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Here we have the photonovel about the last serie about "Star Trek", "Enterprise". Being "Enterprise" located one century before the original serie, it was quite impossible to find any episode linked with it. This is not properly correct: in fact in the "Enterprise" storyline there's also a disturbing "temporal war", where humans and aliens fight across several ages and often using century XXII as a battlefield. Anyway, no characters from the original serie are seen in any episode of "Enterprise". But here appears an alien race seen only in the original serie: the Tholians. They had first appeared in the episode "The Tholian web": the Enterprise, with Spock in command, had to rescue Captain Kirk being imprisoned into an "interphase" (in other words, he was stranded into a parallel universe), and the intrusion of the Tholians, who pretended the Enterprise to leave immediately, proved to be quite inappropriate in that difficult situation. Tholians are not humanoid, have six legs and two arms, live in a 200° C environment and are xenophobe: they avoid any contact with other races and do not tolerate any intrusion in their space. But, anyway, they are involved in the "temporal war". Tholians also appear in the "Enterprise" episode "In a mirror, darkly", which happens in the same time and place of "The Tholian web" and explains several things about it. That would have been the most suitable episode for my line, but it was a two-parter and would have been too long. This episode has not a "satisfying" ending: in fact, despite the resistance and reactions of Captain Archer (being his Vulcan first officer T'Pol always hostile), the Temporal war goes on, all remains quite difficult to understand, and any attempt to do that is unsuccessful. But this is exactly the "Enterprise" atmosphere: humans try to have their first interstellar voyages without knowing what to expect, and must face absolutely new problems, unpredictable and often out of control. Captain Kirk pretended "to boldly go where no man has gone before": but in the original serie there was a Federation, some ideas about friendly and hostile races, some rules (although often bended). On the contrary, here things have all to come, Vulcans don't provide much informations, and captain Kirk can be a space cow-boy also thanks to Captain Archer's struggling in a century before. Then something odd. It is impressive T'Pol's resistance to new scientific theories like time travel and (only a theory in that century) breedings between Humans and Vulcans. T'Pol simply considerates them as "non-scientific", and then "non-logic". This behaviour is coherent with the character, a Vulcan woman whose duty is to monitor humans during their first interstellar voyage, full of suspicion and distrust towards humans and their science. But this is absolutely in contrast confronting with the most popular Vulcan of the franchise, Mr. Spock. maybe living a century after made him more open-minded, anyway Spock never refuse any scientific theory, and neither non-scientific ones, and always investigates any new phenomenon with kittish curiosity, (lifting his eyebrow and saying "interesting!" or "fascinating!"). The point is: should logic be the same for all Vulcans? Or, rightly, aren't all Vulcans equal? Does Spock's human part have any influence on this? Or, as said above, Spock lives in a century with more scientific aknowledgement? Anyway, T'Pol proves to be quite different confronted with our ideas about Vulcans, as we knew them from the original serie. More similar to Spock is Dr. Phlox: he is very interested in the new scientific theories, in fact he is the "real alien" of the serie, as was Spock for the original serie. Now a little synopsis: the Enterprise takes aboard a wrecked ship, and the pilot's corpse is found aboard. But the vessel is full of mysteries: the pilot is human, how did he made there? And the ship has a lot of very unusual features. And both Sulibans and Tholians want to retrieve it, and Captain Archer's refusal doesn't stop them... Enjoy. WARNING: to read the comic you need Acrobat Reader. FUTURE TENSE |
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