{"id":6587,"date":"2017-10-17T13:00:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T20:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6587"},"modified":"2017-10-06T09:53:56","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T16:53:56","slug":"mark-watches-enterprise-s04e10-daedalus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2017\/10\/mark-watches-enterprise-s04e10-daedalus\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Enterprise’: S04E10 – Daedalus"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the tenth episode of the fourth season of Enterprise<\/i>, a childhood friend arrives on Enterprise<\/i> to conduct an important experiment. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Star Trek<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For grief\/death\u00c2\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

In the abstract, or perhaps from a distance, I like this episode and its bold attempt to talk about the intersection of technology and grief. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all know I love a good story about grief! But somewhere along the way \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m having trouble pinpointing it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Daedalus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d stumbles and never really recovers. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an interesting premise, but the closer we get to the tragic ending, the stranger it feels.<\/p>\n

Which is a shame, since the idea behind this is so cool. We actually get to meet the man responsible for transporter technology, who once paid a very<\/i> physical price to help advance his theories. (I think? I was a little uncertain on that point.) So much of Enterprise<\/i> is about bridging the gap between the series, and so I was excited to see how the show would introduce subquantum transportation, despite that we knew it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a reality in future timelines. What happened? Why wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> it a viable form of transportion?<\/p>\n

So, yes, I assumed something negative was going to happen here that would prevent it from being a viable alternative. Even so, and even though the episode revealed very early on that Danica and her father, Emory, were lying about their reason for being on Enterprise<\/i>, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect the downward spiral to come. This is an increasingly sad and bleak episode about how Emory has refused to accept his son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death for FIFTEEN YEARS. He spent that time devising a method to save his son, who was the victim of a transporter accident, and still exists in a weird spatial node where time doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pass??? All of this is fucked up, undeniably so! And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I experienced this story and thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Everything will end up fine, there will be no consequences!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, a crewmember died<\/i> when Quinn, Emory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s son and Danica\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s brother, touched someone. It was clear there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be consequences!<\/p>\n

Except not really, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the major problems I see with this. Emory does end this struggle accepting that his son is gone and that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to be held accountable for what he did on board Enterprise<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s left ambiguous as to what that actually looks like, and the same goes for Danica. She speaks of being free to live a life that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> centered on her father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inability to accept that Quinn was gone. But do we know what that is? No. Instead, the first half of this episode establishes that the Ericksons were close with Archer and his father, which undermines the story. Why? Because a very obvious solution was left unaddressed: Why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Emory just ask Archer to use his newfound fame as the savior of Earth and help him with his experiment? It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily have to be an official Starfleet mission, but at least the crew could have known<\/i> what they were getting into!<\/p>\n

Perhaps the attempt here was to say that Emory was so full of his irrational refusal to accept Quinn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death that he just made bad decisions. I could maybe buy that if it was explored more. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still another<\/i> problem: ARCHER IS A TOTAL JERK IN THIS EPISODE. And he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t apologize, despite that this is a bad idea, despite that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s little science to back up Emory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assertions that he can save Quinn, despite that this whole experiment puts everyone<\/i> at risk of death, even though they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to AND it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a Starfleet mission. Does he ever apologize? Nope. Was he 100% wrong when he told Tucker this wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t personal? YES. Ugh, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just… it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that Archer can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be stubborn and make mistakes. WELCOME TO SEASON 3. But you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have that happen and then just ignore the ramifications of it.<\/p>\n

And look, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how else to explain why I greatly disliked that ending. Please, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give me perfectly-wrapped presents as resolutions; fuck me up; ruin my day. I live for dark shit sometimes. But what the fuck<\/i> was the point of having Quinn pop into this world just to die in his father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arm seconds later? It was already<\/i> tragic enough, and that just felt like salt in the wound.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Daedalus\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":"