Star Trek: Enterprise is often considered the dark horse of the franchise. This original series prequel is set nearly a century before Captain Kirk and his crew venture out on their 5-year mission, a time before the Federation existed and Starfleet was still in its infancy.
Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) commands the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise, one of the first space vehicles capable of traveling at warp 5, and faces a variety of antagonists during their adventures. However, several of these characters made to square off against Archer feel like they never quite left the writing room whole.
1. The Suliban
These aliens were connected to the show’s Temporal Cold War storyline, with changeable appearances and skin the texture of wet sand. They had a variety of abilities, including invisibility, shape-shifting, and night vision. While these were compelling, the execution was not consistent, and the abilities felt shoehorned in to make the species seem more threatening.
It’s possible that the writers felt they had to create loopholes within the Suliban species' motives because Archer and his crew are the first to encounter the hostile beings, and so they couldn’t write them as all-powerful or unbeatable when compared to a crew with limited experience with alien antagonists. This made the Suliban’s motivations much too weak and unclear.
2. The poachers of Dalaka
In the episode “Rogue Planet” (S01E18), Archer and his crew explore a planet that has no daytime and discover, upon exploring, that a group of hunters is stalking indigenous creatures in the woods. These people, the Eska, claim they come to the planet, which they call Dalaka, each generation to hunt the shape-shifting beings who live there.
Eventually, the Enterprise crew realizes that the beings are not only sentient but telepathic, and one of the beings reaches out to Archer in the form of a beautiful woman to reveal that the Eskan people are little more than poachers. Maybe the writers wanted to say something about destroying a species mistakenly believed to be harmful, but the message fell flat because the Eskans were so one-dimensional themselves.
3. Mirror universe Captain Archer
When it comes to the Terran Empire mirror universe from “In a Mirror, Darkly” (S04E18-19), Jonathan Archer stands out in his ambition. The universe is there for the taking, but the only problem is that this man cannot get out of his own way and lacks additional layers that would have given his character more depth. Like Indiana Jones, he seeks fortune and glory, but as a character, he’s hampered by his underdevelopment.
While it’s obvious that Scott Bakula enjoyed playing this version of Archer, it’s also a waste of his talent to make the character so scattershot when he could have been much more compelling had the writers given him a bit more insight and less ambition. Perhaps it was the show’s budget, but Archer’s ultimate fate (being poisoned by that universe’s Hoshi Sato) felt rushed as well.
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