Mark Watches ‘Enterprise’: S02E19 – Judgment

In the nineteenth episode of the second season of Enterprise, Archer is accused of treason by the Klingon Empire. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.

Trigger Warning: For talk of imperialism, anti-refugee sentiment

Holy shit, THIS WAS GREAT.

If you’ll recall (and I mentioned it on video), I realized fairly early into Enterprise that the placement of the show within Star Trek‘s canon meant that there were few opportunities for Enterprise to do anything with the Klingons aside from portraying them as hyper-violent and imperialistic. I figured that since this took place before The Undiscovered Country and the Klingon treaty, canon couldn’t change much.

That might still be the case, but OH MY GOD, this was such a satisfying example of me being proved wrong. If change was going to come to the Klingon empire and to Klingon culture, then it hard to start somewhere. And in this case, it appears to have started with just one person: Kolos, the advocate that Archer is assigned when he’s accused of treason.

I’m so fascinated by half the writing choices for “Judgment,” mainly because with each new twist, this script commits to the things it puts on the page. It doesn’t dance away from uncomfortable epiphanies or the weight of what each of these twists actually mean. But my god, does it ever examine what it means to be Klingon in this specific time period! It’s frustrating to watch, of course, because the “tribunal” that Archer is subjected to feels utterly absurd. Not only is it unlike what counts as justice on Earth, there’s virtually no attempt to give fairness to Archer in any form. The opposing counsel calls a witness who distorted the truth to make himself look better after Archer and the Enterprise kicked his ass. The judge appears to love being inflammatory. Archer’s advocate LITERALLY GIVES UP WHEN IT IS HIS TURN TO PROVIDE ARCHER’S DEFENSE.

Even then, before we get to The Thing, this story is still massively messed up. Turns out that Archer really wasn’t trying to foment a rebellion. What he does admit to, however, is taking on a group of refugees whose home world had been ransacked by the Klingons, depleted of all resources, and left to die. I suppose if merely taking them in and helping them counts as starting a rebellion, then Archer would have straight-up admitted to that. What the Klingons did to this unnamed culture is horrific, and its cruelty is part of what pushes Kolos to change his views on Klingon justice. (A small part, I should say.) According to Klingon traditions of honor, there’s little to celebrate in doing something so terrible to a “weaker” people. (And obviously, even viewing other races/species through this lens is a hot mess.) So what does that mean in terms of justice? How does the tribunal serve honor?

This episode makes the convincing case that not only has the Klingon court system turned into a joke, but Kolos was complicit in that happening. Of everything here, y’all, that’s the one detail I found most important: Kolos is not left off the hook for spending nearly twenty years letting injustice and dishonor happen. Does it absolve him of what he’s done? No, and I don’t think “Judgment” makes that case, either. Instead, Kolos fights for Archer’s right to a fair defense, and he puts up one hell of a fight. When Archer’s death sentence is commuted, though, there’s still another injustice tacked on to it: Archer must spend the rest of his life on Rura Penthe, which is pretty much a death sentence. Kolos’s reaction is perhaps my favorite moment in the whole episode. He furiously rejects the illogical nature of the magistrate, and then GETS HIMSELF CONVICTED OF CONTEMPT AND PUT IN RURA PENTHE FOR A YEAR.

And then the show actually puts both of them in the mines. I kept expecting some last minute save that would prevent this from happening, and I even anticipated that Kolos would succeed in his defense of Archer. But nope, both men are forced to pay the price for what they’ve done, and THEY GET SHIPPED TO RURA PENTHE. Then – because this episode is never enough!!! – when Archer is rescued through backchannels by T’Pol and Malcolm, Kolos rejects help. HE REFUSES A DEUS EX MACHINA. Like?!!?!?! It’s such an unexpected twist, but it also hits way harder. Kolos submits himself to a year in the very place he helped send countless “guilty” people. Again: not a solution or an absolution in any way, but it’s a start. It’s easy to imagine that Kolos survived that year and then made changes to Klingon’s legal system, even if we don’t see that at all. Ah, what a satisfying end, y’all. Bravo!

The video for “Judgment” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

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About Mark Oshiro

Perpetually unprepared since '09.
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