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Captain Archer - a short evaluation
crusty8mac
Member Posts: 1,381 Arc User
For the last week or so I've been rewatching Star Trek: Enterprise on Netflix. After about 10 episodes I formulated an analysis of Captain Archer which hasn't undergone any major changes, and I'm through almost all of Season 3. I thought I would share it for discussion.
Captain Archer is a petulant crybaby with no command abilities and absolutely no diplomatic abilities.
Half of the episodes involve him getting himself into some kind of trouble - usually captured by the enemy, or incapacitated in some manner - that his crew has to get him out of. If it weren't for his crew, he would be dead about 50 times over.
I like Enterprise, but Archer is only minutely better than Janeway, who I find completely insufferable along with practically all of her crew.
They should have started the series with the mirror universe episode, and run from there, leaving the Archer character as a tragic memory.
If there is something like Starfleet in Earth's future, God save my descendants from the likes of a Captain Archer.
Captain Archer is a petulant crybaby with no command abilities and absolutely no diplomatic abilities.
Half of the episodes involve him getting himself into some kind of trouble - usually captured by the enemy, or incapacitated in some manner - that his crew has to get him out of. If it weren't for his crew, he would be dead about 50 times over.
I like Enterprise, but Archer is only minutely better than Janeway, who I find completely insufferable along with practically all of her crew.
They should have started the series with the mirror universe episode, and run from there, leaving the Archer character as a tragic memory.
If there is something like Starfleet in Earth's future, God save my descendants from the likes of a Captain Archer.
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STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
Post edited by crusty8mac on
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actually, barcly as a captain would be quite funny
rrred aaaalert! bbbatle ssstations!
neelix as a captain would be even worse :P
This sig dedicated to the many random objects the Mythbusters crew has blow to smitherines
I think he was an ideal cast but the writing was weak.
He should have been more daring and funny, less handwringing and less based on certain prominent political figures.
I think one thing that Quantum Leap made great use of was playing him as a bookish but physical guy, in touch with his feminine side, and a somewhat conflicted but capable approach to romance. That all gelled on QL.
On Enterprise, he seemed constipated and more than a little modeled on U.S. presidents.
Just thinking how I'd have approached creating Archer, knowing Bakula's strengths...
I'd have made him considerably more daring. Not in a "I'm going to challenge you and prove humanity's worth" kind of way. That made him seem ignorant. Instead, I'd have looked at something like making him a human who'd spent his years since high school with Andorians. Oddly pluralistic. Aggressive. The ideal human to reach the stars. A reverse Spock instead of a proto-Kirk. He knows the galaxy better than his crew. Has traveled the circuit of worlds that Vulcan is linked with and knows a thing or two. But he doesn't know it as a military commander because he's the first. He knows it more as a human expat who has backpacked across a dozen worlds. I'd have made him a Nerdy Ernest Hemmingway or even F. Scott Fitzgerald who must prove he's suitable for military command. College educated playboy who suddenly has to consider strategy and defense. Maybe a bit of a JFK. If he's going to act like a politician, might as well give him the full set.
The second thing I'd have done and this is radical for Trek... is to give him a wife and somehow not kill her off. And she's a civilian. And it rankles people that they've got a crew of 83 and a civilian onboard. It rankles people that he takes advice from her. And she's hot.
This gets around the poor attempts at chemistry between Bakula and the females they tried to play him opposite. Shatner could be a horndog. So could Picard.
Bakula can have appeal as a romantic lead but his type is definitely the one woman man... and it's SUCH a running theme on later shows that a captain can't have serious relationships that if you want a prequel that establishes the rules, you might as well break the big one and have a married captain. And show the problems it creates by having it as this awkward situation that you're stuck with.
And she's smart and sexy but she gets in the way. Maybe have her as the ship psychologist and in contrast to Troi, who we see as a counselor, she's more... theoretical. A Freudian. And a touch manipulative. A civilian psychotherapist. Has issues with Phlox, maybe big on prescribing psychiatric drugs which Phlox objects to filling orders for.
Played by Olivia Williams. So she's stern, sophisticated, British, doesn't take kindly to this military dynamic Archer has himself embroiled in. Looks forward to getting planetside. Gotta have sparks with Archer so people see the appeal but gotta have sparks with the crew so that people see that, with small crews anyway, it's better for the Captain to be married to his ship. In the end, she and Archer work things out but it's rocky.
And... with that... I've just rewired the whole show's dynamic.
Only mid Season 2 did they invent some sort of drive, but before it was miserable at best.
I quite liked Archer and remember unlike ALL the other Star Treks they ahd certain guide lines they had to follow where as Archer was in new territory, no wonder Star Fleet founded the rule about non interference with other civilizations just look at all the strife he got into lol.
I didn't like the Borg episode at all as it screwed with the whole Star Trek story line not to mention the last Star Trek movie where they blew up Vulcan which royally screwed the story lines for Star Trek 1-6.
Then theres the fact that STO is set 30yrs after DS9 and Vulcan only recently got destroyed, I really do hate the temporal time line TRIBBLE.
But going back to Enterprise I liked Season 3 the best, I didn't like season 4 because they rushed 10yrs worth of the Story line into it or tried to anyway and the last episode where its Ryker and Dianna Troy on the holodeck is just insulting.
There was nothing to go by except the advice of Vulcans who didn't think Earth was ready to explore space. So Archer getting into trouble was to show the mistakes and the lessons learned from early exploration. A lot of things had to be learned the hard way. All that experience eventually evolved into The Federation and Starfleet Command.
Janeway regularly appeared to be borderline crazy. Those times, other characters reacted as you'd expect them to respond to a crazy person, and often she reacted to their response as a crazy person would. Example: Pretty much everything in Scorpion. She had a crazy idea, she was called crazy, and then started systematically locking up everyone who called her crazy until nobody called her crazy anymore. That's the mark of a bad captain, but of a bad captain who was written to be a bad captain.
Archer, though? His baby deer learning to walk style of captaining might have been appropriate (see eagledraco's post), but other characters rarely responded to him as they would a rookie in over his head (except the Vulcans, who rarely did so for valid reasons).
He would act like a bumbling newbie, be regularly respected as a peerless leader, soldier, statesman, and sometimes even scholar, and then blunder through that respect like a hippo trying to cuddle, somehow without ever losing that respect once it's mysteriously earned.
That's the mark of a bad captain who was written to be a great captain, and that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Especially since Enterprise didn't hit the reset button in the last five minutes of every episode like Voyager.
I am pretty sure you wouldn do the least better.
You would be surprised how many officers and senior non-commissioned officers in the real military are exactly like that. I'm not kidding.
But in this case I blame the writing. They hired crappy writers for most of the show's run, and the writers didn't play to the actors' strengths for pretty much the entire series.
One of the biggest complaints about Voyager for me was that Janeway was a Mary Sue extraordinar. Warp drive broken? Don't worry chief engineer, the captain can fix it! Fight breaking out? Tour captain will simultaneously beat them all up in hand to hand, snipe the guy over there and negoiate a ceasefire! Feel like playing pool? Not to worry, your captain will win the game in two shots. Playing with time for the 8th time in 12 episodes? Your captain has it all under control, since she apparently majored in temporal mechanics. Not to mention everything else. After all, they never established which area of science she studied, so it was apparently all of them. Sure, I might be exaggerating just a touch, but she was still a poorly written character. She was the Wesley of Voyager, just had at least gone through the Academy (where Boothby brought her roses every day).
So Enterprise went against that, and made the captain do what a captain actually does. Rely on their crew. Not for everything, but for their areas. Besides, there's a good reason why in the future the Captain doesn't go on any away missions with knowing what they're all walking into or for good reason :P Well, that is unless you're Captain Mary Sue.
If anything screwed up the whole trek storyline regarding the Borg, it was Voyager. Even before that though, the Borg sent a lone cube to a distant location of space.... why? The Federation-Romulan Neutral Zone is far from their established territory, and the Borg aren't the kind to send out exploratory cubes. As far as we know, they've only sent them in one direction. Pre-Voyager, you could explain it as the Borg were simply a handful of ships, scattered around the galaxy assimilating whatever if you didn't like the idea of them having a centralised base of operations. Perhaps they were even scattered by something else. Not so after Voyager.
Enterprise gave an excellent reason for why the collective would equip and sent out a Borg cube directly towards Federation space. They received a decayed subspace message sent directly to them with a set of coordinates, and by all appearances, it's from themselves. There shouldn't be any Borg out there, so they want to know why. Equip a cube with the necessary infrastructure to maintain a coherent collective far away from Borg territory and the unimatrix infrastructure, and now everything makes more sense. It also reinforces something that a lot of people forget about in TNG. Q didn't hasten the Federation's encounter with the Borg, the Borg already knew about the Federation by the end of Season 1. Q was giving the Federation warning about what was coming their way. Even still, some things just never really fit, the USS Raven for example never really meshed in well. It was just an excuse for why Seven was there after all.
As for STO, the first 10 movies and the latest movie, like it's already been said, they're separate realities, not simply time travel. The JJ movie is not earlier movies or STO's past, STO is how the universe that Spock left behind ends up. Hence STO's Vulcan is perfectly fine.
The USS Kelvin for example is very different to a prime universe ship, even though that was built long before the Narada showed up. A pretty clear indication of being a separate reality. Not to mention Starfleet being so undermanned that they'd give their flagship (now the Enterprise instead of whatever it was in the prime universe) to a bunch of recruits barely and/or not even out of the academy. Being a separate reality also means that there's no paradoxes and that Temporal Integrity Commission wouldn't be able to intervene.
I agree that Archer is, in my opinion a very likeable Captain compared to the others. The only one I remotely enjoyed other then Archer was Sisko.
As for the Borg Episode I thought it was a pretty sound storyline. Its not that far-fetched that when Picard destroyed the Sphere. Something of it was left behind. Including Drones. And to better explain the timeline involving the latest movie. Just look at Back To The Future 2. Alternate timeline, not the original.
You should watch a few episodes close together. Archer's only command style is petulant anger. In one episode the crew has to mutiny because he isn't acting himself. He is angry at everyone and starts relieving them of their duties. I couldn't tell how they knew he wasn't acting himself.
I don't know if it was Bakula's acting or how he was directed, but Admiral Forrest should have spanked his whiny butt.
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
See, here are the problems I have with this. First there were centuries of naval traditions for command and diplomacy to draw on. And second, it was rarely the crew that got in trouble, it was always Archer, and usually because he was too ridged, angry, whiny, or just plain stupid. It was always the crew that got him out of trouble.
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
Your forgetting about the character Whoopie Goldberg (don't know don't care if thats the correct spelling for he name) played in the next gen, Her entire race was wiped out by the Borg with a history and all.
The problem I have with a Borg episode in Archers time is the tech level between then and when Q re-introduced the Federation to the Borg, they would have had borg tech to fight them with. You can't tell me Starfleet would have just left the borg stuff and never poked at it as that just does not fit into Starfleets profile.
You can say their separate realities to justify the mess but its not the case, the last Star Trek movie is supposed to be about to how Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise not some alternate reality and it can't be an alternate reality anyway cause you have the Spok we know as well as the new one so it has directly got to do with temporal time travel.
If you have ever seen the original pilot episode of the original Star Trek with Captain Pike you would see how hypercritical the whole Star Trek story line has become and there is another Episode with Kirk returning Pike to the planet it all started with but the new movie completely wrecked that whole story.
People who lash out at Scott Bakula, as being a comedic actor, or that he's a joke, are usually the same people who have never watched the likes of 'Quantum Leap'. Pitiful.
Enterprise had it's fair share of issues (as did EVERY... SINGLE... ONE... of the other shows). Scott Bakula as Captain, was the least of it's problems.
Thats just it. He played Archer as if he still was the guy from quantum leap. Same exact personality and boy scout mentality.
Personally I would've chose Michael Ironside as Archer.
He's got the attitude, the acting skills and would've been great for the role.
The words "alternate reality" are used IN THE FILM.
Spock chased Nero back in time. They landed in an alternate reality that was changed because of Nero destroying the Kelvin. The theory is that going back in time CREATES alternate universes.
From there, it's the story of how an alternate Kirk comes to command an alternate Enterprise.
And our Spock is there because it's HIS black hole that created the alternate reality by sending Nero to change history. And the running conceit of the movie is that changing history creates alternate universes. (Which is one scientific guess about how real time travel would work. It's not USUALLY how time travel works in Star Trek but a lot of sci-fi suggests that your method of time travel determines how the rules work, including whether you can alter your own past or whether any attempt to do so creates an alternate reality.)
Two universes. The JJverse was created by Spock and Nero, who are from our universe but wound up creating that one. Their universe has a Romulus and no Vulcan. The Prime Universe has a Vulcan and no Romulus.
Since you started your post by being utterly disrespectful and uncaring, I suppose i'll have to follow in kind. The correct spelling FYI, is "Whoopi Goldberg", Mr Risabove. Don't suppose you'd like it if people purposely called you by the wrong name? I'm sure Mr Burton wasn't too thrilled to be called "Laverne" on the ST: Nemesis set, by it's director.
You fail to take into account, the impact of having Borg in the 22nd Century (caused by Picard leaving wreckage/bodies on Earth in 2063). In the original timeline, the Borg weren't even present in the 22nd Century (as far as we know). There would be no tech to study, no tech to prepare for, and no fore-knowledge of the Borg, other than "rumor and speculations".
During TNG, Season 1's "The Neutral Zone" and Season 3's "Best of Both Worlds" are very much part of the same storyline. The Enterprise is sent to investigate a planet (in the latter episode), and it's confirmed that the destruction is the "same as what was seen in The Neutral Zone". The Borg were present near Federation space as early as the end of Season 1. Half a season later, in "Q Who?", the character of Q sends the Enterprise flying 8500 lightyears, directly into the path of a Borg Cube. It's assumed later on that the Cube in Best of Both Worlds, is the same cube as in Q Who?. One could always speculate, why were the Borg already on a direct path towards the Alpha Quadrant, when Q sent the Enterprise flying? Did Q possibly have fore-knowledge of what Humanity should expect to face? Did Q try to warn Picard and the rest of humanity? We know from Q's own statements, that the "Continuum" fears what Humanity might one day become. A race possibly more powerful than the Continuum itself.
Stated and quoted in the movie as being an "Alternate Reality" caused by Nero's influence on the timeline and the destruction of the USS Kelvin. I understand you hated the movie, but atleast try and back up your claims with same actual FACTS.
This goes back to my previous paragraph. The 2009 movie takes place in an "Alternate Reality", and thus anything that happens in that timeline, has absolutely NO BEARING on the events of the "Prime Universe" that is TOS and beyond.
Actually we don't know if the Hobus supernova destroys Romulus or not in that reality yet. For all we know, Romulus still gets destroyed in the 2380s.
A fair assumption. Given that the events of the 2009 movies takes place 150 years pre-STO. We have no idea whatsoever what that universe might look like in 2409 compared to STO's 2409.
Well I apologies for not knowing how to spell an actors name, big deal. The point was there is a History with the Borg pre voyager.
You just don't get it, look by putting the Borg into Archers Time line (yes we know they where there given what happened in the next gen series and movies) Starfleet would have what had a couple of hundred yrs to study the Borg tech and integrate it into their own but they didn't because its not apart of the original next gen story so it stuff's it.
I didn't say I hated the movie I just said I don't like how it stuffs the whole Star Trek theme I don't care that you and others try and justify it as an alternative reality.
I have it in my collection, I have all of Star Trek bar the Originals.
This is my opinion you can argue till your blue in the face it ain't gonna change lol, call me ignorant and all the names under the sun its still not going to change my opinion OK!
Thank you, I will.
You ARE ignorant. Ignorant of the fact that the 2009 movie specifically said that the events in the period between 2233-2258 takes place in an Alternate Reality. They said it in the movie. That's not an opinion. That's FACT.
It's not a fan justification. It's stated in the movie that it's an alternate reality.
The premise seemed okay, but they had the same problems as STO has: They had to put everything in there we already know from other ST-installments, wether it made sense or not instead of developing a unique storyline with less fleshed-out elements of the universe. Oh, plus it became really dull 9/11 propaganda at the end
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Starfleet probably did poke at it. But the records were sealed, and only a few would have known about it. There's also only so much that you can learn from wreckage.
When one of the latest aircraft gets shot down or crashes, the owning government typically sends another ground attack fighter or a bomber to destroy the wreckage to prevent anyone else from learning very much from it, and it's pretty effective. Now that's humans trying to study the wreckage of human technology destroyed with a bomb, and that's extremely difficult. In the case of the destroyed partially assimilated ship, we're talking about humans trying to study the destroyed wreckage of 24th century alien technology from numerous distinct sources destroyed by far more powerful weapons, not to mention the antimatter containment failure. How much exactly do you think will be left to study?
Borg vessels are further designed so that when the ship is cricitally damaged, all vital technology self-destructs. At the end of Best of Both Worlds, the Borg cube self-destructs above Earth after it gets shut down, leaving very little, if anything for the Federation to study. Even after just trying to disable a Borg Probe, the salavagable wreckage from it only littered the floor of a single cargo bay on Voyager. Part of the sphere surviving relatively well like that would likely be extremely rare, and be simply because part of that self-destruct process failed. If the Enterprise-E even suspected that it might of survived, then they would have retrieved the wreckage themselves to both prevent contamination of the timeline, and because it would be a rare opportunity to study relatively intact Borg technology.
Because Spock can't go to another dimension? Jumping dimensions isn't anything new for Star Trek, just they're normally mirror universes, while the JJverse is a little different. But then, the method of reaching it was rather different as well. The interaction between the nova and the red matter singularity allowed them to shift through dimensions and time. It's not the first time the pair of those have occurred either. The mirror universe Tholians in 2063 stole the USS Defiant from the prime universe in 2268 after all.
Incidentally, time travel is always going to be at least of the temporal variety. I'm not sure how you'd get non-temporal time travel.
I think between what Meurik has said and what I've added on here, I think it about covers it. Everything says that the JJverse is an alternate universe, not a retelling of the prime universe events. I haven't seen a thing that even indicates that it's set in the prime universe.
Yeah. The only debate I can see is whether the JJverse was ALWAYS an alternate universe (a fan assertion I've seen) or whether Nero's emergence caused it to splinter off, either via standard rules of time travel where time travel creates universes (I believe this is Orci and Kurtzman's assertion... and that Spock's life was not changed until he reached Earth, which was transformed politically and technologically by reverse engineering the Kelvin's scans of the Narada) or whether the red matter singularity CAUSED the universe to splinter off.
My pet theory on Trek time travel is rooted in what Spock said in "City on the Edge of Forever":
"There is a theory. There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river, with currents, eddies, backwash."
Running with that, some time travel is like paddling against the current. Some is climbing out of the river and running alongside it backwards. And some is being rocketed back and hurtling into the stream with enough force to splinter its course.
Treat Spock's statement literally, not as metaphor.
Just treat time like a river in Trek. It can be dammed, splintered, fed by tributaries, redirected, siphoned for irrigation, stored, turned backwards. Its flow can be constant or intermittent. It can be used for power. It can have rapids and calm stretches. Its rate can be variable and also vary by location. It can swell and flood or dry up. There can be stable canals linking timelines.
It's like a river.