Enterprise 20th: Star Trek The Motion Picture shaped “Broken Bow” in 5 ways

The Star Trek The Motion Picture legacy includes “Broken Bow.”

When I recently rewatched “Broken Bow,” the first episode of Star Trek Enterprise, I was struck by how much this episode owes to Star Trek The Motion Picture (TMP).

Yes, “Broken Bow” makes clear—from its use of a pop song in an opening credits sequence that doesn’t include the phrase “Star Trek,” to its nudge-nudge-wink-wink “decon gel” scene—Enterprise intended to set itself apart. At the same time, it gives off an unmistakable Trek vibe by paying homage to the first of the franchise’s feature films.

With celebrations of TMP’s 40th anniversary only a couple years past and the 4K remastering of its Director’s Edition coming soon, the platinum anniversary of Star Trek Enterprise is the perfect time to take stock of five lessons in spinning a Star Trek story “Broken Bow” seems to have learned from Star Trek The Motion Picture.

Five franchise lessons Star Trek The Motion Picture taught “Broken Bow”

As the first and last Star Trek film in which Gene Roddenberry had direct and substantial input, Star Trek The Motion Picture is one of the purest expressions of his vision. This truth appears not to have been lost on the creative team who gave us “Broken Bow.”

1. Start with Klingons shouting in the Klingon language.

TMP’s opening action sequence surprised Star Trek fans by showing bumpy-browed Klingons engaging a mysterious energy field, their commanding officer (an unrecognizable Mark Lenard) barking orders in the guttural Klingon language. They get blasted by V’Ger’s energy bolts and are never seen again, but these Klingons became the franchise template.

In its fourth season, Enterprise would explore the in-universe reasons Klingons in the original series looked nothing like their later counterparts. But “Broken Bow,” in its opening action sequence (albeit its second sequence overall), shows viewers a lone, bumpy-browed Klingon who unintentionally engages an Oklahoma cornfield. After shouting some guttural Klingon, he gets blasted by an energy bolt from a farmer’s futuristic rifle.

2. Make an external inspection tour of the Enterprise.

Jonathan Archer and “Trip” Tucker’s flyaround of the NX-01 is a more casual affair than Scotty’s slow reveal of the refit NCC-1701 to Admiral Kirk. And, without any offense meant to Dennis McCarthy, it lacks a musical underscore as great as the one Jerry Goldsmith provided in TMP.

But both inspection fly-bys communicate a captain’s love for his Enterprise. Archer is like a man seeing the woman of his dreams for the first time: “God,” he breathes, “she’s beautiful.”

Kirk is a man seeing the love of his life he thought he’d lost as though for the first time, more radiant than she has ever been. He speaks no words, but the look on his face says it all.

3. Mount pictures of your ship’s namesakes on the wall.

Captain Archer has decorated the wall of his ready room with pictures of previous vessels named Enterprise. A 18th-century British frigate HMS Enterprize (also seen in the series’ opening credits montage), a 20th-century aircraft carrier, the NASA orbiter prototype (named, of course, for Star Trek’s own Enterprise)—they’re all there, per the Memory Alpha wiki.

Likewise, the wall of the recreation deck of TMP’s refit Enterprise bears images of Enterprises past. Due to pesky real-world chronology, Captain Archer’s NX-01 is not among them. But that wall display does include—at Roddenberry’s request, according to Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Inside the Art & Visual Effects—concept art for a “ringship” designed by original series art designer Matt Jefferies.

4. Fear the transporter chamber.

One of the most knowing nods to Trek lore in “Broken Bow” is the crew’s misgivings about the as-yet unproven transporter. Malcolm Reed notes, “I don’t think I’m quite ready to have my molecules compressed into a data stream.” Were it not for Reed’s elegant English accent, he’s sound as familiar as Dr. McCoy’s complaints about the transporter do to Admiral Kirk in TMP.

Of course, early in TMP, we witness a horrific transporter malfunction, which lends some heft to every misgiving McCoy ever muttered against the machine during the original series.

It also makes us appreciate why Tucker feels obliged to tell Archer, after beaming him to safety in the climax of “Broken Bow,” “Sorry, Captain—we had no other choice.”

5. Build, then release, tension between humans and Vulcans.

If the Klingons’ appearance shocked Trek fans in 1979, Mr. Spock’s dour and detached demeanor throughout most of TMP shocked them even more. Leonard Nimoy turns in a thoughtful and masterful performance as Spock, but until Spock melds with V’Ger, he’s simply not the Spock fans knew and loved. The chill between Spock on one side of the officers’ lounge and Kirk and McCoy in the other is almost as cold as Rura Penthe. Fortunately, Spock’s contact with V’Ger’s existential angst leads him to appreciate “simple feelings” once again.

The relationships between Subcommander T’Pol and Archer, and T’Pol and Tucker, are similarly frosty through much of “Broken Bow.” Archer resents the way Vulcans have been holding humans back from deep space exploration. Tucker gives T’Pol grief about her culture’s reliance on logic. For her part, T’Pol regards both men, and their species, as immature and unprepared for the final frontier. But by mission’s end, they’re all willing to at least give cooperation and friendship a chance—a choice the rest of the series validates.