Episode 57: Impulse

Vulcan zombies! Vulcan zombies! Vulcan zombies!


Written by Jonathan Fernandez and Terry Matalas, "Impulse" proves a watchable distraction from the larger flaws of Enterprise's third season. It's a horror film, really, with decent visual effects and, if you can adjust your mind to create more reasonable explanations of certain aspects of the episode, a decent plot.


A distress call from the Vulcan ship, Seleya, draws Enterprise to the perimeter of a rather active asteroid field which just happens to feature rocks that are rich in Trellium, that most rare and valuable substance in the Delphic Expanse. While Archer, T'Pol, Reid and an army dude take one shuttle pod through the field to the Vulcan vessel, Tucker and Mayweather take the other pod on a mining expedition.


Seleya is in rough shape and the surviving Vulcans aboard her in even rougher shape. In fact, they appear to be died-in-the-wool zombies (note the pun on died/dyed), complete with decaying bodies and ornery dispositions. As the Star Fleet team explores, it becomes more and more clear that the Vulcans are trying to cut them off from their shuttle pod and, if possible, kill them; it also becomes clear that whatever has affected them is now starting to affect T'Pol.


There is a lot to like about the episode. It's visually effective and internally consistent. The action aboard Seleya builds as Archer and his team must accomplish a series of increasingly difficult tasks (finding medical treatment for the injured army dude, finding a way to communicate with Enterprise to seek help, developing a way to circumvent the Vulcan zombies' efforts to block them from their shuttle pod and finally trying to keep T'Pol in good enough shape to escape with them). This is one of the few episodes that actually manages to build dramatic tension over the course of 35 minutes such that the ending is actually somewhat exciting.


Note, I say 35 minutes because "Impulse" reaches its climax early, leaving about seven minutes for what I can only suspect is late-added foolishness. And, speaking of dramatic tension, I cannot understand the value of telling this as a frame story, with the first scene showing the arrival of T'Pol in sick bay at the end of the Seleya mission. From where I stand, the frame does little but undermine the suspense: we know from the start that everyone survives.


But. there are some nice Star Trek touches. "Seleya", for example, is the name of the mountain on Vulcan to which Spock's katra asks to be returned in The Search for Spock, the mountain upon which the Vulcan mystics manage to perform the ritual to return Spock to his own body. It's a nice touch and one that made this viewer feel at least a little bit comforted that someone actually knew and perhaps even respected their Star Trek lore.


That being said, the explanation as to what the Trellium is doing to the Vulcans (attacking that part of their brains that is responsible for their emotional control) is complete garbage and represents just another instance of Enterprise undermining the long-established truths about Vulcans. The explanation suggests that, without their vaunted emotional control, Vulcans are homicidal maniacs, incapable of rational thought.


On the contrary, we know that Vulcans adopted logic and emotional control because, as Spock once explained, Vulcans used to be a lot like humans, with violent and self-destructive tendencies. Vulcans chose another path, sure, but that path didn't start from a position of zombie-like nastiness.


So, in order to enjoy the episode, I just added a bunch of other stuff to the explanation to account for the Vulcan zombies' inability to think rationally, their physical transformation and their thoughtless violence. Oh, yeah, and their amazing ability to resist phaser fire that no non-zombie Vulcan could resist. I can only hope that the Trellium-impact-on-Vulcans bit doesn't play at all in later episodes -- if it does, I'm going to have to do an awful lot of calculated ignoring to get through this.


And there are other quibbles:


With Enterprise still basically at war, in hostile space, why would every single member of the senior crew (with the exception of Sato) leave the ship to enter a clearly dangerous asteroid field? Enterprise is left completely leaderless in the case of an enemy attack while the command crew are away and if, perish the thought, both pods should be destroyed on their escapades, it would likely doom Enterprise's mission entirely.


With the one shuttle pod already deployed deep in the asteroid field, in a situation of significant peril, why would Tucker leave them exposed with no hope of rescue by taking the other shuttle pod into equal peril? Why not simply wait until one risky venture is completed before embarking on another risky venture? The Trellium-rich asteroids will still be there and they are clearly not worried about an attack of any kind -- why not wait?


Why is it that Archer's phaser is so much more powerful than anyone else's phaser and even the army dude's really cool rifle weapon? While shots from everyone else's weapons just seem to bounce off the Vulcan zombies, Archer picks them off with a single shot.


And just how tough are these shuttle pods? They certainly do take an awful lot of pounding without suffering any catastrophic damage? And when did shuttle pods gain laser/phase-cannon type weapons? In TOS, the shuttle craft are sub-warp craft with no apparent weapons. It's only in TNG that they start to equip the shuttles with more impressive technology. Enterprise takes place a long time before TOS -- how come the shuttle pods of the earlier era are more advanced than the shuttle craft of the later era?