Enterprise Flashback: Cogenitor

Through its first few series, the Star Trek franchise didn't have the best track record with stories about gender equality or transgender issues. But it hit a home run talking about slavery. So you couldn't be quite sure what you were going to get when Enterprise took on a cocktail of all these issues with "Cogenitor."

While researching a dying hypergiant star, Enterprise encounters the Vissians, a three-gendered race who amiably wants to explore with them. While Archer and the alien captain take off in a small craft (and Reed flirts with the Vissian tactical officer), Trip spends time with a member of the Vissians' third gender, an unnamed cogenitor. When he learns that it has as much mental capacity as Vissian males and females, yet is treated like chattel passed around by would-be parents, he takes it upon himself to educate the cogenitor and bolster its self worth and ambition. A culture clash inevitably results.

Let me start briefly with some things I don't hold against this episode: the way it fumbles around in ignorance of gender identification, pronoun usage, and the like. This story isn't trying to say that this cogenitor character is trans, and the way Trip fumbles around with "it" versus "she" doesn't feel to me like it's ill-intentioned by the writers in any way. This is years and years before "they" became the pronoun of choice for most non-binary people... and even if that had been in common use at the time of this episode, I think the writers might still have opted for "it" because of the real point the episode was trying to make.

That point is a good old-fashioned Prime Directive conflict (albeit, this being a prequel, before Starfleet had a Prime Directive). Gender oppression bordering on slavery is on the one hand, and a principle of respecting other cultures on the other. Is oppression an aspect of culture that should be "respected?" Trip emphatically comes down on the side of "no" -- though his reaction is less outrage about the society writ large than it is recognizing the plight of one individual. (Though I think making the struggle individual rather than collective helps the storytelling.)

Weirdly, Archer comes down on the side of "yes," and hops on a high horse to yell at Trip about what he's done. But I think it doesn't work well in this episode to have Archer arguing for a non-interference ideal that doesn't formally exist yet, especially when he hasn't been modelling one in any way. (Though at least he acknowledges that he hasn't.)

But I think there are other reasons the episode falters a bit. One is that the conflict is quite muted. These Vissians are just too friendly, presenting no kind of threat despite their advanced technology. The captain is as charming as can be. (And it's rather ironic that he's played by Andreas Katsulas, an actor normally known for playing villains -- or at least, more "gray area" characters.) The couple whose family plans are disrupted by Trip's interventions seem only minimally upset, making their objections without any hint that they'll do anything extreme to get their way. To make the story work, Archer basically has to side with the Vissians (and against his own character as previously depicted), otherwise there isn't any consequence at all.

Another issue I have with the episode is how much time it wastes on things that aren't enhancing the central issue. It's wild how much time is spent with Archer and the Vissian captain tooling around in their "shuttle ball" doing science, when the only relevant story point to come from the entire subplot is that Vissians learn quickly (a necessary contrivance to speed along the cogenitor's education). It's also wild how much time is spent on the Reed subplot -- though far less surprising for a show like Enterprise. The writers are always trying to be sexy if they can, so naturally when thinking about a three-gender society, they're going to focus on how that means sex can come without any risk of unwanted pregnancy. Lest you think that Reed is going to get any kind of meaningful "cultural exchange" out of his experiences, the subplot is immediately abandoned once it's clear he and the Vissian tactical officer are going to sleep together; the episode never checks in on him again.

All this unsatisfying time spend with Archer and Reed is time that might have been used to further elevate the story with Trip and the cogenitor. T'Pol and Phlox get scenes to argue in favor of not judging an alien society. But how much more texture might we have gotten from more scenes, perhaps with Hoshi Sato to come at it from a linguist's perspective, or with Travis Mayweather -- who has probably encountered more aliens than anyone else on this ship from his time on a freighter? Or how about giving us a scene with cogenitor after it has learned that Archer won't grant it asylum, articulating the cruelty of being forced back into a life that now feels too small?

Other observations:

• There's some extreme and effective lighting used for this dying star shining in through the ship's windows.

• We actually get to see a tiny bit of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" in this episode. So that must be part of Paramount's catalog.

"Cogenitor" does still do a reasonable job of making its points about gender equality. And the tragic ending, with Trip's remorse about what he's done, lands well. Still, the time-consuming and fruitless subplots with Archer and Reed steal time that could have been used to heighten the morality play. And Archer's sudden conversion to a belief in non-interference is... rich. I give the episode a B.