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.

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.

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

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Rick Berman & Brannon Braga

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Director:

James L. Conway

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Air Date:

26-Sep-2001

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing the 629th story in the Star Trek franchise, Broken Bow! I figured I might as well, seeing as it's its 20th anniversary today.

But unlike all those other episodes, this story doesn't push the timeline forward. Trek had spent 14 years in the Next Generation era, but this took a huge jump 227 years backwards from Star Trek: Voyager to tell a story about Starfleet's early days. Prequels were in at the time, with Star Wars returning to cinemas with The Phantom Menace, so I suppose it wasn't a surprise that Trek would want to jump on that bandwagon. This was a real turning point for the Star Trek franchise though, as after the final Next Gen movie, Nemesis, the franchise spent the next 17 years stuck in its own past.

Personally I would've preferred to find out what happened next in the 24th century... and now I've got Lower Decks, Prodigy and Picard for that, so I'm happy. At the time though the franchise wasn't really inspiring much enthusiasm in people. Deep Space Nine had been over for a few years, Insurrection had been a real disappointment, and Voyager had kind of rolled past the finish line on fumes. Plus even though Trek hadn't exactly been heavily serialised, it had built up enough mythology during its Next Generation era to be daunting to some viewers. Enterprise had a premise different and interesting enough to bring some hype back to Trek and it promised to provide a jumping on point for people who didn't know the difference between a Cardassian and a Kazon. It definitely got me to jump back on board after skipping the last few seasons of Voyager... though I may have jumped ship again a few months later. It's not my favourite of the spin-offs to be honest.

I'll be going through the entire episode writing comments under screencaps, so this will contain MASSIVE SPOILERS. There may also be spoilers for episodes and movies from earlier shows as well; anything before 2001 is fair game. Though unlike the commentary tracks on the disc, I'll not be spoiling anything that comes after it.

Star Trek: Borg

Writer:

Hilary J. Bader

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Director:

James L. Conway

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Release Date:

1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm giving you a choice!

Star Trek: Borg is an interactive movie, but it's also a Star Trek story, so you can keep reading this article to get all the meandering, sci-fi trivia and nitpicks I put in a typical Sci-Fi Adventures review, or you can jump over to my other website, Super Adventures, and get a more focused, streamlined version which gets to the point. Stay here if you're a Star Trek fan who likes words, or go over there if you'd rather scroll past less text.

> CLICK HERE FOR THE SHORTER SUPER ADVENTURES STAR TREK: BORG REVIEW <

I really wouldn't recommend reading both articles. Well, unless you're into sitting through lots of the same content all over again, in which case I might have found the right story for you!

The game apparently came out in late 1996, just a few weeks before the movie Star Trek: First Contact. That film's all about the Borg so they had their synergy figured out there. That means that in grand scheme of Star Trek games, Borg comes after 25th Anniversary and A Final Unity, but before Starfleet Academy and Elite Force. It was released right at the start of the Trek game explosion that lasted until 2001, where every year would have three or more games, some of them not entirely terrible! In fact this wasn't even the only Trek game by Simon & Schuster that year, as they also released Star Trek: Klingon, which appears to be more of the same kind of thing.

The game will apparently run on modern systems if you download this ancient installer from the Internet Archive: Borgptch, but I don't really know how well it gets along with Windows 10 because I decided to run it in Windows 95 using the PCem PC emulator instead.

I usually only play for an hour or two, but this isn't the longest of games so I'm going to be playing all of it this time. So there's going to be HUGE SPOILERS for this game and maybe a few smaller spoilers for Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes like The Best of Both Worlds.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2-08: Necessary Evil

Episode:

28

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Writer:

Peter Allan Fields

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Air Date:

14-Nov-1993

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Deep Space Nine's Necessary Evil, by writer Peter Allan Fields and director James L. Conway. I'm mentioning those names because they happen to be the same ones you'll find in the credits for season one's Duet, which is maybe the best episode so far. In fact looking at the other stories they'd later work on separately (Way of the Warrior, For the Cause, In the Pale Moonlight for instance) it seems like neither of them really understood how to make a bad episode.

Though I did watch an episode of The Orville that Conway directed a few weeks back... and my research for that reminded me he did that episode of Next Gen where Wesley Crusher falls into a flower bed and is given a death sentence. And then dies. R.I.P. Wesley. Or maybe he doesn't, I don't want to spoil it.

But if you continue past this point you will find a huge variety of SPOILERS for Necessary Evil and perhaps a couple of earlier Trek episodes as well. It's a detective story based around a couple of mysteries, so you might want to be more careful with this one if you haven't seen it before/in a while.

The Orville 1-04: If the Stars Should Appear (Quick Review)

Episode:

4

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Writer:

Seth MacFarlane

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Air Date:

28-Sep-2017

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing some quick thoughts about The Orville's fourth episode, If the Stars Should Appear. Here's my first thought: the name sounds like it was found in a box of unused Star Trek episode titles, and I hope there's a few more left in there for later episodes because it's great.

This seems to be have been the second episode filmed, but it was held back to fourth because... I dunno, maybe it's terrible and they didn't want to scare people off early. It's not uncommon for series to film episodes out of order though, Doctor Who's always doing it, so I'm not going to read too much into it.

It's another episode credited to creator Seth MacFarlane, which means he's written four in a row now (no matter what order you put them in). I'm sure he'll let someone else have a turn eventually. The director's Trek veteran James L. Conway, and Memory Alpha tells me he's responsible for classics like DS9's Duet and Way of the Warrior, Voyager's Death Wish, Enterprise's Broken Bow and Next Gen's... oh shit he did Justice? The one where Wesley falls into the flowers? That's a contender for being the worst episode in the worst season of the entire run! Well, it was from season one; the poor guy was doomed from the start.

This is a quick review without that long recap I usually do, I'm just going to jump straight into SPOILERS and opinions, so you'll probably want to have watched the episode first before going any further.