Star Trek: Enterprise 1-01: Broken Bow - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still writing about the very first episode of the entire Star Trek franchise (chronologically speaking): Broken Bow. Sure there are episodes with events that take place before it, but this is 100% set in April 2151 from start to finish. That means it's actually a kind of sequel to the movie First Contact, revealing what happened next. By the same writer in fact!

Though First Contact wasn't just written by Brannon Braga and neither was this, as this time around he was joined by Trek overlord Rick Berman. It seems a bit strange to see Berman credited as a writer, as up until this point he'd mostly been the franchise's executive producer, succeeding Gene Roddenberry. But he had written the Next Gen episodes Brothers and A Matter of Time, and he'd been giving notes on all the Trek scripts scripted during his reign.

Broken Bow is a feature length episode with a lot to write about so I've split this article into three parts for the sake of everyone's sanity (especially my own). You're currently reading part two, but if you want to jump back to the first part you can click THIS LINK.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be spoiling this episode and others that came before it, but everything that aired after it is safe.

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Previously, in Broken Bow:

An incident involving a wounded Klingon who crashed in Broken Bow, Oklahoma threatened to delay the launch of Earth's first explorer ship, Enterprise. The Vulcans weren't keen on the ship anyway as they believe that humans are currently too impatient and emotional to explore space, and they wanted to handle the Klingon situation themselves... by letting him die. But Captain Archer is sick of the Vulcans holding humanity back and decided to launch his ship early on a mission to take the Klingon back home alive. A compromise was made: the Vulcans provided Archer with information to help them speak with the Klingons and in exchange he's bringing a Vulcan spy chaperone with him during the mission.

Meanwhile something sinister is happening on a space station inside a dark nebula... 

And now, the continuation:

Okay, this is an actual supervillain lair. They've spent the last 20 minutes of the episode setting up a more realistic and grounded Star Trek, with characters we can relate to, and now they've just gone and cut away to show what the bad guys are up to!

I don't know if you can see him, but there's a guy in red near the door. He's a bit fuzzy as a ghostly echo precedes him as he walks up to the other platform to chat to the person in the blue energy field. Clearly time is a bit wonky here.

The mysterious figure (aka Future Guy) was played by James Horan, who'd already played four other characters in Trek and would go on to become a voice actor. I know him best as Skull Face in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, he's got a good villain voice. Berman and Braga made an interesting choice here keeping Future Guy's appearance a mystery, though I'm not sure why they did it. It almost seems like they could've been going for a GI Joe/Inspector Gadget thing where we never see the villain's face, but they said they did intend to reveal him at some point. And he was going to be Captain Archer! Maybe.

When I think of Trek antagonists, I think of Gul Dukat, Seska, Tomolok, Weyoun, people with a bit of character. Future's Guy's basically just a sinister silhouette though, and right now he wants the guy in red to recover the evidence.

ACT TWO

Back on Enterprise, Archer visits Dr Phlox in sickbay, and we get to see that it's not grey like everywhere else! The set design here is both really elaborate and well done, with more of a stark 70s look to it. I'm still not that keen on it, but that's my problem.

When I was doing research I kept coming across the same story about how actor John Billingsley threw in a couple of bird squawks in his audition and got hired for that performance, then when he filmed his first scene the director told him to knock it off. We do get a little bit of a squawk in the episode though, when he talks to one the creatures he's unpacking. The guy has a menagerie of creatures and he likes to stick them onto patients. That's basically his gimmick, along with being endlessly cheerful and optimistic, and having a lot of wives.

One of the show's writers, André Bormanis, apparently wanted to make Phlox a vet on his home world of Denobula, who wasn't supposed to treat humanoids. It would've gone well with their warp engineer being self-taught by working on boat engines and their starship commander having never been on a starship before, but I'm glad they decided not to go down that road. I like Phlox being endlessly competent and very experienced.

I even like his creepy CGI-augmented smile. At least I'm assuming the actor can't really pull that face.

Doctor Phlox is an important character in the episode, because his presence says something about Archer's character. If T'Pol had been the only alien on board then it could've seemed like Archer doesn't like aliens, or that wants humans to do this mission on their own to prove themselves. But the very first thing he does after getting the job is to go and invite Phlox to come on board, as he knows he has more knowledge about Klingons than any human doctor and can make their mission go much better. Archer is all about diversity... it's not his fault that the series has the least diverse cast since Next Gen.

Phlox also has the important job of making sure the Klingon is healthy enough to walk off the ship in 80 hours when they reach Kronos, or else the guy may as well be dead.

The episode has really begun to slow down now that they're on their way, and Trip and Mayweather have nothing better to do than hang out on the ceiling.

This is the 'sweet spot' where the gravity gets inverted for some reason. Mayweather grew up on ships so he knew exactly where to look, while Trip had no idea it existed. Hang on, Trip is the chief engineer, hasn't he seen every inch of this ship?

It's a nice scene though as the two of them have a really casual chat about how many planets they've visited and how many breasts the aliens there had (Gene Roddenberry would've liked the women on Draylax).

Next we get to see the mess hall. It's grey and murky. We're not sticking around though, as Trip's on his way to the captain's personal dining room (like the one Janeway used to have until Neelix stole it).

It could be that the writers put this scene into the script just to get the set built with their pilot episode money, as it's going to get a lot of use later in the series.

Some actual colour! It's just blue, but it's nice to see. Also now we know the scale of the windows.

I wondered if they were using projected backgrounds or screens at this point to put the starfield behind their windows, but it turns out that this was achieved with good old-fashioned green screen compositing. It was expensive too, so they avoided showing windows as much as possible. Next Gen got around this issue by staying away from windows when the ship was at warp and Discovery uses a low-tech trick of just having narrow windows so you can't see out of them unless you're looking directly at them.

T'Pol has been invited to dinner with Archer and Trip, and she's still being kind of antagonistic to them. We learned back in the TOS episode All Our Yesterdays that Vulcans are vegetarians, and she's not impressed that humans still eat meat. Meanwhile she's so enlightened that she won't even touch food with her hands. She says that humanity has yet to achieve patience or logic, but then she successfully cuts a breadstick with a knife and fork, and admits that with proper discipline anything's possible. Or maybe she's just showing off her patience and logic, I'm not 100% sure what point she's actually making here. Either way she's not impressing anyone by successfully eating a breadstick the hard way.

Trip counters her accusations by giving us some information about what Earth's like at the moment. They've apparently wiped out war, disease and hunger in the last fifty years! It's like the writers forgot for a moment that this was supposed to be a prequel and they didn't have to have the Trek utopia in place from day one.

Then we get a close up of Mayweather (or his photo double) operating the helm, showing off how detailed the controls on the bridge set are. This is a bit more elaborate and expensive than backlit gels and Plexiglas, and they're even making use of LCD screens now. It's not quite as expensive as it looks though, as I believe all the buttons were actually self-adhesive rubber feet. Well, except for the ones that are part of the monitor.

Hoshi feels a change in the vibrations as they reach warp 4.3 and T'Pol immediately tells her she's imagining it. Then she suggests that she should go to her quarters and lie down! Hoshi fires back in Vulcan and T'Pol tells her that she was instructed to speak English during this voyage and she should respect that. I don't know why she's being so catty, it doesn't seem very logical.

Their Klingon is regaining consciousness so Archer brings Hoshi down to see if she can talk to him. Unfortunately all Hoshi is getting from her gadget is gibberish, which is making her a bit anxious. The actress was new to acting at the time and she was nervous as well, so that worked out well for the role.

Fortunately for Hoshi the Klingon really is speaking gibberish, due to a hyper-stimulated pre-frontal cortex. She doesn't have time to feel relieved though as there's another vibration and this time it's the ship falling out of warp.

Then the power dies, leaving them in darkness, which isn't ideal when you're billions of miles from Earth.

The camera switches to night vision mode to follow some of the aliens from the teaser as they crawl down a corridor. Seems like it would be faster to walk on the floor than crawl on the ceiling, but they're aliens so I guess they think in alien ways. There was only one actor in the scene by the way; the aliens on the walls are CGI.

Back in sickbay, Archer asks Hoshi if she knows how to tell the Klingon to shut up, so she yells "SHUT UP!" It doesn't work.

Then Hoshi thinks she sees someone on the ladder, and Archer actually believes her! He's a much better boss than T'Pol. Wait, why does sickbay have a ladder?

The scene continues like this for a while, with the characters hearing things and shining their flashlights around. It's building tension in a way that earlier Trek pilots didn't really try to do.

These aliens can go invisible, and they're in pitch black darkness right now, so the one they spot crawling on the ceiling should really be ashamed of how rubbish he is. Another jumps down and knocks the rifle away from a security officer (I guess he forgot to bring his own gun), but Archer grabs the rifle and shoots him, much to Hoshi's distress.

Then this guy drops from the ceiling and that's it for the Klingon. Being jumped onto means he's been kidnapped, that's how it works. A few seconds later the power comes back online, but it seems like their mission to Kronos has been cancelled.

Hang on, that's the ceiling they had over the biobed in Voyager! They've just added some spotlights to it to make it more Enterprisey.

ACT THREE

Archer's focused on figuring out who took his Klingon and getting the ship ready to fight back next time, but T'Pol tries to talk him into giving up and going home. In fact she's so insistent about it that Archer has to have a private chat with her in his ready room. He should also have a chat with his electrician about getting those lights fixed, because he is pretty much disappearing into black there. I thought Discovery was supposed to be the dark Star Trek!

He talks to her about how pissed off he is that the Vulcans always kept just enough information from his dad to keep him from his dream of inventing a device that the Vulcans had already invented, and he died before seeing his ship in action. I get where Archer's coming from, but it's funny how he's complaining that the Vulcans forced his dad to work things out for himself.

In an alternate universe a different Archer is yelling at T'Pol because the Vulcans were too helpful. His dad wanted to invent a warp drive, but the Vulcans just told him how to build one and he never got to figure it out for himself! His dreams were ruined and his son went on to captain a ship with an engine that someone else designed, to his endless shame.

Anyway, this is some of that interpersonal conflict that writers were always keen to put into Star Trek, and it feels pretty forced to be honest. T'Pol's being absolutely unprofessional here.

Then we get a gross scene where Phlox opens up their dead alien and discovers he's a genetically enhanced Suliban. (Not to be confused with the Taliban, that's.... something else. Man the writers really could've been a little less obvious with their inspirations here). The aliens weren't born with the ability to squish under doors, climb on walls, and change their skin pigmentation like a chameleon, they've been augmented in a way Phlox has never seen before.

By the way, I've noticed there's often (but not always) a bit of space between the characters and the edge of the frame, which is something I've been seen in widescreen Babylon 5 as well. It's a sign that the episode wasn't originally framed for a 16:9 aspect ratio, or at least they wanted it to work just as well with the sides cropped off.

The production team had been told that Enterprise was going to be aired in a standard 4:3 ratio, same as all the earlier Trek series, but like with Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine they decided to plan ahead and future-proof it by framing shots in a way that that would allow them to someday make a 16:9 edit for widescreen TVs.

Then at the last minute UPN decided that the future had already arrived, so Broken Bow became the first Star Trek episode to broadcast in widescreen! I think after this point they just filmed the episodes for 16:9, but they decided to future-proof the series in a different way: by producing it in 1080p high definition to begin with. The CGI was mostly rendered at 480p and upscaled it seems, but unlike TOS and TNG, no remastering was needed when Enterprise was released on Blu-ray 12 years later.

Archer finds Trip and T'Pol in engineering (for some reason) working on detecting the Suliban stealth ship's trail. They're not having much luck though, as "Vulcan children play with toys that are more sophisticated" than the sensors on this ship.

This line reminds me of Diane Carey's infamous novelisation of the episode, which was a bit of a tragic end to her 15 year Trek tie-in literary career. I've never read it myself, but I've seen excerpts and it seems like she took a real dislike to the episode and made everyone secretly even more hostile to each other. The characters never miss a chance to roll their eyes or point out how ridiculous a line of dialogue is, with Trip reflecting here on how T'Pol's statement was an obvious lie. Does it have to be though? I mean a Nintendo Switch is more sophisticated than the ship we sent to the moon.

A couple of lines later Hoshi mentions that there were a few words mentioned by the Klingon that aren't in his language: "Jelik, Sarin, Rigel, Tholia". Archer asks if any of them sound familiar to T'Pol, and she replies that Rigel is a planetary system about 15 light years away. Carey's novelisation has Tucker thinking "Of course, Earth had known about the blue giant Rigel for generations [...] but this was the first he'd heard of settled planets there." Which is actually a reasonable way of dealing with the fact that a real world star got mentioned that our heroes should obviously know about.

The thing is, Rigel was one of the nouns they couldn't translate, so it's not an English name, it's the name the Klingon knows it by. Our Rigel is 860 light years from Earth, Voyager at maximum speed would take almost a year to get there, so Carey missed a chance to point out is that it can't possibly be the same star. It's like how there's a Rygel in Farscape as well, but it's not a blue giant, it's a tiny muppet.

Rigel VII (The Cage)

Rigel XII (Mudd's Women)

I didn't realise this until doing the research, but Trek's already been to the Rigel system a couple of times. The Doomsday Machine revealed that it's in the most densely populated region of the galaxy and I can believe it considering how often it's been mentioned in the franchise.

This time around though we're going to Rigel X, which is somewhere brand new. Turns out that the Vulcans had retrieved the navigational logs from Klaang's ship and discovered that he stopped at Rigel X before heading to Earth, and T'Pol just didn't mention this until now. I don't know what they expect to find there, but it's more than they're going find out here in the middle of empty space with their rubbish sensors.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, the Suliban have given Klaang a truth serum. We didn't typically get subtitles in Star Trek episodes at this point in the franchise, so this was a bit different.

They discover that Klaang was sent to meet a female Suliban called Sarin, but whatever they're looking for he doesn't have. She didn't give him anything.

Back on Enterprise, the crew assemble in the launch bay on the walkways above two beautiful shuttlepod props. This is a hell of a lot more impressive than the shuttlebay sets in previous Treks and I love those shuttlepods, inside and out. They absolutely nailed them.

This is the crew's first away mission, most of them are greener than season 1 Harry Kim, and T'Pol's treating them as such in their briefing. Trip mentions that she forgot to warn them about drinking the water, but apparently the water on Rigel X is fine!

They're going to go down to the Rigel trade complex and ask around if anyone's seen a seven foot Klingon. The language barrier shouldn't be a program as their translators have been programmed with Rigelian. So the prequel series with a linguist in the main cast took less than 40 minutes to say "Screw it, here's a device that lets you talk to the aliens". Poor Hoshi.

One thing that sets Enterprise apart from all the other ships in Star Trek (well, except for the Defiant) is that its shuttlepods drop down from the launch bay instead of flying out the back on their own. It's a nice touch to show that they're not just repeating everything that Next Gen and Voyager did. It's not as dramatic as firing them out of the side, Battlestar Galactica-style however.

Though hang on, wasn't the shuttlepod facing the other way around in the previous screencap? Never mind, not important.

Then we get a beautiful shot of Shuttlepod 1 landing on the trade complex. It doesn't look so impressive in a screencap, but it's very nice in action with all the snow in the air.

The crew's first stop being a trashy bazaar full of aliens from different planets says a lot about humanity's place in the universe right now. It took us decades to develop a ship that could get us this far, but this is an old facility and all these people have been visiting the place for years.

For them this is old hat, but for the crew this is a strange new world full of things humans have never seen before.

Hey is that a bit of Voyager's holodeck on that back wall? I've already seen that before! They've also got lots of chains hanging from the ceiling, more than you might think they'd need.

Seems like the landing party has split into pairs to search the place for clues. Or just wander aimlessly.

Trip freaks out slightly when a CGI bug lands on his shoulder, but a disapproving glare from T'Pol helps him reclaim his composure. Then he hears a woman screaming from behind a door and goes to look in through the window, but T'Pol pulls him away. So that's a mystery that'll never be solved. Trip is really playing the role of 'us' in this scene, reacting how a regular present day human would react. He's the companion to T'Pol's more experienced space traveller and she's coming off a lot better now that she really is the only one who knows what she's doing. Well except for Mayweather perhaps.

Meanwhile Reed and Mayweather have found themselves watching some butterfly dancers.

Dancers that eat butterflies I mean. It's nice to see Mayweather and Reed as bros again (for the first time since their first scene together), but right now they're utterly transfixed when they should be figuring out what their Klingon was up to. The two dancers were played by twin sisters who took nine hours to be painted in latex. Unfortunately the stuff didn't smell too great and the one in blue passed out and threw up. She thought it was totally worth it though.

Turns out that Reed and Mayweather were tricked here by a potato alien who just wants them to pay to meet the dancers. Reed's more interested in learning whether the butterflies are real or holographic, but Mayweather eventually remembers he's supposed to be the Tom Paris, with a bit of space experience under his belt, and successfully drags him away.

At this point T'Pol has found something to do, leaving Trip alone to continue being a bit of a clueless tourist.

He sees this woman with a kid who needs a respirator, and watches as she keeps taking it off him, leaving him gasping for air. Eventually he can't take it anymore and tells her to leave him alone, only for T'Pol to tell him it's none of his business again. This time though we get an explanation! Their species can only breathe methyl oxide until a certain age, then they're weaned off it. It's a bit of an inconvenient trait to evolve with, but it's better than looking like a potato I suppose.

This is a prequel and the protagonists were intended to be closer to flawed modern day humans than the morally flawless veteran space heroes of the other series. So I feel like I should be able to look at this scene and immediately think of what Kirk, Geordi or Dax would've done, and I can't really. This kind of situation has never come up in Trek before now as far as I know!

T'Pol tells Trip that humans need to learn when it's appropriate to interfere. Thankfully she doesn't mention anything about coming up with a directive. Now I'm wondering what he should've done here. Gone over and ask her what she's doing perhaps?

T'Pol tells Archer about an enclave on level 19 by the geothermal shafts where Klingons go for live food, but all he and Hoshi find down there is steam and pipes. The scenes on Rigel X were filmed at the Redondo Power Plant and Hyperion Water Treatment Plant, and this looks like it could be either one of them (though the production crew brought their own steam).

Archer and Hoshi do eventually spot some Klingons, but they don't answer back when they shout them. So Archer gets out his communicator and we get a nice close up.

I like how we're back to old-school flip open communicators like in the Original Series, but it's a bit weird how it has a much smaller antennae. Sure mobile phones were a thing even back in 2001, so a bulky device would've seemed more low tech than what viewers already owned, but this thing's actually a sat phone, it has to broadcast to space! The internet tells me that modern phones have a maximum range of around 45 miles, while the Original Series writers guide puts standard orbit at around 1000 to 7000 miles, so it's a powerful little gadget.

Unfortunately it's being jammed right now so he can't use it!

Hoshi thinks that they should go somewhere with more people around, and Archer has a great action hero reply, saying there's plenty of people right here. He pulls his pistol and tells her to stay behind him... and then they get grabbed by Suliban.

ACT FOUR

So they've gone and got themselves captured halfway through their very first mission. Nice job team. At least when Pike, Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway all got captured in their pilots they were up against godlike powers. Perhaps the captain of the ship should stop going on dangerous missions! I guess Mayweather and Reed are still free at least.

Archer is taken away to meet with someone, a woman called Sarin. Hey that's the Suliban Klaang was sent to contact! She looks human though.

Sarin wants to know about the people who took Klaang off his ship (I guess they've been telling people about that?) Archer tells her that the kidnappers looked like her people and he'd like her to give him Klaang back so that he can take him home.

Then she kisses him!

It turns out that Sarin has the power to learn if someone's telling the truth with a kiss. Which makes me wonder who wrote this, Rick Berman or Brannon Braga. Maybe they both came up with it at the same time, like that time Janeway and Torres had an epiphany about warp particles.

Sarin transforms to look like a Suliban (with some bad compositing) and stops trying to be sexy, as now it's time for exposition. The Suliban Cabal have been making it appear that one Klingon faction has been attacking another in order to throw the Klingon Empire into chaos. They're doing this because they're soldiers in a Temporal Cold War; taking orders from the distant future in exchange for upgrades to their DNA.

I like that they've put this scene in the very first episode, as it makes clear from the start that the Suliban are not an evil alien race. In fact even the Suliban Cabal isn't all bad, as Sarin's Suliban used to be part of it before deciding that the price of evolution was too high.

Sarin's happy to help them find Klaang but a Suliban vs Suliban shoot out breaks out and she dies shortly after freeing the others.

I like these energy beam effects by the way. They've gone a bit too far maybe with the heat haze, but they look suitably flashy and powerful. The huge explosion of sparks after every hit helps (though it's a bit comical how much the prisoners flinch each time).

So the good news is that they're out, the bad news is that they just lost their only lead. The other bad news is that this lift doesn't have any walls, so if they need to stay well clear of the sides.

Though this isn't the actual crew, these are their CG stunt doubles, created by Eden FX. It was apparently the first time regular Star Trek actors had been doubled with CG.  I like how CG Hoshi is holding onto to CG Archer's arm, because she's just been through a terrifying experience and they're currently hurtling up a pipe.

They get to the snowy landing platform, but Trip and T'Pol disagree on where they parked! Archer thinks for a moment... and then decides that he should probably listen to the Vulcan this time. Especially seeing as this is the planet where T'Pol's always right and Trip's always wrong.

Meanwhile Reed and Mayweather have made it back to Shuttlepod 1, where it's a lot warmer. It's got a fantastic looking interior as well, and it apparently all fit inside the exterior prop so there was no cheating. I love these shuttlepods, they're so much more detailed and interesting than the shuttles we've had in Trek so far. I mean I still prefer the iconic Type 6 shuttle from Next Gen, because it's cosy, but these are more impressive.

Unfortunately the Suliban must have a really good jamming device as the shuttle can't even contact the people basically right outside. It seems at first that T'Pol was wrong and had led them all the wrong way, but it turns out that they just couldn't see the shuttle from where they were standing.

It's interesting that they haven't even considered using the transporter to escape. I mean they can't, as their communicators are being jammed, but it's never even suggested.

The Suliban catch up and they get into another shoot out. Hang on, they're taking cover next to the lift they came up here on. Now I'm confused, did T'Pol lead them the wrong way or not? Because right now it looks like they only walked a few metres, then turned around and ran back again.

At least the mystery of the interference gets answered: it's apparently the snow storm that's jamming their equipment somehow. The snow was actually soap flakes, which probably wasn't ideal for the actors. You don't want to get that in your mouth.

Conditions get even worse when another ship flies overhead, kicking up all the snow and sending T'Pol skidding across the floor. They're really going all-out on this action scene! Firefights aren't Hoshi's strong suit, so Archer orders Trip to get her to the shuttlepod while he rescues T'Pol. He even grabs her fallen pistol to look more badass while he does it.

He doesn't hand it back to her though, nope this is something he's got to do on his own!

Anyway he gets shot, and Reed and Trip have to drag him back to the shuttlepod. So it's lucky these aren't the kind of weapons that vaporise you in one hit. They're also lucky that the shuttlepod is moderately phaser-proof, at least for puny hand weapons, and despite the loss of their starboard thruster they're able to take off and return to Enterprise.

Things are looking kind of bleak though. They've lost Klaang, they've lost Sarin, and they almost lost Archer! While he's unconscious T'Pol's taking command of Enterprise and we already know what she thinks they should do next. Seems like the Klingon Empire's doomed to fall into chaos!

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE

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TOMORROW

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's Broken Bow's epic conclusion! Is humanity really ready for space adventure or will they utterly fail to get their Klingon back and embarrass themselves in front of the Vulcans? Check back tomorrow to find out!

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