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Typhon Station is a very fastpaced PBeM RPG with skilled, experienced
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Typhon Station is a very fastpaced PBeM RPG with skilled, experienced
players and a warm sense of bonding and community. We play at the
turn-of-the-century, 2400, and are located in the Typhon Expanses,
bordering the Neutral Zone, proximate to the Romulan Empire, and near
the Iconian Digs, and are on the first warning route of the original
Borg Incursion.
We have three stations to post from, SB 185, USS Odyssey, and USS
Wraith. They all have general and particular storylines and all
interact. This game is not for the faint of heart! The writing is
superb and comes hot and heavy. We have some open spots and also we
will consider character suggestions. So, longtime RPGers and novices,
check us out. See if you want to make Typhon Station your home away
from home.
(0 comments | Add)
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Posted:
07:07:06 on April 25 2002
By: Steve Krutzler
Dept: ENTERPRISE Reviews | www.stenterprise.com
Reviews Ex Deus
"Detained"
Written for TrekWeb by O. Deus, edited by Steve Krutzler
Summary - Archer earns frequently captured flyer miles, T'Pol
demonstrates again why she belongs in command and the episode hammers home
its message with all the subtlety and grace of a Rush Limbaugh broadcast in
a predictable Andorian Incident Redux storyline.
It's interesting to note that the bulk of Enterprise's critical and fan
favorite episodes take place in space. Episodes like Broken Bow, Cold Front,
Breaking the Ice, Silent Enemy, Fight or Flight and Shuttlepod One manage to
capture at least some of that thrill of exploration and bring a fresh
sensibility to the usual Star Trek cliches. On the ground though, Enterprise
tends to produce retreads featuring even more forgettable aliens of the week
than Voyager and stories with as little or even less complexity. Detained is
no different in that regard and follows the usual Enterprise formula of five
minutes of story per forty minutes of episode. It also manages to repeat the
same mistakes of crew characterization that have made Captain Archer a
laughing stock and Mayweather the latest incarnation of Wesley Crusher.
In the course of an unfinished season, Captain Archer has been captured
more than a few times. Unlike Captain Kirk though, Archer doesn't tend to
get captured by the Greek god Apollo, aliens from another galaxy or an
omnipotent child; but by anyone who goes to the trouble of shooting down his
shuttlecraft. This isn't a great record for a starship Captain and it makes
for fairly uninteresting viewing. Worse yet, Archer seems perpetually
clueless, blundering from one mishap into another and justifying it with what
he undoubtedly thinks is a charming smile and a paen to the virtues of
curiosity. Though his ship has been attacked many times and he's learned
that there is a temporal war going on, Archer still seems to be strolling as
casually around the universe as in Strange New World where he decides that
an alien planet couldn't possibly be dangerous because it looks so pretty.
Meanwhile the writers seem to have decided that competence is the
exclusive purview of repressed Vulcans and repressed Englishmen, while
celebrating the emotional incompetence of the humans as a testament to their
virtue. Consider Trip's behavior in this episode where he undermines his
commanding officer's authority by questioning her actions on the bridge and interrupting her negotiation with the Colonel. And this isn't the
first time. You have to assume that Trip is either an idiot or has so much
contempt for T'Pol that he would actually treat her this way. After all,
Archer called T'Pol on the carpet for much less.
Archer goes back to making his decisions based on a completely
baseless confidence in his own ability to be able to grasp complex
sociopolitical situations in 5 minutes or less and to make decisions that
affect billions of lives based on his feelings, without actually following
any kind of rules. A good deal of this probably happens because while the
producers may have toured submarines to get ideas for how the Enterprise
engine room should look, they didn't bother brushing up on even the basics
of military discipline. This makes Archer look like an incompetent egomaniac
time and time again, or for those who have been following the reruns of the
third Star Trek spin-off, a lot like Captain Janeway. Worse yet where Kirk,
Picard and Sisko were larger than life figures whose decisions had larger
than life moral grandeur, Archer is a weak character whose attitude comes
off as pettiness, rather than principle.
Often it's because Bakula is simply a weaker actor. Consider Detained,
in which Dean Stockwell playing the villain not only turns in a much better
performance with little material and an underplayed character, but in his
character's worst moments still manages to maintain more dignity and stature
than Bakula manages to retain in his best. It's one of the most
memorable performances since Mark Alaimo's subversion of the Gul Dukat
character and almost as enjoyable because it involves acting, something
Bakula seems increasingly incapable of. But it's also because Bakula is
being given no material to work with. His character's motivations and
behavior make no rational sense. All that's left is to play him as a
cartoonish Dudley Do-right that isn't grounded in any kind of realistic
expectations. Shatner could have played these scenes with the kind of
outrageous scenery chewing that made even the worst TOS episodes fun. But
all Bakula can do is turn in the same bland performance so that you can
barely tell the difference between a scene in which Archer is eating toast
and a scene in which Archer is protesting the oppression of an entire
people.
Which of course makes the decision to pair Archer with Enterprise's
weakest character and weakest actor, a very big mistake. It's the bland
leading the bland as Archer and Mayweather spend three times as much time as
is necessary to establish that the Suliban in the camp are innocent and
oppressed and the guards are nasty and sadistic. For anyone who fails to
grasp this point through the subtle cinematic device of having the guards
repeatedly shock the prisoners for no legitimate reason whatsoever and shove
small children and make them cry, the guards are further dressed up in
militaristic uniforms with high black collars and straps around the chest, a
favorite Star Trek design when emphasizing the Naziesque qualities of the
Alien Villain of the week, last used in Voyager's Counterpoint.
The characters of the Suliban themselves don't come through very well
mainly because of the poor quality of the Suliban makeup which renders the
actor's faces mostly immobile while depriving them of distinguishing
features. The Suliban makeup seems to have been rather poor to begin with and its cakey quality would not have been out of place on TOS.
On Enterprise it looks cheap and ugly. Even Andromeda manages to produce a
Vedran complete with four feet, yet Enterprise can't give its chief race of
villains a more unique look than what TOS would have come up with on a bad
day. The fact is, Voyager aliens that we've only seen for three minutes
at a time have come with better makeup than this (and costuming!). Witness the enemy aliens
in Voyager's Homestead among many other examples of completely throwaway
makeup designs that are more effective than what amounts to a covering of
caked yellow mud.
It's no surprise, then, that the actual story itself turns out to be as
crude as the makeup with the basic message being reinforced by a ridiculous
lecture from Archer referencing the American internment camp of WW2. You
have to wonder if in the aftermath of WW3, Khan Noonien Singh, the banning
of genetic enhancements on Earth and their persecution as we saw on DS9's
Bashir storyline, Archer can't think of a more relevant example for a being race
persecuted for the exact same reason. Of course this would assume some
measure of familiarity with Star Trek canon on the part of Braga and co,
which would force them to dip into the seedy world of continuity
pornography, e.g. maintaining a concordance and doing their research and
thus their jobs. It would also distract from the political message being
hammered home here with all the grace and subtlety of a Rush Limbaugh
broadcast.
It's not simply a question of continuity or ideology; like most
Enterprise episodes, Detained is simply devoid of elementary storytelling
values. There's no real suspense, no twists and turns. Braga in his
interview bragged about writing a prison-break story, but all the fun of such a story is in the possibility of being caught and playing a cat
and mouse game with the guards. The actual assault is rather
straightforward and over in a matter of minutes. The bulk of the episode
instead engages in a repetitive series of humanizing Suliban incidents,
Bakula alternately looking deeply concerned and sneering at his former
co-star and Mayweather trying to remember where he left his personality. Much of the action in this episode is a redux of "The Andorian Incident" right
down to the planting of the charges and Reed's British Invasion. The real
winners here are Dean Stockwell and Jolene Blalock, who has some of her best
action lines since "Civilization" (another forgettable and not altogether
dissimilar episode.)
What is left of Detained when you distance it from its current time and
place in history? Like much of Enterprise's first season it's a wasted
opportunity consisting of recycled material, another snoozeworthy
performance from Bakula, poor storytelling and a clarion call for repairing
the characterization of Captain Jonathan Archer before he goes down in Star
Trek history as Mr. Janeway.
Next week: Ectoplasm invades Enterprise. Can the Ghostbusters be far
behind ?
About the Authors
O. Deus has been a TrekWeb visitor since the site's 1996 inception. Along with being an ardent poster, he is a freelance journalist based in New York City. Deus has written reviews and columns for TrekWeb for over two years.
Steve Perry is not the former lead singer of Journey. He is, however, a long time fan of all Trek, yes, even Voyager. He is currently in law school and contributes reviews when his busy schedule permits.
TrekWeb Reviews
"The Catwalk"
"Precious Cargo"
"Vanishing Point"
"Singularity"
"The Communicator"
"The Seventh"
"Marauders"
"A Night In Sickbay"
"Dead Stop"
"Minefield"
"Carbon Creek"
"Shockwave, Part II"
Season One Re-cap (Deus)
"Shockwave" (Deus)
"Two Days and Two Nights"
"Fallen Hero" & "Desert Crossing" (Deus)
"Vox Sola" (Deus)
"Detained" (Deus)
"Oasis" (Krutzler)
"Acquisition" (Williams)
"Rogue Planet" (Deus)
"Fusion" (Deus)
"Shuttlepod One" (Deus)
"Shadows of P'Jem" (Deus)
"Sleeping Dogs" (Deus)
"Dear Doctor" (Deus)
STENTERPRISE.com
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