Enterprise Reviewed! (by a pedant) S1E23: FALLEN HERO

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:02]I can I can figure it's a new day on the Enterprise and To thinks we aren't getting enough orgasms, efficiency is down, so she's concluded that unlike Vulcans and their 7-year itch, we silly humans need to do a bit of the old dirty little bastard. Rises the place, she says, and once she's reframed it as shore, Archer agrees.

[00:00:29]Starfleet Command has other ideas as our preparations are interrupted by Admiral Forest Kelly. He wants us to immediately go and pick up a Vulcan ambassador called Velar as a favor for them. And to show us their appreciation, they're refusing to tell us why it's so important. The reason doesn't matter to Topole and she's trying to make sure everything is prepared for an esteemed Vulcan guest, including notes on how the crew should behave. It's somewhat of a shock then that upon arriving at a planet to pick up our guest, we find them in a rush to be rid of her. Rather understandable really once we learn that Ambassador Velar is, to use the technical term, a proper wrong and what done some bad crimes. She arrives on the ship and proves herself to be anything but expected. Handshakes and an expressed desire to mingle with the humans takes everybody by surprise.

[00:01:17]Perhaps this unusual behavior is why Topal comes straight out and asks about her alleged crimes, ones to which Velar says there's no defense, which is not the same as admitting guilt. Aar decides to retire to her borrowed quarters, possibly for a chance to speak with Topole in private on the way. If so, she's to be disappointed. Topal now has little time for her and tries to leave at the earliest opportunity. AR assumes its anger at having brought Vulcans into disrepute with the allegations before concluding it's really disappointment.

[00:01:49]Topal excuses herself and leaves. Even Archer can tell there's something off, which might be why he just happened to be walking along a nearby corridor. To Paul admits she's concerned about the situation and assumes Aar is guilty for not wishing to stay and defend herself against the accusations. It's more than that though, as To Paul met Velar before many years ago and views the event as a turning point in her life. To learn the inspiration for your choices may not be who you thought is a difficult pill to swallow. Looks like Topole's not the only person who has beef with Aar. We have a ship approaching of the same species as the planet we just left. And he says there's been a change of plan.

[00:02:30]Aar is to return to face more questions and we should hand her over. This is the first we've heard about it. Though Archer wants to call Starfleet command and confirm. The lad agrees and hangs up, but we find placing another call difficult as they're now blocking our phones. That concern becomes secondary when they start pooping rainbow sparkles at us. Our recently installed new guns don't work at warp, so we slow down to use them. That does enough to bugger their engines, and we scarper while the scarpering's good.

[00:03:00]Archer wants to know what's so important about a naughty ambassador that it would get us kaboomed. Officials probably wouldn't start shooting at us if everything was above board. So, the attacker was not who he claimed. Velar will elaborate no further, saying that revealing what's going on would be more dangerous still. But Archer is in no mood for her [ __ ] We won't be rendevousing with a Vulcan ship for a couple of days. So, in the absence of a decent reason to risk more encounters, he's turning back to the planet. This decision is obviously not welcomed by the Vulcans, and Admiral Forest Kelly calls to let Archer know they're absolutely fing. Archer doubles down, sick of yet another example of the Vulcans keeping things from us, and Admiral Forest Kelly goes off to see if he can find out more. Looks like Topal's trying to do the same. She approaches Aar talking to Hosshi, who gave up her quarters. Once Hosshi's buggered off, Topal gets to the point and tells Aar she should trust Archer with the truth.

[00:03:57]Their current path of silence hardly helps combat the human view that Vulcans are aloof, disdainful wankers.

[00:04:04]Aar can't argue the logic of that, just as she couldn't when they last met many years ago. To Paul made an impression back then and has done so again now.

[00:04:13]That's why Aar wants to share some of the truth. to Paul's visiting Archer afterwards and interrupting his quality time with Pthos Dog in space. She passes on what she's been told, namely that the accusations are a distraction from Velar's actual mission. To Paul wasn't told that mission or who the people trying to murderers are, but is now entirely convinced the situation is genuine. Based on this, and to Paul calling it a personal favor, Archer turns the ship around once more and continues on the original mission. All of this U-turn bollocks has come back to bite us in the ass, though. Our pursuers are back, and they're not alone. A stand-up fight will not be in our favor this time. So, we instead put our boot down. We eventually managed to reach the same speed as them, but it's not a permanent solution. The rendevous is 2 hours away at this speed, and that's not something we can keep up. Nor can we tell the Vulcan ship to meet us, as we're being jammed again. Once Velar's updated on just how deep the [ __ ] we're in is, she decides it's time for a chat.

[00:05:16]Long story short, Velar's been targeted because she intends to provide evidence of corruption in the government of the people she was ambassador to, the Mazerites. Vulcan interference was requested by the Maserites themselves, as they don't know who to trust internally. The business with Velar scarpering due to crimes was meant to get her safely to Vulcan where she could prepare to provide the evidence she's gathered. Clearly, this plan went down the [ __ ] and we're being chased by those with much to lose. She also says it's time to surrender and hand her over. Okay, this will mean she's got a 100% chance of doing a dead, but it'll prevent the Enterprise crew from meeting a similar fate. Archer takes issue with this, possibly because it's not a real Starfleet mission unless as many people as possible are in danger. So, we're going to carry on with delivering her.

[00:06:04]Our pursuers have different ideas. The guy who shot at us last time calls again to point out our engines are running a little hot and maybe we should do a bit of the old surrendering. Archer politely tells him to bollocks and that his own engines don't look good either, which prompts the pursuers to speed up a touch. We do the same, much to the concern of Tucker, but can't match them and slowly lose ground. We're still an hour from the rendevous ship despite pulling out all the stops. Though we could make that significantly less if they came to meet us as they're faster.

[00:06:35]Velar knows a super special diplomatic channel. We can try calling on one that might not be blocked, though we have no way of knowing if it got through. If they do turn up, it would be best if they took our asalants by surprise. Reed does a science to see if we can reflect their jamming wibbly. Alas, we're out of time. A part of our engine is a little bit on fire, and a shot from the pursuers puts on the brakes. Our only hope now is if the message got through, which will mean them turning up in about 10 minutes. Aar's ready to give up, but Archer thinks it's worth bullshitting them for a while to see what happens and sends Velar to sick bay. The guy who calls us again isn't interested in Archer's attempts at distraction and instead docks with us. We spin him a yarn about being injured during the attack, so down to sick bay we all go.

[00:07:22]Once there, the guy receives a call from his ship to say their sensors just died.

[00:07:26]So, it looks like Reed did his job.

[00:07:28]Sounds dodgy. So, rather than waste any more time, he lets his lads poop at the medical goubbins we told him was in.

[00:07:35]It's at this point we have a bit of shaking and some noise from outside.

[00:07:39]Those enemy ships aren't responding to the boarding party anymore, and a Vulcan captain gives us a call to make sure everything's all right. A threat to start kabooming stuff if the boarding party doesn't surrender is effective.

[00:07:52]Which is of course when we reveal that Velar wasn't in the medical gizmo at all.

[00:07:57]The pursuing ships have been allowed to leave which seems a bit shortsighted when you consider they're from a group powerful enough to subvert an entire planetary government and we've just massively pissed them off to boot. But let's ignore that for now. Archer's still calling it a win and Velar's got a lot more time for we humans after seeing Topole feels that way. So, we'll leave everybody to consider what this might mean for our future relations as we get ready to take another step on the long road.

[00:08:26]A Vulcan story then, and one that ties into quite a few previous points raised along the way. The first is the most obvious and most relevant, that of Archer considering Vulcan treatment of humans to be part controlling and part condescending. He may have had a personal example of how this feels when the roles are reversed back in the episode Dear Doctor, but that doesn't entirely negate the deep sense of injustice he's felt for a significant portion of his life. To be fair, that conclusion is justified given the particularly egregious examples of secrecy here. Requesting a favor without providing a reason is a dick move to begin with, and Velar's refusal to share data even after being attacked is a pretty damning judgment of humans. And that started me thinking about the why of her choice. My first response was to say this was a deeply flawed calculation on her part, that there was no reason to withhold the true mission by this point.

[00:09:23]But there's more to it than this one event. And to understand the decision, we have to understand what makes Vulcans different. At this point in future history, we humans were about a century recovered from a global war. In the time since, we'd been at peace and largely conquered hunger and disease. For pretty much all humans, World War II was something you read about when learning how barbaric we were. But Vulcans aren't humans. Vulcans live for multiple centuries. Their distrust of humans makes sense in this context because what's abstract to us is real to them.

[00:10:00]Our global war was quite literally within their living memory.

[00:10:06]Aar is just such a Vulcan. She's old enough to remember her people discovering this curious race of post-apocalypse survivors. And the initial impression of those reports is understandably more impactful than the gradual changes of nearly a century.

[00:10:22]This is a situation likely repeated by pretty much any Vulcan in a position of power or influence. In short, Vulcans don't trust us because the people in charge can still remember us at our worst. There's probably a moral here about how excluding the young from decisions that affect everyone can cause a disconnect between societal perception and reality, but let's leave it there for now. We'll instead look at another revisited topic in this episode, specifically Vulcans and interference.

[00:10:52]Today's story is about the Vulcans assisting a foreign government. And this, perhaps unintentionally, has ties to a previous story. Shadows of PEM gave us a group of rebels who believed their planet was being led by a puppet government, ultimately controlled by Vulcans. We don't get definitive proof either way, leaving a question mark over whether this was accurate or just propaganda from disgruntled opponents.

[00:11:18]That has implications for today's story.

[00:11:21]Is it possible such whispers were spawned from events like the one we're given here, where the Vulcans were invited to be an independent third party? It was hinted those previous rumors were started by the Andorans, and seeing the Vulcans engage in such behavior as today is fertile ground for an already suspicious party. Is it also possible the opposite is true, and actions here were more than simple observation? When you pause for a moment to try and verify her story, you realize we only really have her word that she was invited by concerned officials to root out corruption. Maybe she was really implementing a puppet government and the people following us were trying to fight it. Now, I'd be the first to admit this is unlikely based on the lack of accusations when confronted by Valar at the end, but a little skepticism is a healthy thing, and it can be fun to consider alternative readings of a given narrative. Whatever the reality here, one thing we know for certain is that we keep getting evidence of the Vulcans not always being quite so non-inference as they've previously suggested. The reason behind that interference is left open to the viewer. We'll end this one by acknowledging the first chronological reference to Riser. This is the episode where we humans hear about what will eventually become the official Federation [ __ ] planet and it already has a reputation for being sex positive some 200 years prior. It's somewhat of a shame then that the whole thing is treated as a joke. There's probably an interesting conversation to be had about the society built on open affection being one of the most stable, but instead Enterprise will treat it with snickering and sideways glances, just as Archer and Tucker do at the start of the episode. I'd like to believe that's another deliberate nod to we humans being less psychologically developed than we'll become, but based on things like the Burman Goo Chamber getting green lit, I think that's probably being generous.

[00:13:21]End of episode.

[00:13:24]>> I take it you've heard the news.

[00:13:25]>> Yeah, but Flock says he can sew it back on.

[00:13:28]>> What are you talking about?

[00:13:30]>> Um, what are you talking about?

[00:13:32]>> The fact that we're heading to Risa.

[00:13:34]>> Oh, that. Yeah, I heard that, too.

[00:13:36]>> Wait, what did you mean when you know what? I don't care. Anywh who, we're going to Risa.

[00:13:41]>> I know.

[00:13:42]>> Which means we don't need to mutiny.

[00:13:44]>> Which is precisely why I'm still going to >> What? I don't understand. You said you wanted these ends skits to have surprises in them. Well, this is a surprise. We don't need to mutiny.

[00:13:54]>> I heard you the first time. Our going to riser now means any mutiny would be a completely superfluous gesture with no tangible gain and significant risk to all involved.

[00:14:04]>> Exactly. Exactly. That's why I want to do it.