#sighs wistfully picard would never do this

[marxistgnome]

Ive been watching alot of enterprise recently and one of the things that strikes me, especially in the latter seasons is how focused it is on captain archers heroism. It seems like every other episode is concluded by him risking his life in a feat of daring do to save the day. It kinda has the effect of making him seem a bit more like an all american action hero rather than a starfleet captain who is a part of a cohesive crew. This is a little jarring, especially when compared with other star trek captains (who have their action hero life risking moments but they are 1 much more scarce and 2 have alot more justification beforehand) but I do think it works quite well character-wise. Archers relentless self sacrifice and die hard (the movie) approach to alot of situations really draws attention to the fact he is the first person to be the captain of the starships we know and love from other shows - and especially the fact that the role and code of behaviour of later captains has not by any means been established. It shows how he acts more on emotion than protocol because there are no protocols yet for how a captain should behave and it shows how he reacts to encountering dangerous and chaotic circumstances there are no precedence for - by putting his life on the line rather than risk anyone else, even to the point of irrationality. And this makes sense! In the tos/tng era we have things like the kobayashi maru and command simulations where you have to send a crew member into a life threatening situation, but enterprise didnt even expect to see heavy combat, they barely left space dock with weapons, there is no way archer was prepared to this extent and his actions show this. So yes, the heroism is very focus is very interesting character wise however narrative wise its fucking annoying. Making Archer the go to guy who has to jump on every grenade and has to take every bullet gets old pretty quick. For one thing it really takes the drama out of it because we know Archer will get out unscathed cos he did in every other virtual suicide attempt so far. And for another thing the self sacrifice stops feeling earned because its just a go to - and you can definitely maintain a balance between showcasing how archer is reckless with his own life and keep the emotional weight by not having it be such a frequent thing. But my main gripe is that this focus on archer saving the day absorbs so many other cool opportunities. like in immunity syndrome kirk had to choose to send spock or mccoy on a suicide mission - and also had to concede that he couldn't do it himself cos he also has similar self sacrificing herosim streak - and that could be something so cool to see on enterprise but the archer focus gets in teh way. ( i am now realising i am only midway thru season 4 so if this does happen at some point keep it to urself). And it gets in the way of so many chances to explore other characters. Travis Mayweather is criminally underutilised i want to see how he behaves in a life or death situation!!!! I already know how archer would cos ive seen it a bunch of times!!! And there are so many instances where it would have been more interesting if another character was in the grenade jumping position - like what if phlox had to test the cure for the klingon virus on hoshi instead that would have been so interesting to see cos of how close they are. I maintain that if like a 3rd or even a 5th of big captain archer hero moments had been devoted to exploring other characters or other options enterprise would be so much better. Truly society if

#at times it is kinda the captain archer show and it drives me mildy insane #especially cos i personally find him kinda annoying not as cool as other characters #so the fact he gets so much screentime and focus in comparison is suhhhgughgughgh #another archer characterisation thing tho is how many wild non suicidal captaining decisions he makes #like so many times im like bro wtf what possessed u to do that #sighs wistfully picard would never do this #or if tehy did it would have been way more of a thing #like in daedalus he is purely acting based on emotion and not in the interests of a crew #he is highkey not a good captain but i dont mean that in a badly written way it is a very juicy delicious character choice #star trek #star trek enterprise #captain archer