entire Enterprise. At least it seems to me worst one based on ones that Chuck has reviewed so far. At least Chuck made MtG reference with that "Citadel of the Nicol Bolas" that warms my heart as former MtG player.

[Darth Wedgius]

I think Enterprise did a particularly poor job of message stories. It wanted to be preachy, but whenever it got to the pulpit it would fall on its face.

Some people were afraid to admit they had AIDS because of the stigma (e.g., probably Isaac Asimov), so I can't say Enterprise was totally off-target. More to the point, it's possible that AIDS got less attention because of the stigma around homosexuality, and the people behind Enterprise could have taken that for granted.

But the Enterprise could have encountered a planet full of people dying from the disease of the week and left there by their homeworld. There were some people seriously talking about putting AIDS victims in camps. How much of that was because of the stigma associated with homosexuality and how much was (mostly irrational) fear of the disease spreading I can't accurately guess at.

The crew could have had honest discussions about the motives involved, about irrational fears, about how quarantines have been used in the past (e.g., leper colonies), about how many of the victims caught it through behavior they knew to be dangerous and about what obligations society had to help them anyway, etc., all with "it's none of your business what we do with our people" somewhere in there. And Archer could have made a tough decision -- recommend aid for a people largely abandoned by their homeworld, or not interfere because this is something that civilization will have to come to grips with. Or maybe hand them a cure and ask them, "Now that the disease can be taken care of, what are you going to do with them? Was the disease the real reason, or was it just an excuse?"

But they had to make it about Vulcans and T'Pol, and they had to make the civilization so tied to logic motivated by illogical disdain for one episode because this episode needed someone to be an asshole. And making the Vulcans into assholes was so important they heavily retconned T'pol's experiences for it. Maybe worst of all, it wanted to make the villains assholes not because they were scared or because they were less concerned with a disease less likely to hit them or their families, but because the episode needed assholes. That's not the way to teach a lesson, dammit, because few people are assholes because they want to be assholes. Even I don't wake up every morning thinking, "What a brand new, glorious day to be an asshole in."

Thinking about this episode is literally making my headache worse, and not just in the way that any thinking does.

[Aotrs Commander]

I think, not quite unilaterally, but by-and-large, message shows tend to fail to me personally - because however good their intentions are, it is woefully easy to forget and make the message more important than the story. (Case in point here.) I personally do not partake in entertainment media to be preached at and take a dim view of it when I am. So if your story is being sacrified at the altar of pushing a message (ESPECIALLY since, despite being, y'know Evil and everything, I'm open-minded and equalist, so it's preaching to the converted) I'm thus going to be much more likely to get annoyed.

(Another example, Supergirl's current season with the tedious ham-handed immigration strife allogory. I just think that, maybe, a show about an alien superhero living among humans is largely going to be watched by the people who kind of don't need that message, because they are like, fans of an alien superhero living among humans. But perhaps I am once again, giving people more credit than they are due in assuming that there are very few people who will watch something like that and go "my goodness, Supergirl is right, I better stop being a Richard the Third to my neighbour chap from [some other cultural background/country/whatever]!"

(Notably, the moment they actually got to the "Russain Supergirl clone plot that has been teased for the first, like two-thirds of the season, everything improved markedly...)

This is not to say "don't do it," but rather "don't do it fracking WRONG."

[bronnt]

(Another example, Supergirl's current season with the tedious ham-handed immigration strife allogory. I just think that, maybe, a show about an alien superhero living among humans is largely going to be watched by the people who kind of don't need that message, because they are like, fans of an alien superhero living among humans. But perhaps I am once again, giving people more credit than they are due in assuming that there are very few people who will watch something like that and go "my goodness, Supergirl is right, I better stop being a Richard the Third to my neighbour chap from [some other cultural background/country/whatever]!"

I haven't watched Supergirl at all so I can't relate...but the oldest take on Superman was a pro-immigration take. He was escaping a dire fate from another planet and came here, raised to embraces the best of American values. All he wanted was to give back to his new home and do what he could to improve it. It works best when it's just a subtext, though-people can either pay attention to it or not.

Stigma is an example of when you decide subtext is weak losers. Just shout the message, plaster it all over your episode, and don't bother trying to naturally weave it into the flow of your own story about a ship exploring the wonders of the universe.

[Shuboy07]

I haven't watched Supergirl at all so I can't relate...but the oldest take on Superman was a pro-immigration take. He was escaping a dire fate from another planet and came here, raised to embraces the best of American values. All he wanted was to give back to his new home and do what he could to improve it. It works best when it's just a subtext, though-people can either pay attention to it or not.

Since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both sons of immigrants, I'd say that might have been their intent.

[9ansean]

This was actually the first Enterprise episode I ever saw. Not sure what to make of that.

My limited knowledge of Trek lore might have made it easier for me at the time. Yes I can see the inconstancies with Vulcan history, but unless somethings part of larger story arc I prefer to judge every work as someone's first.

Evan on rewatch I still can't say I hate Stigma, but yeah it handle the analogy pretty poorly. Probably in part because I was almost mandated by Viacom as part of HIV/AIDS Awareness Week.

I could believe that Vulcan leaders would want to discourage their people for doing something contrary to logic (indeed the group in Fusion were admitted rebels) or even them being reluctant to support research on a disease that only effective those undesirables, especially if they though other matters were more pressing (they were still battling the Andorians at this time). What's ludicrous is they'd find it necessary to holt medical research so said undesirables could be killed off completely! Even in the worst days of Government incompetence with the AIDS, I don't now of any elected official in America who publicly advocated such a vile policy. They were many debates about the risk to civil liberties in certain methods advocated to keep people safer and some pretty demeaning judgement to be sure, but only the lunatic fringed were calling AIDS "a cure for the disease of homosexuality."

Speaking of which, Stigma also kind of bungles the prejudice angle by making melding synonymous with the disease. Even in the last 80s most people know that not everyone who got AIDS was gay. By saying melding was the only means of transference they not only make it seem as easy to contain the plague as it is to discriminate others for it, but kind of reinforces the notion that only those who engage in certain lifestyle are susceptible. If Melder is meant to equals gay, then unless there is so other means of transference melding disease would appear to equal gay disease. Way to go guys!

Making it even more confusing is that T'Pol says the minority are 'born' with this ability, but the counsel guy says they lure the foolish into their behavior. Clearly we're supposed to see this playing on the whole "recruitment" claim in anti-gay rhetoric, yet he doesn't deny the born this way argument! So are they fine with those who have the ability to meld so long as they never use it? Even after T'pol all, but admits she was taken by force the reacting from Storm suggest some one who knew better wouldn't have been susceptible. So they blame the victim on top of everything else. I honestly don't mind that Enterprise put Vulcans in the less familiar role of villains, but there was no need to make their whole society this loathsome.