u/MeowManMeow

I have searched reddit and see that every year or so someone makes this same post, so feel free to delete if not allowed.

Trigger warning - reference to suicide

I have been enjoying Enterprise, lots of really dated sexual stuff for no reason, very American and obviously in the 9/11 era. But I absolutely hated this episode and feel like it goes completely against everything that is "trek" IMO.

I loved the premise, a race that 3% are born a certain sex that are needed for reproduction. They are otherwise equally capable but because of them being needed for offspring they are basically treated as objects (referred to as 'it' with no name), not educated, no free will. Basically an awesome setup for an episode exploring important topics, not to dissimilar to The Handmaid's Tale or where some countries are heading at the moment with plumeting birth rates.

But rather than have Archer explain like that we humans find it wrong, this alien race they have just met, is much more technologically advanced and they can't just convince them immediately to change their entire society. They can't do anything because they are seriously outgunned, but by building a strong relationship overtime they might be able to influence them. Or any sort of explanation he just skips right to handing the Cogenitor over and scolding Trip for treating this being as an equal.

Then to make things even weirder, it ends with the Cogenitor comiting suicide because they enjoyed reading and started having hopes and dreams and then knowing that would never be allowed. Which makes sense to bring home the cruelity of the situation, but instead it's used as a "should have allowed the mistreatment to continue" vibes. Which to me is the opposite takeaway. Maybe if they had a scene with the two other parents realising that 'Charles' was actually a living being and they were wrong to treat them that way would have been good, but I almost laughed when they said it because it was so random and literally like the last line of the episode, felt so tonally wrong.

Anyway am I alone in the year of 2026 to think this is probably one of the worst aged episodes?

I read this article the other day and I think it helps explain why some people can't imagine a world in which humanity ends or is seriously threatened. Basically it talks about that we lived through the initial global warming (sea level rises), nuclear threat, ozone hole, pandemics etc and we managed to survive those. Therefore any future threats can be instantly dismissed as false because all previous threats did not eventuate.

But we are only living in this timeline where those threats didn't happen. In any version of Earth that they did happen we wouldn't be on Reddit right now talking about it. Future threats are real, just because we managed to get lucky in the past.

And also the reason we managed to get lucky was because people took them seriously and worked tireless to avoid them. But now with the current attitude we aren't doing that which makes these future threats like AI even more scary.

Anyway I can't explain it as well but here is the article.