Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #11 — “Azati Prime” And “Memento Mori”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the sixtieth anniversary approaches, we here at Comicon are ready to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through September 8th, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

Star Trek is full of hope and dreams, centered around a better future for humanity and beyond. This better future though doesn’t come without its bumps, bruises, and absolute beatings though. In reality, things that are gained often have to be fought for with sweat, tears, and far too much blood.

Some of the best episodes of Trek center on the hardships the beloved crews must endure to accomplish their goals. The two episodes this week are the epitome of that, as we give some love to the often forgotten and maligned Star Trek: Enterprise as well as the currently loved and soon to end Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

-RED ALERT: SPOILERS FOLLOW-

“Azati Prime”
Star Trek: Enterprise – Season 3, Episode 18 (03/03/2004)

Synopsis: The crew of the Enterprise has at last discovered the whereabouts of the dreaded Xindi weapon and launch a deadly mission to destroy it. When their captain is captured and fails to convince the Xindi leaders to relent, the Enterprise finds itself under siege, defenseless, and at the brink of destruction.

If you remember this episode, the part that potentially stands out the most is the ending. Seeing the NX-01 Enterprise battered, carved into, drifting towards certain death is an image that I remember leaving me with a jaw on the floor.

Yes, we’ve seen our favorite ships destroyed and broken but usually it was an alternate timeline or duplicate or other get out of jail free creative card. Rarely have we borne witness to the ship of the series come so close to certain death. There was the destruction of Enterprise D in Star Trek: Generations, which is its own shocker, but that was a cinematic choice that led to a bigger sleeker big screen ready ship.

Enterprise as a series had a struggle through its run. It was a far in the past prequel that tried to tie itself to the future shows with little easter eggs while attempting to find its path. Season three though is where the show began to truly cook. The introduction of the Xindi attack on Earth, and the season long plot to stop them really pulled out all the stops. We learned so much more about these characters and what they were made of and how far they were willing to go in some cases.

There are some episodes after this one that are hard cause we see our heroes cross some lines we never thought we would. It begins here where they are so close to stopping the Xindi, with Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) convincing half the Xindi leaders, only for those with a warlike mindset within the collective to shatter it all.

Unlike with the other Trek shows, we know there is no one coming to rescue or back up the crew. There are no other ships really, the fleet is a long off dream beyond these first few voyages. As we watch the Xindi ships obliterate whole sections of the Enterprise, we know that there is no magic comeback waiting. This isn’t a wave the magic wand next week type move that Voyager became known for over it’s run.

There’s nothing grander about this episode in theme or scope to discuss. It’s a hard-fought moment where the captain tries his best to utilize diplomacy to stop an attack on his home world. Meanwhile his crew fights to the almost bitter end when diplomacy is proven to be mostly ineffective in the end. The theme or grander thing might be the fact that this is a hard moment where the beginnings of Starfleet, and the eventual beginnings of the Federation, learned truly how dangerous the universe can and will be.

“Memento Mori”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season 1, Episode 4 (05/26/2022)

Synopsis: A routine supply mission to a colony planet takes an unexpected turn as the Enterprise comes under attack from an unknown force. With lives on the line, the crew must battle against a force they know nothing about to save one member of the crew. Her past with these beings cost her everything and hardened her into the person she is today. A classic Trek foe gets a deadly upgrade in this episode.

Even if you never watched any or much of Star Trek: The Original Series the image of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) with requisite ripped shirt staring at a rubber suited lizard man holding a big rock has probably crossed your life at some point. It’s a pretty classic image and episode where we were introduced to the Gorn. From this point they were an alien species that made that one appearance through all of Trek, until a briefly seen CGI update for a Mirror Universe episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Well, Strange New Worlds said hold my synthol and not only upgraded the Gorn once more but made them an honest to goodness terrifying threat. No more two-legged men in rubber suits for them. No, the Gorn are a horrifying Xenomorph like lizard species that are aggressive beyond all reason.

We don’t see that version of them till later in this first season, in a truly horrifying and heartbreaking episode, but this one sets everything up.

One of the framing bits of the episode is Starfleet Remembrance Day, a moment where everyone wears pins commemorating the loss of ships and crews that paid the ultimate cost for exploration. These people are officers, scientists and civilians who ultimately gave their lives for galactic peace and the spirit of exploration and connection.

Right away the crew of the Enterprise is on the defensive, struggling to figure out how to even respond to a foe they’ve never seen and only heard rumors about. We have several crew members in danger during the attack, some of them ones that we aren’t sure of their ultimate fates since they don’t know up in TOS.

This is an episode where we really get to dive into security chief La’an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) and her past. It dives deep into why she is the way she is, and the trauma that she’s been battling for a long time. It doesn’t go away here as the Gorn return in the aforementioned later season episode and into the second and third season. It becomes a throughline of her character, that we see lead to big over-arching developments. It truly speaks to how well they were able to work with and liven up these brand-new characters next to the legacy ones that have gotten the same deeper polishing.

Much like the Enterprise episode above, this one pushes the crew to very different levels than we had seen in the first three episodes. Hard choices must be made, and lives are lost in the process. Again, it speaks to how tough the universe really can be and how despite the good intentions of the Federation there are forces beyond them that couldn’t care less about peace and togetherness.

While it does “break the canon” in some respects, I could care less. In this version the Gorn are truly a force to reckon with and one that gives the Federation a brutal enemy to face. Much like the introduction of the Borg or Species 8472, this reimagining turns something that could be laughable into a terrifying counter to what we love about Trek.

Come back next week as we dive into two more of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.