Day 361: Enterprise, Bound

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S4EP17, “Bound”

 Summary: Enterprise encounters an Orion privateer named Harrad-Sar (William Lucking), who wants to offer a business proposition to Archer. There’s a planet full of a valuable mineral, but the Orions lack the proper mining equipment; if Starfleet helps them out, they’ll get a ten percent cut. Archer agrees, but then things take a turn for the interesting. As a gift to solidify their partnership, Harrad-Sar gives Archer three Orion slave girls (played by Cyia Batten, Crystal Allen, and Menina Fortunato), who immediately start making heads turn whenever they roam the corridors. The only people who aren’t affected by them are T’Pol (superior Vulcan physiology strikes again), and more surprisingly, Tucker. Which is a good thing, because Tucker’s replacement after he left for Columbia, newly promoted Commander Kelby (Derek Magyar), is worried about his position, and the presence of the Orions is causing him to act out, to the point of damaging the engines. And he’s not the only one who’s starting to get a bit territorial…

Standalone Thoughts: Much like “Singularity” in Season Two, this episode had the potential to be comedic, but the writers made the surprising move to make it more serious instead. There’s definitely some humor to be had, but the acting and especially the music makes it clear that there’s something sinister going on. I don’t know if that was a good move or not, though; I’m all for playing with expectations, but it might have been better if the episode started out funny and gradually got more serious, instead of using the music to tip its hand. As it is, it leaves the viewer feeling somewhat unsettled, which normally isn’t a sensation you’d expect to have when watching beautiful green women cause the men of Enterprise to act like lovestruck idiots.

Another thing that I don’t think quite works about the episode is the lack of followup on certain things. Archer’s original assignment was to scope out a potential area for a new starbase, but that plot point gets dropped when the Orions show up (and I know for a fact that it never comes up again in the show). There’s a great revelation during the climax of the episode that absolutely deserved to be explored more, but nothing comes of that either. On a related note, the end of the episode is wrapped up a little too neatly; it’s very much an example of “tell don’t show”. Perhaps the characters weren’t the only ones being distracted by the charms of the Orions…

The one other big observation I have is one that most people probably never notice, but when you do notice it, it winds up being somewhat distracting. As I mentioned in the “Other” section back in “Babel One”, Enterprise didn’t often give us dates for when these events were happening. However, we’re informed in “Affliction” at one point that the date is November 27^th, with the events of it and “Divergence” possibly continuing into December, depending on how long it took for everything to resolve. Now in this episode, we’re given the date of December 27^th, meaning about a month has passed. My problem with this is that there were things that happened in “Affliction” and “Divergence” that probably should have been addressed over the course of that month. Tucker decided to stay on Enterprise for a while to help fix the damage caused in those episodes; did they really take a month to repair, or are we supposed to assume he’s finding excuses to stay? On a related note, are we really expected to believe that Tucker and T’Pol haven’t addressed their visions for a month, despite T’Pol bringing up the subject in “Divergence”? Why would she let it drop for that long? And while this last one is mostly my bias coming into play, I really feel like there should have been more conflict regarding what happened with Malcolm in those two episodes. Would Archer really have been so willing to let Malcolm resume his duties with no repercussions? Don’t you think Malcolm would be having to deal with suspicious crewmembers, who almost certainly don’t know the whole story but do know that their tactical officer was sent to the brig? A month is not enough time for those sentiments to disappear, and I for one would love to have seen that explored. Ah well, I guess that’s what fandom’s for.

I really want to like this episode, but ultimately, I find it kind of blah. I enjoy seeing the Orion girls (partly due to family in-jokes), but the execution of the episode is lacking, even though it has a lot of potential. It’s better than any of the weaker episodes of Season Two, but I’d still classify it as lower-middle-tier Enterprise. Though as one of my tags over on my movie review blog states, at least there’s eyecandy.

How it Relates to the Whole: As far as continuity to Enterprise material goes, we finally get an explanation of what’s going on with Tucker and T’Pol, which had potential but unfortunately doesn’t really go anywhere thanks to the cancellation of the show. I also suspect the show might have been planning to do more with Commander Kelby, setting him up to butt heads with Tucker the same way Malcolm and Hayes did in Season Three, but that I’m less sure about. Meanwhile, on the Trek lore front, we get to see and learn more about the Orion slave girls, who are probably the most iconic symbol of TOS other than the main characters and the Enterprise. Also, there’s a brief mention of the other green-skinned alien TOS made famous, which not only is entertaining for Trek fans, but may have led to something that we’re going to see in the next two-parter…

Other: *Early on in the episode, T’Pol mentions that the planet they’re going to be looking over (this is before the Orions show up) was reported to have creatures that sound suspiciously like dragons. What makes this even weirder is that the report came from Vulcans, who aren’t known for lying. Honestly, I kind of want to see an episode about the Enterprise going down to see these animals for themselves; depending on how they did it, it could either be very amusing or very exciting.

*It’s kind of hard not to notice that the Orions have an Arabic (or at least stereotypically Arabic) motif going on. The Orion women dress like belly dancers, the Orion ship, as you can see in my header, looks like a palace from the Arabian Nights, and even the name Harrad-Sar sounds like something you’d hear in a movie like Aladdin or The Thief of Bagdad. I double checked, and it looks like the showrunners were just doubling down on the motifs established in the first appearance of Orion slave girls (TOS’ “The Menagerie”), which is admirable continuity and certainly makes things memorable. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a good memorable or a bad memorable, though (me, I’m neutral leaning towards positive).

*I honestly don’t know what to make of one scene in this episode. In the scene, the Enterprise gets attacked by a small ship, presumed to be a science vessel. Its weapons can’t hurt the Enterprise, but Archer decides to fire on it (which would almost certainly destroy it). Malcolm refuses to do so, and Archer angrily pushes him aside and almost does it himself, but fortunately the ship moves off…and that’s the last we see or hear of it. Obviously, the primary intent of the scene was to show how Archer was being affected by the Orions, but it’s an odd scene for several reasons. One, it feels like the ship should have been a larger part of the plot, but it just vanishes from the narrative with no explanation. And two, I have no idea how I’m supposed to read Malcolm’s actions. He seems almost gleefully smug about the fact that the other ship’s weapons are so weak, which I suspect is supposed to be related to the Orions influence, but then we get the whole thing where he refuses to fire. Are we supposed to see that as a normal reaction, not seeing the point in destroying a much weaker ship and possibly killing innocent people? Or are we supposed to read it as a display of dominance against Archer, again connecting it to the Orions? Both are interesting reads (though I admit a preference for the former), but I wish I knew which one it was supposed to be.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Malcolm is affected by the Orions as much as all the other characters are, but it seems that his devotion to his job is so strong that he manages to maintain a fair amount of control, at least while on duty. We see this scattered throughout the episode (possibly including the scene discussed above; it would have won this category if it had been made explicit that that was Malcolm’s normal behavior), but the moment I like the most is when he suggests going to Tactical Alert when they reach the planet Harrad-Sar told them about, because he suspects there could be a trap. Even when distracted by beautiful, scantily-clad women, some things remain constant, it seems.

After the Fact Update: According to Memory Alpha, the dragon planet is a nod to a comment made in another TOS episode. Which just makes me want to see this planet even more.