ENT - Stigma

Plot – Star Trek has a desire to provoke a reaction in people with its compulsion to push an analogy to contemporary social issues in a science fiction setting. Drugs? Check out the ‘just say no speech’ in Symbiosis. Racism? Far Beyond the Stars attacks that with fervour. Homelessness? Past Tense is all over that shit. Rape? Violations explores the horror of that and then some. Homosexuality? Rejoined has a thinly veiled metaphor in place. I have to applaud Enterprise for daring to tackle the thorny subject of HIV/AIDS in such a bold and obvious way and to make its analogy so in your face.

A sub culture whose behaviour is neither tolerated or sanctioned – that is how the minority group is described here and it could very be a description of homosexuality from the 1980s. ‘Since Panar Syndrome is transmitted by these people a cure is not a priority’ is very much a 1980s way of thinking about gay men and HIV. Was the purpose of this episode to expose how the establishment used to feel about homosexuality and AIDS? What possible relevance would that have when this episode aired? It’s obvious and unsubtle and far too bureaucratic an approach to be anywhere near provocative. ‘There’s more intolerance today than there was a thousand years ago’ says one of the Vulcan Doctors, and that is very true of our society too. Certainly, during the Roman Empire homosexuality was considered a free and unrestricted practice. I’m not sufficiently au fait with history to understand what happened to change all that but I can imagine the bible and religion had its influences.

Character – It does strike me in fiction if characters were just a little more honest with one another then things could be resolved a lot more easily. Had Trip just said ‘I don’t want to insult you but you’re really not my type and I am finding your come-ons really awkward’ then this entire subplot could have been dealt with in five seconds flat.

Archer is such a canon ball of anger and his ‘prejudice is bad!’ approach left me with my head in my hands. Just about any other Captain (maybe not Sisko, he would punch their lights out) would make a more reasonable, less emotional case. A more nuanced one.

The irony of the only black character on this show talking about monkey in the middle was clearly lost on the writers.

Performance – Jolene Balock doesn’t deserve material as weak as this, and for her character to be on the periphery of something potentially ground-breaking but ultimately vanilla. Frankly it would have been far more interesting for her as an actress if it was revealed that T’Pol was engaging in illegal mental acts instead of a victim of circumstance. That’s the angle they go with in season three with her drug addiction and it provides Balock with material far more substantial and gutsier to get to grips with. Making T’Pol a victim of mind rape rather than somebody that perpetuates mind meld pushes her far too easily into the role of a victim and takes any substance out of her involvement in this episode. It’s a double injustice, both the way she is treated and how it happened in the first place whereas a more balanced, complex approach would have had her complicit and facing the consequences.

Production – I’m at a loss with the CGI on Enterprise. Sometimes it blows my mind with some stunning vistas of alien worlds and sophisticated action sequences. However, at times it leans far too heavily on CGI to establish places and stretches the limits of the technology to breaking point and things wind up looking cartoonish. There’s a wonderful sweep over the medical facility that should have been about five seconds long but it goes on and on and gets into the detail of showing people walking about in some detail. Or not as the case is here…the people literally look like little cartoons that move with all the realism of CGI creations rather than actors. I felt the CGI on DS9 and Voyager worked much better because they started from a point of ‘can we achieve this?’ and then poured money into it if they thought they could. Enterprise is far more ambitious but falls on its face far more because of it. I actually burst out laughing at the innocence of the effects here and I’m sure that wasn’t the reaction they were going for. The old matte shots of Bajor, Cardassia and the like might have been simple but they were artful and striking in comparison.

Best moment – How delightful to meet one of Phlox’s three wives and it is even more delightful that instead of falling into each other’s arms and kissing as a human couple might, they end up sniffing each other and getting off on their pheromones. Phlox remains the most fun character on this show by some margin across the entire four seasons. It’s the least alien-centric crew and so the pay off is that the few alien characters characteristics are accentuated. Yeah, try saying that three times fast. The Denobulans seem to have invented the key to a successful marriage. One where you can spend up to four years apart at a time. The best scene comes when Phlox says ‘your loss’ with a smile when Trip says he refuses to play about with another mans wife.

Worst moment – The antiseptic nature of the episode guts it of its power. If this is supposed to be a reminder of how bad things could be if you contracted HIV in the 80s as a gay man then the episode should have pushed so much further. Ostracised T’Pol socially and professionally, and face serious pressure to step from the shadows and publicly shame herself. What people went through was diabolical and insulting. They weren’t lepers and they weren’t victims. Society handled the situation without subtlety, grace or humanity. By taking an administrative angle to this episode rather than an emotional one, it feels as though the worst T’Pol suffers is a little cultural embarrassment. We should be seeing the results of these mind melds, with no medical aid, as blatant undignified suffering, just like developing countries suffering with AIDS. It wouldn’t be entirely tasteful but to shove the horror of what is happening under people’s noses would make people sit up and pay attention. Instead the most I could get from this was ‘wow, having AIDS must be a minor inconvenience.’ Past Tense might not have been subtle but it took the rawness of living on the streets; dirty, smelly, poverty-stricken, mentally sick and it smeared it all over the audience. I left that two parter determined to do something about homelessness in my area, which I still do to this day.

The climax, which sees the Vulcan Doctor that performs ‘abhorrent acts’ standing up and saying that he is a normal person who shouldn’t be condemned for how he explores his feelings made me want to hurl something at the TV. If Rick Berman and Brannon Braga think this is tackling a subject, they need to seriously think about running a TV show. It reduces the themes addressed here to their simplest possible formula.

I wish they hadn’t done that – My partner has HIV. Anybody with a grain of intelligence can seek out information that proves that, with the correct medication, sleeping with somebody with HIV is potentially the safest sex you can possibly have because their viral count is under control and they are living and dealing with the knowledge of the infection. Undetectable is untransmittable, as the literature goes. What’s sad is that this was released at a time when there was far more stigma and far less treatment, which means the analogy tells only half of the story. Had this come out now there could be a real lesson to be learnt about just how safe a relationship and sexual exploration is with somebody with HIV who is doing all the right things. Instead Stigma pushes the drama, and makes a monster of the ‘disease’ and the unfortunate result is to perhaps buy into people’s fears. And that’s a shame because this is an example of television that could educate and do some real good.

A reason to watch this episode again – This episode had to be prompted, which shows how committed the writers were to exploring the issues in question. Mind, you only have to watch the episode to see how committed they were to exploring the oppression of sexual minorities and sexually transmitted diseases. About the only truly inflammatory thing about Stigma is that it exists. It is the least risky issue-based show I can remember seeing in Trek and an issue show that refuses to tread dangerous ground is the most sterilised piece of television I can imagine. It portrays the Vulcan medical practioners as prejudicial and backwards thinking and does further damage to a species that this series has gone to some lengths to demonise. The sub plot reveals a cute polygamous side to Denobulan culture, which is played for laughs, but Trip’s reaction to the share and share alike nature of their relationships made me uneasy. You would have thought human beings of the future would have been more enlightened. We’re halfway there already. Kudos for tackling two thorny subjects so openly, but a massive slap around the face for the cack-handed and spineless exploration of both. It is insultingly gutless. It never even attempts to get under the skin of the prejudice, which is baffling.

*1/2 out of *****

Clue for tomorrow's episode: