Fortunate Son

I can't shake the feeling that this Enterprise crew is a bunch of amateurs. In contrast to the crews of the TNG and VOY series, there are definitely no explorers and scientists at work here. Space anomalies? Not interested! Charting stars? Boring! Diplomacy? Something for losers! This crew doesn't have an ounce of tact. Like a couple of cowboys from the American provinces. The ensign simply chats into the captain's speech without being asked to do so. The captain is a complete joke anyway. He could maybe play captain on a shrimp boat. But on the Enterprise? Speaking of boats: The entire Enterprise set seems to me like I'm watching a submarine crew. Those blue overalls, those controls... it doesn't look like a spaceship.

The story of this episode is also complete nonsense. The idea of "Boomers" being born in space, traveling the stars on freighters and being a secretive community of swashbucklers who solve their own problems is just dumb. I just don't buy Mayweather's life story anyway. And his understanding of this freighter crew waging their own guerrilla war is also completely out of place in Star Trek. But Archer then plays space police and ensures law and order in the Alpha quadrant. USA! USA! USA!

Starfleet contacts the Enterprise with orders to help a freighter ship in distress.

I like the concept of freighter ships and their crews so this is an interesting area of the Trek universe that I wanted to find out more about. However, the plot, dialogue and acting in this episode languishes at impulse power. The only time it ever kicks into warp 1 is when Archer gets a bit tough with Officer Ryan.

The resolution comes from someone talking someone else round to see sense and I always struggle with these situations. Couple that with the Nausicaans resembling someone wearing a bad Predator mask and I found this one difficult to get through.

Travis is given a bit more screen time and something tangible to do but unfortunately the quality of material doesn't do the character favours. Archer tries to lift things with his ethical stand, but it doesn't improve matters that much.

I did like the discussions about advancing science and warp technologies impacting ways of life outside of Starfleet but that's about it.

When the show begins, annoying Nausicaan* pirates are attacking an Earth freighter. Soon, Enterprise is ordered to change course to investigate. However, the reaction of the freighter crew is strange and they seem like they don't want any help--even though their ship has obviously been damaged. It's obvious that they are hiding something--and when their secret is revealed, the ship takes off. What is it they are hiding and how will Archer handle it?

This episode brings up an interesting idea with space travel--who will police space? So, if there are space pirates, who is to stop them and how will they punish them? The Captain Ahab-like approach of the acting commander of the freighter is certainly one way! Overall, a rather interesting but not particularly outstanding episode.

*The Nausicaans was a name that was familiar but I didn't at first realize which episodes involved them. My wife looked it up--these were the nasty brutes who nearly killed Jean-Luc Picard when he was a stupid and headstrong Starfleet cadet--which is revealed in one of the final shows of "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

... S_cked!

I don't like that this series redesigned several alien races. The Nausicans were the worst. The Tellerites were the 2nd worst. Even the Klingons were fiddled and diddled with.

As far as the episode, I did not think it was that bad. Chip DeLucia, Who portrayed a Dorian Greyish slimeball in TNG "Man of the People" S6E3, is a more positive, normal person type Captain here. Unfortunately, he is taken out of the picture for most of the ep, his place usurped by Lawrence Monoson from "starship troopers 2" and DS9 "The Storyteller" - He plays a real jerky here... and he almost gets his just desserts until Kieran Mulroney from TNG's "The Outrageous Okona" steps up with help from Mayweather. Too bad Billy Campbell did not make an appearance.

Ensign Mayweather of course is able to assert some authority here, as this episode involved Freighters, which Mayweather previously crewed.

But what we have here is basically a confrontation between the second officer of this freighter, and the leader of a gang of Nausicans.

Which is totally unbelievable, as the Nausicans that we are familiar with From next generation and deep space nine never spoke complete sentences. The grunted and mostly fought wielding serrated blades.

So they are a little bit too educated here, I don't know if that is the proper word. Sophisticated maybe. And they should not have been. Also The new make up was terrible.

One of the other reviewers explains it well: Monoson depicts the average incompetent who is suddenly in charge, while De Lucia represents a man with no agendas, and operates without malice.

I think this was the main point of the entire episode, and as such it was almost a kind of prophecy about the kind of leadership (or lack thereof) that we have right now.

Of course, the episode is problematic, but if we just ignore those things that don't make sense, the redesign of an alien that is not even acting the same way as we know they act... and other issues, the main point becomes obvious from early on in the episode.

Also, the name of the episode, is also prophetic:

"It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son".

The Enterprise is asked by Star Fleet to investigate the silence of a space freighter. In the opening, we see it attacked by Nausicaans, known as space pirates. They follow the pattern of the bad guys being ugly. The captain of the freighter, Fortunate, lies unconscious in their sick bay. His second in command happens to be a man whose family was killed while on board a freighter. He has spent his whole life in this line of work. Unfortunately, he is consumed with revenge and has taken on of the invaders hostage. He routinely beats him, forcing him to give up defensive codes. When the Entriprise away team comes on board, this man is resistant to their interference, knowing that their scanners will find the Nausicaan. Soon, he traps the away team, sends them off in a pod, and goes off to attack the pirates. Archer realizes that this will lead to the deaths of either the crew of the Fortunate or a herd of Nausicaans. This is really heavy handed and moralistic. The conclusion is really unacceptable when one considers what this guy did.