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| T'Pol challenges the morality of Archer's decision in "Damage" |
I think, however, that the comparisons of the Xindi arc to 9/11 and its aftermath are often overstated, and possibly mistaken. The NX-01 crew's actions in the Expanse following the attack on Earth are said by some to be an actual allegory for the real world events of the time, and a sort of justification for torture and the War on Terror. My feeling about the latter is much the opposite.
It kind of seems to start off that way. Archer vows to Trip that he'll "do whatever's necessary", and early in Season 3 he briefly tortures a prisoner to get information out of him about the Xindi. This is truly shocking, and certainly bothers me a great deal (as it clearly bothers Reed). Hothead Archer, abandoning his principles out of fury and frustration.
From "The Shipment" onwards, however, our crew realise that not all Xindi are complicit in the attack on Earth, and Archer goes out of his way to avoid the deaths of innocents and find other solutions. Although the anger and grief remain and Trip struggles to accept the death of his sister, the tone of the season's arc starts to change.
Even in "Damage", when Archer and the crew commit an act of piracy to make the rendezvous with Degra, it's clear that while it costs the victims dear and marks Archer's soul (perhaps for the rest of his life) with his guilty conscience, they really have no choice by this point. Things have got so desperate; not committing this crime would almost certainly have led to apocalypse for Earth, humanity, maybe even the galaxy.
Ultimately Season 3's arc builds towards hope, conciliation, the clearing of a huge misunderstanding, with the Xindi no longer being enemies. Even the worst of them may eventually become friends and allies. Despite the very dark road to get there, this is an extremely Star Trek story and expresses one of the biggest themes of Enterprise.
Archer ultimately is a builder, a bringer together of peoples previously hostile to each other. Over four seasons, he overcomes his own racism and prejudice, and encourages others to do the same. He will one day help to found the Federation itself. He's not really like George W Bush at all. Perhaps he is in some (harmless) aspects of his character - he strikes me as affable, slightly folksy, and probably not as "highbrow" in his cultural interests as his successor Picard. But although he can at times be hotheaded, he's also thoughtful, humane and deeply principled. And his crimes (I think they are crimes) in the Expanse are a consequence of trauma and desperation, and on nothing remotely like the scale we saw from America after 9/11.
Bush (amplified by the media) falsely linked Iraq with 9/11 and lied about WMDs so as to justify a war of aggression. He has less in common with Archer and much more in common with the Sphere Builders, who convinced the Xindi that humans were an existential threat for their own nefarious reasons. The Xindi were duped. This is another frequent theme in Enterprise. In Season 4, Vos frames the Syranites for the Earth Embassy bombing, to justify wiping them out. He also stokes fear of the Andorians and plans to attack their home world. Later, the Romulans try to trick Andorians, Tellarites, Vulcans and Humans into fighting wars against each other. In "Demons"/"Terra Prime", Paxton tries to force alien species out of Earth's solar system by using the Xindi attack and the birth of a Vulcan/Human child to stir up fear and prejudice among Earth's citizens. In the process, he almost derails the whole of the hopeful future we've seen in Star Trek following that in universe date.
Star Trek: Enterprise travels some dark regions, but its tone is ultimately hopeful and positive. Archer overcomes his prejudice against Vulcans and becomes close friends with T'Pol. Ambassador Soval becomes a friend and ally, and after the Vulcan Trilogy tensions between Earth and Vulcan ease greatly. Archer, though not a natural diplomat like (say) Picard, gets the Vulcans and Andorians talking to each other in Season 2, and does the same with the Andorians and Tellarites in Sseason 4. His initially brutal relationship with Shran turns into an alliance and eventually a touching friendship. There are so many stories and arcs like this in Enterprise.
In the pilot, "Broken Bow", Archer tells T'Pol on their first meeting that he'd like to physically assault her. In the finale, she speaks words of platonic love to him and he spontaneously hugs her, with deep feeling. Enterprise's cancellation after four seasons was for me the saddest decision in Star Trek's history, but it still managed to close out that friendship arc beautifully and with it the main theme of the show, just as the Federation is being born.
As T'Pol notes to Archer on one of several occasions when he potentially sacrifices his own life, "Vulcans have a saying: 'One man can summon the future.' What happens if that man throws away his life before his time?" Daniels, an actual visitor from the future, basically tells Archer the same, implying that he'll be instrumental in founding the utopian organisation that we know as the Federation. I've always thought that Archer's name (like David Bowman's in 2001: A Space Odyssey) is not a coincidence; the original Odysseus was famously skilled with the bow! Archer's inner journey is an odyssey which is mirrored in the arc of the series itself. In a memorable speech at the end of "Terra Prime", he says, "the most profound discoveries are not necessarily beyond that next star. They're within us, woven in the threads that bind us." This is right near the end of the series, but both Archer and the show took us on a sometimes dark and perilous journey (of the soul, as much as anything) to get there!
The biggest enemy of the hopeful future in Enterprise is not the Xindi or even the Sphere Builders. And it's certainly not Archer and the NX-01 crew rampaging through the Expanse in search of revenge for the deaths of seven million people. The real enemy is the capacity for all peoples, all "races", all spacefaring species to give into fear and prejudice, and to be taken in by manipulative powers who use those worst impulses for their own ends. Although the making of Enterprise was contemporary with 9/11, the War on Terror and the early years of the Iraq War, the parallels with these real world events are far from exact, and seem to me ultimately antithetical to both the rhetoric and actions of the US and UK at the time. And they feel very relevant now, in 2021, after years in which millions of people have been manipulated and confused by populist politicians, conspiracy theorists and unscrupulous parts of the media. Star Trek always reflects its times, but at its best the themes resonate across the years and decades.
Sometimes I rather wish they didn't; the hopeful future has never felt so far away to me. But if Star Trek in some of its incarnations can seem a little naively simplistic, there are often times when it tests its utopia, both through its beloved characters' actions and through much bigger political complexities. Like the later creations of Discovery and Picard, Enterprise realistically recognises that utopia is always something to be struggled for, not a perfect end in itself. But in a very Star Trek way, it's extremely hopeful all the same.
