Archer's backstory

[Dinah]

We don't know a great deal about Archer's backstory. Basically it revolves around his father, his father's death and the attempts by the Vulcans to discourage humans from deep space exploration. With that in mind, do you think the writers doomed Archer's character from the beginning? They gave him no proven track record as the captain of a ship. "First Flight" seemed to imply that his eventual promotion to captain of Enterprise was based as much on his father's accomplishments as on his own.

After the first season when it became apparent to TPTB that Archer wasn't regarded by many fans as a strong or particularly worthy captain, what should the writers have added to his backstory in season two to make him a more compelling figure? If you don't think the backstory was the problem, what should the writers have done to turn Archer into the type of captain who could command respect? What could Bakula have done differently, if anything, to "sell" Archer as a man worthy to command Starfleet's flagship?

[CoffeeCat]

Archer had more of a backstory than Trip did - but the majority of Enterprise fans seem to love Trip anyway. I don't think it has much to do with the backstory (unless you count the fact that the father-angst backstory is way overdone in Trek anyway), I think it has more to do with the fact that the writers had a tendency to take away from all the other characters in an attempt to make him look good. For example: T'Pol often appeared weak and overly sumissive around him and Trip was turned into a blithering idiot during season 2 and *the_abomination*.

In a way it can be likened to the Seven of Nine syndrome.

[Rigil Kent]

With that in mind, do you think the writers doomed Archer's character from the beginning?

No. It was just the inconsistent writing for him throughout the series that ultimately did the character a disservice.

"First Flight" seemed to imply that his eventual promotion to captain of Enterprise was based as much on his father's accomplishments as on his own.

Which was, IMO, a major misstep. By going in that direction, any and all of his accomplishments prior to that appointment were rendered irrelevant as it made his appointment nothing more than an example of the "good ole boy" network.

After the first season when it became apparent to TPTB that Archer wasn't regarded by many fans as a strong or particularly worthy captain, what should the writers have added to his backstory in season two to make him a more compelling figure?

To the backstory? Nothing. Just writing him as a more compelling character without resorting to weakening the other characters to do so would have worked for me.

If you don't think the backstory was the problem, what should the writers have done to turn Archer into the type of captain who could command respect?

Ditch the arrogance and the "only my way is right" mentality. Have something blow up in his face so he gains some perspective and adopts a more cautious approach to things. Stop assassinating the characters (or races as in the case of the Vulcans) around him so as to exalt him. Remember that, sometimes, failure teaches us more things than success. Get some fresh blood in there to write the episodes, preferably someone who actually knows what a real leader is like...

What could Bakula have done differently, if anything, to "sell" Archer as a man worthy to command Starfleet's flagship?

Not really sure he could have done anything if the writing was crap.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

I'm not sure what Bakula could've done, but I do know what the writers should've done. They should've written Archer as a competent Captain. I can buy that he would be rather inexperienced with deep space exploration, but all too often they confused inexpereice with ineptitude, and that made the Captain look stupid.

They should also have ditched the nepotism angle. Now it seemed like he got the job because of his father and not through his own achievements. Perhaps it would also have been better if he hadn't been a test pilot. A better choice would've been a C.O. of another Starfleet vessel, like those Intrepid-ships.

[Dinah]

Ditch the arrogance and the "only my way is right" mentality. Have something blow up in his face so he gains some perspective and adopts a more cautious approach to things.

I agree. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the cogenitor episode had been built around Archer instead of Trip. Even in the Expanse, Archer never saw the ramifications of his decisions: he never saw the bodies of the people at that listening post at Azati Prime, or heard about the destruction of the Illyrians he left stranded. He always seemed to walk away clean. With Shockwave, it was Reed who seemed to be at fault and then when Archer was feeling down, Daniels came along and made everything all right by giving Archer a pat on the back and telling him he's important.

I guess seeing Sim die was about the closest Archer came to facing up to his mistakes, but underneath it all, I'm not sure Archer ever truly believed that creating Sim was wrong. Somehow the successful completion of "the mission" allowed him to justify it. Archer struggled in Home with the things he'd done, but it wasn't because he'd failed or made a mistake; it was closer to the feeling that you can't make a cake without breaking a few eggs. I have no doubt that he was sincere in his remorse, but it certainly wasn't enough to change his pattern of behavior -- a la season 4.

[Rigil Kent]

And it was T'Pol who felt the ramifications of the P'Jem thing, not Archer.

It's one of the reasons I remain convinced that Archer was an evil telepath with the ability to convince everyone that he interacted with that he could walk on water, eat bullets, and excrete ice cream...

[blacknblue]

Sadly, this inability to face up to the reality that actions have consequences... it isn't uncommon nowadays. Not in most televisions shows. Not in most movies. And not in most daily American life that I have seen. Our culture seems to me to have become infected with an obsession for getting away with it, whatever it might be. As long as you can get away with it, nothing else matters. What they don't know won't hurt me, and so forth.

Archer being written as never having to face up to the consequences of hsi decisions is simply par for the course of everything else coming out of Hollywood now.

[Rigil Kent]

I blame the sinister space monkeys and their orbital mind control lasers ... fear them!

[pookha]

we hardly ever get a lot of back story on any of the trek characters.
we dont have a clue about when kirk became captain or even when he took command of enterprise.
we dont know anything about his father.

one thing i would have changed is move first flight to early first season.
and i think i might be seeing a different episode. in it archer had to step away from the shadow of his father to take a risk.

and it adds another dimension to his (and trips ) mistrust of the vulcans. it took it just from he didnt like them due to what they did to his father in the past but how they almost disrpted the warp five program just when trip told them the discovery had been made about the intermix ratio being the problem.
the vulcans knew they had the solution but pushed hard to can the entire program.
and jon, trip and ag all knew they knew as soon as the flight worked.

and archer had moments of failrure such as desert crossing and even in shockwave.
and just because daniels told him enterprise wasnt at fault didnt lessen a lot of the anger archer was feeling about what happened to those people. and i never got the idea at all the archer ever bought into what daniels said and took it as ego stroking.
in fact it seemed to make him angry.. sorta like what rigil observed in a story.

actually they were progressing archer along pretty well in the first part of season two until anis.
and then just about wrecked all the good that had been done.
for me it took catwalk to restore the character.

ps there are references to archer serving on other ships through the series and oddly enough about a former co and how he never wanted his style of command to folllow his though in the expanse it started to when he believed he was leading his crew on a one way mission.

as for watching mess up more.. well detained could have used a follow up. with some and perhaps most of the suliban just quietly settling some place else but a few join the cabal.


but overall i liked the character even though he was treated badly in some stories.
and he needed to learn to say please and thank you more often.

[Dinah]

he needed to learn to say please and thank you more often.

Captain Kangaroo's magic words. You're right, Pooka, Archer should have definitely watched old reruns of Captain Kangaroo.

I think you're right about moving First Flight to season 1 along with Cogenitor. Those two episodes lay the foundations on which characters can grow and change. I guess I would have just preferred that Archer's life-changing decision distanced him from his father instead of cementing the two together even stronger. Instead of the Starfleet brass being able to say, "Archer's demonstrated that he's a man willing to fight for his convictions; he showed leadership and initiative," we're left with the same old mantra, "Archer will do whatever it takes to prove that his father was right and his engine is sound."

It should have been made clear that Starfleet was appointing Jonathan Archer, not Henry Archer's son, to the captaincy of Enterprise. Without providing information on previous deployments or previous command experience, they made Archer appear to be a one-trick pony with the ghost of Henry Archer firmly riding on his back. It isn't really until season 3 that Archer begins to make his own mark and that was more as a diplomat than as a commander of a ship.

I know with the early space program, the top test pilots like Chuck Yeager and Scott Crossfield didn't take the astronaut program seriously because there didn't appear to be much actual flying involved in the early space capsules. With the launch of Enterprise, I don't see that being the case, however. The most experienced, the most capable captains in Starfleet would all be campaigning to get command of the first Warp 5 ship. In First Flight, A.G. Robinson came off as more decisive than Archer. If it hadn't been for A.G. pushing him, Archer would have never got off the mark. After watching that episode, I just couldn't envision Archer as being the best of the best.

[CX]

The only thing I can really add to what's been said, because Rigil and KTR have already covered most of it, is that if TPTB were going to put so much focus on Henry Archer and the chip on Jon Archer's shoulder in regard to Vulcans and how they "held humanity back", they should have put more effort into an actual background for it. As the show went on, there was actually an episode where it all came down to the Vulcans not simply handing their technology over, which took any legitamacy out of the issue instantly. They needed a lot more than that to justify the ill feelings humanity and Archer in particuliar had toward Vulcans. First Flight, while setting up part of the "background", only proved that a lot of it was humanity's own fault for letting the Vulcans have so much weight in their own internal opinions. I can understand wanting advise from people who have experiance, but it's still up to them to make everything happen in their own programs. In the end it came off as childish whining. As for Archer, they had an opportunity to give him a really good chip on the shoulder involving the Vulcans, but they couldn't even get when and how Henry Archer died internally consistant.

[Rigil Kent]

I completely agree with that. "Woe is me. The Vulcans wouldn't give my daddy their hard-earned technology, and expected us to figure it out ourselves. Woe." I wanted to hit the goobers in charge with a shovel when I saw that.

and archer had moments of failrure such as desert crossing and even in shockwave.

But he never experienced any repercussions from them, and frankly, never really seemed to learn anything from them either. Once they were done, he was back to the same schizophrenic character that he had always been. Look at P'Jem: T'Pol was suffering the repercussions of Archer's decision from that all the way into season 4, even though she wasn't the one who made the actual decision! For that matter, look at the repercussions she faced in Fusion when her IQ inexplicably dropped 150 points. We never saw anything remotely like that for Archer. We never saw him have to face the aftermath of his bad decisions, and it instead seemed like the people around him were the ones who suffered when he made stupid decisions..

What was the result of his criminal decision in Dear Doctor? What was the aftermath of Damage and Archer's decision to become a pirate? What was the aftermath of Similitude where Archer basically force-grew a person and then killed him? What was the aftermath of Archer's various decisions to abandon his duties and go off on suicide missions in the latter part of the third season?

I realize it was simply not going to happen, not with Coto trying to cram every single TOS reference in that he could, but I would have liked to have seen some of these decisions comes back and haunt him. Yeah, court-martial episodes are cliched, but most of Trek is cliched. We needed to see some sort of indication that he had actually learned from his mistakes; instead, we got him shouting at Trip in Daedalus because Tucker was right.

[Asso]

Rigil Kent wrote:

But he never experienced any repercussions from them, and frankly, never really seemed to learn anything from them either. Once they were done, he was back to the same schizophrenic character that he had always been. Look at P'Jem: T'Pol was suffering the repercussions of Archer's decision from that all the way into season 4, even though she wasn't the one who made the actual decision! For that matter, look at the repercussions she faced in Fusion when her IQ inexplicably dropped 150 points. We never saw anything remotely like that for Archer. We never saw him have to face the aftermath of his bad decisions, and it instead seemed like the people around him were the ones who suffered when he made stupid decisions..

What was the result of his criminal decision in Dear Doctor? What was the aftermath of Damage and Archer's decision to become a pirate? What was the aftermath of Similitude where Archer basically force-grew a person and then killed him? What was the aftermath of Archer's various decisions to abandon his duties and go off on suicide missions in the latter part of the third season?

I realize it was simply not going to happen, not with Coto trying to cram every single TOS reference in that he could, but I would have liked to have seen some of these decisions comes back and haunt him. Yeah, court-martial episodes are cliched, but most of Trek is cliched. We needed to see some sort of indication that he had actually learned from his mistakes; instead, we got him shouting at Trip in Daedalus because Tucker was right.


I completely agree with that.


Perhaps it is the Captain's syndrome? In my opinion, very often, in "Star Trek", the Captains work a little stupidly. But, still in my opinion, "Archer" is the first in this kind of things.

[blacknblue]

In VOY Tuvok tells a crewman, "The captain is always right, even when s/he is wrong."

Ahem.

No. I'm sorry. No. There is such a thing as an unlawful order. Can you say... Nur-em-berg?

[Rigil Kent]

In VOY Tuvok tells a crewman, "The captain is always right, even when s/he is wrong."

Seriously? They actually said that? Gah. It's no wonder I have no respect for the VOY/ENT captains if that's the mentality of the goobers in charge. So ... if Archer/Janeway decides to open fire on an unarmed transport, then s/he is right. *shakes head*