History Fridge / StarTrekEnterprise

[[folder: FridgeHorror]]
* Consider the automated repair station from Dead Stop. It tried to kidnap Travis to wire his brain into some kind of computing matrix, and towards the end we encounter a room filled with all the aliens it has captured. Terrifying though this is, it could be worse. This is a ''trading'' post, so it's conceivable that it accepts long term contracts as well as simple repair jobs. So, there may well be a species out there that, for whatever reason, steals people's bodies and is willing to trade with amoral robots for them.
** The repair station might be much older and might even be from the Delta Quadrant considering that one of the Aliens seen wired up to the central processor is a Vaadwaur [[note]]An alien species that actually went into hibernation back in the 15th Century to wait out a War until the 24th Century[[/note]]. The station could very well be a prototype of what might become The Borg.
* The "alternate" opening to ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'''s MirrorUniverse episode "In a Mirror Darkly" still says "Based on ''Franchise/StarTrek'' Created by Creator/GeneRoddenberry." Do we even want to ''know'' what ''that'' looked like?
** "Mirror, Mirror" gives a pretty good picture. And imagine all of Series/StarTrekVoyager with the evil crew from "Living Witness."
** Alternate-Archer from the Mirror Universe, over the course of the episode begins to experience vivid hallucinations and demonstrates progressively more erratic behaviour that according to Forrest was previously atypical from him. Did he suffer a psychotic break, or is he beginning to display several of the symptoms of Clarke's Syndrome, the illness that killed his regular-universe counterpart's father? If so, what does that bode for his counterpart?
*** If we're supposed to believe the Defiant in "In A Mirror Darkly" is the same Defiant from TOS episode "The Tholian Web", then Archer may have been affected by the weird sort of "interspace madness" that Kirk's crew experienced around the Defiant. Maybe it manifests in different ways?
*** Keep in mind, Arik Soong postulated a possible cure could exist and the Denobulans could have researched one, given how they aren't against genetic engineering like Starfleet. It ''is'' possible that in our universe, Archer ''could'' have developed the condition and been treated for it.
*** But wouldn't treating Archer's genetic disease go against the "evolutionary predestination" Phlox believes in?
*** One web reviewer described it as Mirror Archer being haunted by his Prime Universe counterpart. Specifically the fact that Prime Archer (the peaceful guy that Mirror Archer hates) got farther than Mirror Archer has. (Note that the hallucinations start after Mirror Archer reads Prime Archer's bio.)
* When one looks at the evidence, the Xyrillians from "Unexpected" look very suspiciously like date-rapists. First, they stalk Enterprise remaining in their wake to avoid detection, only to claim their ship is broken down when caught. Any visitors experience a MushroomSamba due to their unique atmosphere, forcing them to take a nap for the better part of a day or two. In Tucker's case, he's shown the wonders of the holodeck and invited to play a game, which is actually their form of sex, essentially subjecting him to ''rape!'' (Which she later reveals she knew what she was doing). When their ship is finally fixed, they seem to be in quite a hurry to depart, only to run into the same mysterious "engine problems" a few days later when they're found trailing behind the Klingon's ship. Sound suspicious yet? How about the following line;
--> "We have a ''lot'' of experience dealing with alien visitors..."
** The fact that the female Xyrillian in question has very large breasts in a very figure hugging uniform is also deeply suspect in hindsight as we learn very quickly that it is the men who provide the milk for the children using nipples that grow ''on their arms'' - which means that not only do they serve no purpose on her, but they are in completely the wrong place. How else can this be explained in-universe other than surgery to help her better attract alien men? And how about the technicalities of this box that she used to impregnate Trip with given how it clearly cannot be their natural method of reproduction? Kind of makes you wonder why it exists in the first place and why she had one so close to hand.
* In "Doctor's Orders", Phlox is forced to remain awake while the rest of the crew are put into a coma to travel through a dangerous region of space. The problem however is that unlike the episode it's recycling, "One" from ''Voyager'', Seven lasted about three weeks before the isolation started causing her to hallucinate, before finally going off the deep end when the Doctor went offline. In this case of "Doctor's Orders" however, Phlox is only alone for four days and cracks up after ''two'' of them. Furthermore, it's stated that this hallucinations under extreme stress is considered normal for his species and is ''not'' a side effect of the region of space they are travelling through! In other words, this unintentionally paints the picture that Phlox's mental health is constantly teetering on the precipice of full-blown madness!
* The InferredHolocaust of the Valakians from "Dear Doctor". The first big evolutionary and intellectual leap that the Menk will have to make is [[AfterTheEnd figuring out what to do with the corpses of an entire civilization]]! Plus, one can only hope that the Valakians are feeling charitable and do things like responsibly shutdown and secure all of their industrial technology (e.g. reactors, etc.) prior to dying out. Otherwise the Menk will likely face a highly polluted and dangerous world filled with failing machinery they have no idea how to repair.
* The Vissians in the episode ''Cogenitor'' try to describe the life of a cogenitor in very happy, bright terms; but we are essentially talking about a race where two sexes of this world force the entire third to move from family to family to impregnate the females ''without any belief at all that what they are doing is rape.'' Perhaps some of the cogenitors give their permission or that some of the males and females are opposed to this horrible treatment as we don't have enough of a reference pool to say either way, but there is no way that the one we see in the episode is and that doesn't change the views or actions of the Vissians that we meet at all (and of course also gets into the thorny issue of whether such an oppressed class could ever be legitimately consensual). And then that gets into other implications, such as what level of indoctrination and treatment goes into cementing this way of life from a young age for all three sexes (because no one goes from normal life to passive rape slave in the span of a single birthday). It certainly makes you wonder how if at all their parents maternal instincts manifest when they give birth to one.
* The decon chamber seems like a rape charge waiting to happen. Whoever thought of not having separate facilities for men and women seriously dropped the ball that day. And the idea that humans are now so evolved by the 22nd century that they can rub down their half-naked work colleagues with gel without anything bad happening completely fails when you realise that the subplot of ''A Night in Sickbay'' is Archer getting turned on by T'Pol doing this to him - and even forms part of a daydream where he has sex with her afterwards.
* This Risa we see is nothing like the Risa we would go on to see in TNG and [=DS9=] given how Trip and Reed actually bother trying to chat up some girls in a bar instead of flashing a couple of Jamaharon statues and calling it a night. And they were visibly struggling at it too, so its not as if this was merely their preferred method. This kind of leads to some worrying implications as to what is going to happen on Risa in the next hundred years to create the ''open'' culture that we would later see.
** Although a culture becoming more sex positive isn’t necessarily for horrifying reasons.
[[/folder]]

!! FridgeHorror:

!! FridgeBrilliance:

** 4. The preceding or succeeding vessel cannot be a prototype. The ''NX-01'' was the very first ship built for Starfleet (the NX standing for experimental), and was a one of a kind ship in many respects; all other NX class ships built (i.e. ''Columbia'') were designed to improve upon the existing design. Hence, ''NX-01'' was already disqualified for legacy status in both name and registry. It's the same reason why the ''Excelsior'' didn't get the same treatment; she has two successors in both the mid 24th and early 25th century, but the NCC-2000 was too a prototype that was later mass-produced. Same with the ''Defiant'', only Starfleet made a brief exception with her successor when they let Sisko rename the ''San Paulo'' to ''Defiant'' as sort of a symbolic middle finger to the Dominion with destroying the original, and even then they never gave her an ''A'' on her registry (real life budget reasons aside).

* In "Fight or Flight", Hoshi worries that she's inept for being the only member of the away team who screamed when they discovered the bodies. However, she was an ensign and relatively young, while Archer and Malcolm were more experienced, higher-ranking, and older crew members. In addition, they didn't discover the bodies until ''after'' Hoshi screamed, meaning they were preparing themselves for seeing something scary.

* In "Fight or Flight", Hoshi worries that she's inept for being the only member of the away team who screamed when they discovered the bodies. However, she was an ensign and relatively young, while Archer and Malcolm were more experienced, higher-ranking, and older crew members. In addition, they didn't discover the bodies until ''after'' Hoshi screamed, meaning they were preparing themselves for seeing something scary.

* The T'Pol subplot of "A Night in Sickbay" makes a lot more sense if you interpret it as the {{UST}} never being there in the first place. Phlox just mistakenly thought Archer had feelings for T'Pol because, versed in psychology or not, he is an alien so it's plausible he'd make mistakes. Also, he's a Denobulan, who are naturally bigamists, so he might be more inclined to making false guesses that have to do with romance or sex. As for the EroticDream and accidentally saying, "breast" that might just be because it was suggested to him, so it'd be in his mind, but not in that way.

* The T'Pol subplot of "A Night in Sickbay" makes a lot more sense if you interpret it as the {{UST}} never being there in the first place. Phlox just mistakenly thought Archer had feelings for T'Pol because, versed in psychology or not, he is an alien so it's plausible he'd make mistakes. Also, he's a Denobulan, who are naturally bigamists, so he might be more inclined to making false guesses that have to do with romance or sex. As for the EroticDream and accidentally saying, "breast" that might just be because it was suggested to him, so it'd be in his mind, but not in that way.

** There's another bit of Fridge Brilliance on the part of the Borg that was dinged by ''Website/SFDebris''. In his review, Chuck dinged the Borg for not including the "We are the Borg" part of their standard greeting. Given that these Borg were from the future, so they know how it plays out, they wouldn't want to give the Federation any heads up. If they did their standard greeting, then when Picard got back from J25, all Starfleet would have had to do is type "Borg" into LCARS-Google and they'd get ways to resist/stop assimilation, ways to modify weapons to work, etc. and already be at a post Best of Both Worlds level of tactics and tricks. Or even better, when the El-Aurians started talking about the Borg, they would start preparing nearly 70 years ahead of time. But this way, all they have are some vague 200 year old references buried deep in some archives somewhere that probably just has vague references to cybernetics, which could easily be confused with something like, say, the Bynars. -- Tropers/Zatman
* Maybe this doesn't belong here, and maybe I've subconsciously taken it from somewhere, but why did Picard have to tell his replicator he wanted his tea hot? Because one of the guys working on the replicator since before it was used for food and drink was from the South, where tea is iced! -- Tropers/Alvin
* Actually a reaction to a ''Website/SFDebris'' review, but that work's Fridge page is reserved for Chuck's in-universe conclusions. In his review of "Carbon Creek", Chuck tears into Stronn for making StrawVegetarian arguments against killing a deer, then turning around and [[AlienNonInterferenceClause trying to justify leaving humans to die]] because [[WeAreAsMayflies They Are As Mayflies]]. He (Chuck) points out that the deer wouldn't live even as long as a human, so the Vulcans should be justified killing and eating it. But my FridgeBrilliance is that ''Stronn doesn't know that''. He's never seen a deer. For all he knows at the time, that deer could live another two centuries. -- Classified

* Archer's escape from Rura Penthe in "Judgment" seems ridiculously easy at first, with Reed bribing someone to let him into the complex, then the two just running outside, and the rest of their escape not even being shown on-screen. However, nowhere in the dialogue is the magnetic shield that prevented transporter use around the prison in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'' actually mentioned. Presumably, Archer and Reed just needed to get out onto the surface so that they could be beamed up, and the Klingons, after getting a face-full of RealityEnsues over their security measures, built the magnetic shield to ensure that anyone who tried this little tactic in the future would freeze to death before they got somewhere they could be transported.

* This Risa we see is nothing like the Risa we would go on to see in TNG and DS9 given how Trip and Reed actually bother trying to chat up some girls in a bar instead of flashing a couple of Jamaharon statues and calling it a night. And they were visibly struggling at it too, so its not as if this was merely their preferred method. This kind of leads to some worrying implications as to what is going to happen on Risa in the next hundred years to create the ''open'' culture that we would later see.

* Many fans were irritated by the show's treatment of the Vulcans, which more or less made them a whole race of jerkasses. It does, however, give some interesting context to [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Dr. [=McCoy's=]]] occasionally. . .uh. . .[[FantasticRacism uncomfortable]] comments to Spock.

* In "North Star" at first it seemed strange that the humans were apparently able to overthrow these aliens who were obviously technologically advanced (at least enough to have transporters, beam weapons, the ability to travel to Earth then take slaves the fifty light-years from Earth to the Delphic Expanse) but that none of those technologically advanced aliens ever showed up to find out what happened to their people in the last 200 years. Then it hit me that this colony was in the 'Delphic Expanse', basically the Bermuda Triangle of space where ships go in but don't come out and where Vulcans fear to tread. After they didn't hear back from their people they probably learnt something of the reputation of the place and decided not to send another ship. Of course, it's extremely unlikely we'd ever see a return of the Skagarans in a future Trek series but if we did it'd be interesting to encounter a group of technologically advanced Skagarans who may not like the idea of a group of cowboy humans having oppressed their people.

** It's explicitly stated in ''Voyager'' that there were at least rumors of the Borg before Enterprise-D encountered them. Seven's parents went looking for them about a decade before official first contact. Also in the first episode with the Borg, they mention that a planet attacked by the Borg looks just like the remains of Federation and Romulan outposts that were destroyed along the Neutral Zone. Which implies the Borg were already making moves into the Federation's neighborhood. So yeah, the ''Enterprise'' Borg episode actually fits surprisingly well. -- Tropers/DrLunar

!! FridgeLogic:
* Bearing in mind that "In a Mirror Darkly" shows us the mirror versions of Phlox and Reed are the agony booth's inventors, and that the first prototype of the booth was later destroyed along with the Enterprise, one of its inventors has to have survived; by Kirk's time, the agony booth had been propagated to all Terran vessels. Since Phlox was most likely executed for his attempt to sabotage the Defiant (and most certainly would not have given his executioners any help in making his execution more slow and painful than it was already likely to be), Reed, whom Phlox indicated stood an equal chance of dying or recovering after his near-fatal encounter with Slar the Gorn's booby trap, probably did ultimately recover.
* Many fans were irritated by the show's treatment of the Vulcans, which more or less made them a whole race of jerkasses. It does, however, give some interesting context to [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Dr. [=McCoy's=]]] occasionally. . .uh. . .[[FantasticRacism uncomfortable]] comments to Spock.
* Are we ''really'' supposed to believe that the Humans willingly let the Vulcans stagnate their technological development for over 100 years? Granted they were desperate for allies and the Vulcans are (mostly) benevolent, but what exactly stopped Humanity from simply trading for a more advanced Warp Drives from another race? Does this mean that the Vulcans confiscated the vessels of anyone who tried? Surely this would have caused Humanity to tell them to go screw themselves and cut off all ties?
** ''Enterprise'' appears to suggest that before the the Enterprise expedition, humanity's knowledge of what is out there is quite... limited, to say the least (even the ''Tellarites'', who appear to be one of the local relative Great Powers, are unfamiliar to the non-T'Pol Enterprise crew as of season 2). Before you trade for a more advanced warp drive, you need to find someone willing (and able) to ''sell'' you a more advanced warp drive, after all.
** That being said, we know that Humanity's reach was at least 90 lights years prior to 2151, with Draylax and Vega Colony being some of the furthest locations explored, even before the Warp 2 Barrier was broken in 2143 [[note]]Merryweather was born on the several months long freight-run between those two places in 2126[[/note]]. Furthermore, we know that Humanity was in contact with both the Draylaxians and the Denobulans before the launch of ''Enterprise'' and possibly a few other races. Unless they all were still limited to Warp 1 and 2, it seems strange that there wasn't at least ''one'' enterprising alien businessman willing to flog human explorers a better engine?
** But what would humanity have to trade with? Seriously, we're a backwater hick planet with crappy everything. We probably had nothing worth the trader's time.
** While Earth is still a backwater, it appears quite wealthy and prosperous as of 2151, enough to end world hunger, disease and poverty. The Earth Cargo Service runs freight to various worlds, so clearly it's not like Earth doesn't have stuff other races aren't interested in? We even see Archer trade supplies for a bunch of kitchen spices in one episode! Taking two ships and selling one, even if for scrap metal and spare parts would earn more than enough for some better kit. Even the ''Ferengi'' figured this out and they were too stupid to invent warp themselves!
** Most likely political/economic threats from the Vulcans. The Vulcans are shown to be an important player in the Alpha Quadrant, so much so that the Klingons are willing to not send a squadron of warbirds to raze Earth after speaking with them. They most likely exerted their influence to prevent other races from trading with Earth, something along the lines of "If you sell the humans technology that we say they can't have, we'll boycott/blockade your world," or, even worse in cases like the Andorians who the Vulcans ''don't'' have amicable relations with, the threat of a shooting war should they interfere. And the Humans, lacking in technology as they were, would be incapable of telling the Vulcans off. "You want us to leave? That's cute. Now, about this warp engine you want to build..."
** However, many of the races that the Enterprise encountered in its mission only had ships that were capable of traveling at about warp 2. If that wasn't true, then why would other planets trade with Earth using its warp 2 freighters? Many of the ships that were able to match its speed were from hostile or unknown species that humanity was unable to trade with. With that in mind, trade with other species and decades of practical experience in space no doubt sped up humanity's progress in general. Humanity was able to break the warp 2 barrier only 80 years after they built their first warp drive, while it took the Vulcans centuries to do the same. If this applies to other species as well, then it is no wonder that humanity didn't trade for better warp technology, they were already on their way to having some of the best warp engines in local space.
** The definition of "stagnation" is very subjective here. From most species' perspective, humanity was advancing very rapidly. It was only humans (e.g. Archer) who were chomping at the bit and feeling like they were being "held back". These aren't the idealistic utopians of later ''Trek'' eras, they're people for whom WorldWarIII was recent history, and Earth had been divided into nations that were doubtless in a constant arms race. So as they began to encounter other species, the first thing that sprang to their mind was the urgent need to achieve technological parity with them, just as the nations had used to do. The Vulcans were "allies" who refused to share their advanced technology. In the days before United Earth (and in real life), that kind of relationship between nations carried the connotation of it being less of an "alliance" and more of a dominate-subordinate relationship.

* Malcolm's strong objections to Archer's actions during the Xindi crisis make even greater sense when you realize that [[spoiler:it's likely he may have committed deeds in his past as an agent for Section 31 that he may not have been proud of and cannot anymore justify with the Greater Good]] which is the slippery slope that Archer seems to have gotten himself into.

* In "United", Shran, an Andorian, challenges a Tellarite ambassador to an Ushaan, which is an honor battle with Ushaan-Tor. An Ushaan-Tor is basically brass knuckles if they were a giant knife. The fridge brilliance is that it's an ice miner's tool, coming from the Andorians who are known to have an icy planet, and it is incredibly similar to a knife known as an Ulu, which is a traditional knife from Alaska, which the coldest state in the US.