Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews S

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).

“Daedalus” See this for a plot summary.

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

“Observer Effect” See this for a plot summary.

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

“Babel One,” “United,” “The Aenar” See the links for a plot summary.

There are a small number of political aspects to this episode:

1) Shran again expresses a willingness to torture people, which is fairly disturbing because he is generally seen as an ally of Archer’s.

2) One thing I like is the unity created between the different alien races, which will lead eventually to the formation of the Federation. I generally support such moves (i.e. (after making some changes) increasing (in small steps over a number of decades) the power of the United Nations).

3) So far I don’t have a complete picture of the Romulan political system and how democratic or undemocratic it is. In this episode we learn that dissident members of the Senate can be expelled.


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

“Affliction” and “Divergence” See this and this for a plot summary

There are two sort of political things in this episode.

First, we hear (probably not for the first time) that Klingon society is a caste-based society.

Secondly, there is the appearance of Section 31. I discuss Section 31 here while discussing the episode "Inquisition."

For the most part a non-political episode. I like how it explains the appearance of Klingons in The Original Series. I give it two stars out of five.