The Andorian Incident (2)

DVD, Enterprise S1 (The Andorian Incident) (2)

Shock value must have been this episode's main draw at the time because it's gone down as one of my favourites of the series. It still retains the shocks, and outside of the obvious the one that pleased me was: Landing Party! Landing Party! Landing Party! Yes, at last, just what I've been waiting for since the start of the season, someone (Reed does the honours), talks of the Landing Party rather than ignoring this well-worn piece of 'TOS' terminology. The episode doesn't shy away from embracing the Trek canon with references to Surak (oddly brought up by Archer in his scene of bamboozling the enemy by chattering away ten to the dozen in order to disguise his real reason for wanting out of the Vulcans' cell: to drop a small icon through the face in the wall so Trip can work out where it opens out to. But why didn't they just go up and look out through the holes of the eyes and mouth, they'd have seen the main entrance chamber without the Captain having to endure a beating!), Kolinahr (the Vulcans seem very free with the information, uncharacteristically, but then they were hiding something so perhaps they were trying to present as open and honest an attitude as possible to fool everyone), and the mating rituals where females force males to fight each other to the death over them, crassly brought up by one of the Andorians to show how bad he is. Andorians, there it is, I tried to put off writing the name, but the secret (on this two decades old episode with the clue in the title!), is out, and is a far, far worse kept secret than Vulcans hiding a spy station under their monastery.

If there was to be a series set pre-'TOS,' then it needed to explore the races we knew from 'TOS,' not just humanity's early attempts at exploring the galaxy. On a side note, Trip and Archer have a little discussion early on where Trip wonders why they should visit places humans have already been, or that the Vulcans have given them star charts for, and he replies 'we haven't been there,' meaning humans in general, but specifically Archer and his crew. To me, this was a light jab at viewers who may have been wondering, as Trip was, what was the point of a series going where man in the future will have gone before in other series', rather than where no one had been, and there are two answers to that: one is, for all the exploration seen in 'TOS,' 'TNG,' 'DS9,' and 'Voyager,' they'd all been focused outward, and with the exception of 'DS9' had not tried to examine known space and deal with the realities and complexities of future life in the stars with their galactic neighbours and familiar planets on a regular basis. 'Enterprise' had the chance to solidify the races, pin down the places, and be face to face with the known. The other point is that every experience a crew goes through is different depending on the crew - I've often said that Trek can do the same episode in a multitude of different ways depending on which character is at the centre of it. Worf will react differently to Hoshi, Janeway to Scotty, so even if we knew every facet of every race and situation Trek could put its characters into we can still have a different experience and learn about the individuals. And that is, at heart, the very essence of Trek: to explore the human condition (even if it has been largely lost in the last decade to simplistic, action-based adventure).

Okay, that was a little more than an aside, but I think I've made the point that 'Enterprise' didn't need to go beyond known space to make its mark, and one thing I do love about this episode is that it began to set up the familiar races and politics that are necessary for a fully rounded Trek series to properly carry the mantle of 'Star Trek.' One of the things that made 'TNG' and its 24th Century brethren stand above 'TOS' was in its careful interweaving of detailed races and their politics into the fabric of the adventures. Not every episode featured Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans and others, but every season would have its share of tales that would further our knowledge of these key races and expand on other, secondary races until there was a shorthand that loyal viewers were rewarded by picking up on. Although much of Trek featured little serialisation, there was a steady, growing shape to events and characters' lives which demonstrated change and development, and this was in a large part to the consistent fleshing out of the universe our heroes inhabit (one reason 'Discovery' infuriates in its inability to explore such nuances by preferring big, bombastic mysteries or physical adventure over introspection and thoughtful exploration, ignoring the main characteristics Trek has always worked under). The tapestry of galactic politics is integral to making a believable world, and though 'Enterprise' didn't do that nearly enough for my liking (two-dimensional Klingons, not following up with races that only had cameos, like the Tholians), one area they succeeded satisfactorily with was the Andorians.

Designing 'Enterprise' they really wanted to make it feel as grounded as possible, an extrapolation from our own time, which in turn could morph into 'TOS,' and so they stayed away from a lot of the 'TOS' stylings (also perhaps from the same reason of wanting to fashion their own identity as 'TNG' did by avoiding most familiar races for much of its first season), of outlandish aliens with green skin, tentacles, antennae - the 1950s aesthetic that had naturally bled over into 'TOS' in the 1960s. So the Klingons were bumpy-headed like the ones seen in everything post-'TOS,' the uniforms were functional and had an air of NASA about them. They preferred to travel down to planets by Shuttlepod rather than beam. And no Romulans allowed. Sometimes you have to make an exception that proves the rule, however, and the Andorians were it: blue-skinned, white-haired aliens with antennae represented exactly the kind of thing they didn't want the series perceived as, but at the same time if they were going to play in this universe they had to follow the rules to some extent, and though the founding of the Federation wasn't really the guiding arc of the series in the way that Voyager was always trying to get home, the pieces needed to be put in place, and what better way than to have some fun for an episode. I don't know whether the success of the episode was what changed their minds about introducing more building blocks of 'TOS' into the mix, but the advantage of a 'long' season of twenty-plus episodes allowed for course corrections and reaction to audience tastes, unlike now where a season is all done before it launches, and only violent reaction online between seasons can show how badly some decisions have gone down with the faithful (as seen by how 'Into Darkness' tried to fix many of the concerns over the first Kelvinverse film, or 'DSC' tried to do the same for its second season).

Whatever the case, the Andorians proved that you could do classic Trek races, updated for the modern day, and make it work. One of the few (only?), things I would say that 'DSC' has done better than any other Trek is making their version of the Andorians hark back closer to 'TOS,' with a gaunt actor in the role, high cheekboned and with the right amount of hair. Not sure the extended brow was necessary, but they did well, especially after ruining the Klingon look so effectively. What they didn't have are the detail that went into the antennae. The makers of 'Enterprise' were keen on making advances, but also having them make sense. In 'TOS' they didn't have money or technology to make Andorian antennae move, this being one of the great ideas 'Enterprise' brought. Andorians had been seen sparingly through Trek history (in the Federation Council of 'Star Trek IV,' a couple of minor times on 'TNG'), and always with static antennae, so why not make them move, and not only that, but correspond those movement to their emotional state? It was a brilliant idea and it's easy to forget now how revolutionary an idea it was to update a race in that ingenious way. Not only did they enable a potentially daft, pulpy sci-fi alien to have more reality, but they were using advances in technology to their best advantage to pull it off. I don't get the impression the Andorians (or Andorian, it seems to me we only ever see the same guy!), on 'DSC' follow the ideas laid out by 'Enterprise,' because while the antennae there do move a little, they don't appear to possess any particular meaning, another example of the kind of showing off of effects without thinking things through that that Trek is all about.

At least with the 'Enterprise' Andorians, although their heads look a bit bulbous, and in this first appearance you can see the blue paint has rubbed away a little in places to reveal pinkish areas, it all came down to characterisation, and they made one of the best decisions of the series by bringing in noted Trek actor Jeffrey Combs as the lead. That this character went so far in people's estimation that it has been said by the makers it was planned for him to join the series as a regular if Season 5 had gone ahead, is testament to the energy and effort brought to bringing this species back to life as Combs did. He, of so many recurring Trek guest stars, is up there at, or near, the top spot (it's so difficult with the number of greats on even just 'DS9' to narrow it down to one person). He'd already made his mark on Trek history forever with his turns as Weyoun, the slimy Vorta of the Dominion, and Brunt, the cowardly, bullying Ferengi who was Quark's nemesis, but like Quark actor Armin Shimerman, he now had the opportunity to define an entire race, and he goes to it with a will, making Shran (I'm not even sure we heard his name spoken), one of, if not the, most memorable recurring role on the series. And he's surprisingly brutal when you think how much of a friendship would grow between him and Archer over the course of the series. He could never be entirely trusted (just witness his entry into the Xindi saga of Season 3), but that trusting distrust and the humour of their respective positions in regard to each other was what developed a hearty respect between Archer and Shran.

And it all began here when the Captain turns against his Vulcan allies to support a man that has given him a good going over - it shows what kind of a man Archer is. Yes, you could suggest he was doing it to be spiteful toward the Vulcans, considering his history with them, but when you see how he's adapted to working alongside a Vulcan on a permanent basis in T'Pol, and you how he could have had his ego bruised as much as his face by the Andorians, he has those qualities you want in a heroic Captain. He operates from a place of strength even when he's on his knees having an Andorian rifle butt in the face, he takes the punishment and even goes back for more just to do the 'statue in the wall face' trick, baffling Shran at his attitude towards taking pain. He also refuses to capitulate to threats, and this is something shared by Reed, whom is left in command and we actually get to see taking the Captain's Chair - in fact we see him more in command than when Trip held the position in the previous episode. This is certainly not a time where the Captain or his Security Chief look weak. I love that Reed's usual pessimism and suspicious nature means that he doesn't assume everything's just fine and dandy down on the planet when there's been no contact with the Landing Party, and even when the others, like Hoshi, are smiling at his overcautiousness (reminding me of the times when Vulcan crewmembers were mocked for their over-preparation before being vindicated), he's proved right, and if such an attitude can save lives even once then it's a good deal, and as Archer said, Reed's attitude is why he chose him.

It was immense fun to see the Andorians, and they were an ideal race to be primed for a new Trek series since very little was known about them and yet they were said to be one of the founders of the Federation along with other notables the Vulcans and Tellarites. I only wish we could have had greater political and racial exploration across the series, one area they fell down on, getting lost in reset button action adventures of the week and not including enough ongoing plots for my satisfaction: the Temporal Cold War, the Suliban, the Klingon situation, the Vulcans, the Andorians and even other 'TOS' races could have done with a lot more movement on the chess board, but you never got a sense that they were building to something they'd planned out. The structure was a little too loose, and while I'd prefer more 'capsule' episodes where the end is the end of a story yet opens up future possibilities a lot more than the 'DSC' complete serialisation format, they could have achieved so much more if they'd thought through where they were going and the points they wanted to hit along the way. I will say that Berman and Braga developed a great opening sequence of episodes and I've always considered this one the last in that line where presumably they had expended so much thought and energy into boosting the series off that it caused a little drifting for periods of the season after this point, no matter the quality of some individual episodes. It's like they had been able to plan out the first six episodes over months of deliberation, but then the season caught up with them and they didn't quite know where to go with it.

Though the Andorians get all the attention in this episode the Vulcans were also a big draw for me, being my favourite race as they are. I liked the more traditional mien of these examples of the race, different from the barely contained emotions of Soval and his ilk, and yet this was the first true episode about the race on a series that used them a lot. It must have been that these were greater adherents to the creed of Surak than many of the other Vulcans we saw, as they were much more into the nonviolent, peaceful, emotions under wraps style that appeal about the race so much. It helped having another known Trek guest star in the main role, Bruce French having been there at the beginning of 'Voyager' for its pilot where he played an Ocampan, one of Kes' people. He'd also been in 'TNG' and had a small role in 'Insurrection,' but the Ocampan Doctor is the most memorable - I wonder if Director Roxann Dawson remembered him from her first episode as B'Elanna Torres and brought him back because of that? In any case it was his last role in Trek, but he was always good at projecting peace and care, ideal for the blind that this monastery is genuinely hiding what the Andorians fear. I wasn't so enamoured of the younger Vulcan who does act more like the other unconstrained members of his race, showing concern or superiority, even looking perturbed when Archer thumps him on his glass jaw. You could assume he's not a genuine adherent of the monastery, hence his attitude, really there to help liaise with the listening post below. Yet if he was a Vulcan spy you'd think he wouldn't be so weak as to be downed by a puny human's punch!

I get that he was supposed to represent the devious side of the Vulcans and Archer knocking him to the ground (as he threatened to do in the pilot), was meant to be cathartic, but the portrayal never landed far enough into the 'arrogant Vulcans we don't like' end of the spectrum, and he was somewhere between the true and trusted leader of the place, and the Soval type so it didn't quite play well when Archer decked him! Mind you, the Captain had been under a lot of pressure and he'd already been brutalised himself, so you could put that down to a bit of weakness there that he didn't control himself. It would have been better if T'Pol herself had performed a nerve pinch, but I can never be sure how secret such an act is supposed to be at this time. There's so much Vulcans keep to themselves, so their hidden listening base was completely in keeping with their position on things - if it's logical to deceive, then deceive they will! I never had a problem with Vulcans apparently being 'bad guys' in the series. If they could justify anything through logic as we've seen happen over the years, then in a less enlightened time, a time of greater external threats (and as we see in Season 4 with Romulan intrigue, internal threats, too), whether that be from Klingons or the meddling of their human allies rushing round off the leash and getting involved in things that stirred up hornets' nests, I can believe that they would be conducting all kinds of surveillance and operations to form plans to protect their position in the galaxy.

No, what I couldn't stand about the Vulcans in this series was always their surface emotions coming to the fore, whether it be T'Pol or the guest Vulcan. Bruce French did a pretty good job, even if he did look somewhat worried throughout the episode, but I did appreciate the attempts to remind us of the differences between Vulcans and humans. So T'Pol reports that the serene elder seems agitated and Trip remarks that she calls that agitated? That's exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see, as is the moment when Archer is given a blanket for the cold night in the monastery and offers it to T'Pol, but she refuses saying he needs it more than her. Because he would, as humans are less able to cope with the cold or heat than the more rigorous world of the Vulcans has inured them to. The issue of Vulcan secrecy is uncertain in this particular episode. So often on the series T'Pol comes out with private things about her people (though it's been nice to see that they started off trying to keep things secret as much as possible, and there's always the argument that Starfleet isn't the Federation so Federation records might not be as complete in the future, enabling Spock to still remain the only one on a ship of humans that knows about Pon Farr and that sort of thing), as she does about the Kolinahr here (and the Stone of J'Kah - was that a 'Babylon 5' reference to G'Kar? Andreas Katsulas even showed up on the series in Season 2!), yet at the same time humans don't know about Andorians! You'd think they'd know of a threatening neighbour to their closest (only?), galactic allies and also be aware of their main enemy!

It could be a case of size. I can buy that Andorians had never heard of Earth as I imagine the wise old Vulcans made contact with a number of planets and races at the stage they reached warp travel, if only to stop them suddenly flooding out into space and causing chaos in the well-ordered space lanes that Vulcans had seemingly tasked themselves with patrolling (this is all my imagination, but it comes from the attitudes we see from them and that their sense of responsibility is as much about self-preservation of them and their culture as it is nurturing allies). Earth is just one small planet, no matter how many cargo ships went out like Travis' family, trading back and forth. But Andor must be a bigger deal. Maybe they, like Earth, aren't one of the major players at this time (or at any time once they were subsumed into the Federation), and are more of a thorn in the Vulcans' side than a real danger like the Klingons. Then again, humans didn't even know about them until one dropped in to blow up a grain silo at the start of the season so perhaps Archer and others haven't given the Vulcan files enough respect, or they've been heavily redacted. It's only because Reed says he's consulted the Vulcan database and found out about the Andorians, so it's not like the Vulcans kept them a complete secret. Maybe they were lost in reams of races as I can imagine the Vulcans not wanting humans to know about their conflicts with others.

Other things I like about the episode include the face in the wall, reminding me of the one in 'Roman Holiday'; the inside of the spy station having computer designs reminiscent of 'TOS' (coloured rectangles and other shapes on black backgrounds you can just about make out in the distance), and the scene-setting CGI environments, a beautiful rendition of the monastery. I also like that the facility was realistic for its function. None of your secret caves of time crystals as 'DSC' threw in our faces, turning Klingon monastery Boreth into this ridiculous fantasy world and ruining its sense of reality. The caves in this episode are catacombs, and the good old cave set is redressed yet again in as many episodes. This time it's all cobwebs, Vulcan corpses and the remains of sculptures and antiques, which I thought were a brilliant production design for a set that could easily become tired, it's used so much. But they keep making it different enough to be a whole other environment, and the sound of the rushing winds and the sombre score all sell the environment expertly. Production design is certainly one of the high points, whether that be the Andorians themselves or the Vulcan details, and even more when you add the two together for the impressive entrance of the antennaed ones! I liked the justification for why the NX-01 couldn't call down to the planet to announce their presence - the monks consider technology to be a distraction (a valuable nugget of wisdom, especially for today!), and so don't have the facility to accept calls (much like me not having a mobile phone!). We learn the Andorians have inferior technology to Vulcans with no Transporters, for example. Talking of which, it seems dangerous to beam multiple people on the NX-01's pad at the same time, but then it was still early days of the technology's protocols, and I like that Reed has no time to be concerned about using it since he's too worried about what's happened to his Captain than anything else.

The episode doesn't feature a great deal of character moments, but we do get another little scene between T'Pol and Phlox as they dine together in the Mess, discussing being aliens on a human ship. I wonder if we get many more such scenes - if not we'll know why: Phlox incurs his First Officer's grave displeasure by grabbing a stick of celery off her plate! I know he's an alien, but surely he must know what Vulcans are like. In another misguided reminder of the Vulcan IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), he clumsily reminds her of what it's all about, but as usual in this progressive stance the usually wise Vulcans never seem to realise that infinite means unending; everything. That means the worst degradation is still part of diverse thinking and is the reason IDIC simply does not work as a concept. People will always say that 'well of course it doesn't mean we accept…' but then what you're saying is that the words themselves are meaningless. If it was Almost Inifnite Diversity in Most Acceptable Combinations then there would be less of a problem (although there's still the issue of a creed that suggests embracing almost everything, and the wider you expand to include, the better, is that if you live by specific rules then these rules are at risk of breaking down under such a philosophy, putting society at risk for failing to realise certain rules are there for protection), but AIDMAC doesn't have the same ring to it, and it's still down to subjective thinking on what's acceptable and what isn't, which changes in societies over the course of time, going round in circles, not ever upward as some seem to think.

Phlox' IDIC chat was really only a reason to include him in the episode, something which would become increasingly problematic, and not just for him. While the main three and Reed could all be worked into action stories easily, a translator, a Doctor and a Helmsman were harder to justify, and outside of getting their own episode here and there, led to a troubling lack of ensemble feel. At least they were still making the effort toward inclusion in early episodes, where in too many they were simply there in the background and it became sad to see how often. T'Pol was never going to be one of the background characters and I wondered at the end whether she might have known about the monastery's hidden base. On reflection I realise she couldn't have done. Although she does put up barriers against visiting (and it does seem a curious decision by Archer to want to barge in on a place of silence and seclusion), she never hotly forbids such an incursion and obviously she's the one who forces the issue when they do beam down and Archer feels he's overstepped the mark and they should head off while the monks are in seclusion. What is ambiguous is how T'Pol feels about the breaking of a treaty as the Vulcans had done. Unfortunately we're not afforded a chance for a tag scene in the aftermath, the episode bowing out as suddenly as it began, and it very much could use a scene or two of reflection on what had occurred.

It may be they knew they were going to revisit the plot threads set up here later in the season, it may be that they were undecided on how T'Pol would react or what Archer would have to report back to Starfleet Command. It may be that T'Pol herself didn't quite know how to react, and if anything the ending does envision a much more serialised style than usual where not everything is tidied up or even addressed, but held back to be developed later. The problem is that you can do both, and even one scene of Archer and T'Pol, or Trip and Archer reprising their conversation about going where man has gone before would have been preferable to a vacuum. I don't remember if the next episode follows things up immediately, though I do know it features the Vulcans again, so I'll reserve judgement on how well the threads were taken up. There would certainly be ramifications, and that's what matters, and one reason why dealing with established races is so enjoyable for the average Trekker. Saying all that, coming to this episode now I didn't consider it to be as great as I previous thought. Once the shock value is removed, from seeing the Andorians as we would on a number of occasions in every season, there isn't much of a story being told. It needed something to cut back to on the ship, and though Reed's rescue attempt was almost that, it could have done with something for Phlox, Hoshi, and/or (Andor? Arf, arf!), Mayweather to be involved with. I love that it sets up the ongoing friendship of being in or repaying debts that went back and forth between Archer and Shran, but this episode on its own isn't as powerful as when it debuted.

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