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Character Profiles; Captain Jonathan Archer

STARFLEET PERSONNEL FILE: Archer, Jonathan

Played By: Scott Bakula
Rank: Captain
Assignment: Commanding officer, Enterprise NX-01
Full Name: Jonathan Archer
Birthplace: San Francisco, North America, Earth
Parents: Mr. & Mrs. Henry Archer
Marital status: Single
Office: Enterprise NX-01, A-Deck Ready Room adjoining Bridge

Psychological Profile: Report of Starfleet Medical/Counselor's Office

Charming, bold, a born explorer. Archer is guided by a core of human decency and intuition, even when they contravene direct orders. He is independent, yet has a strong sense of duty. Archer holds a grudge against the Vulcans, whom he blames for keeping humanity stuck on Earth, but must learn to cope with a Vulcan science officer. As captain of a starship his father helped build, Archer is eager to make history and see what's out there.

Biographical Overview

Jonathan Archer grew up dreaming of the day when he would get to go "where no man has gone before." His father was the renowned Henry Archer, who led the development of the Warp Five engine in the footsteps of warp pioneer Zefram Cochrane. So it is fitting that Jonathan would carry on the family legacy by commanding the first starship powered by that engine, the Enterprise NX-01.

Possessing an insatiable sense of adventure and wonder, Captain Archer is guided by a core of human decency and intuition. He is fiercely independent, while at the same time strongly committed to duty. All these qualities made him Starfleet's choice to lead humanity's first mission into the deeper reaches of space and represent Earth in the wider galactic community.

Like many children of his generation, young Jonny Archer had big dreams and big aspirations which set the stage for his future. He had Dr. Cochrane's famous inspirational speech at the dedication of the Warp Five Complex memorized to the letter. At age eight, his father gave him his first astronomy book, "The Cosmos: A to Z" by Laura Danly. (The boy promptly marked it "From the Library of Admiral Jonny Archer.") He would stare at the pictures in the book for hours, hoping he would someday see those celestial objects in person. By age nine he was actively building models of the low-warp spaceships of the time. Using an anti-grav unit his father provided, Jonny constructed a flying toy ship and got his first taste of what it's like to be in command. It was during times like these that Jonny learned from his father some of the principles that would stay with him throughout his life: Keep things straight and steady ... finish what you start ... embrace trust not fear ...

Alas, Henry Archer would not live long enough to see through the completion of his life's work. Jonathan blames the Vulcans in large part, for withholding knowledge and technology that could have accelerated progress on the Warp Five engine. Jonathan always had something of a grudge against Vulcans, and his father's death only deepened it. Thus his dealings with the green-blooded race have always been characterized by tension and petulance — almost a knee-jerk reaction on Archer's part. In fact, the animosity is mutual; many of the Vulcan delegation on Earth, such as Ambassador Soval, believe Archer is not suitable to be commanding Earth's first Warp-5 starship, preferring the far-less-impulsive Captain Gardner instead.

But Starfleet has backed Captain Archer every step of the way. He especially has the full support of his direct superior, Admiral Forrest, with whom he enjoys a casual first-name relationship. Forrest and his colleagues trust Archer to apply the best of human values and human judgment in his dealings with other species, however flawed those values and judgments may often be.

Respecting life over political considerations is one of those values which led Archer to launch his ship on its maiden voyage a few weeks ahead of schedule. Upon the famous "Broken Bow" incident which left an injured Klingon named Klaang in human hands, Archer learned the Vulcans intended to take it upon themselves to return the Klingon to his homeworld as a corpse — despite the fact that he was clinging to life — in the name of interstellar diplomacy. Appalled at their position, Archer convinced his superiors to let him launch early and take Klaang to Kronos under human supervision, since he had crashed-landed on their soil. Starfleet agreed, but to appease the Vulcans they also agreed to allow one of their officers to be temporarily posted on Enterprise as an observer, or "chaperone." Thus Archer was forced to contend with Sub-Commander T'Pol as his second-in-command, a particularly cynical and humorless representative of the Vulcan race. But as that mission to Kronos went awry due to interference by the nefarious Suliban Cabal, he came to learn that Vulcan individuals can be more complex and unpredictable than he realized. For when Archer was wounded on Rigel X and rendered unconscious for several hours, T'Pol assumed command and led the ship in pursuit of Klaang's captors, in anticipation of the captain's wishes. That and other selfless acts by the Vulcan which were crucial to the mission's success led Archer to realize that many of his preconceptions about her race were not entirely justified. So for the benefit of his ship and its ongoing journey, he decided to leave behind his grudges and ask T'Pol to stay aboard as Science Officer. It is an arrangement that Archer has never regretted, but has always found challenging.

The NX-01's first regular mission of exploration also put human values as exemplified by Archer to the test. The ship came across a disabled Axanar vessel wherein the crew had been overpowered by an unknown enemy and strung up to be drained of their fluids. At T'Pol's behest, Archer ordered the ship to resume course, leaving the corpses behind on the likelihood the perpetrators would return and put his own crew in jeopardy. But that decision did not sit well with the captain. Racked with guilt over violating what he believed to be a code of behavior that took humans millennia to evolve, he turned the ship back in an effort to find out what happened to those people and hopefully contact their families. He insisted that humans do not avoid confrontation at any cost ... and confrontation is exactly what they got. The perpetrators did indeed return and threatened Enterprise with superior weaponry, but fortunately another Axanar vessel had been contacted and arrived in time to help defeat their common foe. The Axanar then became the first new alien friends of the Enterprise crew.

If Jonathan Archer is guilty of anything, it's a certain naivete. Looking at pictures of nebulae in a primer is one thing, but actually coming face-to-face with a populated galaxy is another. He's been rather shocked at the number of hostile beings encountered in just the first year of the starship's journey. Four months in, Enterprise was attacked by yet another new foe for reasons that are still unknown to this day. In response, Archer actually set course to return home to Jupiter Station so that the ship could be fitted with weaponry that was left incomplete due to the premature launch. But to his credit, Archer had picked a crew that was far more diligent and determined than even he anticipated. His Chief Engineer and Armory Officer led their teams in building three phase cannons from scratch, and put them to use against their latest adversary. Though it was a very messy initial deployment, some creative solutions managed to put a dent in the enemy's defenses and ward them off for the time being.

The first hostile force Archer encountered in space continues to plague his existence, and is at the forefront of a great unsolved mystery. The Suliban Cabal not only disrupted Enterprise's first mission by kidnapping Klaang, but it led to a strangely personal face-off between the captain and Silik, a genetically enhanced Suliban warrior who knows Archer a little too well and considers him a personal nemesis. Silik is involved in something called the "Temporal Cold War," which came home to Enterprise when Archer learned that one of his own crewmen, a steward named Daniels, is actually an operative from the future fighting against the Cabal and the people they're taking orders from. The exact nature and origin of this "Temporal Cold War" remain a puzzle to Archer, as does the reason he seems to be often caught in the middle of it.

Throughout all the bizarre incidents Archer has faced, he has always remained steadfast in his values, even when he's not sure how those values should be applied. Perhaps his most difficult ethical dilemma came when a people called the Valakians begged for help to cure a genetic disease that was slowly wiping out their race. Compassion is the human value Archer holds most dear, the impulse he lets guide his judgment more than any other, but his own handpicked medical officer, Dr. Phlox (who actually developed a cure for the Valakian plight), maintained that a well-intentioned act of compassion can interfere with the natural order of things. To provide a cure to the Valakians would be to suppress the evolution of the other sentient species on the planet, the Menk. In the absence of any specific doctrine from Starfleet as to how to act in such situations, it was up to Archer to make the call. He decided humans did not go into space to play God, and though it went against every fiber of his being, he opted to withhold the cure from the Valakians.

The question of whether to interfere or not in the dealings of others is always a precarious balancing act. At what point do you extend your own morality upon others, and when is it immoral NOT to? A number of times Archer has made choices which at the moment were consistent with his sense of right and wrong, only to endure consequences for them later. When he discovered that the Vulcans were lying about hiding a surveillance station underneath their monastery at P'Jem, he turned over the evidence to their militaristic rivals the Andorians. That led to an Andorian attack upon the ancient temple and the laying waste of its ancient relics; Archer got the blame and tensions were heightened between Vulcan and Earth. When he and Ensign Mayweather were imprisoned in a Tandaran internment camp whose primary purpose was to remove innocent Suliban from society and "protect" them from the Cabal, Archer drew from Earth's own history and judged that detainment to be egregiously unethical. So with help from his crew, Archer saw to the escape of those Suliban people, an action which came back to haunt him as other races expected Archer to fight on their behalf also.

As someone whose very job is to epitomize humanity in space, Archer has even found himself facing off with fellow humans. When Matthew Ryan took command of the Earth cargo ship Fortunate and used it to seek revenge against space pirates called Nausicaans, Archer put Enterprise in harm's way in order to prevent Ryan from carrying through with the worst of human behavior, even towards a race as belligerent as the Nausicaans. Did Archer have the right to impose his own morality on a victimized freighter crew? Most of his peers, including the Fortunate's own Captain Keene, seem to agree that in this instance, he not only had a right, but an obligation.

Whether he's dealing with Klingons, Andorians, Tandarans, Malurians, Mazarites ... or seeing his ship looted by smarmy little aliens or invaded by a growing symbiotic organism ... Jonathan Archer is in the unenviable position of tackling a constant procession of new situations never before faced by human beings, and doing his best to weigh his responses in a manner befitting humanity's highest ideals. He must consider the voice of logic from his Vulcan confidant T'Pol; the voice of ambition from his best friend on the crew, Commander Tucker; the voice of readiness from his Armory Officer, Lt. Reed; the voice of exuberance from helmsman Ensign Mayweather; the voice of cautious intelligence from communications officer Ensign Sato; and the voice of open-mindedness from Dr. Phlox. As such, Archer is clearly becoming the prototype for every Starfleet captain to come, perhaps for centuries. As he goes boldly into the unknown, making history with every light-year, Jonathan will never forget what his father used to tell him while they were flying model spaceships on the beach: "You can't be afraid of the wind. Learn to trust it."