{"id":6586,"date":"2017-10-16T13:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T20:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6586"},"modified":"2017-10-06T07:04:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T14:04:10","slug":"mark-watches-enterprise-s04e09-kirshara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2017\/10\/mark-watches-enterprise-s04e09-kirshara\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Enterprise’: S04E09 – Kir’Shara"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the ninth episode of the fourth season of Enterprise<\/i>, Shran makes a terrible decision, Archer is way too good, and war is averted… for now. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Star Trek<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For talk of torture<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh, I tried to like this one. There are a few bright spots in this, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frankly a mess of a script. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to do so much, so the story felt rushed and shallow in some respects. LET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TALK.<\/p>\n

Thwarting a War<\/b><\/p>\n

Of all the plots here, Tucker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to take Ambassador Soval to Andorian space was probably my favorite. It had a lot of potential! Shran was friendly-ish with humanity, but there was still a huge challenge set before Enterprise<\/i> and Soval. How could they get Shran to believe that the Vulcans were going to invade if that tip came from<\/i> Soval?<\/p>\n

Initially, I was interested in this, and given the storied history of Shran and Soval, stretching back to the first season, I wanted to see how they would interact if they were forced to work for the same team. I expected pushback, sure, but I did not expect Shran to spend hours<\/i> torturing Soval. It is, once again, practically impossible to see this show outside the lens of a post-9\/11 world. I think<\/i> I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said this before, but if not: there was a lot<\/i> of torture on television after 9\/11. It felt like those five years after the attacks, our nation worked out our response to it through fiction. Which is obviously a very understandable thing. LOOK WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH ALL MY PERSONAL ISSUES. But time and time again, fictional narratives wrestled with torture and instead of examining its insidious nature, the evidence that it is not effective, or the cruelty present in such an act, the worst thing we seemed to get was how sad<\/i> it made the torturer. And for the most part, we are shown how horrible and wrong this act of torture was in the moment<\/i>. Both Jeffrey Combs and Gary Graham give fine performances, so my issue is more with the script. Shran did something monstrous<\/i> here, and once the torture is over and he chooses to believe Soval, the show forgets to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153HEY, TORTURE IS BAD, WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO, SOVAL WAS ALWAYS TELLING THE TRUTH.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Soval isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t upset at ALL that he was tortured so badly that he nearly suffered permanent neural damage. The characters barely criticize Shran, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still viewed as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153positive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d character by the time \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Shara\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is over.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I call bullshit. This whole plot felt like a gross use of the end justifying the means, when IT LITERALLY DID NOT. SOVAL WAS TELLING THE TRUTH. SHRAN DIDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T EVEN APOLOGIZE!!!<\/p>\n

Saving a Culture<\/b><\/p>\n

If the whole white savior thing I commented on in the previous Enterprise<\/i> review wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t clear enough, then let this episode stand as a stunning example of how terrible<\/i> this trope is. Archer has virtually no real personality in this episode because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s written to be the perfect savior of all of Vulcan. So he always knows what to do, and that includes him LECTURING VULCANS AND SPECIFICALLY T\u00e2\u20ac\u2122POL ABOUT VULCAN HISTORY. Like????? No one thought that was a bad look??? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s downright aggravating and insulting, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m surprised that T\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Pol didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t haul off and knock Archer into the Vulcan atmosphere. He literally told her to give the Syrannite religion a chance, like he has any fucking knowledge or experience with this subculture. The katra subplot was just a lazy way to get Archer to be the Chosen One and to be the person to save all of Vulcan from corruption.<\/p>\n

And don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get me started on the Kir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Shara. It 100% disappears in some scenes. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that fight sequence where Archer just flat out does not have it. Other times, it is not a solid, heavy artifact but something light and fluffy that definitely fits within a backpack with ease. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a clumsy Macguffin that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually do anything in the end<\/i>. Yes, there was that holographic display of words but WHAT DOES IT MEAN. WHY DOES IT MATTER. Like, I get that this is meant to usher in the age of Vulcan that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see later in the show, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so messy<\/i>. Archer is responsible for that? One human white dude helped to save Vulcan??? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m supposed to believe that? And then he just gives up the katra to some random Vulcan WHICH HE COULD HAVE DONE EARLIER, RIGHT??? Also, was T\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Pol magically healed? WHO FUCKING KNOWS, THIS SCRIPT BARELY TELLS ME ANYTHING I ACTUALLY NEED TO KNOW?<\/p>\n

At least I got to yell at a lot of it.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Shara\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"