Bitchy History - Warp Speed Woke： Lecture 5 – Star Trek： Enterprise & The Post-9⧸11 Era

00:00:00.000 All right, so today we are going to be talking about Star Trek Enterprise, which is the last

00:00:08.220 of the official, you know, network televised versions of Star Trek to come out. Possibly

00:00:15.680 and considering doing another lecture on the Abrams movies in the future. I'll need to take

00:00:21.580 a little bit more time to to finalize my notes on those. So we're not going to not get into those

00:00:28.160 anytime soon, and I will probably be doing, I'm thinking about doing a lecture on Babylon 5 as

00:00:33.060 well in the future, so I'll keep you guys apprised of those if you're interested in coming to those

00:00:38.600 talks as well. And yeah, so let's get into it. All right, so this is the final era of network

00:00:47.720 televised Star Trek, right? Later we're going to get into the Abrams movies, and then we get into

00:00:54.180 the streaming versions like Discovery, Star Trek Picard, things like that. But this is the last

00:00:59.660 one to be shown, you know, episode by episode on a network television station. It starts in 2001.

00:01:08.440 It's the very first Trek prequel and the very first Star Trek series that's canceled before

00:01:14.120 seven seasons, aside from the original series. It only makes it four seasons. It was not

00:01:20.280 doing so well in the ratings department. As Chris said, yes, the Orville. I'm also going to talk

00:01:28.680 about the Orville in a future lecture. So it was created by Rick Berman and Brandon Braga,

00:01:34.260 my two favorite people in the history of Star Trek, right? And it's set in the 22nd century.

00:01:41.060 So it's set before the Federation officially exists. It's a more grounded kind of submarine

00:01:47.080 inspired aesthetic. They're reflecting the dangers and kind of, you know, the fears of early space

00:01:53.340 exploration because this is the first warp capable ship. It's a very interesting series and it kind

00:01:59.800 of experimented with episodic content and some serialized arcs. Neither one of them really,

00:02:05.800 really worked for the show in many ways. So this was set as a prequel. They wanted to show what

00:02:12.180 the world was like before the Federation becomes, you know, the powerhouse that it is at the very

00:02:18.580 beginnings of Starfleet. And it's going to deal with a lot of odd things. Now, the first two

00:02:28.740 seasons, they don't really get into a serialized story arc so much. They are doing, they try to do

00:02:37.840 something with something called the Temporal Cold War, which just stops, they stop bothering with

00:02:44.620 that almost entirely by the end of the second season. So let's start with what is good about

00:02:50.260 Star Trek Enterprise, what limited good there is, and really the world building. The world building

00:02:58.420 is quite good. Brandon Braga and Rick Berman worked together to create the new series. They

00:03:04.700 needed the show to, you know, be more stripped down than the original series, right? They needed

00:03:14.560 the technology to be pre-original series, and they wanted to really create something that would

00:03:22.640 have that vibe. I will say that at the very least, Rick Berman and Brandon Braga did a really great

00:03:29.100 job on that. Whereas if you look at shows like Star Trek, you know, Strange New Worlds, things

00:03:35.120 like that, they kind of just ignore the fact that they're doing a prequel entirely and they

00:03:39.540 give them amazing technology regardless. But that's an entirely separate subject to be talking

00:03:45.480 about. So Burman and Braga were incredibly detailed in the creation of the setting for

00:03:50.500 this series. They wanted to create a ship that's less technologically advanced than those in the

00:03:55.080 23rd and 24th centuries. One of the things they actually did was tour a nuclear submarine

00:04:00.660 to take their cues from designing the new ship. They want it to make a lot less comfortable.

00:04:06.020 They're making it a very throwback to kind of Cold War 20th century submarines and space shuttle

00:04:10.920 designs. So I have a few pictures here that I'm going to show you from a 2007. So this is a little

00:04:17.460 bit newer submarine than what they would have been touring in 2000. But you can see that the

00:04:24.340 bridge of the NX-01 and the bridge of a nuclear submarine share some similarities in the kind of

00:04:32.240 tech that they're using, the way that they're designed. It's very boxy. It's very, very 20th

00:04:39.580 century. I've got another great picture here of a captain's quarters on both ships. So the captain's

00:04:46.500 quarters on a nuclear submarine, it's very cramped, certainly less cramped than what the rest of the

00:04:52.080 crew are living in. But when you look at the design that they've given for Captain Archer's

00:04:57.400 quarters on the original Enterprise, it is also that very cramped kind of space. You don't have

00:05:04.020 a lot of extra room. Even when you look at the original series, at least, you know, Kirk has two

00:05:10.500 rooms in his quarters. And going into the later shows, the captains always have pretty expansive

00:05:17.980 quarters in this you're seeing something that's very cramped very not fun to be living in

00:05:25.180 and here's another little example here of the original uh the way they designed the original

00:05:31.340 torpedoes that were being used in uh in star trek enterprise and you can see that they look very

00:05:37.260 similar in design to torpedoes missiles that are are available on a nuclear submarine as well

00:05:43.980 So these definitely look different than the photon torpedoes that we are used to in the original

00:05:49.820 series and later. So they did a good job. They did a excellent job of aesthetics. They did an

00:05:55.320 excellent job of creating a world that looked like it was a prequel to the original series. I am

00:06:02.480 going to give them credit for that. That's pretty much the end of my credit for them, however,

00:06:07.440 because they were so focused. They were so insanely focused on the aesthetics of this

00:06:13.140 that they just kind of didn't bother with any sort of overarching theme or overarching concept

00:06:20.600 for the show. It was just, oh, this is going to be a prequel, and that's what we're selling it as.

00:06:24.720 It's purely nostalgia-based. So let's get into talking about the actual series. So James Conway,

00:06:31.800 who is the director of the Enterprise two-hour premiere, said in an interview several years

00:06:36.660 later that the first season was very repetitive. It felt like it was being written by people who

00:06:40.740 were burned out. So the setting is something that they, you know, were creating that they

00:06:47.600 wanted to do something with, but they didn't really have a plan for it. They started this

00:06:51.860 directly on the heels of Voyager going off the air. So most of the writers were going from one

00:06:57.160 show to another, and it just didn't, it didn't flow right. That Andre Jacques Metin and Stephen

00:07:04.300 Beck, who were both writers for the series, felt the first season never planned out an arc really.

00:07:11.980 Writers felt disorganized. They weren't really getting any feedback from Brandon Braga on what

00:07:16.380 he really wanted to do with the show. Another writer, David Goodman, I'm going to quote him,

00:07:21.900 quote the full quote later, he said that the series was full of cool stuff but there were

00:07:27.020 no details that had been worked out for a clear message. So they really were not creating something

00:07:32.220 that was the Gene Roddenberry conceptualization of Star Trek. So with no planned theme to shape

00:07:38.340 the series, they just kind of meandered around without any consideration of socio-political

00:07:44.220 current events or anything like that. Like Voyager, it kind of fell into this role of just

00:07:50.240 entertainment and trying to, you know, reflect society. And we'll talk about what it starts to

00:07:58.120 reflect in just a second. I'm going to play you a little clip here from the first episode of

00:08:03.680 from the premiere. When Zephram Conkren made his legendary warp flight 90 years ago and drew the

00:08:10.660 attention of our new friends, the Vulcans, we realized that we weren't alone in the galaxy.

00:08:17.760 Today, we are about to cross a new threshold. For nearly a century, we've waded ankle deep

00:08:24.920 in the ocean of space.

00:08:27.720 Now it's finally time to swim.

00:08:37.660 The Warp 5 engine wouldn't be a reality

00:08:40.140 without men like Dr. Cochran

00:08:42.040 and Henry Archer,

00:08:43.700 who worked so hard to develop it.

00:08:46.240 So it's only fitting that Henry's son,

00:08:49.080 Jonathan Archer,

00:08:50.320 will command the first starship

00:08:51.900 powered by that engine.

00:08:54.920 so I'm not gonna go playing the whole scene because frankly it's not that great a scene 1.00

00:09:07.760 I do love the way that like everyone starts clapping for him and the Vulcans just like are 0.64

00:09:11.900 like why are they clapping this is way too much emotion going on 0.99

00:09:16.160 All right, so the one major event that this show is going to end up having to deal with,

00:09:25.880 as every show on television pretty much had to deal with, was September 11th. So the terrorist

00:09:33.660 attacks on September 11th, 2001 happened 15 days before this series made its premiere.

00:09:41.780 So this premiered on UPN, RIP to that network.

00:09:46.600 We haven't heard of that one in a while, on September 26th, 2001.

00:09:51.640 And of course, that means that it's not really going to have a major impact on the first season.

00:09:56.820 The first season was already written, primarily.

00:09:59.080 It was already produced in many ways.

00:10:03.160 But we are going to start seeing that influence come in eventually.

00:10:08.740 Now, bear with me.

00:10:10.720 uh after the Voyager lecture I had a couple of critiques that said I didn't spend enough time

00:10:15.580 discussing the history of third wave feminism and kind of giving enough historical context for the

00:10:20.060 90s so I am gonna kind of back it up a little bit and give you guys a little context for what I'm

00:10:26.800 talking about here even if all of us were alive for uh for 9-11 and remember all of this stuff

00:10:33.500 uh that being said I will upload this to YouTube later and some of the people who view it there

00:10:37.820 may not have been alive for 9-11. So the culture of the U.S. is going to be incredibly impacted by

00:10:45.100 the attacks on September 11th. Obviously, there's a heightened security and anxiety in America.

00:10:53.140 There's an increased demand for a security apparatus. There's a lot of paranoia, especially

00:10:58.960 around air travel. And psychologists have basically confirmed that it was kind of

00:11:05.600 the impetus for most of the national anxiety and commercial air travel. We hadn't really had a lot

00:11:11.880 of anxiety about that prior to this. I still remember flying before 9-11 and my dad being

00:11:17.480 able to like walk us all the way up to the gate and nobody had to take off their shoes. Nobody

00:11:24.220 had to go through a lot of crazy security. I have students when I teach about 9-11 in my classes

00:11:32.740 who are completely baffled at the idea of going through an airport that doesn't have security

00:11:37.380 like the TSA because they they they're they didn't even exist when this happened so

00:11:44.820 we're going to end up of course with the war on terror uh we're going to end up with the

00:11:49.700 Patriot Act being put in place which is one of the biggest impacts of that we didn't see that

00:11:54.820 go away until 2020. We're also going to start to see things like the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay

00:12:00.020 in the news a lot and we're going to see the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. So we're

00:12:05.540 going to see a lot of things that are going to become incredibly controversial happen. I would

00:12:10.900 say that the Patriot Act is number one on the list of most controversial, then of course the invasions

00:12:16.180 of Afghanistan and Iraq as well. But 9-11 is also going to leave a mark on culture. So pop culture,

00:12:27.860 music, film, all of those things. Following the September 11th attacks,

00:12:32.500 one of my favorite little bits of history is that the Clear Channel Communications,

00:12:37.060 which is now known as iHeartMedia, was the largest owner of radio stations in the United States,

00:12:43.300 and they sent around a memo that contained a list of songs that they felt would be

00:12:48.580 lyrically questionable, maybe a little, you know, unfortunate to put on the air in the aftermath

00:12:54.580 of these attacks. Contrary to popular opinion they did not ban these songs from the air. They simply

00:13:01.460 suggested a list of 165 things that you might not want to put on the air at this point. Suggestions

00:13:09.460 included every single song in the Rage Against the Machine's entire catalog. They also contained a

00:13:17.380 a lot of songs that had references to airplanes, collisions, death, conflict, violence, all of

00:13:26.000 these things, even just the month of September. They said, don't put this on air. A few of my

00:13:32.460 favorite examples are ACDC's Highway to Hell, Safe in New York City. I can see where that one would

00:13:39.060 have been a problem. Yes. The Bengals' Walk Like an Egyptian is on this list. The Clash Rock the

00:13:46.580 Casbah. Credence Clearwater Revival's Traveling Band is also on this list. To be fair, they do

00:13:52.760 talk about being on a plane, right? Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young, Peter, Paul, and Mary's

00:14:00.220 Blowing in the Wind and Leaving on a Jet Plane, Queen, Another One Bites the Dust, and U2's Sunday

00:14:06.800 Bloody Sunday. Of course, there's a lot of other examples of songs that are on there. In fact,

00:14:11.360 If you go on Spotify, you can find an entire playlist titled the 2001 Clear Channel Memorandum,

00:14:18.740 which has all the songs available to listen to, which I think is hilarious and kind of dark.

00:14:24.220 A lot of films are going to be edited before they were released because they contain sensitive

00:14:32.060 imagery or script things.

00:14:33.840 Spider-Man 2002 had to be re-edited before the film came out.

00:14:39.180 Zoolander in 2001 had to be edited before it was released to remove scenes of the Twin Towers.

00:14:47.540 Armageddon, which had come out in 1998, in fact had a scene retroactively edited in which the

00:14:54.420 World Trade Center gets hit by meteors and catches on fire. That was edited out of most television

00:14:59.440 broadcasts of the film after the attacks. E.T. had a whole scene that was redone in the 2002

00:15:07.020 re-release where the dialogue is originally, you're not going as a terrorist, which was a line

00:15:13.420 spoken by the mom and is replaced by, you're not going as a hippie, which wildly different context

00:15:19.180 there. And I think possibly my favorite example of a change here is the ending of Lilo and Stitch,

00:15:26.220 which originally was meant to be very different. I'm going to play you a brief clip of this.

00:15:37.020 You still watch this right there.

00:15:40.020 So what exactly are you doing? 1.00

00:15:42.020 Not for a kill, but for a kill, but for a kill. 0.99

00:15:46.020 Hey, get that part of your car. 0.99

00:15:49.020 Man, how many pieces are the more peaceful I can say?

00:15:55.020 Well, I don't know, maybe the company's helped want these.

00:15:58.020 Right, so the end, that scene in Lilo and Stitch originally involved them hijacking an airplane

00:16:15.180 and then flying it through a cityscape. They obviously decided that would be a little insensitive

00:16:22.820 under the situation. Uh, so they changed it to being an alien spacecraft, which makes more sense

00:16:28.820 in a lot of ways anyway. Uh, and they're just flying around in a, uh, around a nature area

00:16:34.320 instead. Um, we're also going to see a lot of changes to previous, you know, previous forms

00:16:40.020 of entertainment. Iron Man is going to end up with his entire, uh, canon history rewritten in

00:16:46.460 many ways. He originally comes out as an anti-communist crusader in the 1960s and 70s

00:16:52.460 and his character is now selling weapons and being involved in the war on terror

00:16:59.040 and unbeknownst to him, selling weapons to terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

00:17:04.980 So we see a lot of things that get changed during this time period.

00:17:09.420 And then, of course, television.

00:17:10.600 Television gets hit hard in this era.

00:17:13.880 Obviously, people are worried about how we're going to depict this.

00:17:17.360 How is this going to change what people want to watch on television?

00:17:19.900 uh several tv shows most notably the west wing and third watch produced special episodes that

00:17:26.320 addressed the attacks uh so we see episodes like isaac and ishmael in uh west wing which

00:17:32.220 was i mean i'll admit a little heavy-handed and possibly not made at the right time but it's not

00:17:38.860 a bad episode in my opinion i actually had my students watch the entire episode at one point

00:17:44.060 in one of my classes. The season eight premiere of the NBC sitcom Friends was dedicated to the

00:17:50.540 people of New York City. They also had to change an episode of it at one point because they had a

00:17:56.880 section in which Chandler and Monica couldn't get on their flight for their honeymoon because

00:18:02.860 Chandler makes a joke about a bomb. That story was completely rewritten and reshot in the

00:18:08.980 in the actual episode because, well, yeah, it was supposed to air on September 27th and

00:18:14.420 nobody was going to be making jokes about bombs in an airport, right? It's just not going to be a

00:18:18.280 thing. We're also going to see a lot of shows that are military based like JAG and things like that

00:18:24.480 making major changes to their ongoing storylines in order to incorporate 9-11 into them. And of

00:18:30.700 course, one of the major aspects of this is the show 24. It premiered in October of 2001. Howard

00:18:37.460 Gordon, who was the showrunner, thought that 9-11 might have killed the show before it could even

00:18:41.800 air. Because, well, who wants to watch a dark, gritty show about a guy chasing down terrorists

00:18:47.580 right after a terrorist attack on America? But Howard Gordon said that it turned out that 9-11

00:18:53.080 was the beginning of the resonance, which became something that I think the public watched the

00:18:57.380 show through a different set of eyes. So they, you know, suddenly they were writing about the

00:19:01.300 American hero fighting terrorism, right, wrong, or indifferent. That's true, right? And it

00:19:07.440 At least this show in 24 did a little bit of a good job of not making it all about Middle

00:19:11.820 Eastern terrorists.

00:19:13.880 But still, there's a lot of dark sides to 24 dealing with issues of torture and Islamophobia

00:19:18.820 in the wake of 9-11.

00:19:20.940 And of course Sex and the City famously changed their entire opening credits scene to remove

00:19:26.620 the two towers, or the Twin Towers, not the two towers, this isn't Lord of the Rings.

00:19:31.800 Yeah, so we had a lot of changes that happened in culture.

00:19:35.600 of course Star Trek Enterprise is going to end up picking up on that. So now we can get back to

00:19:39.780 talking about the actual point of this lecture. So again, premieres 15 days after 9-11. There's a

00:19:45.720 big cultural and political climate change in America. Early episodes are going to be more

00:19:51.020 like the Voyager model. They're very episodic. There's not a lot of clear political themes in

00:19:55.820 the show. And we don't see an actual 9-11 context in the show really until season three. So they

00:20:04.060 wait a decent amount of time to start incorporating this into the show. And this shift was kind of

00:20:09.920 divisive, at least in my opinion and in the opinion of other academics. Was, you know, Star

00:20:15.720 Trek critiquing these shifts in society or reinforcing them? So there's definitely some

00:20:22.240 problems in what they decide to depict in this show. Dominic Keaton, who plays Lieutenant Malcolm

00:20:27.920 Reed on the show, referred to the work that they were doing on Star Trek in these later seasons

00:20:33.600 as jingoistic and heavy-handed. So you can see not everybody on the show was a big fan.

00:20:40.140 However, Scott Bakula, who played Captain Archer, thought it was a good thing. He said,

00:20:44.940 there's a big part of me that feels that 9-11 influenced our show, influenced the writers and

00:20:49.220 their state of mind. When they said, we want to go in this darker direction, I said, that feels

00:20:54.000 appropriate to the times. You look at shows like JAG, which was still on then, and NCIS, and shows

00:20:59.160 that came out of the war. It's funny how all the war movies pretty much died, but the TV stuff that

00:21:04.160 touched on it lived on. I feel like it was appropriate. I wish it had been that way from the

00:21:08.300 top. Now, I will say there are conflicting accounts of how specific the references to 9-11 were meant

00:21:14.580 to be in the series. Chris Black, one of the writers for Enterprise, says that he doesn't

00:21:19.700 remember 9-11 ever being an issue specifically addressed in the writer's room. I feel like that

00:21:25.260 can't be true like how could how could it be true but but he did speculate that it might have been

00:21:31.340 something that Braga and Berman discussed behind closed doors rather than collaborating with the

00:21:35.880 Enterprise writing staff. Mike Sussman and Manny Cotto both writers on the show were both confident

00:21:42.000 that the season three plot arc was a clear allegory for 9-11. There's there's literally

00:21:47.520 no way to say it isn't. It's ridiculous to say it's not an allegory for 9-11. Sussman contended

00:21:54.480 that it was an attempt for the series to regain relevancy and it boosted its kind of falling

00:21:58.980 ratings. And of course, Brandon Braga firmly denies that there is any 9-11 parallel in the show

00:22:05.560 whatsoever. He says, we weren't trying to do 9-11. The show premiered a week or two after 9-11.

00:22:11.240 We didn't do the Zendi arc as a 9-11 metaphor. We did it because an attack on Earth hadn't been

00:22:16.220 done in a while. Let's put Earth at stake so there's a larger purpose. That is the biggest

00:22:20.760 amount of bullshit I've ever heard come out of Brandon Braga's mouth and that's saying something. 0.99

00:22:25.720 But regardless of what Braga says the intent was the season three plot arc has many many distinct 0.98

00:22:31.800 parallels with 9-11 and the conflict that it's going to cause both on American morality,

00:22:37.800 American ideas of immigrants and religious freedom and also of course international war

00:22:43.880 that we're going to get into as well. So season two of Enterprise ends with an unprecedented

00:22:49.880 attack on Earth. A probe appears, an alien probe appears, fires an energy weapon at Earth's surface,

00:22:56.520 kills millions of people in a single attack. I'm going to play you a clip here from that.

00:23:19.880 The Captain wants to talk to us.

00:23:49.060 About what?

00:23:50.680 He's speaking to Admiral Forrest.

00:23:53.200 It's the third time in the last hour.

00:23:56.900 Well, something's obviously up.

00:23:58.500 I can't remember the last time he asked me to join the senior staff.

00:24:01.500 We're briefing him.

00:24:02.620 Maybe it has something to do with the...

00:24:04.220 There's been an attack on Earth.

00:24:16.440 What do you mean, attack?

00:24:19.060 A probe.

00:24:21.720 They don't know where it came from.

00:24:24.520 They fired a weapon that cut a swath.

00:24:28.180 4,000 kilometers long.

00:24:31.840 From Florida to Venezuela.

00:24:35.960 There may have been a million casualties.

00:24:38.940 A million?

00:24:41.580 We've been recalled.

00:24:43.960 Did they say why?

00:24:46.580 I didn't ask.

00:24:49.060 So, of course, they head back to Earth and they're on now on war footing.

00:24:55.740 They've gone from being exploratory vessel to being a military vessel.

00:25:00.960 Now there's a few things that are remarkably similar in the way that they handle this attack

00:25:06.820 to the to to what happens after 9-11.

00:25:09.560 The first major theme that the show kind of explores is Islamophobia.

00:25:14.940 So in the aftermath of 9-11, we see a massive wave of hate crimes rising against Muslims

00:25:20.000 in America.

00:25:21.000 I don't care what some economists who write articles for the New York Times may have said.

00:25:28.160 We did not all come together and, you know, be supportive of everyone in America after

00:25:34.140 9-11.

00:25:35.140 Didn't happen.

00:25:36.140 There were numerous incidents of harassment and violence that were reported around the

00:25:39.420 country, including attacks on mosques, religious leaders, assaults, arsons, vandalisms, threats,

00:25:46.060 several killings. And this was not just affecting people who were Muslims. This also affected just

00:25:52.300 anyone who looked Arabic. Sikhs were attacked often who obviously had nothing to do with this

00:25:59.260 attack whatsoever. But of course, this is going to become a major factor. There's all sorts of

00:26:04.860 conspiracy theories cropping up in American television, some of them created by Donald

00:26:10.820 Trump himself, that he saw Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the downfall of the Twin Towers

00:26:17.280 on the other side of the Hudson River. That wasn't true, never happened, he didn't see it,

00:26:22.040 he couldn't have seen it from where he was, but it didn't matter. Islamophobia becomes a major

00:26:26.360 factor for America at this point. Now where this comes in is in the two of the major

00:26:33.220 conflicts that we end up having in Star Trek Enterprise, the first one being the Zendi. So 1.00

00:26:39.540 the Zendi are a group of six sentient species who all evolved on a single planet in a place called 0.97

00:26:45.620 the Delphic Expanse. Don't even talk to me about how ridiculous it is to have six sentient species 1.00

00:26:51.360 all evolve on one planet. I don't even think that's possible, but Brandon Braga didn't care 0.63

00:26:55.940 about science. So there is a Zendi civil war going on. Everyone who, all the members of 1.00

00:27:04.780 the Zendi are very obsessed with their religion. They worship something called the Guardians. 1.00

00:27:13.600 They consider them to be their saviors. Children are taught to revere them and have daily prayers

00:27:19.080 to the Guardians. And it's a terrible offense to question the Guardians. It's just not something

00:27:24.020 you're allowed to do at all. The director David Livingston said that the Zindi were destroying 1.00

00:27:29.780 parts of earth. It was reflective of what was going on at the time. The actor Connor Trenier 1.00

00:27:35.460 who plays Tripp opined that the Zindi were clearly a not too veiled reference to terrorists.

00:27:41.860 There are several parallels between the Zindi and the Trianon who I'll talk about in another

00:27:45.780 section as well and the post 9-11 views of Islamic culture. So a lot of the parallels

00:27:52.900 the views that americans had of muslims during this period of time believe they saw that that

00:27:59.540 that muslim extremists were just muslims in this case they just applied this to everyone uh had

00:28:05.940 kind of a preemptive strike doctrine which is why the zindi attacked earth in the show as well they 0.98

00:28:10.740 had been told by the guardians that earth was going to destroy them um there's all these things 0.95

00:28:16.660 that are that are going to come up so the religious the religious corollaries between 0.95

00:28:20.580 the zindi and muslim extremists are pretty clear but they're going to get even more clear when we 0.99

00:28:26.020 get to the next group that we end up in a conflict with in the show which is the trianon

00:28:31.620 and i'll play you a clip here from episode 12 of season three where they first meet the trianon

00:28:39.060 the expense you mean the chosen realm

00:28:44.980 i think we're talking about the same thing we're here to learn everything we can about

00:28:49.380 of species you may have run into as indeed i'm not familiar with them we place very little emphasis

00:28:57.380 on meeting other life forms uh space travel for us is merely a means to bring us closer to the

00:29:04.820 spheres you've studied them for some time we're not here to study the spheres we're here to

00:29:10.420 venerate them we believe that it is through prayer and meditation that the makers become manifest

00:29:16.740 The Makers, the creator of the spheres. I've felt their presence here.

00:29:27.740 You're referring to spatial anomalies.

00:29:30.740 The Maker's breath, it reshapes reality, allows ordinary men a glimpse of the divine.

00:29:38.740 That breath nearly destroyed your ship.

00:29:41.740 Well, we became careless. It's easy to do when you're in the presence of a sphere.

00:29:47.600 They're certainly impressive.

00:29:50.460 We've found three of them so far.

00:29:52.640 You're fortunate to have such a fast ship.

00:29:55.860 I regret that I'll die having seen only one of the many thousands of spheres.

00:30:00.200 Actually, we've determined that there are 59 spheres in the expanse.

00:30:04.580 I think your estimates are a bit low.

00:30:07.100 That's doubtful.

00:30:08.860 With the makers, there is no doubt.

00:30:11.180 Doubt is the basis of all scientific progress.

00:30:14.040 scientific progress has led many people astray perhaps this is a subject we should discuss some

00:30:21.740 other time all right now i'll admit in a modern context looking at this i can see the definite

00:30:27.640 corollaries between this kind of religious fervor and hating science to um other groups in america

00:30:34.100 today who may or may not have voted for a guy who likes to wear red hats uh but at the time

00:30:41.240 this was more or less a very direct corollary to the way that Americans viewed Muslims and

00:30:49.180 fits in with Muslim extremism to a great Islamic extremism to a great deal. The triadon venerated

00:30:56.100 the spheres through prayer and meditation. They took months long pilgrimages to see them very

00:31:01.020 similar to the Hajj in Islam. But you couldn't land on it or go inside it. That was considered 0.87

00:31:08.760 to be desecration that was punishable by death. We see that they don't view anyone who has a

00:31:15.240 different view than them as being kind of, you know, human. They're the enemy. A quote from

00:31:21.160 this episode that, you know, we've just begun this mission and already three people are dead.

00:31:25.160 These people aren't our enemy. They're non-believers. That makes them our enemy, 0.88

00:31:29.540 which is very much the way that we viewed Islam at the time in early 2000s. 0.98

00:31:38.760 Another major factor that comes up is this extreme devotion to religious views that makes 0.67

00:31:48.600 them willing to commit violent acts of self-sacrifice in the name of religion. This is a trait that

00:31:54.380 was very commonly associated with religious extremism in Islam during the post 9-11 period.

00:32:00.600 People, you know, they're suicide bombers, hijackers, things like that. This entire plot

00:32:06.420 of episode 12 of season three is based around the group these trianon uh hijacking the enterprise 0.93

00:32:13.380 and using uh hidden internal explosives to take over the ship uh so we have both suicide bombers

00:32:22.260 and hijacking in one episode and of course the very extreme religious beliefs which is you know

00:32:28.260 uh what when you question me you question the makers there's a word for that heresy uh this

00:32:33.780 This is very, very strong on the religious corollaries. 0.79

00:32:38.040 I sympathize with you, Captain. 0.52

00:32:41.640 I've had to make hard choices as well.

00:32:44.800 When I was young, I fought with the holy regiments.

00:32:48.040 I was commanding a mission. 0.76

00:32:50.500 We had infiltrated a village known to be a heretic stronghold. 0.77

00:32:55.880 We were instructed to stay concealed and relay intelligence about enemy movements.

00:33:00.720 but one of the villagers discovered us it was a small boy no more than six years old

00:33:10.240 we know if we let him go he would alert the village

00:33:16.340 and if we tried to hold him he might give us away

00:33:21.660 there was only one action to take

00:33:26.040 so i took it

00:33:30.680 you're proud of that

00:33:34.360 in the service of the makers all actions are blessed ones right so you can see that i'm trying

00:33:46.020 not to go too hard on this but you can see definitely those corollaries that they are

00:33:49.780 trying to make here between religious extremism and the Trinon. Another thing that is notable

00:33:58.180 about this is that after 9-11, we see an increased interest in populism, this increased

00:34:06.760 wave of populism in America, which is, of course, a range of political stances that emphasize the

00:34:12.600 people and juxtapose them against the elite. It's frequently associated with anti-establishment,

00:34:18.220 anti-political sentiment. I'm preaching to the choir here. Everybody's here knows what populism

00:34:23.180 is. We saw an extreme increase in populist rhetoric, especially of the nationalist variety

00:34:28.860 after 9-11, which very much focused on ethno-nationalism and our people versus those

00:34:34.860 rotten outsiders who have hurt us. And we look at Brian and Braga describing the world of

00:34:39.900 Enterprise's 22nd century. We see that Star Trek had taken a sharp turn towards populist narratives

00:34:45.660 as well. He described it so that people had ball caps and walked dogs and wore tennis shoes and

00:34:51.100 are more identifiable as people than say a Captain Picard who is more of an idyllic man of the future

00:34:56.900 that you probably wouldn't recognize as a person that you could ever meet today. Again, Braga is

00:35:02.800 hanging around with the wrong people. I know plenty of people that are more like Captain Picard than

00:35:06.980 they are like Captain Archer, but Braga just had weird ideas about society.

00:35:12.800 honestly doing a talk on Orville is going to be very nice because I'll finally get to say

00:35:18.780 something nice about Bran and Braga because it's never going to happen when I talk about

00:35:21.860 them in the context of Star Trek. It's never going to happen. So Enterprise becomes Star

00:35:28.140 Trek's most reactionary show at this point. Prior Trek series had critiqued American foreign and

00:35:34.340 domestic policy. We see it with the original series in Vietnam. We see it with Next Generation

00:35:39.400 talking about issues of the Cold War, DS9 with issues of the security state. However, Enterprise

00:35:45.000 really just embraces the post 9-11 military mindset. They begin, you especially see this

00:35:51.600 with Captain Archer. He starts out as kind of Roddenberry's optimistic explorer type and then

00:35:56.880 becomes this hardened, very, very scarred war driven leader who has to make a lot of moral

00:36:02.540 compromises. And this is going to mirror a lot of the shift towards pro-military and pro-war

00:36:12.360 ideals in America after 9-11. So there's several things they focus on specifically in the show.

00:36:19.580 One of them is the issue of torture. There's a very strongly post-militaristic pro-war attitude 0.52

00:36:26.500 in the third season, which is going to touch on things like the acceptability of torture in

00:36:30.720 wartime, which was a major topic on the minds of people in America at the time. So in season three

00:36:36.980 episode Anomaly, which is early on in the series, in the season, Archer tortures and threatens to

00:36:43.860 kill a prisoner on board the Enterprise unless he gives up critical information that's needed

00:36:48.200 in the conflict against the Zendi. I'm going to play a clip from that really quickly. 0.98

00:37:00.720 Your ship attacked a Zindi vessel. 0.98

00:37:06.500 I want to know everything you can tell me about them.

00:37:09.120 Zindi? 0.98

00:37:12.640 You heard me.

00:37:15.140 I don't remember a species with that name.

00:37:17.620 You're lying.

00:37:19.180 The manifesto said you took their ship less than two weeks ago.

00:37:22.020 What manifest?

00:37:23.380 Tell me what you know.

00:37:26.660 It was a small ship, but they were no match for us.

00:37:30.120 Where are they now?

00:37:36.060 You destroyed them?

00:37:38.220 They resisted.

00:37:40.060 We had no choice.

00:37:41.540 Where does that come from?

00:37:42.980 I have better things to do than familiarize myself with our victims. 1.00

00:37:47.260 Which species of Zindi were they? 1.00

00:37:49.460 What do they look like? 1.00

00:37:50.860 I don't remember.

00:37:56.960 Are you sure?

00:37:59.320 Your threats aren't very convincing. I told you, you're too civilized.

00:38:03.260 We'll see about that.

00:38:06.860 Sir, as you are.

00:38:10.240 Lipson?

00:38:11.720 Are you taking me to your torture chamber? 1.00

00:38:14.020 Shut up. 1.00

00:38:16.160 Get in. 1.00

00:38:24.760 The city.

00:38:25.540 This tactic doesn't suit you, Captain.

00:38:30.540 This airlock has a decompression rate of 0.5 atmospheres per minute.

00:38:44.500 You better start talking now, because in about 40 seconds, you won't be able to.

00:38:51.720 Lucendi.

00:38:55.540 So even the rest of the crew are like, Captain, what are you doing here, buddy? That's not an

00:39:02.020 acceptable thing to be doing. The only way this could have been more on the mark for what was

00:39:07.860 going on in America at the time and the discussion of the use of torture would be if they'd actually

00:39:12.480 just put him over a chair and put a towel on his face and waterboarded him. I mean, this is the

00:39:17.940 space version of waterboarding. Their deprivation of air, very similar to what was being used by

00:39:23.760 the CIA at Guantanamo Bay and things like that in post 9-11 intelligence gathering. Public opinion

00:39:29.020 was both for and against the practice in many ways. There was a lot of people who said this

00:39:33.240 is unacceptable. A lot of people who said, kind of like Manny Cotto said about this episode,

00:39:38.200 he's protecting the lives of 4 billion people. And by the way, this wasn't even a nice guy.

00:39:42.620 This was a thug who was just trying, he was just depriving of oxygen enough to knock him out,

00:39:47.040 just justifying it, right? The action of Captain Archer is not censured by his commanding officers,

00:39:52.580 nor is it played as truly negative even though some of his crew are a little like and this isn't

00:39:57.900 a great thing that you're doing and his actions proved to be beneficial his he gets the information

00:40:03.380 that he's seeking he this basically gives the impression that oh torture works right torture

00:40:09.700 might not be great but it does get you the information that you need so sometimes it's

00:40:14.240 acceptable you can see here that even it's discussed in this later episode with the

00:40:19.500 trianon as well i had no idea we were such kindred spirits what makes you think that i know why

00:40:25.980 you're here and the expanse it turns out we're both fighting to save our people i'm trying to

00:40:33.920 stop my world from being destroyed you're trying to wipe out everyone who doesn't share your

00:40:38.520 beliefs our situations aren't as different as you think i draw the line of murdering innocent people

00:40:46.400 and not torture in your log there is an incident with a prisoner an interrogation that made use

00:40:53.520 of an airlock i needed information critical to my mission he wasn't hurt all right this

00:41:00.960 is the exact same arguments that were made to justify to justify torture especially things like

00:41:06.800 waterboarding in this period of time which is like it doesn't actually hurt them uh you know

00:41:11.680 we're just getting the information that we need and so it's acceptable to do so when you look at

00:41:16.000 this, they are justifying torture in this show. They are not critiquing it. They aren't saying

00:41:21.740 this is a bad thing. They're saying this is the thing that the heroic captain of this ship

00:41:25.620 should do and it works. So we should accept that. We also see a parallel here with the

00:41:33.000 militarization of Star Trek and its use of mercenaries. Enterprise ends up hiring mercenaries

00:41:38.940 or recruiting a separate group outside of Starfleet called the Makos. And this is the first 0.96

00:41:46.340 time in Star Trek history that they've done that. Very much mirroring the use of Blackwater and

00:41:52.220 other private military contractors during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. During those wars,

00:41:57.420 the United States contracted up to 50% of its armed forces from private military organizations,

00:42:03.120 basically mercenaries, um, in this same way.

00:42:09.400 Is this seat taken?

00:42:11.800 Ma'am?

00:42:13.620 I'm Hoshi Sato.

00:42:15.160 We've familiarized ourselves with all the bridge officers ensign.

00:42:18.540 I'm Major Hayes.

00:42:19.960 This is Sergeant Kemper, Corporals Romero, and Chang.

00:42:23.720 Military Assault Command.

00:42:25.340 Captain Hunter, one of the best.

00:42:27.560 Looks like...

00:42:28.240 So Military Assault Command gets brought in and they are going to be very instrumental in a lot

00:42:34.000 of the big firefights that come up in later episodes. Again, not necessarily a critique

00:42:40.800 of the use of Blackwater or private military contractors. They're not really viewed as a

00:42:46.640 negative at any point in the show. They're not really shown as doing anything bad or inappropriate.

00:42:52.080 this is mostly just a justification. Now I wanted to look at a couple of very specific episodes

00:43:00.820 that are dealing with major factors within the post 9-11 world. So we've got four episodes to

00:43:09.480 look at before we get to the end of this lecture, guys. All right, so the first one we're going to

00:43:13.900 look at is episode Damage from season three, episode 19. There's a lot of themes of moral

00:43:20.460 compromise in wartime. The Enterprise is seeking a warp coil to continue its mission against the

00:43:26.660 Zendi. The Enterprise has been damaged. Archer ends up stealing this warp coil from an innocent 1.00

00:43:33.260 alien ship, condemning them to be stranded in space. They can't get out, right? I mean,

00:43:38.520 when you're in space and you don't have a warp drive, it takes a long time to get from one

00:43:43.500 place to another. T'Pol even warns Archer that he is crossing a dangerous line, but he does it

00:43:48.680 anyway. He just views it as it's a necessity. And a lot of ways this parallels U.S. military actions

00:43:54.580 in the Middle East during this period where morality is kind of sacrificed for the idea of

00:43:59.320 the greater good. This is what we need to get the job done. It doesn't really matter if what we're 0.98

00:44:04.140 doing is morally questionable. And it's kind of the desensitization of Starfleet officers to

00:44:10.200 ethically questionable decisions and also defending them, justifying them.

00:44:15.400 while this episode correctly portrays this as an ethical and moral dilemma the ultimate decision

00:44:21.560 of the episode is that crossing the line is a necessity it has to be done and is therefore

00:44:26.580 justified

00:44:27.200 it's all yours

00:44:39.380 it was the perfect house guest as usual

00:44:44.280 You'll be happy to know that I discharged Jensen Massaro this morning.

00:44:51.620 And Corporal O'Malley will be returning to duty this afternoon.

00:44:57.740 Captain.

00:45:03.600 It's hard to imagine it will never get this ship back the way it was.

00:45:09.400 It's a simple matter of repairs.

00:45:14.280 Well, perhaps not that simple.

00:45:18.280 Somehow I don't think it's the damage to Enterprise that's troubling you.

00:45:30.280 How long have you been a doctor?

00:45:33.280 Nearly 40 years.

00:45:44.280 and in all that time

00:45:48.680 did you ever do anything you thought was unethical

00:45:59.880 twice

00:46:07.640 i'm about to step over a line

00:46:09.400 The line I thought I would never cross.

00:46:14.400 And given the nature of our mission, it probably won't be the last.

00:46:22.400 Probably not.

00:46:27.400 May I ask what you're planning to do?

00:46:32.400 There could be more casualties.

00:46:44.780 I'll be ready.

00:47:02.400 so he's gonna go on there he's gonna take the take the part they need and leave them

00:47:18.440 floating dead in the water uh and again it this is justified within the context of the show it

00:47:23.640 is justified say you know i'm gonna cross a line and it's probably not the last one i'm gonna cross

00:47:28.560 and the doctor is like yeah probably not oh well and just walks out you know uh no real discussion

00:47:35.000 of of anything past that it's yeah this sucks but it has to be done another episode that i think is

00:47:44.380 particularly just gallingly awful is this episode um hatchery from season three uh where they really

00:47:52.740 dehumanize the enemy in this context. So Archer finds a nursery of Zendi insectoid hatchlings 0.92

00:48:00.580 and insists on saving them despite them being the children of the enemy, right? His crew questions 0.97

00:48:06.180 his judgment. Why should they be risking their lives to save the enemy's children? And in a great

00:48:12.440 way, this reflects the US dehumanization of enemy civilians during the war on terror. This idea that

00:48:18.060 yeah okay sure our bombings might kill some some civilians and might kill some kids but you know

00:48:25.420 it's it's what's necessary right um i really raised the question of should compassion extend

00:48:32.220 to the enemies, to the children of our enemies.

00:49:02.220 The DNA is identical to the bodies we found.

00:49:13.000 They would appear to be the crew's offspring.

00:49:18.820 The hatchery? 0.98

00:49:20.540 They built this place to take quite a beating.

00:49:22.860 Reinforced bulkheads, back up power systems.

00:49:26.100 31 eggs are still valuable.

00:49:28.460 They won't survive for long.

00:49:30.060 The bio supports losing power.

00:49:31.500 Do you think you can repair it?

00:49:33.660 I wouldn't even know where to start.

00:49:37.980 There's a shuttlecraft in their port bay.

00:49:39.620 Get it back to the ship.

00:49:41.080 I want an analysis of their tactical systems as soon as possible.

00:49:44.660 Awesome.

00:49:44.900 now what this scene does not show is that the the egg sac that he's scanning there eventually

00:50:04.940 ends up cracking open and spraying him with something which they believe is some sort of

00:50:09.480 like defensive mechanism right the the egg saw him as an enemy it sprayed him with something to

00:50:14.740 get him to leave them alone um and then he proceeds to get more and more aggressive about

00:50:21.120 saving these these hatchlings throughout the rest of the episode he gets much more aggressive about

00:50:27.120 it to the point where um other members of the crew decide to basically mutiny against him because

00:50:32.780 he's he's going so over the top and trying to save them um eventually they you know uh managed to

00:50:40.720 capture the bridge. They, you know, stun Archer, bring him back to the ship, back on the Enterprise.

00:50:48.840 They do a thorough medical scan of him and realize that the egg that sprayed Archer

00:50:53.500 actually didn't spray him with a defense mechanism. It sprayed him with some sort of

00:50:57.640 nurturing hormone, which was making him very focused on preserving the lives. It was protective,

00:51:03.480 but it was meant to make sure that whoever encountered them would be, it would feel

00:51:08.400 parental energy towards them and want to save them um in the end Archer ends up fully treated he's

00:51:16.080 out down for the count sleeping it off Hayes uh they go through a whole series of things to to

00:51:22.960 deal with this and then at the end I don't have the scene here the end he wakes up from his you

00:51:27.660 know nap after he's recovering and he's talking to another member of the crew and he asks them

00:51:34.380 what happened to the hatchlings? And the guy just doesn't say anything about it. He just moves on

00:51:40.140 to the next subject. So it's important to note that while this episode depicts Archer as wanting

00:51:46.360 to protect these hatchlings, he's only doing so in the context of the episode because he's been

00:51:52.180 drugged. He's been forced to care about the young. We're meant to view his compassion and his ethics

00:51:58.560 as a bad thing in this episode. It is not meant to be a thing that we see as a good thing that

00:52:05.660 he's doing. He is, you know, being forced to do it. And given the end of the episode, it's pretty

00:52:11.620 clear that the Enterprise just left and left the hatchlings to die at the end, which in the end

00:52:17.760 makes this episode a really bad answer to the question it raises, which is should our compassion

00:52:23.000 extend to the children of our enemies? This episode basically said, nah, we're not interested

00:52:27.600 in that. That's bad. Anyone who thinks that we should protect the children of our enemies is

00:52:33.060 probably just under the influence of something. I don't know, compassion, empathy, but we don't

00:52:38.840 need any of that stuff. Another great example of commentary here is the episode Home from season

00:52:46.260 four. This is kind of talking a lot about post-war xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiments at this

00:52:52.440 time. So really still fits quite well today, I guess. But Enterprise returns to Earth after the 0.83

00:52:59.180 Zindi War, but Archer isn't necessarily seen by a hero as everybody. Starfleet officials are

00:53:03.820 questioning him. Earth's society has become extremely xenophobic due to the war itself.

00:53:09.460 And it's really a reflection of that post 9-11 suspicion towards Muslim Americans and immigrants.

00:53:14.500 And it showed how this kind of fear-based nationalism was going to grow after a traumatic

00:53:19.200 attack.

00:53:49.200 like alcohol. You may be thinking of Vulcans. You know you're right. They get your species mixed up

00:53:56.760 all the time. Is there something we can help you with? I'm just trying to make sure your friend 0.99

00:54:03.460 here is comfortable. Sitting in a bar full of so many strange looking aliens like us. I'm quite

00:54:10.200 comfortable. Because if you weren't, if humans make you nervous for some reason, a Vulcan consulate's 0.59

00:54:17.400 on the other side of the bridge bet there's some place there where someone like yourself

00:54:21.500 could get a nice refreshing beverage well perhaps we shouldn't be on our way we're not

00:54:28.020 going anywhere doctor if your friend wants to go you should let him go you're not chasing anyone

00:54:33.300 out of here the starfleet people are the real problem you fly all around space telling every

00:54:40.380 species you meet where to find earth did it ever occur to you that might not be the smartest thing

00:54:45.140 to do? Sir, why don't you just go back to the bar? Excuse me. So we end up having a brawl,

00:54:55.420 and I'll admit that this episode is not trying to justify xenophobia. They are not justifying it.

00:55:00.780 They're not saying that it's a good thing. This guy is clearly meant to be a dick. 1.00

00:55:05.120 But ultimately, they kind of just don't deal with it that much. There's a couple of scenes in this 0.99

00:55:10.620 episode that deal with it, but they don't really go after the xenophobia directly. This is an

00:55:16.920 episode that's mostly focused on Archer's PTSD, so we just kind of see a couple of scenes on this,

00:55:22.720 and they don't make it the driving force of the episode. Now, they do, however, make it the driving

00:55:28.240 force of one of the final episodes of the series, which is Terra Prime, episode 21 of season four.

00:55:35.300 It takes them until the very end of the series, well, one episode before the end, but we do not

00:55:39.940 talk about the series finale, nobody talks about the series finale, to make a solid critique of

00:55:45.620 xenophobia. The xenophobia had more or less been justified throughout the rest of the series. So

00:55:50.220 they wait until this final episode to be like, oh, xenophobia is bad. So good for them, I guess.

00:55:56.620 If an episode called Terra Prime, where if you quote from the episode, the citizen soldiers of

00:56:00.700 Terra Prime will act to protect you against the most dangerous enemy that humanity has ever faced.

00:56:05.100 and this image here is the thing that is the most dangerous enemy that humanity has ever faced. It's

00:56:11.440 a human Vulcan hybrid child. So there's a lot of issues of racism, nationalism, and fear of the

00:56:18.180 other in this episode. There's a human supremacist movement called the Terra Prime which is seeking

00:56:23.260 to expel all non-humans from earth. Woo, that sounds familiar. They use a terrorist attack to 0.99

00:56:29.440 push their anti-alien agenda and it was again echoing those anti-immigration sentiments and

00:56:34.740 white nationalist movements that were really growing in popularity in the early 2000s.

00:56:40.620 So this is, you know, a bad thing, and it's depicted as a bad thing in the episode.

00:56:44.660 But again, they kind of wait to make an episode that's solidly against this until the very

00:56:49.940 end of the series.

00:56:53.520 And I don't have a clip from this.

00:56:54.940 This episode doesn't have any, like, one solid clip that was good to show.

00:56:58.700 I had to rewatch the whole episode looking for it, and I couldn't find a solid one clip

00:57:02.480 for it.

00:57:02.860 So here's the thing. Glenn Oliver, who's an entertainment critic who covered Star Trek for

00:57:11.440 years, said that over the course of the years, Star Trek ceased to be about anything tangible.

00:57:16.660 And at the end of the day, who wants to watch shows which don't seem entirely sure of their

00:57:21.320 own identity? Star Trek Enterprise really showed the decline of political discussion in these

00:57:27.280 shows Enterprise is the final step in Star Trek's shift from being a critique of society to just

00:57:33.660 being a mainstream action series that kind of sidelines social commentary. It really lost the

00:57:41.000 lesson plan approach that Roddenberry had built around Trek in the original series and even a

00:57:47.360 little bit in TNG. So Enterprise's legacy is that it's the end of classic Trek in many ways. This

00:57:54.800 This is the last Star Trek series before the 2009 reboots of the films and this new modern

00:58:00.420 era of Trek with Discovery and Strange New Worlds.

00:58:04.420 One of these days I will do a lecture on Strange New Worlds because it pisses me off in ways

00:58:09.280 that are going to take an entire lecture for me to explain.

00:58:12.840 Discovery doesn't piss me off in the same way Strange New Worlds does, but I still think

00:58:15.960 they missed the mark a little bit on handling social commentary.

00:58:21.060 I'll do another lecture on that in the future.

00:58:24.080 And I really view Star Trek Enterprise as the final final nail in the coffin that Trek

00:58:29.020 was simply now a mirror of society.

00:58:31.820 It was just kind of a let's let's indulge our baser instincts as far as war and xenophobia.

00:58:43.600 So the conclusion there's a major impact on the genre from Star Trek in general and Star

00:58:48.340 Trek Enterprise.

00:58:49.340 When you look at many other examples of early 21st century science fiction that follows

00:58:53.580 up after star trek such as firefly fringe andromeda stargate uh these franchises were a lot

00:58:59.980 less concerned about socio-political messaging than and their content is more about providing

00:59:05.660 entertainment to the public uh and now i'm not going to say there's no social commentary in any

00:59:10.460 of these shows but it's certainly not a driving factor now there are examples on the other end of

00:59:16.620 the spectrum as well you see things like battlestar galactica where they are dealing with a lot of

00:59:20.860 social commentary a lot of socio-political issues in that show so that's not it's not a one and done

00:59:26.620 issue here obviously but entertainment does become the focal point for this uh so enterprise really

00:59:33.180 just serves as a great historical artifact of post 9 11 america it's still really useful for

00:59:39.100 discussing society at the time it's just you have to dig a little deeper for that commentary in many

00:59:45.180 ways. It's a case study in how science fiction can shift alongside cultural anxieties and

00:59:50.820 unlike previous Trek shows, it's not going to challenge power structures. It's going

00:59:55.540 to more or less conform to those power structures and the prevailing ideas of society. But even

01:00:02.140 in its failures to address the socio-political issues directly, it becomes this cultural

01:00:08.820 record of what the early 2000s was like for Americans. So lost its remnants of its original

01:00:15.620 purpose, but it's still a great academic tool to be used to discuss this period of time.

01:00:23.380 I've certainly used it enough in my history classes for that. Star Trek Enterprise chose

01:00:29.380 to focus solely on reflecting the fears and angers of American society in the post 9-11

01:00:34.740 period rather than critiquing xenophobia or jingoistic military policies and attitudes the

01:00:40.820 writers and producers adopted those attitudes and the behaviors and put them into their characters

01:00:45.940 and plots as a result this entry in the franchise changes from describing a better future from

01:00:52.340 critiquing the failures of modern society and becomes more about wish fulfillment for American

01:00:57.940 viewers much like 24 was wish fulfillment you wanted somebody to go out and shoot the terrorists

01:01:03.140 And so they made a show about that. I do want to kind of end here by talking a little bit by,

01:01:09.780 if you'll indulge me, I'm going to read you a little bit from my conclusion from my thesis.

01:01:14.580 Roddenberry approached the original series with the intention of a specific liberal message. He

01:01:18.740 said, this is the future. This is the world as it should be. There should be no greed. There should

01:01:22.980 be no hunger where there's equality for all races and genders. And that's, you know, what we've

01:01:27.540 reached. Now go build that. That's the future we want. He approached the series like a lesson

01:01:32.820 plan. Here we will deliver a lesson on racial equality. Today we will criticize the Vietnam

01:01:38.020 War. Next week we deliver a sermon on the universality of the democratic ideals of

01:01:44.980 the Declaration of Independence. He wanted it to be entertaining but the point was that he could

01:01:49.860 use that entertainment to deliver philosophical ideas, socio-political ideas in easy bite-size

01:01:57.380 episodes. The same thing holds true for the next generation to some degree. Roddenberry approached

01:02:02.420 it with a philosophy and those who took up the torch after he left the show, Rick Berman, Michael

01:02:07.700 Piller, and the rest of the writing staff carried that with them after Roddenberry died. The

01:02:12.580 philosophy became updated for the new world it existed in, the entertainment wrappings got

01:02:19.780 flashier, it got better special effects, but at the core these shows were the same message. This

01:02:24.980 is the future we want, go build it. And then Deep Space Nine took a new approach. It said

01:02:31.300 instead of here's what the future should like look like it said this is humanity it's far from

01:02:36.020 perfect we're going to put those flaws on display so that you can recognize them and do something

01:02:40.660 about it it was more realistic philosophy than Roddenberry had envisioned for the series and

01:02:45.540 perhaps not one he would have approved of but it can't be denied that there was a coherent lesson

01:02:50.500 plan in in those series the point at which the franchise begins to lose its identity is with the

01:02:56.020 creation of Voyager. This series wanted to have its own message and philosophy. They tried with

01:03:00.740 feminism but they fumbled it and when ratings dropped instead of holding on to the Roddenberry 0.89

01:03:05.940 philosophy that entertainment was just a clever wrapping for the message, they embraced the idea 0.89

01:03:10.820 that entertainment was their entire purpose for existence. The feminism of the show got shoved in 0.99

01:03:15.540 the closet to make room for anything that would boost their ratings and when they what they needed 1.00

01:03:20.260 to boost their ratings was a sexy alien in a skin-tied bodysuit, feminism got locked in the 1.00

01:03:25.300 the closet and it was only allowed out when it suited them. With Enterprise they decided to not

01:03:30.100 even bother with making it fit that vision for the franchise. It was a show for the masses. It

01:03:35.140 was all about the ratings. The liberal ideology of Roddenberry is lost entirely as the realities

01:03:41.220 of 21st century issues crept into the show along with all that paranoia and xenophobia

01:03:47.780 which the series praises rather than critiques for the most part. The series takes on a tone

01:03:51.940 much more similar to that of 24, which deals with the men and women tasked with dealing with

01:03:57.460 terrorist attacks on American soil and has often been remarked on for having aspects of Islamophobia

01:04:02.420 and xenophobia in its plot lines, 24 and Star Trek Enterprise. That's not to say that Voyager

01:04:08.420 and Enterprise don't have a place of their own in the study of history. I wouldn't have written

01:04:11.780 this thesis if it didn't. Very fact that they became these reflections of societies, very shallow

01:04:17.540 depictions of the worst parts of American society, makes them a pretty useful tool to study

01:04:25.460 what was going on in those societies at the time. They're not the nuanced socio-political

01:04:30.340 critiques of society that many early genres of science fiction had been known for.

01:04:36.900 But you know, it still gives us an interesting tool to look at this. It's a time capsule

01:04:42.180 for the early 2000s. Franchise was the most impactful in its early days because of the

01:04:48.260 message that came with the entertainment but Enterprise is still very interesting as a study

01:04:54.820 and I ended my the final paragraph of my thesis said that

01:05:00.820 the impact of the decision to move from socio-political critique to a focus on entertainment

01:05:05.140 has had long-term impacts on the genre if the socio-political significance of Star Trek or in

01:05:09.940 in fact, the rest of the science fiction genre continues to stagnate in this manner. It may be

01:05:14.360 quite right to ask the same question Gene Roddenberry's son has on whether the future of

01:05:18.460 Star Trek is one as a historical footnote rather than something that's really affecting people.

01:05:24.220 Just as Benny Russell said in Far Beyond the Stars, it is the ideas that are important and

01:05:28.900 survive, not necessarily the stories. All right, does anybody have any questions? Happy to answer them.

Bitchy History - March 03, 2025

Warp Speed Woke： Lecture 5 – Star Trek： Enterprise & The Post-9⧸11 Era

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