Star Trek: Enterprise — 4x16 — Divergence

Aired 2005-02-25

SpaceOpera.com rating:7

Average reader rating:4.81

Synopsis

With Columbia's help, the Enterprise crew grapples with sabotage to their ship as they pursue the truth behind the kidnapping of Phlox.

Remarkable scenes

The zooming scene just after the teaser. Holy wow!
The two NX class ships matching course and speed.
Watching trip climb from one ship to the other.
Trip doing a cold start of the warp reactor.
Archer uncovering Reed's connection with Section 31.
K'Vagh drinking to the bravery of the four Klingon warriors who volunteered to test the various attempts at a cure.
Enterprise and Columbia battling the Klingon ships.
Phlox beaming the virus to the attacking Klingons to persuade them to let Phlox cure the virus.

Review

I must say, that's a damn fine resolution of the Klingon Forehead problem. The only remaining question is why do the "shamed" ridgeless Klingons get so powerful in TOS? It's possible that the virus spreads further and since it only can do "stage 1" it alters ridged Klingons for a hundred years and their cosmetic surgery techniques aren't quite up to the task of fixing the problem until post TOS. That would seem to make sense with why all the ridged Klingons in Star Trek I: The Motion Picture have the same ridges and why post Star Trek I: The Motion Picture productions have progressively better ridges... they were perfecting their cosmetic surgery techniques! ;) Still, you've got to wonder why it would take them 100 years to develop them. But then, given how valued doctors are in the Klingon Empire, it's not all that surprising. Aside from resolving the Klingon Forehead Problem, this episode presents a great action episode at the same time. Trip's leap from Columbia to Enterprise was just the kind of innovative stuff that keeps Star Trek exciting. Phlox bending his ethics with the Klingons added further to the episode's intrigue. Finally, letting the Columbia strut her stuff in battle side by side with Enterprise was just great fun to watch. All in all, a nicely successful episode.

5 reader comments

Good catch on Bashir's surprise. I also wonder how it came to be that the ridgeless mutants seemed to peak in numbers a 100 years from the divergence, (so much so that they dominated politics and military operations, apparently having shed any shame associated with the deformity) only to pretty much die out about a 120 years later :-)
by Jadzia Guinan Smith | 09/10/2010 at 12:40 am

I always felt or more elegant solution to the continuity problem would have been in Tribbles and Tribulation to have Worf appear in TOS style Klingon makeup and simply ignore the problem.
by Andrew James | 12/10/2010 at 5:56 pm

Interestingly that nobody wondered about similar solutions of the "Klingon forehead problem" when watching the Undiscovered Country. General Chang has very faint ridges, is bald - very untypical for Klingons - and loves Shakespeare! There must have beeen some human influence and, seemingly, more underlying continuity before this Star Trek Enterprise episode Divergence.
by peterwolf | 10/03/2012 at 8:00 pm

I am with Andrew James on this matter, TOS were one old show, and things, graphics capabilities, how we perceive what the future might look like, and political correctness have changes everything since then.
And this episode provides one example of the fanboy style written episodes that the entire Enterprise series suffers from. Ideas and aliens presented in the 1960 early 1970 style, (the following episode with slave girls provides a striking example). Taken together Enterprise is a series obviously written for the hardcore ST fans, that they hoped would attract a larger audience, it is not strange at all that a show like this cannot be a huge resounding success!
Now with that said, I have to agree that this is one of the better episodes, and one that do not have me cringe. I really liked Phlox for example.
But the major problem lies with the Klingons, we have learned to like their cranky ways, but here we get to learn that they at first have done virus testing on POV's. It immediately had me started to think and question just about everything really.
Talk about having a skeleton in the closet, with a war atrocity of that magnitude I cannot get that to fit with the idea that the Klingons later would be allowed into the Federation - I would not! A final blow perhaps after having similar references in "Storm Front" and "Borderland", ST should also deliver a bit of simple fun to provide good entertainment - also in that respect do these episodes fail. So I will not enter any comment for those other, but only pass over them in this mini review.
by TheAnt | 11/06/2013 at 11:34 am

To make a fairly nerdy correction to TheAnt's comments: The Klingon Empire does not join the Federation. They merely make peace and are allies, albeit loose ones at times.
by Dstyle | 11/02/2015 at 3:13 pm