Star Trek: Enterprise/Heartwarming
- The episode "The Forge" from Star Trek: Enterprise. Captain Archer and Ambassador Soval, who've never seen eye to eye at any point in the series, stand over the coffin of Admiral Forrest, who gave his life to save Soval. Soval, with his newfound respect for Forrest comforts Archer on the loss of his friend. This marks a turning point in the relationship between Humans and Vulcans.
- Although it's a small moment, "Silent Enemy" has one - in the middle of fighting off some rather nasty aliens, Archer makes it a priority to find out Lt. Malcolm Reed's favorite food to make him a birthday dinner/cake. Reed, as it turns out, doesn't express preferences to anyone about anything, necessitating some clever detective work from Hoshi Sato. Turns out Reed takes injections to control his allergy to bromelin, found in pineapple. Culminates in this cute exchange, as Malcolm cuts open the cake:
Malcolm: Pineapple?!? How on Earth did you know???
Hoshi: [sharing a grin with Archer] We have our sources.
- "Twilight" is widely considered one of the best (if not the best) episodes of Enterprise. In the climax, Archer attempts to create a subspace implosion to try and reset history and avoid the extinction of humanity. His ship is being blasted to pieces under his feet, his crew is being gunned down left and right by Xindi boarding parties, and the Xindi are on the cusp of completing the final massacre of the remaining humans. All of this, and the former Captain still finds time to tell T'Pol and Phlox to try and escape the ship as the Xindi are only after humans and if this fails, they may yet survive. And the truly heartwarming part, of course, neither of the aliens so much as budges! Phlox merely looks at Archer, and T'Pol actually joins him in programming the warp core to implode. Archer notices them staying and angrily states, "That's an order!" T'Pol almost casually reminds him, "With all due respect, you were relieved of duty.".
- Even sweeter is the moment just after that when T'Pol gets shot and Archer stops what he's doing to catch her and lower her gently to the ground.
- T'Pol trying to comfort Archer's dog Porthos after the captain dies stopping the Xindi superweapon. Heartwarming all on its own, but even moreso when you think back to her initial reaction upon meeting the captain's pet.
- Ambassador Soval actually thanking Archer for completing his mission in the Delphic Expanse and going one step further by stating that although he initially disapproved of Archer being chosen as captain of Enterprise, he's clearly the right man for the job.
- In Observer Effect, Archer risking his life by exposing himself to the virus in an attempt to save Hoshi. Also just after that when Trip temporarily dies, Archer rests a hand on his chest in a really tender and sad goodbye.
- Archer's farewell speech in "Azati Prime:"
"I'm going to ask all of you to think back to the day when this ship was first launched. We were explorers then. When all this is over, when Earth is safe, I want you to get back to that job. There are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy – we've only explored a tiny fraction. You have a lot of work to do. Of all the captains who will sit in this chair, I can't imagine any of them being more proud than I am right now.
- Whatever feelings you may have towards the series finale, you gotta love the final lines form "These are the Voyages".
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission...
Captain James T. Kirk: ...to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations...
Captain Jonathan Archer: ...to boldly go where no man has gone before.