The Long Road

04/17/2003 Archived Entry: "Enterprise 2x20: Horizon"

This episode puts the spotlight on the most underused member of the crew as Mayweather gets to return to his family on their cargo ship: the Horizon. He gets to deal with the rift between him and his brother as well as some space pirates. Though its nice to see Mayweather get more than 2 lines this episode, a lot of his scenes felt really awkward. I'm can't really tell whether that's from poor acting or a bad script.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise is on a scientific expedition studying a planet being pulled apart by two stars. Seeing this as a chance to relax, the crewmembers invite T'Pol to watch Frankenstein. It was interesting to see that T'Pol understood the themes of the story better than the humans who couldn't picture humanity being fearful and intolerant of someone different.

What I would have liked to see is the crew considering some of our more modern movies "classics". This was an issue I had with both Voyager and DS9 as the characters were always more enamoured with our past than their past. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of watching the Frenkenstein trilogy, Reid put on a showing of the Matrix trilogy or some other current films? I think this kind of forward thinking is generally lacking from the show.

The best part of this episode for me was seeing what life would be like on a non-starfleet vessel where the crew were not people trying to see new worlds and meet new civilizations but simply trying to make a living. I guess they were more "down to earth", but nevermind that.

Overall: 7/10

Replies: 2 comments

My favourite part of the episode was when Merryweather was talking to Reid about how Starfleet ships should have entire families on them so no one got homesick and Reid said that they'd need councillors then, too - just like in TNG. Okay, not great, but neither was the episode in my mind.

Posted by Romer @ 04/17/2003 03:37 AM EST

IT'S MAYWEATHER!!!! NOT MERRYWEATHER!!!

Posted by sbdep @ 04/17/2003 04:46 AM EST