Star Trek: Enterprise — 2x19 — Judgment

Aired 2003-04-09

SpaceOpera.com rating:4

Average reader rating:4.86

Synopsis

Archer stands accused before a Klingon tribunal of conspiring against the Empire, and faces a lifetime sentence on Rura Penthe.

Remarkable scenes

Duras telling his colored story.
Archer telling the real story.
Kolos telling Archer that not all Klingons are warriors, complaining about the new trend among young people.

Review

A fairly unremarkable episode, but interesting. It's a shameless blatant rip off of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and DS9: Rules of Engagement. It also tried to generate some ratings by using J. G. Hertzler to play Kolos. But I don't really care about any of these things. What I enjoyed about the story was that we got to see some of the origins of the Klingon warrior culture. Obviously, Klingons were always warriors. But I like how Kolos described the difference in generations and how the acquisition of honor has somewhat depreciated over time. For this insight into Klingon culture, I give the episode extra points. So yeah, the general plot may have been ripped off, the seemingly important detail of exactly how Archer fell into the hands of the Klingons was omitted, and resolution was rather convenient, but at least they weren't mining "deuterium" at Rura Penthe. ;)

4 reader comments

Judgment does not fall short, in fact shows that there is a rw= of why there is not an apocliptic war with the the Klingons.
by Shawn | 05/17/2011 at 2:35 am

Yes ripoff and sort of rerun! But I rather think of a homage. In fact, I like very much the way Hertzler plays the Klingon characters. He is just an old grump with a good heart! Interesting how he stands for some "archaic" Klingon society, in which science and laws were valued much higher than in the later Klingon Empire. Seemingly, the formal code of honour that caused a thousand conflicts for Worf had overtaken the Empire already. So I think Hertzler can show us the essence of what a Klingon should be like.
by peterwolf | 08/26/2012 at 8:20 pm

The prosecutor was played by the same actor that played Neroon in Babylon 5, who has a very interesting voice for these kinds of roles.
by Nightwish | 07/12/2015 at 1:12 am

Kolos was ok. Other than that, I thought this was a pretty poor episode. Not just poor, but pointless. This episode not only doesn't move any plot or character development forward, it contributes to the stagnation and impotence of the Klingons. The first era of contact between the Klingons and Humans was supposed to be explosive. Instead it is meandering and boring.
by Zorak | 10/02/2016 at 6:48 pm