Day 316: Enterprise, Cogenitor

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S2EP22, “Cogenitor”

 Summary: While investigating a hypergiant sun, the Enterprise runs into another ship that’s also making scans of the phenomenon, with far more superior technology. These aliens, the Vissians, are incredibly friendly, and everybody seems happy to chat and exchange information. While Archer and the Vissian captain, Drennik (Andreas Katsulas) go to get an up close and personal look at the hypergiant in a Vissian stratopod, Tucker finds himself curious about a different matter entirely. It seems that the Vissians have a third gender, known as cogenitors, who are essential to the process of getting pregnant but are considered to be more like pets. One of the married couples on board has one of these cogenitors (Becky Wahlstrom), and Tucker is convinced that she (Tucker uses female pronouns in dialogue, so I’ll do the same) is capable of being just as smart as the rest of the Vissians. Wanting to help, he sneaks away to teach her to read and expose her to new experiences and ways of thinking. Needless to say, this blows up in his face.

Standalone Thoughts: What I mostly remembered about this episode before watching it is that after my first viewing, I very much wanted to punch Tucker for his stupidity. This is actually a weird sort of compliment; the episode did a very effective job of making me frustrated with his actions, which I’m pretty sure was supposed to be the intent. On a rewatch, I found I lost my more violent impulse, but my opinion that the episode is well-executed still stands.

This episode could very easily have been another preachy episode, or felt uncomfortable like “Dear Doctor”, but it mostly manages to avoid those pitfalls. Some of this, unfortunately, is not always for good reasons. The primary problem is that, like “Dear Doctor”, the bulk of the conflict takes place in the last ten minutes. There’s at least a fair bit of setup for it, showing Tucker’s interest in the cogenitor and his decision to help her out, but there isn’t much in the way of actually discussing the issues (which I’ll go into more detail about shortly). Instead, we keep cutting away from what Tucker’s doing to watch Archer and Drennik fly around in the stratopod. This would be all right if there was something of substance going on there, but mostly it seems to exist to show off some special effects. An argument can be made that their interactions are being established so that Tucker’s interference has more impact later, but in practice, I don’t think we needed so many cutaways to establish that.

When we actually spend time with the real conflict of this episode, though, I’d say it’s a very good episode. For one thing, the dilemma at hand—trying to bring out the potential of people who haven’t been given a chance versus interfering in a culture one doesn’t understand—is one worth thinking about and thus can feel more relevant than a lot of the conflicts we’ve seen on Enterprise. For another, while the writing (at least from my perspective) tries to be fair to both sides, it also makes it very clear that Tucker’s actions, while well intentioned, are unwise. This is why I reacted so strongly the first time; I could sympathize with him, but he’d been warned numerous times that what he was doing was a bad idea, and he went ahead and did it anyway. Having him mess up like this makes him feel more flawed, and I think ultimately that’s a good thing if you want to make the character more rounded. Plus, the episode pulls no punches, and has made this one of the more memorable episodes of Enterprise for me as a result. Other people may have issues with the way the situation was handled, but for me, I actually kind of admire the execution.

How it Relates to the Whole: There won’t be any more followup to this episode, which is probably for the best, though I think a brief interaction in a later episode would have been interesting, just to see how what happened here impacted later relations. However, there is one thing I’ve failed to mention up until now, but probably should. There’s a small running gag that’s been going on throughout the show about how Vulcans have longer lifespans than humans, with some of the crew (Tucker in particular) trying to figure out how old T’Pol is. It comes up again in this episode, hence my mentioning it now, and it’s going to come up a few more times before finally getting resolved. Figured I should mention it in case anybody wanted to keep an eye out for it.

Other: *The lighting guys were on point in today’s episode. In all the rooms with windows, the sets were lit with a golden glow to mimic the closeness to the sun. It’s a good attention to detail, and it makes things a little prettier to boot. I praise the writing and acting of shows so much that it seems only fair to give the technical guys a little love too when they do their jobs well.

*Whoever had to come up with this list of movies clearly had a lot of fun;

While I question the fact that the Enterprise movie database only has two musicals, horror movies (after all, they apparently had three Frankenstein movies two episodes prior), and comedies apiece, not to mention that there’s only one actual movie on this list, I overall love the effort that went into this. Not only are there two references to other Trek shows, but some of the titles are delightful (my two favorites are It Came From Beneath the Refrigerator and Love’s Lovely Love). A+ to whoever worked on this.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Malcolm has a subplot in this episode where he and the tactical officer of the Vissian ship (Laura Interval) are mutually flirting with each other. Unfortunately, this subplot is dropped with no real resolution (one more reason why I think constantly cutting back to Archer’s antics was unnecessary). However, thanks to that lack of payoff, it allows me to assume that Malcolm didn’t do anything to cause an intergalactic incident, probably because he was smart enough to take precautions. Never underestimate the benefit of sometimes keeping your head down, after all.