Trekathon 647: Fortunate Son (ENT)

The Enterprise responds to a distress call.

Another developing theme – it’s the frontier, but things are changing. The tensions between the ‘new way’ and the ‘old way’ are made clear enough, without too much resort to beating the viewer over the head. The freighter officer comes across as a bit too obsessed, but there’s enough of a patina of plausibility to overlook that. The back half descends into some pointless action scenes (another developing worry of mine for the show), but the resolution does keep an eye to the higher themes of the show.

But the economics of this just doesn’t make very much sense to me. The speed of these ships is so poor, and technology appears to be developing fast enough, that it seems like you’d be better off just waiting until the new ship can be built. If ships that can do a trip in six months are around then the ones that need five years of wages and supplies to do the same job are just not going to be competitive.

(Also, what on earth can they be shipping to be worth it? The costs of the shipping must be, excuse the pun, stellar).

10 episodes into the much maligned Enterprise, how is it all going? Pretty good really. Unlike ever other series there hasn’t been a stinker yet, and some of the shows have been really pretty good.

647 down, 90 to go.


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