the delphic expanse

I cut and pasted part of my post from the "Detained" thread in the Re-watch Party section here since it's more about the Suliban in general than it is about that specific episode:

I think the Suliban were a missed opportunity for the series as a whole. They were rarely as scary as they [i]could have been. As Grat makes clear, members of the Cabal can appear as any humanoid species. Imagine if we had a suspicious-looking Vulcan and we didn't know whether he was actually a Vulcan or whether he was a Romulan or a Suliban. Or maybe a Suliban operative could have even replaced one of the members of Enterprise's crew for a few episodes or stolen the identity of a key member of Starfleet or the High Command. We got a taste of that in "Cold Front" when Silik slips aboard with the religious pilgrims.

I guess it's good that we are introduced to some good Suliban in "Detained" because it makes them more three-dimensional, and the main three Suliban in the episode were interesting. Unfortunately, knowing that the Cabal members are the exception rather than the rule makes all of them less scary. They did something similar with the Xindi, showing us that not all Xindi were evil, but somehow I found it more effective, perhaps because we got to know both the good and bad Xindi over several episodes. Sorry if this is too rambling. What I'm trying to say is that I felt like Enterprise needed a really scary antagonist, and it could have been the Suliban but wasn't. The Xindi were only there for one season. It should have been the Romulans, but they weren't around enough. That leaves the Suliban, and they just weren't as threatening as they could have been, even though Silik is pretty creepy.[/i]

I remember writing a failed story with Linkin two years ago about Suliban infiltrating Enterprise. I think the idea of the story was to make the Suliban more threatening. I can't remember the full plans for the story, but I can imagine we planned to have them all over the place.

That would have been a really interesting premise, Destinye! I've always thought Future Guy was a Romulan who wanted to fix things so that his people prevailed in the Romulan War, so you could have the Suliban causing all sorts of trouble on behalf of Romulan masters leading up to that war.

But then we didn't hear much of them after the Xindi, which was rather disappointing if I think about it. But then again, they could have been planning something, but it was cancelled beforehand?

I loved the Cabal and Silik with his bedroom voice as I like to call it! I thought future guy was a Romulan too hehe. The Suliban thing fizzled out which was disappointing tbh.

I think the Suliban could have been a good recurring enemy for Archer and Co., if they'd been developed more. But the writers didn't know where the Temporal Cold War was going, and I always thought it was a missed opportunity.

I'd always been of the opinion that 'Future Guy' was probably a Romulan or someone from the future, and the Suliban were part of his plan. Would've been an interesting sideplot for the Romulan War. We got a glimpse of the Suliban vs. Tandaran thing (Detained, and that woman who was with Archer during 'Two Days and Two Nights), and it could've been an interesting morality thing.

Found this while I was scanning through TV Tropes (that whole site is a gem, and it has a very long section on Enterprise).

Aborted Arc: The writers had no plan for where the Temporal Cold War was going and episodes connecting to it became few and far between. Eventually, it escalated to full-scale conflict and was resolved at the beginning of Season 4.

• There seemed to be the seeds of a plotline with the Tandarans, a race that had rounded up the Suliban and placed them in internment camps. Archer exposed a Tandaran agent and was drugged while the agent escaped. They were never seen again after Season 1.

Double post, but if I don't write it down I'll forget. /oldwoman

Enterprise aired immediately after 9/11. The Temporal Cold War was already scripted, at least a few episodes out, so I wonder if they were influenced by the general temperance of "not everyone is a terrorist" people were trying to follow while directing anger at the people actually responsible. I'm sure that had something to do with Detained -- creating an allegory that dealt with camps in general, and the injustices that can arise when an entire group of people are blamed for something -- whether the Japanese during WW2 or the potential for xenophobia in Enterprise s4 or in reality. We are human, and we have to fight very hard to remain that way sometimes.

Maybe the writers were hesitant to write the series as they may have if 9/11 had never happened.

That's entirely possible, kayjay. Especially with racial profiling getting so much media attention post 9-11.