If Episode 63 "Carpenter Street" has echoes of TOS' "A Piece of the Action", then Manny Coto's "Chosen Realm" must be described as a cover tune of TOS' "Let That be Your Last Battlefield".
It's basically the same story but updated to focus on religious hatred rather than racism. In it, Archer permits a small band of religious zealots access to Enterprise as his own crew work to repair their damaged ship. Once again, despite talking the talk about maintaining security onboard Enterprise, he first allows them to refuse Dr. Phlox's bio scans and then to station themselves all over the ship.
No surprise, each member of the band has within his or her body a biological explosive and they are ready and willing to sacrifice their lives to further their cause. They take over the Enterprise, so that the ship's advanced weaponry can be used to destroy the heretics on their home world and end a hundred years of religious war.
The parallels to al-Qaeda and ISIS are clear (just about as blatant as were the racial overtones of the TOS episode, which was roundly mocked for its lack of subtlety) and the show offers some fairly heavy-handed commentary on the sources of religion and religious belief.
That being said, Coto is a capable writer of suspense and "Chosen Realm" does a nice job of building tension as it progresses. He makes it clear early on that these religious zealots are willing to kill bother their own brothers and Star Fleet personnel for even the loosest reasons, which creates significant tension through the episode. We wonder just how far Coto and the series creative team will let these zealots go. They wipe out all the Enterprise's collected data on the spheres and blow themselves up on command -- we can't be comfortable that a great deal more damage won't be done before the show ends.
I liked the fact that Archer, when forced to choose someone from among his crew to be executed to pay for Enterprise's sins with respect to its investigation of the massive spheres that dot the Expanse, names himself but then convinces the religious leader (D'Jamat) to use a humane form of execution -- the transporter.
It's a nice bit of dramatic irony that we the viewers know that Archer must be alive somewhere on the ship but Coto delays us learning what he's up to for several long minutes of action.
Sure, there are some pretty common tropes at play here: Archer identifies very quickly a band member who is having doubts; the doubting zealot is quickly convinced to betray his people; and Phlox develops, in mere seconds, a compound that neutralizes the biological explosives and that can be distributed quickly and effectively through the ship's air supply systems
And I have a had time accepting that Archer, who seems finally to be reocgnising that he must focus on the of his ship and crew first as it cruises enemy territory, would permit the zealots free run of the ship when they refuse medical scans and seem to be placing themselves strategically in sensitive locations.
Or that a group of religious zealots would be so capable of breaking through password and encryption protections to take over the ship and so able to operate it. The leader presses a single button in the command centre and erases Enterprise's entire database on the spheres -- even I know that I gotta make a backup from time to time and I can't use "1 2 3 4" as my password on my computer.
I also wonder how D'Jamat, who is apparently one of the leaders of the orthodox army in the planet's religious war, can be found so far away from the planet with such a small group at the start of the episode. Wouldn't he be missed? He takes a pilgrimage at what is clearly a pivotal moment in the war, yet is highly placed enough that the infidels who fly out to confront Enterprise know him on sight.
Further, in the "Last Battlefield" final scene (the war is over and their entire planet has been laid waste), Archer says the destruction took place about six months before. So why did the infidels still have a task force of ships? And where were the survivors from D'Jamat's side?
I get so frustrated when reasonably decent episodes include such blatant and avoidable flaws. And I also wonder what impact this episode had on American viewers in the post-911 world, with its distrust of people with strong religious beliefs and its suggestion that such religious traditions are used to disguise aggressive, violent intentions.
Oh yea, and what happened to the three Xindi Enterprise captured in the previous episode and have stored in a cargo bay?
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