Episode 55: Extinction

Just to recap: by the time episode three of season three rolls around, Enterprise is faltering in the ratings and probably facing cancellation if it can't turn things around. In an effort to save the series, show runners Brannon Braga and Rick Berman have conceived of the idea of introducing a significant, imminent threat to the survival of the human race in a plot arc that will last the entire season (if not longer).

The Xindi-Human conflict will dominate season three and, with any luck, draw a new crop of loyal viewers who will tune in every week to see the story develop.

By the end of the second episode of season three, much of the background information on the XH conflict has been established. For example, about the Xindi we know the following:

• the Xindi are a race with five distinct sub-races -- arboreal, insect, reptile, amphibian and... hmm... what is that fifth one now? human-like?
• the Xindi live on a planet that lies within a terrifying region of space called the Delphic Expanse within which the human laws of physics do not always seem to apply;
• the Delphic Expanse, in which the Xindi homeworld is located, lies three-full months' travel away from Earth at approximately Warp 5;
• the Xindi are socially advanced far enough to have brought a measure of peaceful cooperation among the five sub-species on their planet such that the society appears to be governed by a council that includes representatives from each subspecies;
• the Xindi are technologically advanced enough to have developed a weapon that can carve massive swaths of Earth away with a single beam and to send that weapon all the way to Earth, undetected, aboard a single-person space pod in a very short period of time.

About Humans of that period, we know the following:

• Humans have wiped out poverty and hunger in a single generation;
• Humans are technologically advanced enough to have developed interstellar warp capability and to develop weapons such as phase cannons, photon torpedoes, and phase pistols;
• Despite the fact that the human race is racially diverse, only white men can hold positions of power and authority;
• Humans have accomplished all this despite the fact that they still apparently prize aggression, machismo and arrogance in their leadership.

We also know how the current XH conflict got started;

1. The Xindi were told by some individual or group who claimed to be from the distant future that, in 400 years, the Humans would wipe their race out;
2. Acting on this very trustworthy information, the Xindi developed their weapon and sent it to Earth to test out how well it worked, thus warning the Humans of the threat the Xindi posed to them;
3. In the aftermath of the Xindi attack, the Humans were told by an individual who claimed to be from the distant future that the Xindi, acting on information from a group or individual who claimed to be from the distant future that, in 400 years, the Humans would wipe them out, were planning to wipe the Humans out instead and very, very soon;
4. Acting on this very trustworthy information, and in the face of what was clearly a race with significantly superior technology, the Humans decided to send their only Warp 5 starship on a long trip to try to find the Xindi home world and then put a stop to the Xindi ability to attack the Humans;
5. Though knowing that the Humans had sent a ship out to deal with them, the Xindi chose not to send five of six more little weapons to Earth to destroy the Humans bit by bit but, instead, to hold off and work very hard on building a much larger version of the weapon (a sort of "Death Star" if you will) that can do the job in one shot;
6. Though knowing that the Humans have sent a ship to deal with them and that the Human ship took three months to cover a distance the Xindi appear to have covered in a much shorter period of time, the Xindi choose not to send a group of their own space ships out to destroy the Human ship; and
7. Even though the Xindi know the Humans are not slated to destroy them for another 400 years, they are in a big rush to get this all done, such that they are willing to take chances and argue a lot.

Did I miss anything?

So now we get to episode three of season three, "Extinction", written by veteran Enterprise contributor André Bourmanis. With all of the above established, and with the first two episodes of the season establishing that Archer will do anything (including torture) to gain information about the Xindi, one would expect that episode three and those that follow it would follow a series of pretty simple rules, in order to support the overall arc of the season:

• Archer will take every and any opportunity to learn more about the Xindi;
• Archer will make friends with any race he encounters in order to enlist their support against the Xindi;
• Archer will focus on the Xindi to the exclusion of any other distraction;
• Archer will recognize that Enterprise is in enemy territory and is likely being watched by a race that is as desperate as he is and who will stop at nothing to thwart his mission.

Then you watch "Extinction" and you realize: No. None of those rules will apply.

In this episode, Archer decides to take time away from finding the Xindi for some reason to check out an apparently uninhabited planet. While there, he finds a small Xindi ship and a mutational virus that starts turning him, Reid and Sato into another species with a remarkable homing instinct. Only T'Pol seems resistant to the effects of the virus. While the Star Fleet folk are trying to figure this out, two war ships arrive and demand that Enterprise turn over the infected personnel so that they might be destroyed to avoid the spread of a contagion that apparently has killed tens of millions of people on nearby planets.

Even if this episode were simply a one-off episode, it makes no sense. If the virus is that lethal, why hasn't this nearby alien race marked the planet clearly as dangerous to ensure no one visits? If the number of visitors to the planet is so high that this alien race actually has several ships deployed for the sole purpose of destroying people who are exposed to the virus, why does Enterprise only find one metallic object on the surface, not hundreds? Why don't the Enterprise crew immediately report their symptoms rather than waiting until they are pretty far along before alerting the others that, hey, something's wrong? Why is Archer the strange alien still in command of Reid the strange alien and Sato the strange alien? Why is it always Vulcan physiology that is resistant? Why is T'Pol so physically weak that she can't defend herself from her now-alien crewmates? Why does Tucker bring T'Pol peaches at the beginning of the show and why does she only take a single bite before starting in on the now-apparently-required-in-all-third-season-episodes half-naked Vulcan neuro-pressure? How is it that Dr. Phlox is able to come up with a cure in an hour or two when this technologically advanced local race hasn't gotten anywhere with a cure in 70 years? And on and on and on and on...

That's all well and good. The show has flaws. But it also fails entirely to live by what I think are fairly simple rules for the good of the XH conflict story arc:

1. After the virus threat is over, why doesn't Enterprise return to the planet to get the little Xindi ship so that they can learn as much as possible from it?
2. Why don't Archer and his crew stop and have a long chat with the alien race that is monitoring the virus planet in order to learn all they know about the Xindi -- I would think that the Xindi and this local race would be rivals in the smallish area known as the Delphic Expanse;
3. Why don't our Star Fleet friends try to enlist the alien race's aid in fighting the Xindi?