A Look at Archer

[Link8909]

I think the biggest problem with Enterprise was it began too early, 2151 is too far from 2161 to be able to tell a meaningful founding of the Federation story without some degree of pointless meandering. Had they started in 2153, about the time of season 3, things could have been better. Maybe condense the Xindi plot a little, and expand it to be a threat to Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, and Orions thus sowing the seeds of the Coalition of Planets.

Indeed, this also plays a sort of meta game, basically setting it 7 years before the Federation is founded, and the previous three Star Trek series being 7 seasons long each, it gives the audience a sort of roadmap for the series.

Spend half a season on the chaos of the attacks, with a political thriller element, thus necessitating the launch of NX-01 to figure out who's behind them. Then at the mid-season, have a dramatic confrontation between the Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarite, and Orions all blaming each other, while Enterprise swoops in and reveals who's really behind it while weaving in just a little of the temporal cold war. The Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites decide to follow the lead of Enterprise under Archer as Earth is fairly neutral, while the Orions take the information and go off on their own to not only stop the threat, but try and acquire the technology to dominate everyone else.

The season cliffhanger is another dramatic confrontation, this time between the proto-Coalition forces, and an Orion/Xindi alliance (bought and paid for by the Orions). But the Xindi listen to Archer's diplomatic overtures, while the Orions rebuff, and start an attack. The Xindi realize the Federation isn't a threat, and turn on the Orions. But the Orions have stolen Xindi tech and end up largely scattering the Xindi (which is why we don't hear much from them later). The Coalition forces resolve to aid the Xindi, while the fleet returns to friendly space. Gruff remarks are shared by the three main powers, but the hope for peace is really there.

The next season is something of a more Treky breather, with exploration and first contact with other notable Trek species and characters. All of this though is done on the backdrop of ongoing talks to form the Coalition with many episodes dealing with little side stories among the members, but that all connect with overall cooperation. Mid-season, dramatically bring the Klingons to Earth after Enterprise stumbled on a Klingon colony a few episodes before. An appeal to the Vulcans and Andorians is answered and amidst the battle, Enterprise saves a Klingon crew from a dishonorable death from a warp core malfunction and a cease-fire is called. The Klingons don't promise peace, but they don't promise war either and leave.

Thanks again to Earth's ability to show compassion, and end threats without just fighting it out, the Coaliion of planets begins to seriously take shape. At the end of the season, a mysterious winged ship enters a solar system, we see an Earth colony world, with a Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite presence. The city erupts in a nuclear explosion, and the ship glides out of the solar system, but not before we see its underside, and the Bird of Prey painted on it.

This is great, I do wish the series had did more to build towards the founding of the Federation in the first two seasons.

The problem with Enterprise and Archer specifically, is the writers couldn't do anything with them that would be worth viewing on TV every week. They were stuck, do too much, and you destroy continuity, do too little...and you get the mediocrity that we ended up with for season 1 and 2. Randomly poking around on random planets as part of exploration was certainly done, certainly had dangers, trials, challenges, but the vast majority simply isn't worth watching more than maybe once. Between 2151 and 2155, there weren't any moments that Archer could define himself, except maybe first contact with the Klingons which we know wasn't great as from Picard's line in um, TNG's "First Contact" episode: "centuries ago, disastrous contact with the Klingon Empire led to decades of war." That could be woven in too, but leave it something of a cold war so you don't take away from the Romulan War.

While personally I don't get hung up on continuity as their wasn't much information about this era of Star Trek beyond "Balance of Terror" and any new information is welcomed by me, I do see how the writers would have this issue, however this wasn't the only problem, like CharlesPhipps pointed out, the writers of the time not only didn't want to write anything outside of their comfort zone, but they had been writing Star Trek for roughly 14 year and most likely suffering from burn out.

[CharlesPhipps]

Weirdly, one of the things I would have loved for them to do is redraw the territorial map and deal more with the idea that the Federation doesn't exist so there's all these various powers surrounding Earth that Archer will have to deal with. They touched on this with the Andorian-Vulcan conflict but could have played it up more.

Like, imagine if they visited Tellarite Space and found it was a big corporate capitalist society and they had to forever deal with the consequences of this because the Tellarites are right next door to Earth and don't go away like a planet of the week.

While personally I don't get hung up on continuity as their wasn't much information about this era of Star Trek beyond "Balance of Terror" and any new information is welcomed by me, I do see how the writers would have this issue, however this wasn't the only problem, like CharlesPhipps pointed out, the writers of the time not only didn't want to write anything outside of their comfort zone, but they had been writing Star Trek for roughly 14 year and most likely suffering from burn out.

If they ever did a book about it, they could write the reboot Battlestar Galactica by Ron Moore as, "And then i built my own Star Trek! With blackjack and sex bots!"

He's been pretty candid that BSG 2.0 was Star Trek Voyager as he wanted to do it. Which is, admittedly, WAY darker than perhaps might have been necessary but shows how deep the rift was with the other writers.

I think he said, "Basically, Voyager would be the Year of Hell for the entire series."

[GreyICE]

Okay, let me pitch a show to you. It's a simple premise - you've got a fledgling organization that's basically The League of Nations. A group of disparate governments that have formed a vague alliance, a "Federation", but have not fully invested. There's a few founding races - Vulcans, Humans, Andorians, Tellarites, but they aren't fully committed. Each has their own issues:

Earth: Has Xenophobic elements, and elements pushing for a military alliance, citing the possibility of "Inter-World War" and imagining the devastation of the Third World War but with antimatter weapons.

Vulcan: Traditionally isolationist, and doesn't see the value of "other races". Strongest scientific bent, and sees the other races as performing science in a "scatterbrained" and "illogical" manner.

Andorians: Militaristic, and source of much of the technology of the Federation. Naturally allies with the warlike elements of Earth, and sees the Federation as a military alliance. Does not see the exploration or scientific potential.

Tellarites: Their "government" is a splintered mess, with many independent factions. They're generally poorer, and although they contribute several vessels, their biology makes them incompatible with other Federation vessels at the moment. Slowly integrating, and prone to outbursts from various independent elements.


Okay, now we have four interesting factions. Four is small enough that everyone can remember them (especially since one is humans). Now we have one vessel, a Human/Vulcan joint effort that's going to show every one of the four members how the Federation benefits them.

So we show them resolving Andorian tensions with a neighbor. We show them helping the Tellarites establish a mining colony. We show them resolving problems between two races that are constantly causing problems for the Vulcans. They sample a nebula and get valuable research data, and Vulcan command is pleased it didn't take one of their ships (they had none in the region, and see the logic of having more ships that can divert to capture novel events).

Just tie 90% of Season one into helping those four factions and showing them how the Federation can resolve their problems. Show Archer building a Federation. The best part? You barely have to change any of the scripts. Archer has a diplomatic incident? Okay, now it's a species that is offended by the Andorians, and only humans can smooth it over. Science thing? Vulcans, or Andorians, or Tellarites, or Humans. Hunting some weird rumor? It's a Tellorite boogeyman, an ancient space legend that they're scared to confront. Archer finds the truth of it, and tells them how to stay safe from it.

Bam, done, now I've let you do TNG but given it a "founding the federation" flavor. And you can do as many bottle episodes as you want this way. Need a bottle episode? Tribal tensions with the Tellarites, Andorian weapons test, etc. It's all meaningful, because it's all establishing how the Federation became what it is today, so they all mean something. Hell, an entire episode about establishing what a "Federation crime" was and an Andorian being tried in "Federation court" would be hecking fascinating! And bottle as fuck, you basically need makeup for 2-3 Andorians.

And if I can think of this... why couldn't they?

[Link8909]

I really wished they had pushed more on the astronaut angle for Star Trek Enterprise, completely get rid of the Transporters, Phasers, and Viewscreens, show them conducting experiments onboard, they could have even had a sort of Ground Control, have a second mini cast of characters that regularly help the NX crew from Earth.

Definitely. Some of its better moments came from "this is really new to us." That said I think being completely cut off from Earth, comms having not kept up with the ship speed, would also have worked well - if TOS was Hornblower in space then ENT could've been the age of exploration in space (the only bit it did there was the newcomers screwing up the natives in Dear Doctor).

Indeed, the idea of Star Treks early exploration and how they handled it without the equipment the future starships take for granted is fascinating, although I could do without the whole "lets let an entire race die a show and horrific death because of poor understanding of how evolution works."

[Link8909]

Okay, let me pitch a show to you. It's a simple premise - you've got a fledgling organization that's basically The League of Nations. A group of disparate governments that have formed a vague alliance, a "Federation", but have not fully invested. There's a few founding races - Vulcans, Humans, Andorians, Tellarites, but they aren't fully committed. Each has their own issues:

Earth: Has Xenophobic elements, and elements pushing for a military alliance, citing the possibility of "Inter-World War" and imagining the devastation of the Third World War but with antimatter weapons.

Vulcan: Traditionally isolationist, and doesn't see the value of "other races". Strongest scientific bent, and sees the other races as performing science in a "scatterbrained" and "illogical" manner.

Andorians: Militaristic, and source of much of the technology of the Federation. Naturally allies with the warlike elements of Earth, and sees the Federation as a military alliance. Does not see the exploration or scientific potential.

Tellarites: Their "government" is a splintered mess, with many independent factions. They're generally poorer, and although they contribute several vessels, their biology makes them incompatible with other Federation vessels at the moment. Slowly integrating, and prone to outbursts from various independent elements.


Okay, now we have four interesting factions. Four is small enough that everyone can remember them (especially since one is humans). Now we have one vessel, a Human/Vulcan joint effort that's going to show every one of the four members how the Federation benefits them.

So we show them resolving Andorian tensions with a neighbor. We show them helping the Tellarites establish a mining colony. We show them resolving problems between two races that are constantly causing problems for the Vulcans. They sample a nebula and get valuable research data, and Vulcan command is pleased it didn't take one of their ships (they had none in the region, and see the logic of having more ships that can divert to capture novel events).

Just tie 90% of Season one into helping those four factions and showing them how the Federation can resolve their problems. Show Archer building a Federation. The best part? You barely have to change any of the scripts. Archer has a diplomatic incident? Okay, now it's a species that is offended by the Andorians, and only humans can smooth it over. Science thing? Vulcans, or Andorians, or Tellarites, or Humans. Hunting some weird rumor? It's a Tellorite boogeyman, an ancient space legend that they're scared to confront. Archer finds the truth of it, and tells them how to stay safe from it.

Bam, done, now I've let you do TNG but given it a "founding the federation" flavor. And you can do as many bottle episodes as you want this way. Need a bottle episode? Tribal tensions with the Tellarites, Andorian weapons test, etc. It's all meaningful, because it's all establishing how the Federation became what it is today, so they all mean something. Hell, an entire episode about establishing what a "Federation crime" was and an Andorian being tried in "Federation court" would be hecking fascinating! And bottle as fuck, you basically need makeup for 2-3 Andorians.

And if I can think of this... why couldn't they?

All of this, Yes.

[Link8909]

Weirdly, one of the things I would have loved for them to do is redraw the territorial map and deal more with the idea that the Federation doesn't exist so there's all these various powers surrounding Earth that Archer will have to deal with. They touched on this with the Andorian-Vulcan conflict but could have played it up more.

Like, imagine if they visited Tellarite Space and found it was a big corporate capitalist society and they had to forever deal with the consequences of this because the Tellarites are right next door to Earth and don't go away like a planet of the week.

Indeed, this would have also worked to building towards the Romulan War and the birth of the Federation, as well as explore these races that while have existed within the franchise for a long time, have not really been explored or fleshed out like the Vulcans or Klingons for example.

[CharlesPhipps]

I really wished they had pushed more on the astronaut angle for Star Trek Enterprise, completely get rid of the Transporters, Phasers, and Viewscreens, show them conducting experiments onboard, they could have even had a sort of Ground Control, have a second mini cast of characters that regularly help the NX crew from Earth.

Definitely. Some of its better moments came from "this is really new to us." That said I think being completely cut off from Earth, comms having not kept up with the ship speed, would also have worked well - if TOS was Hornblower in space then ENT could've been the age of exploration in space (the only bit it did there was the newcomers screwing up the natives in Dear Doctor).

Indeed, the idea of Star Treks early exploration and how they handled it without the equipment the future starships take for granted is fascinating, although I could do without the whole "lets let an entire race die a show and horrific death because of poor understanding of how evolution works."

My fan-rewrite of the episode is to keep the first half of the episode and then have Phlox reveal that there's no disease but that the locals are actually suffering from the affects of pollution by their heavy industry with the "dumbass" locals being healthier because they don't have heavy industry. It's a completely different episode at that point but could justify Archer just going, "Fine. Man. You don't want to change things. It's on you."

[GreyICE]

My fan-rewrite of the episode is to keep the first half of the episode and then have Phlox reveal that there's no disease but that the locals are actually suffering from the affects of pollution by their heavy industry with the "dumbass" locals being healthier because they don't have heavy industry. It's a completely different episode at that point but could justify Archer just going, "Fine. Man. You don't want to change things. It's on you."

I appreciate the attempt, but as a writer I learned a rule long ago - don't rewrite other people's trash. You tend to find that in fact your stuff is becoming bad because it has their trash all up in your writing.

Somewhere there's an interesting episode about a case where interference served to destroy a culture - to improve the physical lot of the people involved, but to destroy their soul as a civilization. About the consequences of Imperialism, the true effects of the "white man's burden", the inherent issues in seeing a problem and going "yep, we know how to fix it!" and diving in like it's colonial Britain (and all the many, many millions they murdered with their shitty "we know best" imperialism). That episode wasn't ever going to be it.

If I were to play with the concept, hmmm. I'd start with Archer delivering an expert in xenobiological gene therapy to a culture that had a hereditary defect, when they find a hyperaccelerated civilization. The civilization has a genetic defect that was giving them super cancer - basically shortening their lifespan to two weeks instead of the five or six they get with the treatment. The doctor refuses to leave them untreated, and Archer and Phlox agree. A few days, and they have a treatment that they can deliver to anyone, genetically changing them so they no longer have cancer, and can live six week lives rather than two.

Archer heads off, convinced they did good, then returns three months later, after they establish the doctor safely and help the civilization that was the primary mission. They find a planetary system that had developed antimatter weapons and used them on each other, extensively. Entire moons are simply gone. Their original homeworld is cracked to the core, bubbling magma leaking out. The entire system is awash in radiation and sensor-blurring aftereffects of the war. As Archer is scanning, a handful of ships launch a suicide attack on him. Their leaking radiation, they're killing their inhabitants, but they're a religious cult that sees Archer as a devil figure, and they are dying gloriously to kill the devil that destabilized their situation. The Enterprise is able to easily outrun them, but the ships overstress their damaged warp cores in pursuit, ignoring all reason. The Enterprise watches as the last of the species dies in bursts of antimatter flashes, and the Captain's log notes that despite searching for two weeks, no trace of life was found on any body in the system - the war had annihilated life down to the bacteria in the soil.

The last scene would be a happy message from the doctor telling them that the gene therapy had worked, and asking them how the aliens were doing, and Archer sitting in the command chair trying to figure out how to answer that.

[Wargriffin]

I think the sad thing is Archer's character "arc"

isn't so much an arc but happenstance in spite of the intent of the character

Archer wasn't the overly blunt/Naive idealist who must accept failure and compromise are the truths of reality which if that was the intent would have made more a compelling story

Archer is so self assured and barely keeps his idealism intact for 2 seasons that the moment the Xindi arc happens, Damage would be the inevitable outcome.

Cause its not Archer's Not ready for success... He isn't ready to fail.

which is odd since Archer being the most Flawed of the captains would have been the most justified. Of course he makes the big mistakes, when you are the first you don't have a guidebook

Hell instead of him pulling the prime directive in essence out of his bum... have him help a race and then have it go completely wrong

[CharlesPhipps]

Somewhere there's an interesting episode about a case where interference served to destroy a culture - to improve the physical lot of the people involved, but to destroy their soul as a civilization. About the consequences of Imperialism, the true effects of the "white man's burden", the inherent issues in seeing a problem and going "yep, we know how to fix it!" and diving in like it's colonial Britain (and all the many, many millions they murdered with their shitty "we know best" imperialism). That episode wasn't ever going to be it.

Unfortunately, once that happens, that's over for Archer as he'll never be able to be a character that's the lead in a television program again. Mind you, we've had the weekly villain Starfleet Admiral who does the imperialist thing before as well.

Nazi planet being one example. The Omega Glory again.

Besides, as we've seen, non-interventationalist messages are also used as RIght talking points. Imperialism was so awful and evil because it was deliberately about destroying lives as well as looting people for financial gain. There was no "misguided good will" there.