Enterprise Flashback: Fortunate Son

On Star Trek: Enterprise, the character of Travis Mayweather was created to be the experienced space traveler of the bunch, a young man who had grown up on an interstellar freighter. The first episode to really focus on the character, "Fortunate Son," centered on this history.

The Enterprise is sent to aid a freighter that has been attacked by Nausicaan pirates. But the freighter's acting captain has taken matters into his own hands, imprisoning one of the pirates. He only escalates from there, attacking the Enterprise and threatening to spark a diplomatic incident. Through it all, Travis Mayweather may be caught between his loyalty to Starfleet and his own history on freighters like this.

...except that he really isn't, at all. It seems like every opportunity this episode could take to create a meaningful moral quandary, it takes a less compelling path. Mayweather could feel true, deep sympathy for this freighter to a degree where he really questions his loyalty; but no, Archer asks about this, and Travis totally deflates any tension on this issue. The episode could make it really seem like the freighter crew has a point here; after all, these are pirates, and Nausicaans are a notably brutal (through sparingly used) alien in the Star Trek universe. But no, the only brutality we really see in the episode is torture inflicted on a prisoner by the acting freighter captain. The Nausicaans look tame, perhaps even innocent, removing any moral ambiguity in the story.

The fact that it's an acting freighter captain also robs the story of potency. This situation could have been that pirate activity is so relentless and hostile that even an old, grizzled veteran of the space lanes has decided enough is enough. Instead, that guy gets wounded to make room for a young hothead, whose lack of experience only further goes to paint him as the one "in the wrong" in this situation.

It all culminates in an action sequence where only characters we've never met before now are actually in any jeopardy -- and we've been manipulated to have such specific feelings about them that it's impossible to care about what happens. The episode is so devoid of suspense, in fact, that conspicuous efforts to inject some feel really awkward. When Mayweather delivers the climactic monologue in the final act, director LeVar Burton understandably wants to put some movement in the scene. But the answer can't be to have Mayweather abandon his post during a battle to walk around the bridge and speechify. The composer wants the music to escalate the emotions of the scene... yet strangely, the biggest action music comes after things have been resolved, accompanying the Nausicaans' withdrawal from the freighter.

When the story itself is a real dud, you have to draw entertainment from the accents along the way. There's interesting universe building that's different for Star Trek -- talk about the difference between slow warp and fast warp (and "enjoying the trip"). We learn of entire generations of families who spend their whole lives on the same interstellar freighter. It's an interesting and especially "primitive" look for Star Trek, even on the series that, being a prequel, is supposed to look more primitive than we're used to.

But there are also accent moments that don't work very well. Fans know that the claim that "Vulcans never lie" has always been itself a lie. But they don't lie for no reason, so T'Pol's decision to "lie by omission" to help a kid playing hide and seek feels like an odd choice for her character. Mayweather's more "insubordinate moments" (one even earning a "look" from a stunned Hoshi Sato) lead to no real repercussions.

Other observations:

• Vaughn Armstrong makes his first repeat appearance here as Admiral Forrest. Enterprise is just going to take a different approach than The Next Generation. Story structure on both shows often requires the captain to communicate with an Admiral back at Starfleet. But where The Next Generation would just cast a new actor every time, Enterprise is going to reuse the same one.

• Granted, there are only so many ways to show a shuttlepod being launched, and it's probably not worth the cost to render a lot of new CG of the same kind of thing. Still, it's already noticeable that we keep seeing the same shuttlepod launch in episode after episode.

I suppose the writers didn't want to go with a trope and have Mayweather really contemplate turning against Starfleet in this story. Yet while I appreciate not wanting to do the trope, they didn't really replace it with anything. That leaves "Fortunate Son" a boring episode. Good looking, as Enterprise always is, and with a few nice scenes. But boring overall. I give it a C.