Detained (2)

DVD, Enterprise S1 (Detained) (2)

It's not Travis Mayweather's fault that he seems prominent in a higher proportion of the weaker episodes of the season, it's just unfortunate. It's not even that Mayweather is a poor character - granted, by the end of the series it was very clear he was the most underused, underdeveloped and all around lost creation of the series (Jake Sisko, the similarly most underdone main cast member of 'DS9' had far, far more to do, with arcs and changes across the board - in fact, even the recurring cast in that series were treated more like regulars than Travis!), but when you look at certain episodes in which he was written to his strengths (I think of 'Strange New World,' as one of the best examples, telling ghost stories and being the one to embrace Starfleet principles, but also 'Horizon' in Season 2), you realise how much potential was wasted in stories like 'Breaking The Ice,' 'Fortunate Son' and 'Detained.' This should have been his time to shine - he's alone for most of the episode with the Captain, forcibly held by Tandaran authorities in an internment camp for Suliban who are too weak to defend themselves compared to the whiplash dangerous genetic enhancements that has made the Suliban Cabal a feared force in the Quadrant. But what do we really learn about him, or for that matter, the good Captain? That they fell into the same trap as the Tandarans at first, pre-judging this band of Suliban to be just the same as their terrorist brothers?

You'd expect nothing less than that they'd come around to understanding the distinction between the groups, despite looking the same. You could say the story is almost as simplistic as 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefield' from 'TOS' with its half-black, half-white man versus half-white, half-black. It's a little more subtle than that, and although Archer references a similar internment camp from World War II (part of me wishes he'd spoken of World War III, just to add something to the knowledge of that period), one which held innocent Japanese-Americans for looking like The Enemy, something Trek's own Mr. Sulu, George Takei knows all about, what they're really talking about, I believe, is America's holding of Muslims in places like Guantanamo Bay, without charge. That was the kind of issue happening at that time after the 11th September attacks, so although it seemed the series practically ignored the change in society that resulted from that (partly because it occurred just as the series was debuting so they didn't exactly have a lot of time to address such themes), it was really just going to take them a while until they could reflect it in a traditional Trek morality tale. Also, they may have chosen to largely carry on as they were, to give people something better to think of - my theory for at least one of the reasons Trek fell out of favour was that people were stirred by that attack and the homely, optimistic vision of the future that Trek had spun so long no longer touched on the heartbeat of the populace. Instead, revenge, wild thoughts about who was to blame and why such a thing could have happened to the most prosperous and secure nation on Earth, meant that more violent and unhappy TV fare, such as '24,' became popular and Trek slowly sank into obscurity.

Even with this, which I now consider the first foray into exploring the issues raised by the rise in terrorism, it was largely a one-off, and it wouldn't be until the very end of Season 2 that they chose to really jump on the bandwagon of making harsher characters and dealing with the change in temperament that was in the air by having Earth attacked and the whole of Season 3 diverting them away from meandering exploration to specific, targeted missions that effectively turned the NX-01 into an intelligence team to uncover the plot against their home. The season finale, 'Shockwave,' would also deal with such issues, in a lesser way, and you can tell from episodes such as these, that they didn't realise the seismic shift in television that had resulted partly from the attacks, but also other aspects such as technology (being able to 'TIVO' programmes to make them instantly accessible was apparently a less time-consuming and effortless method of keeping up with your favourite series' in the US, rather than the old method of setting the video recorder, allowing serialisation to become popular), since they were still thinking small, one episode at a time. I do wonder how the first season would have ended had the attacks on the Trade Towers not happened, but that's speculation for the finale and not the place for it here.

One reason I don't think so well of this episode as I do the majority of Season 1's offerings is that it was such an isolated story - when did we ever learn anything about the Suliban as a race again? Here we find out that the Cabal's attacks began eight years ago (is that how long the Temporal Cold War dates back to in this century, or did they begin without their genetic payoffs as mere ordinary terrorists?), that the race is largely nomadic after their homeworld was destroyed, and that some have chosen to integrate into other societies. We don't learn anything about their beliefs, their social structures or really anything else, which is a real shame. I understand Trek's desire to continue to examine even the worst of its foes in an effort to show that it's not as simple to consider an entire race of people the enemy, I just wish they'd gone a bit further on the series when it came to exploring cultures, as previous Treks had done, and which was a failure of 'Enterprise' as it tried to return to the purer action-adventure roots of 'TOS,' not realising that the nuance, subtlety and depth of 24th Century Trek was a large part of the formula for its modern success. It was very true to its traditions, however - the Klingons, the Romulans, even aspects of the Dominion and the Borg, Trek's deadliest foes, had had examples of individuals we could accept, something that added hope in the light of such grave threat. But the Suliban turned out not to be the series' Klingons, Romulans, Dominion or Borg, they simply weren't filled out in anywhere near the lengths those classic races were.

Who even remembers the Suliban now? They were set up as the series' main source of conflict, even if it was with the shady assistance from an unknown power from the distant future (will 'Discovery' finally reveal the identity of Future Guy, since they're going even a little further into that future? If they got James Horan back that would be exciting…), but as far as I can recall, this was the only episode to deal with the race outside of Silik and his fellow minions, and if you don't create a strong enemy your heroes don't look strong coming up against them. It's almost as if they came up with all this cool stuff with the crawling along walls and ceilings, squeezing under doors like Changelings (more on the Dominion connections later), and all manner of creepy abilities, but that was as far as their thinking went. In a way then, this episode is the antidote to that simplicity when we meet this bunch of internees who are just regular people. That's what I liked before, after originally being disappointed that the Suliban were being so quickly defanged. But this time I found myself returning to my original view that it wasn't quite good enough, both the Suliban and the Enterprise crew not receiving their full dues in a trade-off for an action-packed prison break. Not to say that wasn't the highlight, what with Reed performing another Trek tradition and infiltrating as an alien (Suliban this time, though inexplicably Archer can simply look into his eyes and know it's him!), Trip flying down and taking out Phaser batteries guarding the compound in what were some good CGI visuals, an explosive exit and the 'hurrah' of the Shuttlepod and Suliban ships launching to safety.

The only trouble is I felt we never had proper resolution. Clearly Archer and Mayweather's change of heart as they see what's going on there (that was Grat's big mistake: not setting them free instantly, allowing them to mingle with the inmates and learn their stories, though he would never had known the extent of selflessness Archer and crew would model in the face of injustice), was the turning point of the episode, which is why it is still an enjoyable story (and knocks almost all of 'DSC' into a cocked hat - not hard to do), but along with not really getting anything from Travis and Archer being together, we don't have an arc for Colonel Grat, we don't know if the violent Major Klev was killed in the escape blast, and most importantly we never know the fate of the Suliban who did escape. If there had been a follow-up that told their story, how they bravely resisted the Cabal's pressure to join up or die (another Islam parallel), perhaps calling on Archer to assist them (in a similar vein to the colonists versus the Klingons in 'Marauders,' maybe), then it would be acceptable, but I don't remember ever hearing about them again, and it's this inability to pick up threads and run with them that was another contribution to the series' failing ratings in my view, the same way the Temporal Cold War was so sparsely developed, and even the Andorians involvement with the NX-01. If you look at the first seasons of the two preceding series', 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' they both unfold either Bajoran culture and ongoing attitudes, or Kazon, and it helped unify the season as a whole. 'Enterprise' never pressed home such an advantage, despite having previous experience to build on.

There are also the expectations this episode fails to live up to, since you assume from the fact that it deals with the Suliban that it would be another link in the TCW, but the only connection is that Grat questions Archer on the events of 'Broken Bow' and demands answers on the Suliban, their genetic enhancements and who they're working for. He even seems to know about the TCW, which you'd think would have been kept off the record, but apparently Archer allowed all the information to be kept in the computer, and that extended to the Shuttlepod! What should have been a highlight of the episode, the pairing of Scott Bakula with his 'Quantum Leap' costar, Dean Stockwell, was frankly not that big a draw. It's not like they have these tremendously well-written scenes, they're just general prisoner/commandant chats that show none of the flair we've seen from similar tales in the past (e.g: Picard and Gul Madred in 'Chain of Command'), and demonstrates how desperately this series required experienced Trek writers capable of making more than just another 'the enemy aren't all my enemy' morality tale. Having seen three-fifths of 'Quantum Leap' since I last watched this episode (I'd never seen Bakula's most famous series before), I wondered if that would have an affect on my appreciation for the important choice of casting, but when it comes down to it, just as when I see Ben Browder and Claudia Black playing different characters together in 'Stargate SG-1,' and forget their 'Farscape' history, I didn't see Sam Beckett and Al interacting because these are actors and they play roles.

The problem is I've always found Grat to be a rather dull character. Stockwell brings his usual insistence into whatever he says, but beyond the novelty of getting those two actors back together in a sci-fi series it was a waste of talent and they should have kept him for something superior. How would it have been if Degra had been played by Stockwell and all those integral scenes in Season 3 had been him and Archer? I wouldn't want to replace Randy Oglesby, who brought such contained vehemence to the role, but it's the kind of thing that would have made more sense than an unmemorable prison commandant in a grey uniform who has about three conversations with Archer and never learns anything himself or has an arc - when we last see him holding a weapon to Archer's head and spitting venom about all Suliban being the same, having just watched 'A Few Good Men' again, he reminded me of the ferocious Jack Nicholson Colonel who is provoked into admitting his indiscretion that he doesn't see as anything wrong. Stockwell got the chance to act there, but it was too little a role for him. I doubt he'd have been able to play something too recurring (such as Degra), because he was always in demand, and of course it would be in the next few years that he had an important part in 'Battlestar Galactica,' but I'll always see his one appearance as a missed opportunity, even if it was only based on a fun, throwback pairing. Nowadays I'm sure that would have been played up exponentially, but maybe they were being complacent then and felt Trek didn't need to make waves to get attention by shouting it from the rooftops that they were getting Bakula and Stockwell back together.

For me, the far more interesting casting came with Dennis Christopher and Christopher Shea. Was it a complete coincidence that the two main Suliban characters were played by actors most famous on Trek for their Dominion Vorta roles? They were both bad guys, as most Vorta were, so were they subtly playing with the Trek audience's expectations here that they'd be bad as a means of pulling the rug? I can't say I ever thought these Suliban appeared dangerous, going around with washtubs and being shocked by Major Klev's cattle prod, but it's always tricky to remember without hindsight how the first viewing was. It seems likely that these specific actors were chosen (and it was weird that the first Suliban we hear in the episode was an old woman who sounded very like the Female Changeling!), for such reasons, and it's another great enjoyment for those of us well up on guest characters from 'DS9' - this season did a terrific job of recasting names that had appeared in previous Trek productions, giving it more of a family feel in spite of the change from the time period we'd become used to (and another reason 'DSC' feels so completely cold and alien since we almost never have anyone who'd ever been in Trek before). That's not to say the casting was perfect - although I felt Christopher was ideal as the main Suliban, Danik, Shea's huge eyes always made him seem wrong somehow. It worked brilliantly when he played Keevan the slimy Vorta, but something about the Suliban makeup didn't work with him, though as I say, it was good to see familiar faces.

When you think about it, it's surprising the Enterprise (and other starships), didn't get in more legal entanglements than they did (though then there wouldn't be much Star Trekking! Maybe a Starfleet JAG series will be Alex Kurtzman's next gambit?). While the Prime Directive had yet to exist (though T'Pol does remind Archer he'd decided not to interfere in other cultures - he replies he's making an exception in this case), Archer is a decent sort and generally feels obligated to obey the local laws and not flout his power (not least because the NX-01 is often not the most powerful ship around when dealing with unknown aliens!), so alien laws would generally be obeyed, though of course if it came down to the life of his crew he wasn't going to be bound by anything like Picard was when Wesley walks on the flowers in the infamous 'Justice'! It's very in keeping for him to act on his sense of injustice, and he and Travis showed their heroism by not accepting the beam out when they had the option because Archer wanted to find a way to help the oppressed (though I would have liked, for example, the Captain to offer the way out to Travis so he, too, could have shown solidarity rather than us taking it as read that he wouldn't have abandoned his Captain). It's also warming to see the confidence he has in his ship and crew, secure in the belief they'll be along shortly to get him out of this fix. It shows how well the crew has integrated, including T'Pol who manages to do a spot of distraction technique, blithely talking over Grat as part of the plan to compromise Tandaran security, the kind of playacting you'd not usually associate with a Vulcan, which shows her once again as quite different.

It's not really much of an ensemble episode, though everyone has some little part to play, which is another reason why I feel it falls short as a Mayweather/Archer story - we should have learned more about those characters through their interactions, there should have been more interactions in the first place (something akin to what Reed and Archer go through in 'Minefield,' maybe taking the beating Mayweather receives a little further so he and the Captain could have a moment, maybe Archer needing to reassure him they're doing the right thing, that sort of scene), and so the pairing falls a little flat. Since this is such a big security matter I was surprised when Reed wasn't all over it and I don't even remember if he was in the episode before he appears in Suliban guise. This could have been a blind so we forget he exists and then we're as surprised as the colleagues he's come to rescue when he does show up, but it just seemed odd to me, though he redeems himself once he's in the flesh. It was an interesting choice to cut to a scene in the middle of a transport and we just see the tail end of something dematerialising - it shows they were up for doing things differently and out of the usual established visual form that had been so rigid for so long (a bit like when the CGI artists began to introduce zoom and pan 'handheld' shots for the battle scenes in 'Star Wars Episode II,' except this time it actually worked and didn't take me out of the world). In the past they'd have either shown the whole transport sequence or not shown it at all, so I enjoyed that on-the-fly approach that made things more dynamic.

I don't think that was the moment Reed beamed down, but I could be wrong, as I did feel the absence of seeing him do that. It wouldn't have been a problem later in the series, but at this stage the Transporter is still treated with concern as most haven't used it. I don't know if this was Reed's first use of the device, but it could be another of those missed opportunities not to give some context when a person is about to beam down (or up), for the first time ever, because it would be an experience of such magnitude that not to play it seems wrong (something they'd play up with Hoshi in 'Vanishing Point'). At the same time, in this particular instance they were working to keep the twist hidden, so they had specific reasoning for doing so - not that Reed as a Suliban was that great a twist, I can't help feeling that so much subterfuge and planning went into what was a very brief moment of surprise, and Trek organising and manoeuvring things around just to manufacture a 'gotcha' moment for the audience is generally a wrong move (witness the vast hoop-jumping, logic-defying efforts with Voq/Tyler in 'DSC'!), but it's not something that harms the episode.

What is harmful to the episode is its unfinished nature: it touches on prejudice and the sin of locking people away for looking like a society's enemy, but we never see that society change its ways. What would have been so much more powerful is if Archer's efforts had led to sweeping changes in how the Tandarans viewed their settled populations of Suliban integrators. The episode shows up the simplistic nature of the series in not going far enough, thinking that showing Archer and Mayweather's change of heart was enough. But it leaves the fate of the Suliban hanging, even Archer unsure whether they'll make it, and that's the kind of thing I expect (disappointingly), from modern, serialised Trek which never has a full and proper resolution, denying the catharsis that makes you feel that things will be alright in the end, preferring to leave the next stage for another day. This doesn't even have the next stage to show for its efforts, and the level of exploration of the Suliban as a whole was a letdown of the series. Grat doesn't learn anything, the episode doesn't go far enough in any direction. I didn't even remember this as a Mayweather episode, if it can be called that. It's difficult to do so because although he's second banana (and he was so rarely that), he doesn't get much weight in the story, he's just there. Sure, he gets his face beaten for refusing to give in, and he tries to make friends with Sajen, to the others' suspicion (again there was gold there to explore prejudice being on both sides, but it was undeveloped), but beyond that he was wasted. And when the whole series wasted him it's hard to think well of an episode that at least had the potential to give him a chance to show what he was capable of.

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