3.09: North Star

[Mariel]

3.09 North Star

A planet inhabited with humans living in the 19th century western lifestyle is found in the expance. Archer goes down to find out why. In the 19th century some aliens, the Skagarens, abducted humans to build settlements on other plants as slave labor. The humans rebelled and took over and made the "Skaggs" second class citizens. Archer convinces the humans to live in harmony with the Skagarens.
This episode kinda bugged me. Why hadn't the humans evolved past their western lifestyle? They had been living free for 200 years. Not one fo my favorite episodes
:blpaw:

 

[Eway]

Not one of my favorites either but was definately an interesting story.

 

[Dave]

Written by David Goodman. According to 'Star Trek Monthly' Goodman explained the origin of the story to fans online:

"this episode came from Brannon Braga challenging me to come up with a stroy like they had on The Original series. but one that would fit Enterprise. My favourites of those Original series ones were A Piece of the Action and Patterns of Force, since they didn't rely on impossible-to-explain things like 'Hodgkins Law of Parallel Planet Development.' So it was really inspired by those episodes, and since it's a Western setting, I paid homage to Spectre of the Gun by naming one of the aliens Cronin."

However, Kit was not named after 'Miss Kitty' on Gunsmoke but was named after olivia DeHavilland's character in one of Goodmans fvourite guilty pleasure Westerns, Santa Fe Trail.

"For those who say, 'Why do a concept like this again?' I can only say that I tried to use an old concept to say someting new, or to at least relevant. I hope it comes through."

At this point in time I've yet to see any of Season 3. I've heard good things about it, and read the storylines, but this one just seems out of place. Have they seriously done so much with the Expanse/Xindii stories that they again have to return to mine earlier series stories already?

 

[libelula]

It was like a relapse back into the stinkier episodes.

 

[Dave]

I'm glad that it wasn't just some kind of TOS-like excuse to use a western theme for a change, but actually had a story too.

It still wasn't the greatest of episodes, but it's carrying on the 'proto-Prime Directive' theme from last season in the decision of whether or not to tell the humans and how they might react. Also thrown in was racism, prejudice and who is responsible for the sins of their fathers.

It's a pity that we had to have yet another group of humans abducted from Earth though. I'm not a believer in alien abductions, but we already have Chakotay's people and Amelia Earhart in 'Voyager', a large part of the Native American Nation in 'TOS' and various others that I now forget.

It's also a pity they needed to introduce yet another alien race that we never see again, the Skagarens.

Originally posted by Mariel
This episode kinda bugged me. Why hadn't the humans evolved past their western lifestyle? They had been living free for 200 years.

That as well. As an excuse, the planet seemed quite harsh, maybe it was short of the raw materials that would be needed for scientific and technological progress and invention, but you would still expect some progress in 300 years.

And why did the Skagarens also abduct Horses and Cattle? If they had energy weapons and transporters why did they need work animals?

 

[Darth Simpson]

I'd agree it was not the best of episodes. The series just seemed to be picking up speed and getting good, then we get 'one of those' episodes.

I think the reason they were still so underdeveloped was that there were so few of them. The Skadarons or whatever had only one ship on that colony that we saw, and so there can only have been a small colony of humans originally. Considering Earth would have the equivalent of several billion people including the worlds best inventors and scientists its no wonder the colony had not advanced. (it would be like the equivalent of taking one towns population and comparing their growth to an entire planets population. It would never be able to compare)