Episode 35: Singularity

A very strong episode, "Singularity" is the latest Star Trek episode that leaves a single character alone to save the ship from ruin.

This time, it's T'Pol who finds herself the last person standing after the radiation emanating from a singularity drives the rest of the crew first into primitive obsessions and then into unconsciousness. Writer Chris Black effectively uses a frame narrative structure, starting with T'Pol, alone on a ship filled with unconscious, possibly dead, crew mates, dictating a personal log about how the Enterprise got itself into this position, then flashing back to the first symptoms of the problem, finally working its way back to T'Pol alone and her desperate efforts to save the ship.

Black does a nice job of creating different obsessions for each main character, injecting humour and a little bit of character development into the story as we move along: Archer's obsession is writing a preface for a biography of his father, Phlox's is finding out why Mayweather has a headache, Tucker's is fixing the captain's chair, Sato's is perfecting a family recipe and Reid's is creating an alert protocol for the ship.

And Black displays great skill in incorporating the Reid obsession into the eventual resolution of the drama: frustrated by Archer's lack of focus on discipline and security for the ship, Reid develops his own protocols ("Reid alert"?), which includes the automatic activation of the ship's weapons when the sensors identify a threat. T'Pol and a half-revived Archer happily discover this last innovation in the nick of time when a massive asteroid threatens to mangle Enterprise.

Add to that the effective use of sound and music to heighten the tension and you have a very effective episode.

Sure, we can quibble -- why is it necessary for the only female character (other than T'Pol) to obsess about cooking of all things? -- but the episode works well and is worthy of praise.