Fortunate Son: Enterprise Retrospective

I haven't done one of these in a while.

So, this was the first episode to focus on Travis Mayweather, the ship's helmsman. His backstory at this point was basically 'he was raised on a cargo ship and rarely spent any time on Earth'. Okay, that would be an unusual background for that era, less than a century from the invention of warp drive, but certainly possible, even plausible. After all, at low-warp speeds, it takes a long time to get from one star system to another.

So, here's the plot recap from Wikipedia:

An Earth freighter with a crew of twenty-three, ECS Fortunate, is attacked by Nausicaans and Enterprise is sent to help. When they arrive, the freighter is relatively unharmed apart from Captain Keene, who is lying unconscious in the ship's infirmary, but the rest of the crew are secretive and reluctant to provide explanations. While helping repair Fortunate, Sub-Commander T'Pol detects a Nausicaan bio-sign. It transpires that Commander Matthew Ryan and his men are secretly torturing the captive for his shield access codes. Ryan admits the Nausicaan pirate is their prisoner, but refuses to let the Starfleet personnel see him, and Captain Archer threatens to retract his assistance to Fortunate.

Ryan seemingly relents, but as Archer and his away team enter a cargo section of the freighter, the cargo pod is suddenly jettisoned with the away team inside. Before Fortunate warps away, it attempts to damage Enterprise in order to delay pursuit. Enterprise recovers its people and begins pursuit of the rogue freighter. Meanwhile, Fortunate arrives at the asteroid used by the Nausicaan pirates, but discover the acquired shield codes are useless. The pirates attempt to board the freighter and rescue their captured crewman just as Enterprise arrives and begins to engage the Nausicaan ships.

Archer is soon able to broker a temporary truce: if they can return the Nausicaan captive, the boarding party will stand down. Ryan is uncooperative until Ensign Mayweather intervenes, saying that Ryan's motivations are not about preventing future attacks on Earth ships; they are about personal revenge, and doing so simply exposes other freighter crews to revenge attacks as well. Ryan relents. Later, Archer and Captain Keene of Fortunate discuss Ryan's actions and his demotion to Crewman 3rd class. They agree Ryan acted rashly, but Keene also muses that acting on their own is the primary motivation his people are out here — to both challenge and prove themselves.

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Okay, so this was our first look at civilian life in the warp era. Cargo hauling has been around since cavemen started trading shiny rocks; only the methods of transport have changed. Imaging long-haul truck driving, except your destination is light-years away and takes four years to get there. That's what life is like on low-warp cargo transports. And when you're out there by yourself, there ain't no cavalry to come riding in to the rescue when bad things happen. Unless, of course, the Enterprise happens to be around.

The Nausicaans are a race that originally appeared in the TNG series; most famously, they are instrumental in the episode where Picard dies and Q shows him what life would have been like had he made different choices. Here, the Nausicaans, much like the humans, are living a much more primitive life than they would two centuries later. We don't get much on their culture; they're basically a 'bad alien of the week' race. But for long-time fans, it's a nice touchstone.

Overall, I'd say this episode gives us a glimpse of what 'Space Boomer' life would be like. The image of the football slowly flying across the entire cargo bay with hang time that would make Aaron Rodgers jealous is a great visual, and the crew's attitude feels authentic. After all, they've been dealing with these situations for decades, and they're not interested in the government (in the form of the Enterprise) sticking its nose in their business. There is a lot that feels predictable (the shield frequency not working, the crew having a Nausicaan prisoner to torment, and Travis' instinctive defense of the Boomers, etc.), but the episode is still decent, if not great. Sadly we wouldn't get much more of a look at the Boomer culture until season two.

So, what rating does this get? I'd say 6 out of 10; it's an average episode, nothing groundbreaking, but not bad. It helps to develop the feel for human culture of the time, which is always good.

I still say that if I were to run a Star Trek game, I would run it in this era. Weaker tech, but so, so much to explore. And there's no telling what else might be found out there.