Mark Watches ‘Enterprise’: S04E12 – Babel One

In the twelfth episode of the fourth season of Enterprise, WOW, THAT CLIFFHANGER IS TOO MUCH. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek. 

Trigger Warning: For discussion of racism, specifically anti-Asian stereotypes.

I gotta start with the negative here because I’m still SO pissed that that line made it into this episode and this fucking show asked Grace Park to utter it. Welcome to the nightmare of… well, this is either one of two things:

1. Ironic racism
2. Unintentional racism

Y’all, we don’t get to regurgitate racist tropes and hope that by hanging a lampshade on them that the audience is smart enough and non-bigoted enough to know that they shouldn’t make said jokes either. There is a longstanding stereotype that Asian people eat dogs that’s used to dehumanize them, attack them, and most certainly make them an Other. It doesn’t matter that seconds after Hoshi says that Porthos is probably tastier than the food in the mess hall, she then reveals she is pretending to be a Tellarite to help Archer learn how they talk. It felt like the writers were winking at us, as if they were saying, “See? She’s not actually saying it, but we still wanted someone who is Asian to make this joke, so tee hee!”

No. Stop. Do not pass go. Go directly to jail.

And let’s say it is an accident! No one thought this through. Easy solution here: stop filling your writers’ rooms with white people. I am pretty sure that someone non-white would have caught that line and said, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t do this.” (Maybe not, though, given that I’ve heard so many horror stories about writers trying to counter shit like this and being retaliated against.)

Regardless: what an unacceptable moment that immediately took me out of the story. I managed to at least overcome it enough once things got interesting. This was otherwise a solid episode that turned into a much better one once you factored in that ending. BECAUSE NOW I KNOW THAT THEY WERE CHASING AFTER GHOSTS THE ENTIRE TIME. Oh my god, it’s so evil??? And that threat leveled at the end of “Kir’Shara” feels way more real???

What the fuck is this show about to do with me?

“Babel One” is an assemblage of a ton of classic ideas and tropes, especially since it’s about Starfleet trying to navigate the difficult relationship between two other cultures/nations. Somehow, the Andorians hate Tellarites even more than the Vulcans! So there’s a lot of bitterness and aggression on display here, made only worse by the Tellarite attack on Shran’s ship, where over sixty of his people were murdered for no apparent reason. It all happens in the lead up to a very important negotiation session ran between these two groups.

So my initial thought? There was some rogue element in the Tellarite government that didn’t want these peace talks to take place, so they fired upon Shran’s ship and destroyed it in order to derail the talks. Just because Ambassador Gral didn’t know of any attack didn’t mean that Tellarites weren’t responsible. However, it’s not like ANY of this helped Archer keep the peace, and half the tension here is wondering when one of these parties was going to kill the other on Enterprise.

It’s hard to talk about his in light of that plot twist, though! Because I had this whole thing written in my head as I was watching “Babel One” about the reason these two cultures mistrusted one another! I wanted to talk about the notion of good faith and how, sometimes, it actually is a luxury to offer that to someone. Ideally, we could believe other people; we could trust them for a moment; we could try to empathize. But if any of y’all have been burned by someone before, you know how hard it is to offer even the most basic sense of trust. After the horrific experience Shran went through in the cold open of this episode, could anyone really blame him for feeling distraught and vengeful over what had happened to him? A Tellarite ship had been responsible for all that destruction!

But then an Andorian ship fired on Enterprise, and this stopped making any fucking sense, and then, BAM! ROMULANS. That threat leveled at the end of “Kir’Shara” came to fruition: the Romulans (and the Vulcans still following V’Las) were trying to pit these two groups against one another by using a ship that could mask itself as anything through holograms. It’s… my gods, it’s so evil. Because why would these people question anything they saw? It was definitely a Tellarite ship that destroyed Shran’s! And that was an Andorian vessel that fired upon the Enterprise.

EXCEPT IT WASN’T. The Romulans are exploiting existing hatreds and prejudices to set two groups against one another, and it worked.

Well, sort of. I’m guessing the second half of this will deal with Archer’s attempt to convince Gral and Shran that they’re being played. They’ll all have to unite to fight the Romulans EXCEPT THEY CAN’T. BECAUSE FUCK THAT ENDING, I FELL FOR IT SO HARD, OH MY GOD, THE SHIP IS NOT MANNED. IT’S ALL DONE REMOTELY. I WAS WONDERING WHY THOSE ROMULANS WEREN’T PANICKING ABOUT REED AND TUCKER REACHING THE BRIDGE.

How??? How are they able to do that at such a great distance????

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

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