Story: Judgment
Written By: David A. Goodman
Series: Star Trek: Enterprise
Year: 2003
You know what this season needed? An episode in which Archer is wrongfully detained and needs to make a daring escape! Not enough of that this season.
This episode is completely unnecessary. We saw both a Klingon court and Rura Penthe in Star Trek 6, why do we revisit both of these ideas for a completely dull and unoriginal story? Not too mention I think it uses the Klingons poorly in this time period. We meet Kolos (a Klingon defending Archer), played by the always-wonderful J.G. Hertzler. He basically is a guy who is beaten down by the degeneration of his culture into a warrior race. But that is totally wrong. The Klingons were always warriors; it is in their blood, their culture…that is who they are. The issue with Klingons wasn’t that they had somehow degenerated into a warrior race; it was that they had lost their honor. I don’t think it was necessary to see the root of that corruption. I mean power corrupts, it is a no-brainer.
Plus I think having Archer get to know a nice Klingon and see that they aren’t all bad doesn’t serve the show too well. We all know Klingons aren’t all bad when you get to know them, because that was explored TO DEATH on both TNG and DS9. We know that now, so lets get to see how they had become such bitter rivals of the Federation, lets see the real root of their long-standing cold war. I mean in TOS they are nothing but enemies, and by the final few years of DS9 they are nothing if not the best of allies. So lets see how their lack of true contact lead to the long standing conflict between the two.
I guess my problem here is that from Star Trek VI, TNG, and DS9…we’ve had a chance to really explore Klingons and see them up close and personal. We all know how they came to peace, we’ve seen their struggles with political corruption, and with Martok instilled as Chancellor at the end of DS9 we’ve seen them finally on the path to truly being honorable from the top down. So now we have this prequel, and we have this chance to see how things got so messed up in these early days that it lead to a cold war that lasted generations. That is an area I’d love to have seen explored, but every Klingon story has just been mindless dull crap…and we get stuff like this, where we just steal scene after scene and set piece after set piece from “The Undiscovered Country”. Lame.
NEXT TIME: A Mayweather Episode?
Written By: David A. Goodman
Series: Star Trek: Enterprise
Year: 2003
You know what this season needed? An episode in which Archer is wrongfully detained and needs to make a daring escape! Not enough of that this season.
Plus I think having Archer get to know a nice Klingon and see that they aren’t all bad doesn’t serve the show too well. We all know Klingons aren’t all bad when you get to know them, because that was explored TO DEATH on both TNG and DS9. We know that now, so lets get to see how they had become such bitter rivals of the Federation, lets see the real root of their long-standing cold war. I mean in TOS they are nothing but enemies, and by the final few years of DS9 they are nothing if not the best of allies. So lets see how their lack of true contact lead to the long standing conflict between the two.
I guess my problem here is that from Star Trek VI, TNG, and DS9…we’ve had a chance to really explore Klingons and see them up close and personal. We all know how they came to peace, we’ve seen their struggles with political corruption, and with Martok instilled as Chancellor at the end of DS9 we’ve seen them finally on the path to truly being honorable from the top down. So now we have this prequel, and we have this chance to see how things got so messed up in these early days that it lead to a cold war that lasted generations. That is an area I’d love to have seen explored, but every Klingon story has just been mindless dull crap…and we get stuff like this, where we just steal scene after scene and set piece after set piece from “The Undiscovered Country”. Lame.
NEXT TIME: A Mayweather Episode?