I've been watching Enterprise off and on

[conuly]

I know, I know, but I never did see it all the way through. (And I'm not seeing it all the way through this time - I skip past a lot of episodes I remember not liking!)

Yesterday I landed on Cogenitor, and yup, I hate the ending just as much as I did the first time around. It's right up there with that episode with Tuvix for how much I hate it.

So, first of all, Trip barely speaks to any other human on board while having his little crisis of conscience, and I kinda feel like some of them might have had an opinion other than "Can't argue with culture!"

It also seems to me that somebody might've made the argument that such a technologically advanced civilization could try to do something to redress the gender imbalance in their society - because clearly, nature's "perfect balance" only works when you carefully set up society to work around it.

And then fucking Archer trying to blame Trip for this person's suicide at the end - no, it damn well isn't his fault. All he fucking did is give them a self-teaching pad so they could learn to read, and offer them asylum. Which they were richly entitled to, thanks. "It's not just that death, there's a child that won't be conceived now!" Oh, please. What if that poor hypothetical child were one of this third sex? What then? That's not an idle question - 3% of the population isn't even given a name, and people treat them with less consideration than they would the family dog or sourdough starter. How are they raised? What happens when they're born? For that matter, what happens when the cogenitor reaches the end of its useful period? Given that nobody bothers to give them fucking names I have my suspicions, and they're not pretty. What do we do with chickens that stop laying, or at least slow down?

These and other questions will never be answered, but I do feel like somebody might at least have asked them.

And I get that it's tricky because if this essential third sex only comprises 3% of the population, and if they, like humans, have only one child at a time then it seems that each of that third sex has to be part of at least 34 pregnancies in order to maintain a stable population. But, again - an advanced technological society ought to at least look for a solution other than heinous oppression. "Oh, what if one of your porters whom you force to work for you asked us for asylum!?" Well, if we were in the habit of oppressing them and enslaving them, I really hope that you'd take that request seriously. Was that supposed to be a gotcha?

The only way I'd like this episode is if we got a follow-up where they fixed their damn society and, btw, stopped blaming Trip for not accepting their shitty status quo just because they happened to be nice and smile a lot.

Edit: Upon reflection, I have questions about that suicide as well, not to mention the way they went out of the way to tell Enterprise about it. Are we supposed to take this at face value?

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Well, yes. I mean, more useful for that plot point would've been the Enterprise spending some montage days trying to negotiate on behalf of their refugee's rights and suddenly the refugee up and dies because they actually need to be almost constantly breeding (which no one ever told the cogenitor, and no one ever mentioned to the humans) or they get some kind of terrible infection and croak. (See also fallopian tube infections in female cats who are allowed to heat-cycle without breeding for a long time.)

I mean, that would explain the "3% is optimal" nonsense, allow species-necessary multiple pregnancy facilitations, and provide some teeth to "if you go into a situation without knowing all the aspects, you will probably screw things up."

The aspects of treating the cogenitors badly would still be a thing that should be addressed (just because they need to be breeding every month or two doesn't mean they shouldn't be educated!), but the episode could have had a lesson about humans jumping into things before they discover if they have, in fact, exchanged one bad situation for another, or even for a worse one.

(Truly exploring all the myriad ways humans can screw things up would probably take a book, and include riffing off CIA meddling in other people's governments. >_> )

[conuly]

I think we've already put considerably more thought into this than the writers.

[archangelbeth]

Very likely.

[sovay]

I think we've already put considerably more thought into this than the writers.

It's so difficult not to when the writers have obviously put so little.

[conuly]

The really annoying thing about all this is it's stuff like this that drives me to discussion and fanfic. If I have nothing to complain about I can hardly be engaged in the topic, but this episode is infuriatingly lazy.

[sovay]

The really annoying thing about all this is it's stuff like this that drives me to discussion and fanfic.

It's the grit that makes the pearl. It's just sometimes so gritty.

[conuly]

And sometimes the frustration : enjoyment ratio is whack.