Star Trek: Enterprise 1-01: Broken Bow - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the final third of Enterprise's pilot episode, Broken Bow. It's kind of weird how the series was just called Enterprise, without the Star Trek in front of it. It's like they were trying to distance it a bit from the brand so that people who'd already written the franchise off and decided that they weren't Star Trek fans would give it a chance.

Did the plan actually work? I mean everyone knows that no one was watching Enterprise, but was anyone watching it? Seems that about 12.5 million people tuned in to the first episode when it aired in the US, which was about average for a Trek pilot. It dropped by 26% by the next episode, but the series was still pulling in bigger numbers than the season of Voyager it was following on from.

You've probably noticed that I called it Star Trek: Enterprise anyway in the title up there. That's because I'm a renegade who plays by my own rules. Also that's what it's called on my Season One box set.

You're currently reading part three of a three-part article, so if you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO you should click one the appropriate link.

SPOILER WARNING: This will be full of spoils for the episode and earlier Star Trek stories, but everything that came after is safe.

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Previously, in Broken Bow:

The crew of Earth's first explorer ship has been having a bad couple of days. All they were trying to do is take a Klingon back home, but their Klingon got kidnapped by Suliban right off their ship and their sensors were too primitive to scan for a trail. They followed another lead to the Klingon's previous destination and met a Suliban who knew where he's being held... but she got killed almost immediately.

Also Archer got shot in the leg and now the ship's under command of their Vulcan spy who didn't want them to go on the mission in the first place!

And now, the conclusion:

Archer falls unconscious due to his leg wound and dreams of the time he flew his remote controlled spaceship model on the beach with his dad. Kid Archer keeps it flying for a bit, but then it crashes into the sand. Just like how Captain Archer's mission has crashed into the sand.

But his dad gives him some advice, saying "You can't be afraid of the wind. Learn to trust it." But... what does that even mean?

Then Kid Archer turns around and sees T'Pol there, looking sinister. She's infiltrated his sepia-tinted flashbacks!

ACT FIVE

Things are a lot more blue-tinted on Enterprise as Trip and T'Pol have been exposed to a protocystian spore and that means sexy decon gel rub time. I wonder if that's related to the sporocystian banjo player entity in the Voyager pilot Caretaker. I also wonder if the actors knew about this scene before they took the job.

It's one of those awkward scenes that Enterprise has sometimes where the plot forces the actors to strip off and stick their hands all over each other for the benefit of the audience, while the characters themselves are just getting on with the story. It's like the series has turned into its own porn parody, as it's impossible to take it seriously when it's doing this. I mean it's totally possible to pull something like this off if you do it right, especially if the characters actually have any interest in each other or what they're doing, but this is like someone drilled a spyhole in the decon chamber for us to peek into and I don't want to do that!

Trip feels like T'Pol has no business taking command as she's just an observer on this mission, while she argues that her rank is higher than his... it's like they got the order of their lines mixed up. It doesn't much matter what they think though, as she explains that she's going to call Soval, who'll speak to Forrest, and then they'll tell her she's in command.

So Trip tries another approach, saying that the people who shot them are an obvious lead to follow, and that Archer would want to see this through. By taking the ship back to Earth she'll just be proving that the Vulcans really are trying to impede humanity any chance they get.

Six hours later, Archer discovers that Phlox has stuck an eel on to his leg to cauterise the wound. They don't have fancy dermal regenerators in this time period so he's left limping around even after treatment.

T'Pol and Trip show up and Archer asks how long before they reach Earth. They reveal that they're actually tracking the vessel used by the Suliban who shot at them. The Suliban are still being stealthy, but she's improved Enterprise's sensors so that they're now presumably equal to Vulcan toys! Things go a lot better when the Vulcans are helping.

Archer wonders why she'd do that when she thinks this is a foolish mission. She explains that an acting captain is obliged to follow the captain's wishes. This checks out with some of the other Star Trek stories I've seen recently. He says she could've just done what she felt like though, so I guess the rules were different in this time period.

She still thinks it's a foolish mission though, as the Suliban are clearly more advanced than them and will effortlessly kick their ass just like last time.

Hey Archer's got a Zephram Cochrane statue! And it's in the pose that Geordi described in First Contact!

Now we're visiting Archer's quarters set, which is just as dull and grey as the rest of the ship. Don't worry, I'll continue to keep you updated like this whenever I come across another dingy, miserable-looking set.

Archer's trying to record his Enterprise starlog, but he keeps pausing to chat with his dog. They weren't using stardates at this point so we learn here that it's April 16th, 2151. They that's just 11 days after First Contact Day!

This is where Enterprise sits in the grand scheme of things by the way. It's set 105 years before its successor, Star Trek: Discovery.

Logs are usually a way for a character to give us some exposition and a little bit of insight into what they're really thinking, but Archer's only sharing his inner thoughts with Porthos. He's a bit confused about T'Pol's choice to continue the mission, as it's not like any Vulcan he's known to return a favour like this (I wonder how many other times he's saved a Vulcan's life). His instincts are still telling him to not trust her with what he's learned about the Temporal Cold War, so he's going to keep that quiet for now. It's totally going in his official log though, screw the timeline!

It's just occurred to me that the word 'starlog' might be a reference to Starlog magazine, which was still being published at the time, and focused heavily on Star Trek when it first started out. That's cool if it is.

Archer limps onto the bridge to see that the trail has gotten a bit messy. It seems like radiation has dissipated the Suliban ship's warp trail. But T'Pol hasn't finished helping them just yet, and when she discovers the decay rates don't match she starts calculating their trajectory. Archer's bright enough to realise what she's figured out: these trails are all from different ships!

Reed's finished getting their targeting scanners aligned by this point, so they're going in! Even though there's strong evidence that 14 ships just came this way and it only took one of them to kill their power the last time they met. Archer orders the weapons online and the hull plating polarised.

Enterprise doesn't have shields like the other ships in the franchise, instead it has special hull plating which gets stronger when you put power through it. It shows how utterly outclassed the ship is, as in the other series once the shields go down you're screwed. Enterprise, on the other hand, is screwed all of the time. At least that's the theory. In practice they may as well have done a find and replace on the word 'shields' and changed it to 'hull plating' after writing the script.

ACT SIX

Meanwhile, on the Helix, Future Guy is having a chat with his Suliban henchman and learns that the humans have followed them. The henchman assures him that he'll destroy Enterprise before they're able find their Helix.

This is the Helix by the way. We saw it way back at the end of act one, it's Future Guy's sinister base.

Oh, I should mention something about the viewscreen! Enterprise does have primitive technology compared to the other ships, but the viewscreen is basically what you get in the Original Series 100 years later. Which does make sense, as you can get a big screen and put a live camera through it now, and video chats are very much a thing in this particular year. The trouble is that it seems to contradict a line from Spock in the episode Balance of Terror which says

"As you may recall from your histories, this conflict was fought, by our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication."

Spock's talking about the Earth-Romulan War, which took place a century earlier... or about 15 years or so after Broken Bow. Doesn't really match up the level of technology Enterprise possesses, unless you come up with some creative justifications (there's no captives because there's no escape pods, no visual conversation because they didn't pick up the phone etc.)

To be fair though, was it likely that science fiction fans in 2001 would've accepted a starship with primitive atomic weapons and no visual communications?

Battlestar Galactica Miniseries

The answer is yes. In fact they could've gone a step further and stuck some actual projectile weapons on Enterprise instead of energy weapons!

We've seen so many examples of sci-fi universes with more primitive tech than Star Trek in video games (The Outer Worlds), TV series (The Expanse) and movies (Alien) now that it's only getting more disappointing how Enterprise's producers squandered their opportunity to create a very different feel to space travel at this point.

Anyway, Enterprise moves into the atmosphere of the nearby gas giant and experiences a bit of turbulence. Hoshi suggests that Archer recommend installing seat belts when they get home, which is kind of like a joke I guess. They should've written more jokes into the episode I reckon, it would've made the characters seem more like relatable modern day humans. In fact the other writers on the series actually did try to throw jokes into their scripts but they tended to get written out.

Then Enterprise gets shot at for the very first time! It's kind of scary, so they move back into the upper layer of clouds where the visibility's not so good and they can hide.

They've scanned the Helix and discovered that it's a built from hundreds of separate vessels held together magnetically. Which is cool, I don't think we've ever had that in Star Trek before. The ship's sensors are even good enough to locate Klaang on it, or at least someone who isn't Suliban. They could probably beam him right off the thing, but Archer doesn't have that much faith in their transporter.

Archer does have a lot of faith in the hull plating though as he takes the ship back down, shooting mysterious red energy bolts at the Suliban ships. They're described as being 'torpedoes' in the script, but they don't look like the spatial torpedoes the ship's firing later in the season. In fact I don't think we ever see the mysterious red energy bolts again.

30 seconds later Enterprise has lost her ventral plating and forward plating, but Reed manages to fire a grappler at one of the Suliban ships and reel it in! The pilot bails out and I think he's got a parachute on, but the poor guy's got a long long way to fall. Meanwhile Enterprise escapes back to the upper cloud layer with their prize.
 
I realise I might be coming across as a bit negative in this review so I should mention that I really like how the ships move in these effects shots. Enterprise has some proper weight to it, which isn't always guaranteed, especially with CGI. I also like how cocky and inventive their plan is; very different to a typical Starfleet starship strategy.

A little while later Mayweather is trying to teach Archer and Trip how their new toy works, but Trip's struggling a little to remember it all. It's rare for Trek characters to actually have to put in some work to understand how to fly an alien ship. Maybe T'Pol should be the one to go instead, she's great at remembering things.

Enterprise's bridge was inspired by the design of the Defiant's bridge in DS9 with the single helm console at the front, the consoles along each side for science and weapons etc., and a table at the back. Unfortunately this table is the closest the crew have to a briefing room and it's very cramped back here.

You know, I'm starting to think that dark blue/purple uniforms against a grey background in a dark room wasn't the best choice the producers could've made.

Battlestar Galactica Miniseries

But then I think back to Battlestar again and it works there somehow. Granted Battlestar is a more modern series (by two years), but there's something different about the design and cinematography that makes it more pleasant for me to look at. I mean at the times when when the camera's not shaking everywhere.

The Enterprise crew don't have a lot of time to carry out their daring plan as the Suliban have started firing proximity charges into their cloud layer. This has officially become a submarine movie... which is a good match for their submarine bridge I suppose. T'Pol suggests calling for assistance from the Vulcan ship two days away, but Archer's convinced they have to do this alone! Also he tells her that her concern is considered an emotion, which is no doubt going to be the first in a long line of occasions where he annoys her like this.

Reed pulls out a couple of cases with some new toys for them to use on their rescue mission. There's a device that reverses the polarity, and there's these:

They're called phasers phase pistols! They've got two modes, stun and kill.

Okay Enterprise, do you even want to be a prequel? What are you even doing here? It's like the producers weren't sure whether to make this 100 years before the Original Series or 10 years, and decided to go with both at the same time.

Here's the really dumb thing though, why are they breaking out the new guns now? What was stopping them from bringing them to Rigel X? They could've shot all those poor Suliban with the stun setting instead of using their deadly plasma pistols! Was there a time lock on the case that stopped them from opening it until a certain number of days into the mission? Were they hiding them from T'Pol? Did Reed forget where he'd put the box?

Archer and Trip are the ones taking the Suliban pod on this rescue mission, because as captain and chief engineer they're the most expendable. Also Archer's leg is feeling a lot better now for some reason! Though I feel like they have unreasonable expectations about how many 7ft Klingons can fit in the pod with them.

Meanwhile on Enterprise, they're finding that the depth charges are getting a lot closer now. They could change their position, but then Archer would have no way to find them. I'm assuming they already did change their position once before launching the pod, they haven't just been sitting there in the same place listening to the charges get closer this whole time.

The two of them still don't know how to work their pod so well, so Archer's having to use his hand scanner instead of the sensors. I don't know if his gadget's been named yet, but they don't generally call them tricorders in this series. Maybe these ones only record two things.

Trip's the one flying here instead of Archer, which makes me feel like they hadn't worked out Archer's backstory yet. They've got Trip figured out though, as he manages to bump into something again.

They dock the pod with the Helix and creep into an empty corridor, where Archer spies a Suliban to shoot. So now they know that the stun setting works... assuming he survived.

Back on Enterprise, they're getting hammered by depth charges and now the bridge is filling up with smoke. They often used liquid nitrogen for these effects so it may have been really cold in there at this point.

T'Pol decides to move the ship... but she's going to need that super hearing of Hoshi's that she's been mocking.

Meanwhile Trip finds and releases Klaang and gets thrown across the room for his trouble. They convince him to come along, despite not speaking his language, but they can't convince him to stop yelling. Hey why didn't they think of bringing a translator programmed for Rigelian, seeing as Klaang visited the place himself and met with Sarin. Maybe he can't speak it, but it'd wouldn't have cost them anything to try.

Archer plants the polarity reversing device and waits right next to it instead of running to the pod with the other two.

The device goes off and does exactly what it was meant to, breaking the magnetic connection between all the ships, causing the Helix structure to come apart. Problem is, it does it while Archer is standing inside the structure, so Trip's pod is currently drifting away from him. I don't think he thought this plan through.

Man, what is it with captains in pilot episodes messing this up? When you're deconstructing an array you've got to set a timer that gives you long enough to escape home first!

Archer tells Trip to get back to the ship and then come back for him, which makes sense considering how much room Klaang is taking up in the tiny pod cockpit.

ACT SEVEN

Enterprise has moved pretty far from its former position now, but T'Pol is counting on Hoshi's hearing skills to find their Suliban pod when it returns. That means we get a good look at her version of Uhura's iconic earpiece. It's not as iconic.

We also get to see T'Pol staring into her version of Spock's viewer. Also not as iconic.

Between the two of them they manage to locate Trip and bring him in, and T'Pol says something nice to Hoshi in Vulcan (in a callback to that earlier scene). I'm glad the two of them don't hate each other anymore! Working together in a crisis has really pulled the crew together. Well, it's pulled T'Pol closer to them anyway, the rest of them were already getting on fine with each other.

Back on the Helix, Archer decided to follow his scanner to the most interesting place on the Helix, which took him through an epilepsy-triggering airlock. On the other side he found a room where time works weirdly. He can see a ghostly image of himself move his arm before he moves it himself. So he's presumably moving his arm to match the premonition, because if he knows what he's going to chose then he can make a different choice and change the future.

It's a really well done effect by the way, as only Archer is blurred like this, not the background. It was an expensive effect too so they stopped doing the future echoes in later episodes.

But just when you thought T'Pol was in sync with the crew now, she and Trip end up having another argument, this one a lot more public. They should take this to the ready room or something.

T'Pol is thinking like a logical Vulcan and has decided that now they've got the Klingon it's time to bring him back to Kronos without taking any further risks. Trip, on the other hand, is thinking like an emotional human and wants them to rescue Archer. I guess extreme loyalty to a captain isn't a universal Vulcan trait.

Back on the Helix, Archer is being tormented by an invisible Suliban with a great voice who knows his name. The guy actually opens the door to let Archer out though, as he's certain he doesn't know anything that could spoil their schemes, or else he wouldn't have tried to grab Klaang. Archer decides to prove him wrong by talking about the plan to cause chaos in the Klingon Empire and name-dropping the Temporal Cold War. Nice work Archer, now he's got to kill you.

A few seconds later the Suliban has Archer's phase pistol and he's aiming it at his chest. Though he just warned Archer not to fire it in here so he's not likely to pull the trigger himself. That would be pretty dumb.

Oh hang on, it turns out he is dumb enough to fire it in here.

Archer gets an ultra slow-motion preview of the beam hitting him, much slower than the future echo of him looking down, and then decides to just move out of the way.

The beam interacting with the wall causes a shock wave which flings the Suliban across the room. The idiot. Then Archer takes something out of his pocket and throws it, causing the Suliban to shoot the wall again and cause a second shock wave. Seems like they haven't gotten around to genetically enhancing his brain yet.

But Archer's not out of the woods yet as the Suliban catches up and they have a fight inside the epilepsy airlock. Aww he never got to chat with Future Guy!

Enterprise comes flying in to the rescue, as once again Trip's managed to talk T'Pol around, but her plan to dock their ship with the Helix doesn't seem all that logical. They're going to be even easier to shoot at once they're parked in once place for a few minutes!

Back on the Helix, Archer's still fighting his Suliban arch-nemesis and is struggling to keep him from reaching over and picking up the phase pistol again. He's got his arm pinned...

... so he just bends his arm over and grabs the pistol with the back of his hand!

That's a nice looking floor by the way. They went to a lot of effort there choosing some fancy lenticular flooring considering we only get a good look for a few seconds.

Archer punches him and then decides to run away. It was the wrong choice however, as the Suliban gets onto his feet and shoots him in the back.

But Archer gets beamed away mid shot! If Enterprise had taken a millisecond longer Archer would've been dead, so that's a pretty incredible coincidence.

This was apparently the hardest effect to pull off in the whole episode, though I'm not sure why. It looks good though! Nice corridor set too.

Man, Scott Bakula has an amazing reaction to being put through the transporter here. Especially as it's also a 'I saw a beam going right through me as I was being transported' reaction. I didn't see anyone flick a switch on the gun though so it was probably still on the stun setting the whole time.

The transporter actually worked pretty well. Just think of how much time they could've saved if they'd simply beamed Klaang up in the first place! And Archer would've still had his phase pistol.

To change the subject entirely for a moment, VHS was pretty much dead in the US when Enterprise made it to home video, but it was apparently still barely holding in the UK, as I actually own this episode on tape. The season was sold on 13 separate tapes and inside each box there was a fold out page filled with facts and trivia for the two hours of Enterprise you'd just bought.

See, every inch of it is full!

The idea was that people would collect each of these pages inside a metal Logbook binder and this would inspire them to buy every tape so that they didn't miss out.

Everyone had the internet in 2002, so this tiny leaflet was adding basically zero value to the package. ▲ FACT

Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up now is because the fact sheet reveals that Captain Jonathan Archer was the first human to ever be transported! He wasn't though, it's wrong about that, it was some other guy years earlier (and I'm not even talking about time travellers).

The page also reveals that the episode takes place in 2151 (it does) which puts it 113 years before The Original Series (close, it's 115 years before The Man Trap). Plus it claims that Enterprise™ is the first human ship capable of travelling 5 times light speed (it's not). It can travel warp 5, which is at least 125 times light speed, so there's a big difference. If the NX-01 was that slow it would've taken the ship three seasons just to reach Rigel X.

In fact the ship's so fast that it reaches Kronos in the very next scene.

Okay this is a legit good looking shot.

I don't know if it's CGI, but it's definitely not a reused matte painting from Next Gen as this looks nothing like what we've seen of the planet in the past. Not that it looks wrong, it just looks like a different place.

Archer, T'Pol, Hoshi and Klaang walk in through their giant doors and a guy comes over with a knife. It's okay though, he only want to slice Klaang's palm. Why does it always have to be the palm? That seems like a really awkward and painful place to cut if all you're doing is drawing some blood! I bet that knife wasn't even sterile.

They put some (red) blood into a tube and take it to a nearby machine.

A few buttons presses later we get this CG close-up which reveals the secret data hidden in Klaang's blood that he had no idea about! That's a nice twist, plus it's in line with what we've seen people do in Next Gen.

The Klingon walks over to Archer next, says a few threatening things, then walks off. Hoshi tells her captain that he doesn't want to know what he said. Fortunately this is Klingon, a language which basically exists for real at this point, so we can actually translate what the guy was saying! Except we can't, because it was gibberish. At least that's what people who can actually understand Klingon say. But if you put each word into Bing's Klingon Translator one at a time it says:

"If now death shoulder battle"

The text commentary says that he's using an unusual dialect, and that he's probably saying something like "Leave now or die".

Well first contact with the Klingons went surprisingly well. Sure they were jerks to Archer but it doesn't seem like we've got decades of war to look forward to. It's a bit of an anti-climax actually, to show an event people already knew about and then retcon it to give it a less dramatic outcome. It's like if someone made a Pearl Harbor movie where WWII ends just in the nick of time, or a Titanic movie where the ship dodges the iceberg.

Wow Archer really does have to duck down in his ready room to avoid cracking his head on the beam.

He's brought Trip and T'Pol here so he can tell them the news before the rest of the crew hears it: a transport is on its way to pick T'Pol up because Enterprise is going straight into its mission of exploration! They'll need to get the hull patched up a bit, but he doesn't expect anyone else will be shooting at them.

But after Trip leaves, Archer talks to T'Pol in private. He's held a grudge against the Vulcans for so long for not helping his dad, but this mission would've failed without a Vulcan's help, so perhaps it's time for him to get past his preconceptions. I guess he's come to the realisation that sometimes Vulcans can be helpful, if Trip shouts at them enough.

Archer started off trying to prove humans are ready to do this on their own and has ended up proving that they can do it even better with others. That's a really Star Trek message. But he can't just ask her superiors to let her stay, because that'd make it look like he needed her! T'Pol calls him on his pride, he accepts she's probably right, and then she agrees to talk to her superiors... with his permission.

So hang on, she's only staying because he's admitted she's useful? What's in it for her? I understand why he wants her, but why would she want to stay here? Is it just because he saved her life?

And the episode ends with one final shot of Kid Archer and his dad flying their model spaceship. We didn't even get to see the ship going to warp!

But right before that, Captain Archer tells Mayweather to set a course for the nearest inhabited planet. Mayweather points out there's an ion storm on the way, and Archer tells him that they can't be afraid of the wind. Hey that's what his dad said!

You know who should be afraid of the wind though? People whose ships can be wrecked by an actual storm! What the hell is Archer thinking? Has he not seen Court Martial or Mirror Mirror? Ion storms don't mess around. Also I feel like the closest inhabited planet to Kronos is probably not the ideal world to start with, seeing as it's probably inhabited by Klingons.

And the episode ends with an instrumental version of "Where My Heart Will Take Me". Most episodes end with "Archer's Theme" but this one's special. Man this tune's so trite, tepid and sappy.


CONCLUSION

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It's impossible to overstate just how utterly irrelevant the title Broken Bow is to this episode. They might as well have called it Starfleet Medical or Level 19.  Unless there's supposed to be a pun in there with an Archer sending a Klingon from a Bow to his destination.

Broken Bow is basically a story about a plucky crew of naive astronauts led by a slightly prejudiced captain trying to prove to their Vulcan parents that humanity has the right stuff to go on weekly space adventures. So it's a little like Encounter at Farpoint, except they're not trying to prove their morality, they're trying to prove they're competent enough to do Star Trek at all. And the answer is... no, humanity isn't quite good enough yet to pull off a mission like this. Not without help from a Vulcan and a Denobulan. But then that's been the source of all Archer's prejudice again the Vulcans from the start: they've been helping humanity for a century, but not helping enough!

I guess the episode's also a little like Emissary, as it's about the protagonist getting over their anger and resentment and moving forwards. It's strange to have a Trek captain being openly disdainful against an alien race that isn't the Ferengi, and even stranger for the episode to apparently resolve it by the end. Archer straight up tells T'Pol that it's time he moved past that, so I guess they're good now!

One of the recurring elements of Berman-era Star Trek is that each new series features a member of a major villain race from a previous series on the main cast. Next Gen features a Klingon, DS9 a Ferengi, and Voyager a Borg. Enterprise is a prequel though, so they worked backwards from Spock, making the Vulcans the antagonist species. A lot of fans weren't impressed by this, because we like Spock and Tuvok! But these are Vulcans of 100 years earlier in a very different situation so I have no trouble buying that they'd be like this. That might be because I'm a DS9 fan though (that series really had an issue with Vulcans for some reason).

On the other hand, the personal conflict between T'Pol and the rest of the crew just doesn't work for me here. She's hostile and condescending to the rest of the crew from the moment she comes aboard, but not in a Spock and McCoy kind of way where each side has a valid point of view. And this interpersonal conflict that the writers were so desperate to bring back to Trek is resolved by Trip saying "C'mon, you owe the captain!" over and over until she gives in.

The rest of the characters were pretty decent though I thought. My fuzzy memories of Enterprise say that Mayweather and Hoshi barely show up and Captain Archer is an angry and incompetent captain, but everyone got something to do here and Archer was very likeable. I mean that's Scott Bakula's default state, so it's what you'd expect really. The characters are a bit bland right now, but they come across more like the DS9 crew than the Voyager crew; more down to Earth and relatable. The producers really should've known better than to have a translator on the main crew though as she's made redundant by a handheld gadget halfway through the story! Though she does have the other job of being scared all the time, because this is a darker and creepier kind of Star Trek.

It's also action Star Trek. The writers wanted to write character drama but this has far more phaser shoot outs and space battles than any of the other pilots. Even the Original Series wasn't as much of an action-adventure as this. It mostly works here I think, unlike their blatant attempts to sex things up. Star Trek's been kind of sexed up from the moment a fake green slave girl started dancing for Captain Pike, but it's rarely felt as forced and awkward as this. The decon gel scene is as gratuitous as Star Trek Into Darkness's "Turn around," scene, except it keeps going and going. Be sexy, sexy's fine, just don't make viewers feel embarrassed for the actors!

But it is legit Star Trek, I feel. They got most of the details right. It's even got the sci-fi weirdness that all the pilots have, in the form of the Temporal Cold War. Though there's three downsides I can see with the concept: first, all the factions involved are in the distant future so the heroes are completely isolated from them, second, it adds some doubt that any of the previous Trek series even happened. Maybe Archer averted the Klingon war here and changed history! Fortunately Star Trek: Nemesis hit cinemas the next year, proving that Captain Picard hadn't been erased... and that's the only time you'll ever read 'fortunately' and 'Star Trek: Nemesis' next to each other like that. The third downside: there isn't actually a sci-fi dilemma to go along with it.

Other than the temporal war this episode is all prequel and it does a fairly good job of setting up a status quo where humanity does have interstellar space travel, but it hasn't yet had the ability to really get out into the galaxy and be a part of things. Trouble is some of it feels like it's happening a century before Kirk, some of it less than a generation. Enterprise really looks like a fragile primitive ship that could get torn apart by a strong space breeze, the crew seems suitably clueless and awed, and the computer doesn't talk, but most of the familiar Trek tech seems to be there already. They've got phase pistols instead of phasers, charged hull plating in place of shields, a grappler instead of a tractor beam, and a transporter in place of... actually that one's just straight up exactly what they have in later series.

Here's the biggest problem I have with the episode though: the style of it. Sometimes the series looks like it was shot in black and white and colourised, other times it looks like they forgot to colourise it. I know it's supposed to be a prequel to a series that was made at the dawn of colour TV, so I should expect it to look a bit 50s, but c'mon. The look of the series in general just isn't working for me, and I can't quite pin down why that is. It torments me that I can't describe what it is about the cinematography that I don't like, and whenever I think I've figured it out I suddenly think of another series that has done the same thing and made it work. Real life submarines have people in dark blue jumpsuits sitting in front of grey walls in gloomy rooms like this and they look great!

Actually my biggest problem with the episode is the music, but I've already mentioned that. I'm open to lots of kinds of music in my Star Trek, from James Horner to the Beastie Boys (the 22 minute Star Trek: The Motion Picture recut with Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy soundtrack is great), but this particular kind of cringy soft rock really doesn't appeal to me. It's funny how the episode overall is trying to be grittier and more modern, but the music is the opposite of that.

I'm sure I've come off as kind of negative the whole way through this review and saying that I think Broken Bow is the second worst of the live-action Trek pilots probably isn't going to help, but despite that I do actually like the episode! In fact I like all the pilots... not counting The Man Trap (which isn't a real pilot anyway). The pacing is a bit uneven, but it's pretty entertaining and the ending is plenty dramatic. I like how it's always moving forward and the crew have to continually adapt to face new problems and find a way back on the trail instead of just dwelling on a mystery for hours.

Prequels aren't always what you want, but in my opinion Broken Bow makes a good case for Enterprise's existence.

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COMING EVENTUALLY

Sci-Fi Adventures is going to take a two month break now because I need the rest. But when it comes back I'll probably be covering more Babylon 5, seeing as I'm still trying to finish season 5.

Anyway, thanks for reading and leaving comments. You can leave another comment right now if you want, or even drop by the Discord.