Archer, T’Pol and Trip visit a planet to which human beings were transplanted 300 years earlier by a race called the Skagarans. Originally slave labour, the humans have risen up and overthrown their masters, but their culture remains locked in an Old West style.

Very much Trek by numbers, North Star should have been like classic Trek’s A Piece of the Action or Patterns of Force, ieally with some humour built in. Instead there’s a simplistic plot about racial tolerance built around someone’s desire to make some pretty sets and indulge in a Wild West shoot-out or two. That’s really all this comes down to in the end; we have a schoolteacher disobeying the law by teaching the ‘Skag’ children, a rogue sheriff’s deputy, and the sheriff himself, basically a decent man. They’re all such ill thought-out ciphers that they don’t do anything you wouldn’t expect.

It’s also an odd break in the Xindi story that cries out ‘Why does Archer believe he has time to drop by this planet when he could just visit on the way back from his main mission?’ They don’t know Earth exists still, so why get their hopes up when there’s a chance it won’t much longer? Would it not be better to alert Starfleet and get a ship out to bring them up to speed if they wish to be? Exactly what is Archer trying to accomplish by visiting the planet? He’s more than happy to interfere with their set-up, trying to make them see things from his point of view when it should be their choice. Has he not yet learned that you can’t change any entire civilization overnight?

It’s unfair to completely slate this episode; it looks fantastic, the sets are superb, the washed-out feel makes it stylistically interesting. But that still doesn’t disguise it being the kind of moralistic story Star Trek has done thousands of times over the years in one form or another, and in more interesting ways. Yes, racism is bad: we know. Can we not try to show a little bit of originality now?

**

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