Looking in the Mirror

Most people know that I've looked down my nose at Enterprise for quite some time. When it started up four years ago, I really wanted to like it. Voyager had been so bad, and Enterprise had Scott Bakula, who I loved from Quantum Leap. I gave the show every chance to win me over. And there was this period right around the end of the first season where they had like four really good episodes in a row, and I thought -- well, this looks like a big improvement.

But then there was season two, which by and large was terrible. And I know the Xindi arc in season three won some people over, but I thought the whole season was a complete lost except for the episodes "Twilight" and "Similitude."

I have no problem walking away from a Star Trek series. Sure, I'm a Trekkie (I'm not one of those people that cares whether you call us "Trekkies" or "Trekkers" or "geeks" -- whatever), but I did give up Voyager for a while in the fourth season. I was finishing school I think, and doing plays steadily, and I thought Voyager basically sucked, so I quit watching it for about 2 months. But then I got my job at Decipher, and I needed to start watching again to keep current. (Eventually, I did catch up on all the episodes I'd missed.)

A similar story applies to Enterprise. I would have given up on this show long ago, except that I felt I needed to stay current for the sake of Star Trek CCG, which I was working on. Well, that all changed on January 24th. (I can personally vouch for what that British psychologist said, it is the most depressing day of the year.) Thing is, it was announced that Enterprise had been cancelled quite soon after that. So at that point, it became, "well, dammit, they've trapped me for this long -- can I really walk away now when there's only like 9 episodes to go?" So, I'm still watching.

Which brings me to this week's installment, the first of a two-part episode taking us to the Mirror Universe established on the original series and continued brilliantly in several great episodes of Deep Space Nine.

For Enterprise, it was pretty good. The reuse of footage from First Contact in the opening teaser was quite inspired. The re-done opening credit sequence was quite entertaining, and I was ready to stand up and cheer at not having to listen to that damn Patch Adams song again.

However, I found a lot to dislike as well. For one, I was rather annoyed that in many cases, the mirror universe versions of the characters were better, more fully-developed characters than the normal versions. Poor Travis Mayweather, for example, delivered more dialogue in this episode than he has in the last two seasons, combined. (I don't count the episode where he was possessed by an Organian, since it wasn't really him.) Mirror Archer's an exception. Regular Archer is a stubborn, pig-headed, stand-offish jerk that yells at his crew on a regular basis, so as far as I was concerned, the only difference between that and the mirror universe version was the haircut.

And even though I'm not normally part of the Continuity Gestapo on shows I watch regularly, I am bothered when Enterprise messes things up. Mainly because they do it so often, it's like they don't care. Some examples from this week, and my "fan-wank" attempts to explain them:

1) We saw the Tholians construct one of their webs in the original series. It took like hours to do. How'd they do it so damn fast in this episode? I suppose this was like 7 ships doing it instead of 2, so maybe there's some exponential math involved. And it's the mirror universe, so maybe they're just better at it.

2) "The Emperor's New Cloak" established that there are no cloaking devices in the mirror universe. Apparently, though, this doesn't count one the Suliban invented (and the Terrans stole) 200 years earlier though. Now, very geeky DS9 fans will know that even DS9 screwed up this bit of continuity, since the first mirror universe ep had decloaking Klingon ships even though five seasons later, they'd change their minds. Still, since they did a whole episode about there being no cloaking, you'd think they wouldn't go and write an episode where there was. It's not like the cloak even turned out to be a major story element. They could have snuck their way toward the Tholian installation using some other form of crap technobabble like they always use on Enterprise. So I guess we have to assume this Suliban device was a prototype or something, and the only one in the entire universe, and since it was destroyed on Enterprise, that's why the technology doesn't exist by the time of DS9. Or something.

Point being, I shouldn't have to work this hard to explain away sloppy fact checking. Fortunately, there's only a few episodes left to go before I can finally give my brain a rest.