"Star Trek: Enterprise" In Retrospect

(Originally published March, 2002 under a different title; slightly modified herein.)

Perhaps more than any other Star Trek series since Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Enterprise has demonstrated a keen sense of poetry in the most subtle possible sense -- the poetry of events and motivations.

Despite the constant nagging of those who want to skew Enterprise toward their vision of Trek, the various writers as well as the producers of Enterprise have had in mind the realization what has been increasingly rare in series television: A venue in which to present stories that are both compelling and philosophical. Sadly, the quiet genius of Enterprise during the last several episodes has escaped the attention of a number of reviewers and critics. The central theme of "Rogue Planet" has been missed by even esteemed reviewers. "Rogue Planet" was far more than an involving, engaging story about monomaniacal hunters after the kill. It was also -- much more importantly -- a story about the role of our own, distant past in shaping our intellectual interactions with the present and the future. Just as Tucker marveled, in "Strange New World", "Challenge your preconceptions, or they will challenge you", Archer, too, grapples with the ideas lurking in his subconscious that he has had since childhood. But intead of realizing, almost too late, the centrality of this struggle, Archer comes to a much wiser and much timelier understanding of his own subconscious. He has integrated his past with his present, through the mediation of poetic images, both literal and otherwise.

This is what I mean by the poetry of Enterprise -- not mere citation of poetic verses, but a lyrical, meditative exploration of the process of living and learning that, in a science-fiction context, brings the otherwise hidden processes of intellectual insight to life.