Enterprise Flashback: Desert Crossing

Hollywood is full of recognizable faces. You see them pop up again and again in countless movies and television shows: never in a starring role, but usually elevating whatever they're in. Often, you don't even know their name. But there are an elite few "working actors" who are more widely known -- like Clancy Brown, who guest-starred on Enterprise in Desert Crossing.

When Trip repairs the damaged ship of an alien leader named Zobral, he and Archer are invited to Zobral's planet. But when a rival faction thinks they've taken Zobral's side in a local conflict, Trip and Archer are driven into the desert, where they must fight to survive until Enterprise can rescue them.

It feels like the central theme of this episode is to demonstrate why the Prime Directive, which doesn't exist at this point in the Star Trek timeline, is a pretty good idea. Because Archer recently got his crew involved in alien politics, now someone on a nearby planet is coming to them all for help. T'Pol even explains to Hoshi how just visiting a factionalized society might create the appearance of taking sides, in one of the better bits of advocacy for a Prime Directive that Star Trek has delivered.

T'Pol doesn't ever get to say "I told you so" to Archer, though (even if Trip notes, not in so many words, that she would). That's probably just as well, because it doesn't seem like Archer has bought into "non-interference as standard policy" by the end of the story. Despite the personal ordeal he's been through, he notes that while Enterprise isn't out in space to fight wars, this seemed like a cause worth fighting for.

I think it would have made for a stronger episode if that detail wasn't so definitive. Archer is right, it seems pretty clear-cut in this struggle who's "good" and who's "bad." A Prime Directive doesn't seem as appealing in such a situation. But the episode doesn't want to spend time making the conflict morally ambiguous. It wants us to watch a game of "shirts and skins" lacrosse. Strange music (for Star Trek) accompanies slow-motion shots of shirtless Scott Bakula and Connor Trinneer twisting and sweating under a hot sun. I'm not saying it doesn't have its appeal, but it's not really storytelling.

As is often the case on Enterprise, though, what the episode lacks in subtlety it makes up for in production. This episode uses extensive location filming, several one-off sets, new "desert camo" uniforms, and more. At the moment of greatest danger for Archer and Trip, director David Straiton puts the focus on the actors by letting them perform a nearly four-minute scene in a single, unbroken take.

We have to talk about Clancy Brown, though. Sure, at some point, you gotta get him on Star Trek. I'm just not sure this was the best choice of episode. Though this alien society has Middle Eastern vibes -- and perhaps Moroccan most specifically -- the leaders we see are (of course) white guys. And here comes Clancy Brown, boisterously over the top with this huge, weird accent that might be Slavic or something. He's a skilled enough character actor that somehow, I do believe a guy like this is a real person. Somewhere. I just kinda wish it wasn't here. Or maybe I wish that all these aliens looked less human and had more going on than a simple doodle on their chins -- maybe then it would feel less like uncomfortable cultural stereotyping?

Other observations:

• Once again, we're teased with pleasure planet Risa at the beginning of an episode, only to switch venues to a different story.

• Poor Trip is having a rough run.

Once this episode actually gets to the fight for survival, it picks up momentum. It's a particularly good character story for Archer and Trip. T'Pol gets a good speech about what will one day be the Prime Directive. But it takes a long time to get to all that, and the alien race's appropriated culture and slapdash conflict don't help. I give "Desert Crossing" a B-.

Where There's a Will, There's a Harper

When I blogged about The Substance, I seeded a minor cliffhanger by noting that I'd watched it the day after seeing a different movie that I deeply loved. I won't draw out the suspense any longer: that movie was Will & Harper.

This movie is a documentary about Harper Steele, a transgender woman who has recently come out to her friends. Because she used to work as a writer on Saturday Night Live, one of those friends happens to be Will Ferrell. He wants to support his long-time friend... but has his own complicated feelings to reconcile. Yet because they are good friends, Will and Harper feel like they can put any big questions right out there in the open. They decide to do so on a two-week, cross-country road trip.

I felt complicated feelings of my own watching Will and Harper, so much so that I'm having a hard time figuring out where to start in praising it. But I think I'll go with: I was surprised and impressed by how real it ultimately felt to me. It did, after all, have two major potential strikes against realism baked right in.

First was the presence of the documentary cameras. The two central subjects of this movie know they're being filmed at every moment. So does every person they come in contact with. When people know they're being filmed, and know that the things they're saying will be seen by others, people often change their behavior.

One of the premises of this movie's road trip is that in her former life, Harper loved criss-crossing the country, visiting dive bars, hanging out with strangers, and perhaps flirting with dangerous situations -- all things that now felt fundamentally impossible to her. Could she reclaim any of that as part of her new self? You might well question how genuine any of that would feel when Harper is traveling with a recognizable celebrity (one form of protection) and surrounded by film cameras (a second). Anyone these two encounter on their trip will behave differently too... right?

Well -- the movie confronts that issue. In one sequence, Harper heads into a dive bar after asking Will to hang back outside. The cameras are still there, but the celebrity is not. Later in the movie, the presence of cameras and a celebrity doesn't stop the crowd at a Texas steak house from being massively shitty. It's a powerful, disheartening moment, but I think it's good for the movie to admit that acceptance of transgender people is not universal. (Far from it.)

The second baked-in element that could have undermined the realism is the fact that Will and Harper are career comedians. Finding the funny is in their nature, and so is diffusing serious topics with a laugh. Sure enough, there are moments throughout the movie where a very deep discussion is headed off with a flippant comment. And yet -- I actually find that when funny people do break past the jokes, things get really profound. I certainly found that to be the case here. When Will and Harper's journey culminates at a run-down house in rural California, the discussion of why they're there, and what it means to Harper, is deeply moving.

Not all the profound moments are about Will or Harper, either. A visit with Harper's sister reveals the most beautiful affirmation you could ask for from a family member. A chance encounter with a retired therapist at the Grand Canyon exposes her profound regret at the way she once handled a patient during her career. And a running gag about a "road trip song" that Will and Harper ask Kristen Wiig to write for them pays off charmingly over the end credits.

Despite the specter of falseness that I thought might hang over the movie, I found it to be nothing but genuine. It evoked in me powerful memories of my own coming out as gay, even as the movie made me think that coming out as transgender would be infinitely harder. And while it sucks that a documentary about a transgender person should innately feel like an "important film," the fact is: it does. Right now especially.

Quite simply, I loved Will and Harper. I was so deeply moved that it lands in the #1 spot of my Top Movie List for 2024.

Enterprise Flashback: Fallen Hero

Can a Vulcan experience something as emotionally charged as hero worship? That's the question at the heart of "Fallen Hero."

Enterprise is dispatched to retrieve a Vulcan diplomat being expelled from a post on an alien world. The Mazarites say ambassador V'Lar has committed a crime -- an assertion V'Lar does not protest. But she is clearly hiding something from Captain Archer, and this secret becomes critical when Mazarite ships pursue Enterprise. Through it all, T'Pol must reckon with the apparent downfall of a once-great Vulcan.

I'm often down on Star Trek stories that are too much about the guest stars. This episode isn't that; T'Pol is very much the central character. Still, the guest star in this story matters a lot, and the episode would be a lot worse otherwise had she not been cast so well. Fionnula Flanagan appeared once each on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and gets another weighty role here as Vulcan ambassador V'Lar. Flanagan plays the character as recognizably Vulcan, while being a great deal more open than you'd expect. She shakes hands. She thanks Hoshi for giving up her quarters. Where most Vulcans can be described as "cold," this character feels "warm."

Yet this writing of the character creates some tension in the storytelling. V'Lar is diplomatic and curious, as an ambassador should be. Yet this is at odds with the secretiveness necessary to drive the plot forward. She withholds information from Archer until Enterprise is thoroughly outgunned. She believes the Vulcan hype about how inept and untrustworthy all humans are -- even though she's coming fresh from an assignment about how not all society on a planet can be judged by the actions of a few. Basically, V'Lar behaves as a plot contrivance, and I think only feels realistic because of Flanagan's portrayal.

Jolene Blalock is gradually getting better at portraying Vulcan subtlety. Here, T'Pol doesn't want to admit how shaken she is that V'Lar has become tarnished in her eyes. She doesn't want to admit how disappointed she is that this "hero" doesn't seem to remember meeting her before. She doesn't want to be thought of as an advocate for humans, but when pressed, she very much is. It's a nice batch of changes for the character.

When it comes to Archer, though, I think the series has now dug a hole so deep that he'll never get out of it. When he decides he's had enough of V'Lar's secrecy and so is taking her back to Mazarites -- yes, it does seem like an action I could imagine any previous Star Trek captain taking. But where I feel Kirk would do it with swagger, Picard with cold firmness, Sisko with righteous fury, or Janeway with stern disappointment... Archer just comes off whiny. He simply gets cranky when people don't take him seriously, then behaves so childishly that you can't take him seriously

Speaking of Kirk, there's a rather Kirk-like bluff at the end of this episode, in which our heroes stall for time by pretending that V'Lar has been injured in the Mazarite attack. But it's Phlox who gives the masterful performance, acting with anguished outrage when the Mazarite boarding party appears to murder the ambassador. It's a fun moment for the character.

Other observations:

• This episode begins with what will be a running joke about trying to get to Risa for shore leave. T'Pol thinks the crew needs to have some sex -- despite this being the most overtly sexualized Star Trek ever.

• Trip packed a Hawaiian shirt for his posting on Enterprise?

• This is a fun exchange between Archer and Trip: "It's called a warp 5 engine." "On paper!"

The "mystery" of this episode -- what V'Lar was really up to and why -- feels a bit strained. But some nice performances (plus a deepening of Vulcans generally and T'Pol in particular) help the story out. I give "Fallen Hero" a B-.

Substance Abuse

These days, I don't usually blog about entertainment I didn't particularly enjoy. But I'm making an exception for a movie that, while I disliked, I appreciated in a few unusual ways.

The Substance is a movie from writer-director Coralie Fargeat. Demi Moore stars as faded star Elisabeth Sparkle, who has been forced out of the movie business, and now even out of her long-running aerobics television show. She's feeling the full weight of her age, but is given a possible solution when she hears about "the substance," a series of injections that promises her a younger, more beautiful version of herself.

I had previously heard about this movie's unsubtle-but-apt critique of Hollywood's treatment of older women. I think I expected some sort of Jekyll and Hyde type of story. Instead, I found myself watching one of the most powerfully gory, graphic body horror films to hit the mainstream in the past several years.

The Substance has its supporters, including inside the Academy, which bestowed five Oscar nominations on it -- including Best Picture. In one way, it's not a surprise; you'll never lose money betting that Hollywood will shower awards on movies about Hollywood, even when they take the form of a scathing critique. But let's put a pin in that for the moment.

I found The Substance to be a movie that starts out strong before rapidly falling apart. Initially, it's crystal clear in what it wants to say about women and aging. "Look what disgusting men have driven this woman to do!" it screams (effectively) with every scene. With an egregiously lascivious camera, the movie trumpets its feminism by becoming a parody of the male gaze.

And then I feel like the movie forgets everything but shock and gore. The Substance is Severance by way of David Cronenberg, but missing any of the thought-provoking analysis of identity. The movie sets forth "horror movie rules" it almost immediately breaks. It fails to answer the fundamental question of what the main character is getting out of any of this -- why does she keep this story going? And the clarity of message from the opening act becomes hopelessly muddied. Is the message that young people are selfish? That people change to such an extent that they'll always hate themselves?

Or maybe this is all just about pure shock, plain and simple. As you watch The Substance, you'll think you've seen the most "over the top" thing it will serve up perhaps a dozen times. But it always tops itself after that, parading one depraved visual after another. If body horror is a subgenre of horror you especially enjoy, then you'll probably love this movie: its practical effects, grotesque makeup, and oceans of blood. You'll never forget its ending.

But I think you will almost forget any coherent message it might have started out with. I give The Substance a D+. Anyone inclined to like it will surely find their way to it without me; I would caution everyone else to stay away.

However, I did say at the beginning that I appreciated the movie. This is a horror movie. Not a prestige, The Sixth Sense kind of tale that's really a suspense movie. This is the goriest of the gory... and it was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. It's never going to win, of course, but it shouldn't be possible for a movie like this to even be nominated. The fact that it was feels like a sign that in the future, there might no longer be such a thing as an "Oscar movie." If this can be a Best Picture contender, then it feels like truly any movie could be. I say that genuinely, not to be snide. And I think it's great thing for the movie industry.

Here's the part that's maybe a little snide: I think with this nomination, the Academy has abdicated its position to tell you what kind of movies are "good for you." I think I've allowed the Oscars to swoop in at the end of the year to tell me "you've been eating a bit too much junk food; you ought to have a salad or two." And while I have found more heady movies I have enjoyed thanks to Oscar nods, I've also subjected myself to movies I found deeply boring, overhyped for a single reason (usually a strong performance), or total head-scratchers. I've increasingly wanted to break free of the mindset that compelled me to do that. The Substance was part of a one-two punch of movie viewing this past weekend that might have finally done the trick.

The night before I went to see The Substance, I watched a 2024 movie at home and loved it. It's nominated for nothing, despite being about an "important topic" that Hollywood should support, and no one has said a word about it being snubbed. (And I will get to writing about that movie later this week.) If that movie, that made me feel more deeply than anything else I've seen in the past year, is not an Oscar movie, but The Substance is? Maybe I don't need "Oscar" to tell me what's good for me anymore.