Star Trek: Enterprise (Episode 94, "In a Mirrror, Darkly Part 1")



Poor Star Trek: Enterprise. The only modern Star Trek series to be cancelled before it’s time. Low rated, and generally despised by fans. For good reason, really. Despite a solid cast (headed by Scott Bakula as Capt. Archer) Star Trek: Enterprise hasn’t been much fun. A lot of that is attributable to the bizarre decision to play down the “Star Trekiness” of the series, as if there is some segment of people out there who are interested in space exploration-based science fiction but somehow turned off by the “Star Trek” name. Making stories accessible to non-fans is one thing, but doing so in such a way as to turn off hardcore fans is another. And the bottom line is that the stories Star Trek: Enterprise was telling were just not interesting.

So in one of those things you knew had to happen, as soon as it became obvious that Star Trek: Enterprise wouldn’t continue it became interesting and fun. The current season, the fourth, has done stories about how the rather testy Vulcans of the Archer era became the ascetics of the Kirk era; why the Klingons that Kirk kept running into didn’t have bumpy foreheads; an encounter with a remote controlled Romulan warship; and new revelations about the nature of the Orion pirates.


Being evil means having tight abs.

This brings us to last week’s episode, set entirely in the Mirror universe. You probably remember the Mirror universe, it’s a parallel reality where the Federation is an empire and all the familiar characters have evil twins. The original series (TOS) did a very memorable episode where Kirk and company accidentally beamed to the Mirror equivalent of the Enterprise, and Deep Space 9 did a few episodes set there. I don’t think Star Trek: Voyager ever did one, but I suspect the Mirror version of Capt. Janeway would be an interesting, well-written character.

In “Through a Mirror, Darkly,” the Enterprise is commanded by Capt. Forrest and Archer is a commander. Archer mutinies against the captain in order to implement a secret plan he believes will bring the Empire great power. He leads the ship into Tholian space, where the Enterprise captures one of the insectoid aliens. After torturing the creature Archer learns the location of the prize he’s looking for. Meanwhile T’Pol leads a counter mutiny, but not before Archer has sabotaged the Enterprise’s navigation system, forcing the newly restored Capt. Forrest to go where Archer wants. What Archer is looking for is an Earth starship the Tholians have captured. But it’s not a starship the humans recognize but the Defiant, a Starfleet vessel from the mainstream universe – and a hundred years into the future! (The Defiant disappeared in the TOS episode “The Tholian Web.”) Archer and some crew members sneak aboard the Defiant to loot the ship's technology. While they do this the Enterprise is detected and destroyed by the Tholians. Now Archer must escape Tholain space in the Kirk-era ship.


"And that's for letting Melvin Belli guest star..."

The story is to be continued tomorrow night, and for the first time ever I'm looking forward to Enterprise. I could nitpick -- because this episode takes place entirely inside the Mirror universe it doesn't have any effect on the "real" universe, barring some unforeseen twist, and it's tough to see how people in the Mirror universe can be so different yet the history of the two universes remains extremely close over 200 years. (After all, both universes have Archer and T'Pol on the same Enterprise, and the same is true of Kirk and Spock a hundred years later... what're the chances?) A little exploration of at what point history diverged and the Mirror universe became evil would be nice. But really, this episode was, and here's that word again, fun. At this point in the Star Trek franchise, that's enough.

Posted: Thu - April 28, 2005 at      

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