Episode 41: Cease Fire

Captain Archer seems to be developing a bit of a rep by this stage in the series: a galactic reputation for fairness and honesty. Neat.


A small, lifeless planetoid floats in a strategically important location between Vulcan and Andoria, the subject of decades of conflict between the two planets. Tensions have flared up again and a full-scale war threatens to break out. Archer's old friend Schran is in command of the Andorian forces and communicates to the Vulcans that the only mediator he will trust to intervene in the situation is the Enterprise Captain.


Vulcan ambassador Soval complies with the request but has distinct reservations, thanks to his long history of conflict with Archer and his crew.


It's a neat little spin on TOS' Organia storyline and offers a nice measurement of Enterprise's impact on the galactic community over the first 18 months of its mission.


Chris Black's script is tight and suspenseful -- he even takes the time to establish plausible reasons for Enterprise's inability to intervene when its shuttlepod is shot down. And the casting of Star Trek stalwart Suzie Plakson as Tarah, Schran's treacherous sub-commander, is a stroke of genius -- Plakson is an imposing figure with just the right amount of menace; the Andorian Tarah represents the fourth different race she's portrayed, following star turns as a Vulcan, a Klingon and a member of the Q continuum in earlier series.


I'm not sure why Tarah's battle uniform requires her to show a significant amount of cleavage (Schran's breast-plate is complete and shows no skin) but I won't comment further on that issue.


"Cease Fire" continues the revision of Vulcan society as being much more war-like at this point in its history than it appears in TOS, where Spock continually searches for any alternative to violence in every situation. The Vulcan High Command is clearly a military operation and the supporting Vulcan characters are all soldiers who are quite willing to shoot first and enter negotiations later.


At least Black avoids the predictable stratagem of having Archer discover that it was the Vulcans themselves who shot down the shuttlepod with their own ambassador in it -- that would have been going a little too far.


If I have one significant problem with the episode, it is this: Soval is hit by fire from an Andorian weapon in one scene and suffers minor injuries to his shoulder, severe enough to require medical attention but not so severe that he cannot take part in later fire fights. That being said, Tarah states quite clearly in her confrontation with Archer in this same episode that Andorian weapons only have one setting: kill.


How is it that Solval survives a direct hit in the chest/shoulder from a weapon that is set to kill? Are we to believe that the Andorian weapon, like a regular gun, only kills if it hits a particular part of the body? That certainly isn't how ST weapons usually work (except, of course, where it is really really necessary that a key character get injured but survive).


Black could have avoided this problem by having Soval get injured as a result of a near miss that causes a wall or roof to collapse on him. Simple but workable.