OEEG: Fortunate Son

Description: The episode opens with a cargo ship, the Fortunate. This could have been good, but naturally nothing feels organic in Enterprise. The captain and the first officer are passing the football back and forth across a warehouse-sized opening - okay, I guess there's nothing wrong with that, though for the most part it seems to be there so we can have a CGI football. They banter a bit, but it's all the kind of crap you'd think two guys -who are so good that even with hundred yard passes the other barely needs to move to catch- would have been old a long, long, long time ago. Anyway, having wasted a full minute of the teaser on this, we finally get to something: an attack by Nausicaan pirates. This, in contrast, lasts five seconds. *sigh* You know, guys, I like football and all that, but when I'm watching science fiction, I like attacking space pirates a lot more. Besides, this wasn't football, it's an ad for an investment corporation or life insurance.

And now that we're back from commercial, we get to Enterprise and see Archer sleeping. He's awoken, however by a message from Admiral Forrest. Forrest wants Archer to keep those reports coming, as he loved the scans of that comet. Boy, imagine how happy he'd have been with scans of three neutron stars clustered together. Actually, that might explain the next line by Forrest: "I hate to do this to you, John, but we're turning you around." Yes, you see, they would have preferred pictures of rare astronomical events instead of the pictures you sent of Tucker landing a swordfish on that boat while wearing a Nascar hat and drinking Old Milwaukee. Please go back and take some pictures of those things: Starfleet could have sent a probe to make maps and take pictures, but they didn't, they sent you... so do your goddamn job!

Actually, what's really going on is that Starfleet picked up a distress signal from the Fortunate and want Enterprise to go check it out - the nearest Starfleet vessel is weeks away, but for Enterprise it's just a day and a half. T'Pol gives a briefing on the freighter, but Mayweather pipes in that her crew count probably doesn't include baby's born on the trip. With all the time between ports, there's not much else to do but hump like spring break in Key West. And by the way, did I mention I've been in space?

So Enterprise shows up and Fortunate doesn't look good - it's got hull damage and the reactor's off-line, and no one answers hails. Archer, Phlox, Reed, and Mayweather head over and meet with the first officer, Matthew Ryan, as it seems the captain was hurt pretty bad during the attack. Ryan's trying to get them to vamoose, but since Phlox is there and knows how to heal a bullet wound with a giant booger, they're allowed to stay. It turns out the reason Ryan didn't want them there is that they have a Nausicaan prisoner and want to continue beating his ass. If you've seen them in previous series, then you should already know that Nausicaan are very intimidating: they're very tall, their faces are deformed, and their speech is almost bestial. Well, if you've any experience at all with Trek of the last ten years, you know the objective was apparently to find anything remotely intimidating, overpowering, or cool, and strip it of all that until it becomes a pathetic shadow of what it once was. Just take the Borg as an example, and how Voyager took this juggernaut of an enemy and repeatedly had them outsmarted or undone by one goddamn ship, until in the final episode when Voyager single-handedly destroyed the entire unicomplex. So, guess what, it's time for the Nausicaan's to have their turn. Instead of looking like a towering piece of bad news, their faces were altered and their teeth enlarged, and their speaking voice has lost any of its terrifying elements. Those last two points don't seem to go together - with big teeth like that, you'd think they'd talk even worse, sounding like Sylvester the Cat or, well, me I'd have to admit. I wish I had a nice, rich voice like James Earl Jones or Sidney Poitier, or at least didn't sound like I can't say the letter "s" without spitting. But that's the thing: I don't even have bad teeth, yet these Nausicaans sound like they ought to be giving a lecture on adjustable rate mortgages, when they should sound like a hunchback who just bit his own tongue.

Over on Enterprise, Mayweather and Ryan are walking around while discussing a piece of broken equipment. Mayweather says they can make up a replacement, but Ryan says they have their own machine shop. So, why did you guys bring it over here? They stop and talk about the transporter for a while - turns out Mayweather really wants to try it out. Foreshadowing? No. What's so bad about this is that it could easily have been, as Mayweather is going to have to do some fast-talking later on when being there could have helped. Chekhov isn't just the name of the guy who talked funny in the original series, he wrote the important principle that unless an object is going to be used later in the story, there's no reason to put it in the first part at all. Anyway, Ryan asks about Mayweather leaving the Horizon, his parents' ship. This will actually set up for something later, and at least it gives Mayweather something attempting character development at least.

Oh, and we come to Tucker, who is shining something through a laser. "These valve seals are shot. We'll have to synthesize some new ones." And if you remember Breaking The Ice, you know what that thing uses, right? "Give me about forty minutes." Yup, he needs to grab a bran muffin and a magazine. While he's getting ready for that, he points Ryan in the direction of their warp five engine. Mayweather points out that even with a warp three engine they could cut a five year run down to six months. Ryan's not happy with that idea at all, saying you couldn't enjoy the trip. Um, yeah, you know, six months isn't exactly the blink of an eye. You'd be able to make ten runs in the same time, meaning you'd make more money while spending the same amount of time out there, and get a chance to resupply more often, and maybe not be so inbred you have flippers and call your sister "mom." They reminisce over eating some really good food chef has made, but it's revealed that Ryan was on the North Star, a freighter that was attacked and his parents died. "Running freights dangerous," he says. Yeah... which explains why having a faster engine would be the last thing you'd want. Mayweather suggests Ryan consider joining Starfleet, that the new NX's are going to need experienced people like him. Ryan gets pretty cheesed off at this and accuses Mayweather of abandoning his family and his home. Things get so uncomfortable that, for the first time, Mayweather is permitted to show a feeling of discomfort that doesn't involve T'Pol and Tucker shouting conflicting orders at him.

On Fortunate, T'Pol finds out that power has been routed from internal sensors to weapons. After looking around with her tricorder for a while, she contacts Archer, and we see the two of them talking with Ryan. They finally get around to the point of the Nausicaan prisoner T'Pol discovered. What we see here is the beginning of the unintended subplot: Archer is completely naive. "What gives you the right to take prisoners?" he asks. Um, what were they supposed to do, call the cops? For the record, I don't particularly care for Ryan or his plan, but Archer has really got his head in the clouds here. When Ryan says he has no jurisdiction to become involved, rather than trying to be diplomatic, Archer decides he's going to skip diplomacy and go straight to blackmail: he'll remove all the spare parts they installed to fix Fortunate. So Ryan brings them over into a cargo pod, but the Nausicaan isn't in there, it's an ambush. Boy, if only T'Pol's scanner could have told them that - it can tell her when she's on the other side of the ship, but not when she's outside the room, huh?

Well, a firefight breaks out, and Ryan punctures the wall so that it's leaking air, seals them inside, and ejects the pod so that Enterprise needs to save them rather than chasing the escaping Fortunate. Before leaving, they also shot the long-range sensor, disabling it for four hours, so we're told that there's no way to catch up. Of course, since we've already established that warp three is ten times faster than them, then they could just fix the sensors and catch up in, what, fifteen minutes? However, since that would take Mayweather out of the story for the moment, and he hasn't done anything in the last half dozen episodes besides fly things and twist his ankle, we need him to step in and say that Ryan is after revenge for what the Nausicaans did to his ship. We cut to him pounding the shit out of the captured Nausicaan until they get the codes out of him for their secret plan. His pal starts wondering whether they're making a mistake, but Ryan says the Nausicaans are going to keep this up as long as they don't fight back. It's a very complicated problem, but this being Enterprise that's completely glossed over - Ryan is obsessed and therefore must be in the wrong.

Oh, and now is the time, in fact, for us to see that. Mayweather eventually goes to see Archer, saying he's not sure they're handling this the right way. Freighters are used to handling their own problems, and Enterprise shouldn't get involved. This is Archer's part of the exchange:

ARCHER: Suppose Ryan finds the ship that attacked him. Maybe it's been damaged and the Fortunate is more than a match for them. What do you think Ryan'll do?
TRAVIS: He'd probably try to blow them out of the sky.
ARCHER: I don't know about you, Travis, but that doesn't sit right with me.

Yes... but you see, Archer, our people getting their asses kicked constantly doesn't sit right with me, either. Ryan's going off and is going to try to kick Nausicaan ass, so you're chasing him. The Nausicaan's, however, already kicked human ass, and what have you done about it? This is not a typical black and white situation here. Archer talked about having the "right" before; well, odds are pretty good that there are either one of two situations in place: either there is a law covering the handling of piracy in interstellar space (which would either be an interspecies treaty or just the law Earth places on its ships) or there is no law about it at all. In the case of the former, it in all likelihood is going to be similar to modern maritime law: pirates are hostis humani generis, literally "enemies of mankind," and exactly the kind of thing Starfleet should be concerned about stopping. In the case of the latter, than there's nothing for a freighter to use to protect themselves, as no one with authority is taking action, and so they must defend themselves. That's why the issue is so complicated. I agree with Archer that it doesn't sit well with me that humans might go off and slaughter these people, but that's the problem with the situation we have. If this is a concern of Starfleet, then they should put some ships out here to do something about it.

Besides this, I find Archer's preaching a little too convenient for a man with a top of the line ship who has never even heard of a Nausicaan. What would happen if Archer was suddenly in a situation where some other ship was stronger than his, the people more powerful, able to board his ship and take what they want and nothing he could do could stop them? I wonder if, while someone is having their brains repaired by Phlox after an attack on his ship, if he'd wonder if being ready to take the fight to the enemy was a good idea...

Nah, he'd never do that.

So, rather than thinking about a long-term solution to the situation, for now all Archer can think about is that a human who has been attacked by sociopathic raiders so many times he's psychologically scarred for life might wind up hurting some pirates. And, of course, Mayweather nods and says "Yessah, boss!" and goes back to his station like the good little ensign he is.

So the Fortunate has chased down the Nausicaans and we see that they pretty much have a bridge like every other bridge we've seen on Star Trek, even down to the big captain chair. They chase the ship behind an asteroid and we discover a big hidden port. Ryan tries fighting them all, but it turns out the codes they got don't work. Heh, the first group of people smart enough to change compromised codes, and it's a species we once saw throwing darts at each other's chests. Well, the Fortunate is trapped now, but because we need to side against Ryan, he's now moved into full-on crazy mode, passing out weapons to people to fight off Nausicaan boarders rather than just giving them what they want.

Enterprise shows up. Since this is a desperate situation, they do things as slowly as possible to increase the chances of somebody getting killed, especially since it's the humans that are losing. It turns out that Enterprise for once has the more powerful ship, so he finally convinces the Nausicaans to back down if they return the captive Nausicaan. However, Ryan asks something of Archer: "What about next time, when another freighter gets jumped?" Of course, Archer ignores the question because he has no answer. For the short term, this situation has to be resolved, but what is going to be done about the long term problem that exists? Archer doesn't comment at all on it, and thus, neither does the episode. Pirates are just part of life out here - just suck it up and don't fight back.

Mayweather finally speaks up... and then gets up. Um, I'm all for giving you a chance, Mayweather, and more opportunity to actually do something besides injure yourself, but get your ass back in the chair. If this turns into a fight, we can't have you prancing about. Well, Mayweather finally gets through to him and the Nausicaans leave for now. Ah good, now they're not Archer's problem any more.

So, there's the epilogue with Archer talking to the freighter's captain, who's now recovered. Instead of it being about how they'll deal with pirates, it's all about how these people have to adapt to the changing galaxy. Hey, no argument here, but again the episode just glosses over the entire issue of what Starfleet should do about this problem. But there's no room for that, I'm afraid, 'cause if they did that there'd be no time to talk about how mankind must evolve, blah blah blah, thank God it's over.

Rating: 4

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