ENTERPRISE 02/05/'03: "Stigma" (1 Viewer)

[Rex Bachmann]

Dave Scarpa wrote:

Quote:

The Vulcans of TOS were always too good to be true.

• They were intellectual and supposedly dispassionate to a tee on the surface, but were not without a comforting passionate nature underneath. That made them intellectual versions of "peaceniks" during the "hippie" era, "new-agers" during the '80s revival.
• In the present series, curiously, they have a perverse intellectuality. It is said they don't "explore" ("Vulcans have no interest in comets." etc.), which is odd, since, if they don't, what would've motivated them to go into space in the first place? (Their planet seems intact.) This does strike me as both incompatible and oxymoronic.
• Before, they were mildly disdainful of humans, but without always being out and out "judgmental" (some of Sarek's comments notwithstanding).
• They took a "backseat" to humanity in all things, despite their seeming overall intellectual superiority, an undue deference, if you ask me.
• In previous incarnations, they served but seemed to expect nothing particular in return. Not only did they have no "ulterior motive", they had no motive at all. Even intellectual curiosity has to have something underlying that drives it. Theirs had none that we could see.

To my mind, despite Vulcans' high status in the alien "pecking order", so to speak, audiences were always subtly assured that humans were better than that.
I, too, dislike most of the revisionist changes in the Trek world perpetrated by the present producers, but I have to admit that, when it comes to the Vulcans, there was a whole lot of filling-in of the blanks that needed to be done, and the "goody-goody" character that they had had would not have been tenable in a "historical" series like Enterprise. (Now, whether there should ever have been a historical series like Enterprse is another matter altogether.)

 

[Jeff Kleist]

I think this is the only Trek ship that’s had an actual working elevator for the actors to use.

Both the Enterprise and Voyager had an elevator in engineering

DS9 had a working elevator in ops

 

[BrianW]

I stand corrected! I forgot about the elevator on DS9, and I simply didn't watch Voyager. As for the elevator in engineering on the Enterprise (which series?), I apparently just don't remember.
Thanks for the info.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

The Enterprise D has an elevator in engineering that works. It's just this little platform, same with Voyager but both have one

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Well, subtlety has never been Trek's strong point. "Stigma" certainly is no exception. It wasn't a bad episode, by any means, but---darn it---I wish they could be more circumspect about these social-parallel stories, if they insist upon doing them.
It has the whole panoply of familiarity:
(1) Bigoted medical establishment not doing enough to find a "cure" (and holding back on what it has already found by way of treatment): "We don't condone the intimate acts these people ['melders'] engage in."
(2) Medical confidentiality in obvious conflict with scientific openness and hope for a "cure".
(3) "Closeted" practitioners.
(4) Archer to T'Pol (paraphrasis): "Silence condones bigotry." = "Silence = death!"
(5) Pleas for "the minority" (hey, while Enterprise's own "minorities" are condemned to their own usual token appearances in the story).
Is there supposed to be a message in the contrast presented to us?
Vulcans: moral ("upright"), reserved ("uptight"), humorless, aloof, and "detached"
Denobulans: free, "fun-loving", "loosy-goosy", etc.
The Vulcans shun and look down upon intimacy (including that derived from sharing feelings during a mind-meld), while the Denobulans seem to share everything. Is it supposed to be ironic that it's the Vulcans, who hate intimacy in any form, but end up with the "communicable" disease? ("Don't fight the feeling"???)
Denobulan polygamy would certainly have the effect of producing more variegated genetic offspring, but if they feel the way they seem to here (Phlox to Tripp over rejecting the advances of Mrs. Phlox: "As you wish. It's your loss."), why get "married" at all? (So resulting offspring know whom they're too closely related to to mate with themselves?)
Oh, yes: Star Trek "howler of the week":
Archer: "We got rid of bigotry nearly a century ago."

 

[TheLongshot]

Man, this was so transparent to the point of ridiculousness. And what the deal is this rewriting of vulcans so that only a "minority" can mind meld? It seems almost commonplace in the future.

The B story was kinda fun, tho it was pretty obvious how Phlox was going to react.

My girlfriend has stopped taking this series seriously long ago, since they are practically destroying her favorite race, the Vulcans.

Jason

 

[Jack Briggs]

And the part where Frank Gorshin expressed his hatred of people who are black and white on the opposite sides, and the part where, and, and...

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Jack Briggs wrote (post #27):

Well, in all fairness, Archer is talking about Earthpeople (as opposed (here) to Vulcans). It's still a ludicrous claim.

 

[NickT]

And the part where Frank Gorshin expressed his hatred of people who are black and white on the opposite sides, and the part where, and, and...

Lol. I missed Enterprise tonight, but somehow I don't seem to care anymore. I bet Jack's quote is probably more entertaining than trying to catch the rebroadcast this Saturday.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Jack Briggs wrote (post #27):

That reminds me. Although I know what you mean to say, this isn't quite accurate, since, as expressed here, that would include Bele himself. Commissioner Bele (Gorshin) despises people who are black on the left side and white on the right, like all of the fugitive Lokai's (Lou Antonio) people; while all of Bele's people are white on the left side, and black on the right side of their bodies (although the audience gets to see only their heads and necks). And, of course, the outworlders are "mono-colored trash" (just so as not to favor blacks or whites).

 

[Jack Briggs]

Yes, the point being: When Trek goes out of its way to give us such an overt morality play, it grounds its story so obviously in current events. No trusting the viewers' intelligence; browbeating them instead.

Also, remember TNG's "The Outcast"? (Well, of course you do.)

 

[TheLongshot]

As my girlfriend says, she hates it when Trek tries to do morality plays like this, since they always end up heavy-handed and make it look like we are being preached to. The episode above was also another example of the heavy-handedness.

Jason

 

[Nelson Au]

In reference to the dialogue spoken in the TOS Dagger of the Mind, Spock refers to the Vulcan Mind Meld as an ancient Vulcan technique. It is an extremely personal thing to the Vulcan people. This implies that all Vulcan’s can do this and that it goes back to ancient times, before Enterprise timeline. Additionally, it is established that Vulcans have an inherint limited telepathic ability as described by Spock from TOS episode, A Taste of Armageddon. Again referring to the telepathic ability.

To play the devil’s advocate, I can see why B&B are doing this revisionist version of Vulcans. In all versions of Star Trek after TOS, the Vulcan’s have all been less then "charismatic". Perhaps due to the writing or the actors who were less able to portray a Vulcan as Nimoy had. (Nimoy and Mark Lenard excepted of course when they appear in TNG.) So this stirring of the pot is an attempt by B&B to make them more interesting.(Rex, you said this much better)

But I agree, it appears too late in history for this kind of stuff to be going on in Vulcan history. And the idea of a minority group of Vulcans with the telepathic ability to Mind Meld is just disrespectful to established Star Trek history.

 

[Dewitte]

I have a feeling this isn't the last we've heard about Vulcans and mind melds. My guess is that a future episode will tell us that all Vulcans are capable of doing it and the assertion of this minority will be attributed to the social mores currently existing on Vulcan.

De

 

[Kwang Suh]

And that's when they all hold hands and sing kumbaya..

 

[Will_B]

Sure it was a morality play, but it was also one of the best season two episodes so far. Morality plays are good as long as they're not too pompous, and fortunately Archer wasn't pompous when he did his little speech, he was enraged. (Unlike an episode months ago when he gave a "solomn" speech about "humans aren't like gazelles" or some other such groan-inducing oratory).

So it worked for me. And having Phlox in both the A story and the B story was nice.

Appeals to the majority are not worth much, but there's been unanimous praise for this episode over at the art asylum board (who are typically as against B&B as anyone).

In my "market" (Boston) they put an HIV info commercial directly at the conclusion of the episode, was this done everywhere?

 

[Al Shing]

You would think that Dr. Phlox would just be able to look up whatever he needs on whatever the Internet equivalent is of their time. Even today, there are lots of highly informational websites on just about every obscure disease you can think of. I've used information gained from the Internet to request appropriate medication from my medical providers when they didn't think to prescribe them on their own (it's an HMO - what do you expect?). It's practically mandatory for people these days to use the Internet to double check their treatments, and to keep up on current research for their incurable conditions.

The Internet of their time should have exponentially more information than today's Internet. I've always compared our Internet to the Enterprise computers, because it always knows everything you want to know. The original Enterprise computers could have been built on the Internet of Captain Kirk's time. In Archer's time, that Vulcan minority group should have had a web site covering all the current research information for people like Dr. Phlox, or Vulcans afflicted with the condition. Most informational web sites have forums where experts such as that closet doctor could contribute current information and answer questions.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Yes One of the Better Season 2 episodes and actually one of the Better Scott Bacula Performances as Archer. I'm still Troubled about Berman and Braga's Reinterpretation of the Vulcan people but I'll ride with them and see where they take them. I guess they are going to interpret the vulcans as maturing alot toward the Race we saw in Tos and TNG, with the Help of Earth (Contamination of earth perhaps) and the forming of the federation. Funny thing about bacula's Speech at the end. He mentions Infinite Diversity. Something we took from TOS as thinking all Vulcans had achieved the notion of IDIC, Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations. Now I guess we'll find I that they moved more toward this philosophy within 200 years of Kirk's Time. Seems Like too little time to achieve this way of thought given that the average Vulcan lives to be 250 years old.

Think back to when you saw First Contact. The ending of that movie was special because we saw these war weary humans embracing the Vulcans. A Race we interpreted would bring them into a bold new future because of their Stoic and Passive ways.

Now we Have Vulcans who stigmacize portions of their society, who are about to wage war with Andorians, and who generally do not like Humans. Can this Minority and members of Vulcan Society cause that much change in 200 years to bring us to the Vulcans of TOS ? I'll give Berman and Braga Props if they can pull that off.

 

[doug zdanivsky]

I thought it was a pretty good episode. A little dated, as far as the message (AIDS and homosexuality) went, I thought. Unless I'm hopelessly out of touch with society.. But I didn't think it was heavy-handed. A little overt, maybe, but not too bad.
Quite the miracle when you consider the source (B&B). A welcome change from the blatent TNG rip-offs that have plagued this whole 2nd season. Phlox is always a pleasure. Nice, reserved performances all around, I thought. Keep it up, I say.
I was also a bit confused by the "only some Vulcans can mind-meld" bit. I thought they all could.. But I'm not as big a Trekkie as I could be, I guess..

 

[Dan Rudolph]

The episode was better than I expected. It was preachy and transparent (and are they trying to imply that AIDS research isn't being taken seriously?), but they them tying it into mind melds was interesting. Also, the B plot was hilarious.