About My Blog

My blog is about history, popular culture, politics and current events from a democratic socialist and Irish republican perspective. The two main topics are Northern Ireland on one hand and fighting anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia on the other. The third topic is supporting the Palestinians, and there are several minor topics. The three main topics overlap quite a bit. I have to admit that it’s not going to help me get a graduate degree, especially because it’s almost always written very casually. But there are some high-quality essays, some posts that come close to being high-quality essays, political reviews of Sci-Fi TV episodes (Star Trek and Babylon 5), and a unique kind of political, progressive poetry you won't find anywhere else. (there are also reviews of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and reviews of Roseanne)



(The "Table of Contents" offers brief descriptions of all but the most recent posts)


Friday, January 21, 2011

Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews A

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.
I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Broken Bow” parts 1 and 2 (see this for a plot summary)

There is only one bit of politics in this where Archer’s father discourages him from speaking about Vulcans in a way that’s bigoted. In general, the conflict between Starfleet and the Vulcans doesn’t seem (in general) to be racist on the part of the former.

On one hand, I’m not a big fan of the Suliban and “Temporal Cold War” aspects of this series. On the other hand, looking at the series premieres for the four series that I like, this one might be my favorite. In general, while watching this series for the 2nd or 3rd time (this is the 3rd or the 4th) I decided I really like this series- more than The Next Generation, and almost as much as Voyager and Deep Space Nine. I think that’s partly because it’s so interesting to see Starfleet at a point in it’s history where they are not as advanced technologically as they are in all the other series. I mean, they used shuttles almost all the time and only rarely used the transporter for people.

I give this two-parter four stars out of five.

“Fight or Flight” See this for a plot summary.


A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Strange New World” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Unexpected” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Terra Nova” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“The Andorian Incident” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Breaking the Ice” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars.

“Civilization” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

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