Episode 58: Exile

If you can put aside any reservations you might have about why a society, which chooses to exile the 1-in-50-million of its members that displays telepathic abilities, would then give each such telepathic member a planet of his or her own and all the resources required to survive for the 400+ years of his or her lifespan, Phyllis Strong's "Exile" is a fairly decent episode.


Strong, like her frequent writing partner Michael Sussman, seems to enjoy adding a gothic/horror flavour to her writing and "Exile" is no different.


In a spooky opening sequence, Sato begins by hearing voices, then starts seeing a strange man in her quarters.


I must admit to having been almost embarrassingly grateful that Strong actually has Sato's crew mates take her experiences seriously enough to investigate them -- too often in the past, especially since Enterprise embarked on its Xindi mission and entered the Delphic Expanse, I have been frustrated when the writers took the easy route to conflict by having Archer and his crew ridiculously dismissive of early signs of trouble. They are in a war zone, after all, one controlled by their enemy. They should be on high alert for any signs of potential problems.


When the visitor tells Sato that he can help Enterprise on her mission and gives her the coordinates of his planet, Archer only needs a little convincing from his Comms Officer to redirect Enterprise to Tarquin's planet to investigate. Tarquin turns out to be a lonely exile from his planet on account of his telepathic abilities who offers his help in locating the Xindi weapon in exchange for a visit from Sato, who happens to be one of a rare few beings with whom he can communicate fully and effectively.


Sato, who has battled her fears in earlier seasons, bravely agrees to stay with Tarquin while Enterprise heads off to confirm T'Pol's theory that the spatial anomalies in the Expanse are being caused by not one artificial sphere but by two... or more.


Thankfully, Strong focuses most of her time and plot on Sato's interesting interactions with Tarquin as she uncovers the fact that he plans to use his powers to keep her with him for the rest of her life. This is a much more interesting story-line than the fairly banal "how many spheres are there" plot.


"Exile" recalls for me three episodes from The Original Series: "The Squire of Gothos", "Metamorphosis" and "Requiem for Methuselah". Like the Enterprise episode, all three from TOS feature lonely individual beings with significant powers who turn to the Star Fleet crew to fill some need.


"The Squire of Gothos" is a lonely telepathic being who draws the Enterprise to him so that he can play with the crew. At one point, Kirk believes he has destroyed the conduit for the Squire's powers (a mirror), similar to Sato's threat to break Tarquin's crystal football conduit which finally makes him relent.


"Metamorphosis" is the original Zephram Cochrane episode from TOS. In it, Enterprise's shuttle craft is highjacked by a strange entity and brought to a planet to provide companionship for a human male (Cochrane) who is apparently trapped there. The entity, who is referred to by Cochrane as "the Companion", loves him and will do anything to keep him alive. I don't think it's a coincidence that Tarquin refers to the role he hopes Sato will play in his life as his "Companion".


"Requiem for Methuselah" might be a bit of a reach here in terms of resonances with "Exile", but it did come to mind. In that TOS episode, Enterprise visits a planet whose lone human resident turns out to be some form of human (Flint) who has lived thousands of years and has been, at one time or another, some of the greatest contributors to western European science and art. Flint realizes that Kirk can be of use to him in bringing the dormant emotions in his cybernetic companion to life.


On a side note, don't you love the titles of the episodes from TOS? Creative, poetic, often including a literary reference. It always bothered me that Enterprise went away from that practice, usually choosing remarkably boring, on-the-nose titles that simply reflect the name of the guest character("Rajiin") or the planet ("P'Jem").


Back to "Exile". It's not a bad episode. Even if the "how-many-spheres" subplot doesn't amount to much and is full of holes, the Sato-Tarquin storyline is pretty good. And Linda Park does a nice job carrying the episode opposite her heavily-applianced but creepily soft-voiced captor (Maury Sterling).


And it does fit fairly well into the greater Xindi story arc. Archer needs info, Tarquin has info, Sato has to take risks to obtain that info.


As usual, there are significant holes, the most galling of which is the one I identified at the outset. Why does Tarquin's society exile him? Why, if they are exiling him, do they provide so bountifully for him? And why do none of their members (like his family) ever visit him?


How does a person whose powers are, for the first 39 minutes of the episode, restricted to telepathy (and using objects to "see" and "know" stuff), suddenly able to shut down power on an entire starship? Those seem like pretty different sets of powers to me. And if he is so powerful, and so lonely, why wouldn't Archer at least offer to take him along with them? Seems he'd be pretty handy to have around and he'd get to be near Sato.


Why does no one in the Delphic Expanse seem to know where to find the Xindi? They are a fairly advanced race and we learn in this episode that they actually have colonies on other planets -- why isn't there a map of the Delphic Expanse available at one of the many markets Enterprise has visited that has a big red circle marked "Xindi" at the location of their home world?


Speaking of colonies, Tarquin does finally give Sato the coordinates of a Xindi colony at which, he tells them, one part of the weapon is being manufactured. Great news for Archer and his mates. But I thought we had established, in an earlier episode, that the Xindi weapon is still be designed and that it is not going well. How can any part of it already be in the manufacturing stage?


Isn't it convenient that, after setting their (remarkably undamaged, considering what it went through in the previous episode) shuttlepod down on the surface of the sphere then watching it start to fly away due to a malfunctioning thruster, Archer and Tucker can knock out said thruster with a phase pistol shot and then placidly watch as the pod (thanks, no doubt, to the sphere's gravitational pull) bounces gently back into place just meters from them?


Finally, we discover at the end of the episode that there is not one, not two but about 50 spheres creating the anomaly problem across the Expanse. Each emits significant amounts of distortion and, we are told, the anomalies are created where the waves of distortion from two or more such spheres intersect. If this is true, and T'Pol establishes the existence and location of said spheres by charting the patterns of the gravitational anomalies the interaction of their effects create, how is it possible that she is able to direct Enterprise's shuttle pod so precisely to sphere number two when she believed that there were, in fact, only two such spheres? Basing her calculations on two spheres where there were really 50 should have thrown her calculations off astronomically. She should not have been able to located the second sphere and direct Enterprise and her shuttle pod to it.