Episode 5: Unexpected

A fun, surprisingly charming episode, B&B's "Unexpected" has its flaws but also a few nice surprises.

Enterprise begins to experience inexplicable malfunctions that are finally traced to a cloaked vessel that is hitching a ride in their warp field. Once challenged, the ship backs off and asks for help to repair their warp engines. Why such a clearly advanced race like the Xirillians would need help from such a clearly less-advanced race as the Humans is never explained.

 Tucker goes aboard the Xirillian ship, enduring three hours of transition conditioning to do so, and immediately proves once again why he is so ill-suited for this mission. Tucker is impatient in the conditioning, fearful of the steps that are needed and completely resistant to the suggestions of his new hosts as to how he can better adjust to the conditions on their ship. He refuses suggestions that he take a short rest to permit his body to adjust, then descends into anxiety and paranoia that make him beg to be allowed to leave again.

All of this is met, not with appropriate censure, but with giggles by the Captain and senior crew. Even after he gets some rest and adjusts, he continues to resist the alien food and drink. He refuses everything that is reasonable to accept, then readily accepts that which he should immediately reject: the sexual advances of the female Xirillian engineer.

The scenes are fun and charming, to be sure, but Tucker's behaviour is so completely inappropriate as to convince the viewer that Star Fleet lost its mind in putting him on Enterprise. The problem is, in my opinion, the show's creative team consider this sort of xenophobia and hyper-sexuality to be acceptable in their own time, so why wouldn't it be acceptable in the 22nd Century?

The interior of the Xirillian ship looks like something out of a psychedelic 60s sci-fi B-Movie... no, wait, with its bright colours and swirly lights, it looks like something out of TOS!

We get our first look at a holo-deck aboard the Xirillian ship and Tucker is appropriately impressed. The fact that Tucker is then sexually assaulted while on that holo-deck doesn't seem to bother anyone. The female engineer, Ah-Len, tells him they are playing a game but we find out later she is actually engaging in sexual activity with him without his consent and leaving him pregnant with her child.

Tucker completes his repairs and returns to Enterprise; the Xirillian ship goes to warp. Tucker and Reid, the little boys, then manage to sexualise the holo-deck technology before discovering the first sign that something is wrong. In a rare case of actually doing something the right way, when Tucker discovers that he has a strange growth on his wrist, he follows at least some sort of protocol and reports to Sick Bay. This leads to a cute moment when Phlox tells Tucker he is pregnant. T’Pol’s reaction is great: “Three days," she says in an even but loaded tone. "You were there three days and you couldn’t restrain yourself.”
  
Phlox says he doesn't dare remove the embryo without more information so Enterprise sets off in search of the Xirillian ship. Tucker endures eight days of rumour aboard Enterprise and begins to display a frankly insulting and stereotypical set of over-emotional behaviours as a result of his pregnancy. The fact that Tucker was sexually assaulted doesn't seem to occur to the men of Enterprise who instead spend their time and energy tittering about their buddy who has managed to get himself pregnant.

T'Pol finally tracks down the Xirillians but, when Enterprise approaches the coordinates, they find instead a Klingon Battle Cruiser. It looks great, to be honest, but then comes a series of decisions/actions that make no sense. Archer decides to hail the Klingon ship to tell them the Xirillians are in their warp trail and disrupting their systems, even though he knows (or ought to know) the Klingons will respond with violence.

I would have thought the Xirillians, in spotting Enterprise approaching, would have dropped back from the Klingons and approached the Star Fleet vessel themselves, thus avoiding a potential hostile encounter and seeking help from known friends.

But Archer contacts the Klingons, tells them of the presence of the Xirililians, then watches in horror as the Klingons disable the Xirillian ship and prepare to execute its crew.

Next up, T’Pol intervenes and tells the Klingons that, since Archer was recently honoured by the Chancellor himself, they would do well to accept his request and spare the Xirillians. That seems to be working but, for some reason, Tucker seems to feel the need to throw himself into the conversation and expose his pregnancy to both the Klingons and his shipmates.

Tucker tells the Klingons that they should spare the Xirillians in exchange for the Xirillian holodeck technology. The Klingons agree. But... if the Klingons simply executed the Xirillians and took their ship as a prize, wouldn't they gain the holodeck technology and a everything else the X ship has to offer?

So we are expected to believe that the commander of a Klingon Battle Cruiser, faced with two puny ships, would agree to undergo six hours of conditioning (with a human!) simply to board one of the puny ships, experience one aspect of its technology, and obtain help in installing it rather than just taking what he wants by force? Even with T'Pol's Chancellor threat, the Klingon commander's actions are pretty un-Klingon.

Everything ends happily. Tucker's daughter is removed from his body and transplanted in another Xirillian host, the Klingons get the holodeck technology and all three ships head out happily on their way.


It's a fun episode, Quite charming in many ways. But still highly problematic in its presentation of the kinds of people Earth would choose to place aboard its first Warp-Five ship and in its presentation of the Klingons, one of Star Trek's best known, best loved alien races.