After the crew of Enterprise decide to ignore the advice of their only competent crewmember, they find themselves on a very routine away mission on a very unremarkable planet, exhibiting behaviour that would embarass the most racist of your racist uncles. Turns out that at the end of the day, it hasn’t been such a long road getting from there to here.
Our mission this week — to boldly rehabilitate an unjustly maligned episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. After more than a season of being aggrieved and obnoxious, Jonathan Archer is suddenly confronted by the need to apologise to people, sometimes with his shirt off. Meanwhile, Porthos is a very good boy, even when he’s just a fluffy puppet.
In this Very Special Episode, we learn a Valuable Lesson about discrimination and bigotry without a single mention of the minority group being discriminated against. In the meantime — by the most amazing coincidence — Trip has an awkward moment when confronted by some nice people who don’t share his sexual ethic. It’s all a bit of a slog, to be honest.
The crew of Enterprise encounter the Vissians, a genial and technologically advanced species who enslave three percent of their population and force them to have sex with married couples who wish to conceive their horrible latex-faced children. Surprisingly, we’re generally fine with this. Apart from Trip, who is a good person.
First broadcast on Friday, 6 May 2005
and Friday, 13 May 2005
Enterprise is reaching the end of the long road that brought them from there to here, and before we say a final goodbye, we’ve just got enough time to foil a charmless racist demagogue who wants to destroy our future — a future based on co-operation, openmindedness and mutual respect. It’s just like the present day, really, only the good guys win. Oh, and Trip gets to punch a racist in the face.
