In the eighteenth episode of the first season of Enterprise, THIS IS MESSED UP. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.
Trigger Warning: For mention/discussion of genocide, violence towards indigenous cultures.
Good lord, the idea behind this episode is SO MESSED UP, y’all. Thankfully, the writers were aware of this in constructing “Rogue Planet,” at least in the sense that there’s a clear morality. What the Eska do towards the “wraiths” of Dekala is never portrayed as justifiable. Indeed, there’s very little discussion on whether or not the Enterprise crew should get involved with this culture’s form of recreation. I honestly expected that, given how much we’ve seen the crew do this before.
But not here. Instead, we get a slow build to Archer’s realization that the “game” that the Eska hunt are not just wild boars or foxes. They’re a sentient community of beings who have been tormented by the Eska for HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS OF YEARS for literally no reason at all. One of the things I enjoyed about this episode was how we heard of the hunt from the Eska, only to then have those stories re-contextualized from the point of view of the wraiths. The Eska celebrate the difficulty and risk that the wraiths provide them in their annual hunt, but it’s an endless annual horror to the wraiths, whose home is invaded over and over again. It’s senseless violence to them! And how sustainable is this practice? Like, that’s a fucked up way to think of this because the reality is that this is a slow-acting genocide. Just because it’s taking hundreds of years to unfold doesn’t make it any less vicious and awful.
So it’s admirable that this show puts Archer in a position where he discovers this system of violence and has no doubt that he needs to dismantle it. There’s no reluctance to it at all! Instead, he focuses on how he can stop the Eska. Granted, this script spends a lot of time on the build-up, so the solution felt like such a tiny part of “Rogue Planet.” I don’t know that I would change the pacing, though. Part of the reason this is such an effective thriller is because of how slowly it all unfolds. We learn about the hunt; Archer deals with the apparent “hallucination” he keeps experience. The two plots collide horribly, and then we kick into the final act. It’s a good set-up, so perhaps “Rogue Planet” just needed to be longer. It’s a great story without much in the way of characterization, but look: this is Star Trek. Sometimes, the show can just give me a good adventure, and kudos if it makes me think of larger issues like exploitation or the violence that indigenous cultures round the world have experienced.
Anyway, I hope that the wraiths of Dekala are safe, at least long enough that the Eska will eventually be discouraged from coming to their world. Because lord, this was MESSED UP.
The video for “Rogue Planet” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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