Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Demons

 

ENT "Demons"

(Not to be confused with the Voyager episode "Demon".)

"Demons" comes as Enterprise wraps up its metastory of the origin of the Federation, casting as its villains an organized Terran supremacist Make Earth Great Again asshole group. These Terra Prime domestic terrorists have in their charge a baby of pioneering significance, a half-human, half-Vulcan child.  Terra Prime's leader, John Frederick Paxton (Peter Weller), considers the child an abomination and rejects what it represents. As an audience, we know what it represents: the future of Star Trek. *Cough* Spock *cough*. The episode clearly has the advantage of depressingly timely villains, but significant storytelling blunders sabotage it.

Weller in some ways is playing a similar character to his villain Admiral Marcus from Star Trek Into Darkness. Both, totally convinced of their ironclad ideology, turn their xenophobia into terrible action. But while Marcus wants to reclaim a level of militarism that Starfleet lost, Paxton is a hardcore isolationist. Paxton's right-hand man literally says of their bigotry, "We're right", to which Paxton responds, "You're a wise man" - which doesn't speak much to nuance. (This right-hand man happens to be Black, which of course is an intentional touch, similar to Brock Peters as Admiral Cartwright expressing blunt racism against Klingons in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country.)

The theme of the episode is legacy, with attention to who writes history, who will be remembered, and how. Paxton muses how history will remember him, which is appropriate since Weller has a PhD in Art History.

But the aforementioned baby (which is often referred to as simply "the Child" - Baby Yoda, much?) is the center of a major revelation: it is the child of T'Pol and Trip Tucker. Everyone in the episode proves to be incredibly dense in the face of this DNA evidence. There's all this hemming and hawing about whether T'Pol was ever secretly pregnant, which she denies, and who takes her at her word with that, and if so, how could this possibly be? This is science fiction! If these people can't figure out how this seemingly impossible child could exist in the 22nd Century, I don't know what to say. And the episode plays as if it's ahead of the audience on this too. It's not.

Worst of all is the disastrous romantic subplot for Travis Mayweather and a reporter named Gannet Brooks. "Demons" is the episode that finally confirms that Anthony Montgomery is a bad actor. The characters, who are supposed to be old flames who eventually rekindle their passion, have awful chemistry, all down to Montgomery, who gives his scene partner nothing in their scenes together. His answer for how to attempt familiar banter is not to attempt at all.

The editing is also off. As the episode has it, Travis' sex scene is interrupted by him putting Enterprise in touch with a contact who can smuggle Trip and T'Pol onto Terra Prime's mining colony. Travis, who already has an old friend character in the episode, is given another one off-screen. Why couldn't it be Hoshi's contact at the mining colony?

Stray observations:

- That's the Mayor from Buffy (Harry Groener) giving the fancy speeches.

- The Coridan ambassador looks like he has a face-hugger from Alien permanently affixed on him.

"Demons" has the right themes in place, and its villains are unfortunately timely, but the twin sins of not respecting the audience's intelligence with the baby twist, and Anthony Montgomery's terrible performance, take the wind out of its solar sails. 4/10.