Okay, it’s mid-January now, so the new shows are starting up again after the Christmas re-run season.
Last night Star Trek Enterprise fired up its warp engines again and delivered an interesting episode.
Unlike the three-episode mini-arcs that it’s been working this season–arcs that allow it to tell bigger, more ambitious stories–this one was a standalone episode, but it will have a significant place in the Star Trek mythos.
The reason is that, even though it wasn’t a multi-episode story like others this season, it did do something that seems to be part of the mission of Enterprise’s season four: Fill in missing pieces of the Star Trek mythos.
The previous story had dealt with a civil war on Vulcan that led to the evolution of the Vulcans we know and love from The Original Series. In this week’s episode, we see the broader social revolution starting to spread.
That’s not the hole in the mythos that this episode fills, though. It’s something else.
Star Trek has always had a number of pieces of magical technology, the two chief ones being warp drive and the transporter. Over time, we met, learned about, and got to know the creator of warp drive, Zephram Cochrane. We’ve never had the pleasure with the creator of the transporter, though.
Until now.
This week’s Enterprise episode features a guest appearance by Dr. Emory Erickson, the heretofore-unnamed father of the transporter.
Like Zephram Cochrane, he is a flawed genius. He arrives on the ship with plans for a transporter so powerful that it could make starships obsolete (something that we know from previous Star Trek series was a technology that at least one alien civilization had). But he’s also carrying with him a secret.
That secret has to do with his son, and it’s no coincidence that this episode is titled Daedalus.
In the end, the episode turns in a poignant story of a father and his loss.
It’s not a planet-shaking story, but it’s touching nonetheless.
And it’s another piece of the puzzle.
If you missed it, it’ll be on this Sunday night on UPN.
And all thi stime, I thought it woul dhave to do with this Daedalus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus_class_starship
Just a note that on the Pittsburgh UPN station, it reruns at 6 PM *Saturday*.
By the way, I’m glad I wasn’t clear on the mythology of Daedalus before viewing last night’s episode. For someone who is familiar, the title could almost be a spoiler as to how the episode ends.
Does this broader revolution include the orans posture during the Our Father? See what happens when you don’t nip this twaddle in the bud?
The improvements in Enterprise are somehow linked to the orans posture at Mass?
At first I thought the writers had completely abandoned everything we knew about Vulcans, but whether they planned it this way from the beginning or not, they’re getting back to the Vulcans we know. I hope this puts an end to the “T’Pol as sex kitten” shows.
Apparently you take Star Trek [fill in the blank] a good deal more seriously than I do. It was a facetious remark, but never mind.