Detained

ENTERPRISE: "Detained" Discussion Thread
Terry -- 24 Apr 2002, 20:17 EST

The story opens with Archer and Mayweather in a Tandaran prison alongside members of the shapeshifting Suliban. Col. Grat, the commandant, explains that the Tandarans are at war with the Suliban and that Archer's shuttle was impounded after it entered a restricted area. "You might think about putting up a `no trespassing' sign," quips Archer. But Archer's not amused when a prisoner tells him the Suliban---women and children included---are being imprisoned solely because of their race.

Starring Scott Bakula's former Quantum Leap co-star, Dean "Al" Stockwell, as Colonel Grat.

I was entertained by Detained!
Eric -- 24 Apr 2002, 22:49 EST

Quick Non-Spoiler take : This was OH SO VERY welcome after those weak episodes we had. THIS is what Enterprise can do when they nail one. Welcome back Suliban! You were missed!

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Spoilers with enhanced DNA!

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Oh BOY! Dean Stockwell on Enterprise and immediatly the acting goes up a notch! I beginning to think that Scott needs to have someone kicking his butt to get a solid performence out of him. He was obviously thrilled to have a friend with him and you could see it. This was Archer the Good. I LIKE this Archer, and it helped that HE was the butt kicker, not the butt kicked!

I agree that the Prison exteriors were awesome even for Foundation Imaging! Those little shuttle pods are powerful!

The message has been seen before on Star Trek but maybe with things the way they are in this world it is good to see them again. I welcome this message and they can do it once a year if they want to!

You know, i think we saw a real emotion on Travis's face this week! It was great to meet him for the first time!

Malcolm Undercover!!! WhooooHoooo! More please! And that little boy grin he got when his bomb worked perfectly! LOL!

I agree with the above poster, this WAS very, very close to TOS. It was fun, it grew characters and it had something important to say.

Hell Yeah! Enterprise hits one out of the park. 10/10.

Eric

Phooey!
Vickie -- 25 Apr 2002, 08:26 EST

I didn't set the VCR last night because I knew I'd be home in time to watch Enterprise. And of course, I wasn't.

Fortunately, due to my location at the intersection of two different television markets, I have 3 more chances to catch the episode: Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Vickie

Well, I thorougly enjoyed it.
G'Inny -- 25 Apr 2002, 09:16 EST

Particularly noteworthy bits:

--T'Pol turning on the charm to get Colonel Grat to come to dinnner --Malcolm in disguise. "How did you know it was me?"

What I'd reallylike to see is another episode that follows up on this one. Wouldn't it be thought-provoking if Grat turned out to be right, that the detainees *were* safer in the camp, because many of them eventually end up as genetically modified soldiers in the Cabal..

The Phantom Ensign Appears.
Ronit -- 25 Apr 2002, 09:22 EST

Hurrah for that! The Eye Candy Quotient just zoomed up the scale.

I was only half-watching the show, but what I saw looked like some fine acting. Give this guy more material.

And he looks good battered, bloody and bruised.

Which brings me to the following urgent trivial question: if one were to construct a pie chart of how often Our Crew is seen battered, bloody and bruised, with different colors for each Trek show... would it be an almost all Ent pie?

Ronit

havent seen the ep yet, but where have the Sulies been?
david g -- 25 Apr 2002, 11:08 EST

i was *into* the idea of the Suliban...i miss their development..is it cuz their effects are too expensive?

Nah.
Jules -- 25 Apr 2002, 12:10 EST

Tom Paris (first three seasons only) and Pavel Chekov could give the Enterprise crew a run for their money single handedly when it comes to getting damaged.

I wouldn't have thought so, david
Jules -- 25 Apr 2002, 12:24 EST

Although some of the Suliban genetic-enhancement effects must be too expensive and too time consuming to do every week. I would have thought, however, that the reason that the Suliban don't appear every week is because if they did people would get turned off by the overkill.

I think they're being paced as a plot device. So they show up more sparingly, maybe half a dozen times a year or less, and that's enough for the regular viewer to remember what happened last time and not so often as to confuse the occasional viewer. It gives them enough exposure to reveal more of their background, without running the well dry so that there's nothing left for next year's stories. Or indeed season seven.

What impresses me is that their appearances aren't always predictably plonked down in the middle of a sweeps period. It makes it more possible to sneak them into the plot when the audience aren't expecting it.

Re: ENTERPRISE: "Detained" Discussion Thread
D -- 25 Apr 2002, 14:15 EST

Not much to say about this one. I liked it better than some episodes but not a top 10. Maybe because it reminded me too much of several previous Trek episodes - Voyager's "Faces" (away team exploring something interesting & being captured) and "Body & Soul" (aliens automatically assuming certain beings are enemies); various TNG and DS9 episodes where someone believed there was a conspiracy or that people knew about things they didn't. I imagine the idea came from all the articles last fall that mentioned the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII when discussing anti-Arab sentiments.

I'm pleased to see they're making the Suliban more three dimensional, not presenting them all as bad guys.

This is at least the 4th time Archer's been taken captive & the first season isn't even over yet. At least most of the fighting and Archer & Travis getting beaten up was off screen. I know Bakula has done of lot of physical stuff in other shows but its getting repetitive.

Good points: Travis actually had something to do. T'Pol is getting much better at improvising. With Phlox supposedly using prosthetics to make crew members look like aliens the actors get to complain on screen about being uncomfortable, something Dorn, Shimmerman, Dawson et al could only do, and frequently did, in interviews. Continuity - the Colonel mentioning previous Enterprise activities (but is there that much information in the shuttlepod computers?) and Archer & Travis' initial attitude towards the Suliban.

I thought it was great!
Mindy -- 25 Apr 2002, 20:42 EST

Not just for the appearance of Dean Stockwell...man, that guy is good, no matter what he's in, he nails it!...but for the performance of Scott Bakula...

I think it was Eric who mentioned it, but he and Dean just feed off of each other in perfect harmony. I loved how he stayed silent while Dean was grilling him...oh, btw, the way Dean was holding his little "Palm Pilot," didn't anybody else think of Al and Ziggy!!!!!!!?????

Okay, maybe it was a little "hit me over the head a few times, why donch'a ya?," but, again as Eric pointed out, sometimes the message does need to be hit over the head a few times, and these days seems like one of those times.

The transformation of Reed et.al. into Sulibans was a little (a little???) too repetitive for my taste (uh, this is the 21st century, remember? I wouldn't think they have the technology for complete transformation like that, even if Phlox is an "alien" doctor).

This was really Bakula and Stockwell's show, and they did a great job, imho.

One thing that the reviewer at Scoopme.com pointed out, and I agree with, though I didn't think of it as I was watching...they should have struggled a bit more with the language, the idea that they all understood each other 1-2-3 was kinda dumb, especially without Hoshi there, and especially as the Suliban did not recognize our species.

The address for Scoopme.com, btw, is www.scoopme.com. Go to the review section and log on to ENTERPRISE. I wish I knew a way just to e-mail here directly...the site has that capacity.

Mindy

Mindy

Mindy about the translation issue....
Eric -- 26 Apr 2002, 09:31 EST

....i agree with you.

This is what i was afraid of when i heard that they were goign to try to make the alien languages an issue.

There is a reason for the Universal Translator, Farscape's Microbes, and Battlestar Galactica's Languatron.

It is a pain in the butt to do language on a TV show. Sure if they wanted to throw a hurdle to the crew they could have the devices break down but for the most part it's less just get to the STORY.

I'm not sure how they can fix this problem without sending Hoshi to the sidelines and that is NOT a option since Linda Park is one of the best actor's on the show! Sending her to the Uhura zone "Hailing Frequencies open Captain!" would really hurt the show.

Eric

Boring and pedantic
Terry -- 26 Apr 2002, 10:32 EST

I like my subtext actually sub or at least sub-tle, thank you.

At first, I thought my current disenchantment with the entire series are making it impossible to enjoy a good episode. That was a factor but the truth is that this episode was too transparent in portraying an analogy to the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII. They didn't explore any ramifications of that event; they just said it was "bad". Well, duh.

Maybe this kind of simple-brained morality play is suitable for kids and was okay back in TOS's time. But I demand more intelligence nowadays.

Like so many Trek stories recently, one side is bad and the other are purely innocent victims. The bad guys may seem to have nice qualities at first but then their inner evil is exposed.

With the complex shades of gray we see in such modern events as the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Detained seem puerile. For one, I was thinking about that the young disallusioned Suliban in the internment camp. A more realistic turn for him would have been to want to join the Kabal and fight the Tendarians. In real life, victims don't remain peaceful by choice.

I also would have appreciated some twists on the main story. What about the idea that perhaps the internment of the Suliban/Japanese-Americans really was the least evil act that the Tendarians/Americans were capable of? That demanding everyone act fairly towards them is impossible in times of war? Or that internment was avoidable until the society's leaders, through propaganda, consciously made the war a racial one.

I saw the point that Detained was trying to make almost immediately. How about making me really like the Tendarians and dislike the Suliban first and then make me change my mind, almost against my will? Or present the Japanese-American internment idea and then subvert or twist it?

What's next, a show saying motherhood and apple pie are good things?

RANT OVER

This is one situation where the translation question didn't bother me
D -- 26 Apr 2002, 16:03 EST

I just assumed that the prison had built in translators. That seems to be true for any prisons members of any crew find themselves in (examples: The Chute; Riker in the mental hospital; Bashir, Martok, Worf & Garak in Dominion custody)

I actually liked DETAINED
david g -- 27 Apr 2002, 19:44 EST

Archer and Travis (who knew?) were a good theme...all the guest acting, esp from Breaking Away's Dennis Christopher, was good...i was worried that Stockwell would camp it up but he was effective and serious.

the reason why it worked for me despite the obviousness Terry pointed out was that it seemed, in the end, an unresolved story--that we'd see, rather in Dragon's Teeth fashion, the repercussions of these events. Maybe Archer will discover the shortsightedness of his decision? the tense final exchange with stockwell suggested this.

i also liked mendacious, playing-a-ruse TPol! I also liked Reed's vexation that anyone could recognize him from w/in his Sulie-wear.

God, trip continues to annoy the heck out of me. He just seems like a big surly teenager. Not very officerlike. When Tom complained it seemed more heartfelt and moral.

O yeah, i know, Drgon's Teeth was never followed up, but it should and COULD have been.

Read your post after posting mine, agreed on all counts, Ginny! NIM
david g -- 27 Apr 2002, 19:46 EST

Trip as a "big, surly teenager."
Nina -- 27 Apr 2002, 20:02 EST

You've given me a chuckle, david g. And you've reminded me of something a co-worker always said about a certain local politician whose performance in office left a great deal to be desired: "But he's pretty!"

Which Trip is, you see...and he's fun when he's trading barbs with T'Pol. Too bad he's not being written as an adult the rest of the time, huh?

Dragon's Teeth! God, don't mention that.
Terry -- 28 Apr 2002, 03:14 EST

Worst case of Braga leaving a big loose end ever. I guess he must have learned that from Chris Carter, apparently.