3x01 The Xindi

[6.8/10] Enterprise is back and it is dark and edgy, man! We’re in The Delphic Expanse where everything is harsh and weird! The alien species are duplicitous! The ship has a new complement of military guys! Captain Archer is angry and determined!Trip is violent and troubled! T’Pol has a new haircut and costume! The theme song is now jaunty and jazzier! This ain't your father’s Enterprise, pal!

If you can’t tell from my sarcastic italics, I am more than a little skeptical of Enterprise’s efforts at rebranding at the start of its third season. The show wants to turn a corner here, and after 50+ episodes using the original premise, maybe it’s the right time to pivot. Still, as Discovery would learn a decade and a half later, trying to mesh the vision of Star Trek with grimdark prestige brutality isn’t always an easy mix, whether you’re at the start of the Sopranos boom or the end of it.

The season premiere sees the crew at six weeks in the Expanse, and there’s the whiff of the show trying to pull off what Voyager was meant to be. Here are our otherwise high-minded heroes, deposited into a strange region of space they don’t know, without the benefit of being able to call for help whenever they run into trouble. That means new, unknown aliens, more rough-and-tumble encounters, and the way the dynamic of the ship changes when the mission du jour is seek and destroy rather than explore and befriend.

Enterprise just doesn't feel much like Star Trek in the process. Archer and Trip’s crawl through an alien sewer feels like something out of the original Star Wars trilogy. The council of cryptic-speaking, poorly CGI’d bad guys plays like something out of the Star Wars prequels. And the Enterprise deploying a compliment of space marines comes off feeling more like something out of Aliens or even Starship Troopers. Whatever problems I had with Enterprise’s first two seasons, there was something comforting about them because they felt of a piece with the franchise, its rhythms and its bearing, in a way that “The Xindi” just doesn't.

But maybe that’s a good thing. Lord knows that Enterprise didn’t work perfectly in its first couple of seasons. Franchises and art of all stripes need to evolve or risk growing stale. I’d be lying if I said the view of Starfleet or the weekly adventures promised if this is prologue really wowed me or drew me in, but it’s good for the things we like to make us uncomfortable now and then. It’s a sign that a show is taking risks, trying new things, letting the series develop into new directions that force the creators, and the audience, to adapt.

The problem is that Enterprise isn’t very convincing in its new darker and edgier vibe, at least not yet. I don’t want to eliminate the possibility. The show is still early in this new experiment, and as hokey as the Delphic Legion of Doom seems, there’s promise in the notion of a vengeance-seeking Starfleet ship having to cope in a rougher section of space. I don’t want to belabor the point, but the reimagined Battlestar Galactica was basically “darker Star Trek” and totally made it work. The catch is that on early 2000s network television, Enterprise can’t help but feel like a kid putting on his older brother’s clothes and pretending he’s a tough punk. It’s just not convincing yet.

Still, however discordant this opening salvo into the show’s brave new world is, there’s still plenty to like here. However cheesy some of the interactions are, I like Archer and Trip getting trapped in an alien mine and having to sneak and fight their way out. There’s some neat setpieces of them crawling through crap or scaling a plasma shaft, and there was a scenery-chewing charm to their interactions with the proto-Immortan Joe who runs the place.

That foreman/warden of the facility, naturally, doublecrosses our heroes and tries to make them his slaves, necessitating the tactical deployment of Major Hayes and his space marines. As much as the fight that follows doesn't feel like Trek, it’s still cool to see their hand-to-hand combat efficiency, or watching one of their sharpshooters snipe a firing alien from down below. You can still feel the show straining to let you know things are grim and serious know in a way that comes off a bit cornball, but the actual nuts and bolts of the standoff is well-done and exciting from a framing and blocking standpoint.

The episode also does a nice job of expanding the world of the bad guys a little bit. While the council of villains comes off poorly, the Xindi prisoner that Archer interrogates opens up some interesting avenues. We’re so used to planets and peoples being unified in Star Trek to the point that it’s genuinely surprising to learn the Xindi are not just another villainous alien race, but a collection and alliance of different species who jockey for power and have their own internal squabbles.

It feels like a nice fictionalization and figurativization of the United States having to deal with the different tribal alliances and rival groups during the War in Afghanistan, rather than the unified nation state we tend to think of in international conflicts. The notion that Archer and company have a lot to learn in this unfamiliar place, not just a lot of fighting to do, does feel very Trek-y.

Fortunately or unfortunately, not everything has changed on Enterprise. The series has still found new, not especially creative ways to have its female cast disrobe and moan and otherwise endeavor to titillate the nerdlingers in the audience. It’s more bargain basement exploitation when the show gins up reasons for Trip to massage a half-naked T’Pol here.

On the other hand, the scene is a testament to the benefits of genuine chemistry. The show has tried similar (if not entirely as crass) moments between Archer and T’Pol, and the complete lack of chemistry between Bakula and Blalock separately and independently doomed them. Blalock and Trineer have a much better dynamic, and it means that even when you’re facepalming because of the script, the proceedings are at least a little endearing because you can dig the vibe between the two characters on screen.

That’s what we have to hope for in the back half of Enterprise. This cast has settled in over two seasons. The creative team has settled in over two seasons. And the fans have (maybe) settled in over two seasons. As the series charts a new course, we have to hope that the seemingly misaimed efforts to inject the show with post-9/11 darkness can find fertile ground in a show and a crew that know how to do what they do at this point, or at least, what they used to do.