Following the victory in the regionals, he and his team went on to participate in the championship round of the tournament that year. The nature of the rally became a mantra that Archer carried forward into later life, such that he always believed he could win, no matter the odds.
The match featured a come-from-behind victory for his team, who were down by two goals in the last minute of play. During his senior year, he participated in the 2134 North American Water Polo Regionals. ( ENT: " These Are the Voyages.")Īs an undergraduate in California, Jonathan was an accomplished athlete in the sport of water polo. While in 9th grade, around 2127, Archer was chided by his teacher for waiting until the last minute to finish writing a speech, so he would have had more time to memorize it. However, the relationship that Jonathan shared with Henry's friend, Emory Erickson, strengthened, and Emory became like a surrogate father to him. Tragically, in 2122, his father started suffering from frequent hallucinations and pain for years, sometimes not even recognizing his own son, the result of Clarke's Disease, dying two years later. This implies that Jonathan entered flight training while his father was still alive, i.e., no later than 2124, at the young age of twelve. The elder Archer's response was, " Don't fail." ( ENT: " Daedalus")
( ENT: " The Council") On the day before he entered flight training, Jonathan asked his father what would happen if he failed. ( ENT: " Rogue Planet") In school, Jonathan was called to the principal's office only once, for passing notes to Katy Bentley. During his time there, he earned twenty-six merit badges, including a Wilderness badge which he received in a rain forest in New Zealand. ( ENT: " Singularity")Īlso in his youth, Jonathan achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts. Jonathan later revealed he was not aware of the significance of his father's work at the time. Prior to Zefram Cochrane's disappearance in 2119, Henry took Jonathan on a tour of the Warp Five Complex, where he met Cochrane, Tasaki, and other scientists working at the facility. Henry responded that it would take many more years, but that Jonathan should not distrust the Vulcans for having held back Humanity's technical progress, as they probably had their reasons. ( ENT: " First Flight") In 2121, while he and his father built and flew a remote-controlled starship model, Jonathan eagerly asked his dad when " his new starship" would be ready to fly. ( ENT: " Fusion") His fascination for space led to him wanting to serve in what became the United Earth Starfleet from an early age, so, in at least one astronomy book he owned as a child, he styled his name on the ex libris as "Admiral Jonny Archer".
Jonathan spent hours staring at its front cover depicting the Arachnid Nebula. One of Jonathan's earliest inspirations for space sciences was a copy of The Cosmos A to Z, which he got on his eighth birthday, in 2120, from his father. ( ENT: " Broken Bow", " North Star")Īccording to the script of "Broken Bow", the opening scene of that episode, showing Archer and his father in front of a sun porch in 2121, is placed in their apartment in San Francisco. Despite being born in upstate New York, ( ENT: " North Star", " Storm Front") Archer variously claimed to have lived "all" or "most" of his life prior to 2151 in San Francisco. Jonathan Archer was born in 2112 to renowned warp scientist Henry Archer and his wife Sally.