Live Long and Be Unsubtle

I'm still watching Star Trek: Enterprise, for reasons I'm not sure even I understand. After making an earlier statement in a multi-episode arc (with Trek alumnus Brent Spiner) that being genetically superior doesn't necessarily mean better hair care, they've gotten even more overt in their underlying -- and by "underlying," I mean "really fucking obvious" -- political themes. From "Awakening," two weeks back:

Captain Archer: You have a lot to learn about humans. We don't sit back and do nothing when our people are attacked. T'Pau*: No, you traverse vast wastelands based on false information.

Zing! In the third part of the arc, they've got a Vulcan administrator arguing that since their political adversaries have advanced weapon technology, that it's only a matter of time until they attack and a pre-emptive strike is then the "logical" course of action. After his planned war is aborted, we see him meet with a shadowy Romulan, I think, and I was somewhat surprised he didn't more closely resemble Dick Cheney.

These three-episode arcs must be expensive to make, as it looked like they had to skimp an awful lot on scenery. The scenes of Archer, T'Pal and T'Pau wandering in "the desert" were pretty silly. Every once in a while I get the feeling they deliberately go with awful backdrops to add to the sense of continuity between this series and the original.

* I don't know for sure that they named a character after an '80s one-hit wonder, but given that she was a higher-up in a religious faction, I'm assuming it's possible that she held her beliefs in her heart and soul.