Episode 33: The Seventh

After capturing a Vulcan spy gone rogue on yet another remote space port filled with alien villains and corrupt administrators, T'Pol, Archer and Mayweather are told they cannot return with their captive to their shuttle pod for four full hours because a coating of cleaning acid has just been applied to the landing platform which will burn T'Pol's "pretty little feet" clean off if she ventures out onto the platform.

Moments later, T'Pol wraps three pieces of fabric around each of her boots and safely crosses and recrosses the same platform.

This is the quality of writing featured in "The Seventh" and in so many other Enterprise episodes. Invent a ridiculous barrier when necessary; ignore that barrier when it is expedient to do so.

Or, as Braga and Berman do moments later in the same episode, when you need your prisoner to escape, let him start a fire and then, within seconds, have a burning beam fall from the ceiling to thwart the prisoner's recapture. The burning beam trick is a pretty hackneyed trope and, in this case, completely ridiculous considering the fire that apparently undermined the structural integrity of the building started only moments before from a single candle.

Remarkably, every alien in the place, including your heroes, then runs safely across the acid-soaked platform with no apparent ill effects. The spy and your heroes even get the chance to walk out into the acid and stand around talking, yet suffer no injuries as a result of their exposure to the acid.

From start to finish, "The Seventh" relies on these kinds of inconsistencies and on smart characters doing stupid things to maintain any semblance of a plot or to create any kind of suspense. It's a remarkable example of lazy, poorly planned writing.

The plot, if you can call it that, involves the Vulcan High Command recalling T'Pol to her previous security duties to complete some unfinished business: capturing the rogue Vulcan spy she failed to bring back 20 years before. T'Pol does Archer the courtesy of warning him that he will hear soon from Admiral Forrest, ordering Enterprise to support her in her secret mission, and Archer responds to this respectful act with sarcasm and derision.

Star Fleet then orders Archer to deliver T'Pol to the remote star system where the spy is hiding, provide her a shuttlepod and a pilot, then wait for her to return, all the while asking no questions. As this is a B&B script, Archer reacts to his orders with resentment and anger, taking his frustrations out on T'Pol in front of the rest of the crew.

Despite this most recent example of the kind of aggression and bullying T'Pol has faced from her Captain over the first season and a half, T'Pol approaches Archer in his cabin with a personal request. Archer's response continues to be rude and ungracious (when she initially asks to speak to him about a personal matter, he actually shifts his position so that he can continue to watch a water polo match on his computer monitor rather than offering his clearly uncomfortable science officer his full attention) and yet B&B seem to believe that T'Pol, at this point in their relationship, would feel such personal respect and trust for Archer that she would ask him to accompany her on her secret mission.

Archer accepts and he, Mayweather and T'Pol head out in a shuttlepod, leaving Tucker as acting captain.

T'Pol explains that the rogue spy refused to return to Vulcan after his assignment came to an end, choosing to plunge deeper into the smuggling business he had been sent to infiltrate. The spy is considered brilliant and resourceful; he is believed to have taken up smuggling biological weapons which he sells without remorse to the highest bidder.

Despite the fact that the rogue spy is said to be a brilliant, cagey customer, T'Pol and her posse capture him easily in a bar on the outpost. The acid ploy is introduced, which creates the time for the spy to work his psychological trickery on T'Pol.

But, of course, this is a B&B script so T'Pol is already falling to pieces emotionally as long-repressed memories of her earlier pursuit of this same spy start trickling back into her brain. It seems she killed a man during that pursuit 20 years earlier and underwent what we see, through a series of distorted flashbacks, to be a brutal and barbaric Vulcan cleansing ritual on P'Jem (of course), intended to lock the memory of the incident away and protect her from the guilt.

For some reason, it didn't occur to the Vulcan authorities that T'Pol might not be quite stable enough, emotionally, to undertake the current mission.

To recap, T'Pol the Vulcan is an emotional basket case, the Vulcan High Command and religious leaders regularly engage in barbaric practices on their former secret agents and acid burns only when necessary to the plot.

Speaking of the Vulcans, their ship has just arrived and rendezvoused with Enterprise, upon which Tucker is happily playing acting captain by hosting Reed and Phlox in the captain's mess. When the burdens of command close in on him, however, Tucker retreats into avoidance tactics because, you know, Archer really is a god for being able to approve a required medical treatment that might make people queasy for a while, to give permission to take the main engines off line for a day to permit required maintenance to tactical systems and take a phone call from the Vulcan captain. I believe that this scene is supposed to provide comic relief from the incredibly tense main plot (and perhaps a chance for growth for Tucker) but it just makes the Chief Engineer appear incompetent.

T'Pol, desperate to find some proof of the spy's guilt, runs across the acid covered platform to the spy's ship which is, apparently, unlocked. She opens a bunch of bins, knocks injector casings about with a crow bar, and gives up the search. She walks back to the bar (ahh, that ineffective acid) and continues to fall to pieces emotionally.

Archer takes T'Pol outside to try to help her get herself together, leaving Mayweather in charge of the prisoner. The good ensign is so ineffective that he permits the spy to knock over the table and set fire to the building. For some reason, however, the spy does not immediately try to escape, waiting until Archer and T'Pol return and the burning beam falls from the ceiling to flee.

The Star Fleet posse pursue him back to his ship (ahh that acid) and, again, find nothing. Archer orders Mayweather to power up the ship's life support so that they can sit tight (and comfortable) in wait for the spy to show up and Mayweather spots a troubling inconsistency. All power in the ship was apparently off, so why is there condensation on a panel and why is there an active circuit beneath the condensation?

Mayweather asks his Captain to check it out and the two leave T'Pol alone in the ship's cargo bay. Brilliant man that he is, Archer decides to shut down the active circuit, without warning T'Pol in the cargo bay that he is doing so, so she is unprepared when a forcefield collapses, revealing an additional cargo bay (and an armed rogue spy) that it was hiding. Amazingly, while T'Pol is unprepared for the sudden disappearance of a wall, the spy seems to know it is about to happen and has his weapon ready.

Gun fights ensue and the spy finally gives himself up. Why does he give himself up? Because he has quite stupidly managed to move right next to what appears to be a refrigerator which turns out to contain ranks of bottles of gatorade... sorry, containers of biotoxin which, if struck by a single phase pistol shot, would have killed them all.

Yes, the brilliant spy is that stupid.

The spy tries to flee, figuring that T'Pol won't shoot him in the back because of her overwhelming guilt from the earlier incident. I guess the spy didn't work Archer's degree in psychology into his calculations (or the fact that phase pistols have a stun setting) because, after a few wise words from her Captain (who decides not to shoot the spy himself because that would take away a growth opportunity from T'Pol and would be too easy), T'Pol stuns the spy.

T'Pol and her posse return the spy to the recently arrived Vulcan ship and T'Pol thanks Archer for his support, closing out this brilliantly crafted episode by saying that, if he ever needs someone he can trust, she's his man.

It's remarkable to me that an episode that is so poorly written and so full of holes actually got produced. It's a classic B&B episode, however, right down to the bullying and harassment of T'Pol and the vilification of Vulcans in general.