This plot makes its debut in TOS with shows like the awful "Turnabout Intruder" and it runs along fairly simple lines:
- The Captain begins to behave strangely, making decisions that don't make sense and that tend to put the ship and crew in jeopardy;
- The crew is torn between loyalty to their leader (mixed with their military sense of duty) and the growing recognition that something is really really wrong;
- When the crew finally decides to take steps to stop the Captain, the Captain charges them with insubordination/treason and tries to lock them up;
- The crew is forced to resort to desperate measures to stop the madness.
In summary, the plot revolves around the Enterprise's discovery of a Xindi Insectoid ship, crashed on a barren planet. While investigating, the Star Fleet crew find three things of significant interest: an operating and accessible Xindi computer system, which permits them to study language, weapons and tactics; an intact Xindi battle shuttle, complete with particle weapons and torpedoes; and a hatchery, filled with Insectoid eggs that are still viable.
While investigating the hatchery, Archer is sprayed by some sort of acid from one of the eggs but Phlox finds nothing to worry about other than burns (which disappear, by the way, in a single scene).
The other crew members work on bringing back to Enterprise and analyzing the Xindi data and battle shuttle in preparation to resume their sprint to the Xindi weapons facility but Archer becomes more and more obsessed with saving the Xindi eggs, to the point that he is willing to sacrifice a significant portion of Enterprise's anti-matter reserve and a great deal of time in the process.
The anti-matter decision brings open challenge from T'Pol, who is promptly arrested and confined to her quarters under MACO guard. Reid is then removed from duty when he destroys an attacking Xindi ship -- Archer argues that he should have negotiated with the Xindi to arrange the survival of the eggs -- and Major Hayes is made second in command.
When Archer orders Sato to send out a distress call in Xindi Insectoid language as soon as she has figured out enough of their language, thus exposing Enterprise's position and opening her up to attack from potentially dozens of Xindi ships, Tucker has had enough and begins planning and implementing the revolution with T'Pol and Reid. The revolution is successful, Tucker is forced to stun Archer and subsequent medical examinations reveal that the Xindi egg wasn't just burning Archer, it was also injecting him with a hormone that makes him imprint on the hatchery so that he will do anything to protect it and its eggs.
Of course, to appreciate the good in this episode, you have to set aside two major reservations, both of which could have been addressed with a line or two of dialogue but were not.
First, we have established over and over again the mission imperative -- get to the Xindi weapon facility as soon as possible and let nothing distract you from your goal -- yet we begin with Enterprise taking the time to survey what seems to be an uninhabitable planet.
This is easily resolved by the inclusion of some opening lines of dialogue: "Long range sensors have picked up what appears to be a crashed Xindi ship on a planet we are approaching, sir"; "A Xindi warship? The tactical value of investigating is too good to pass up. Plot a course".
Second, Phlox misses the "hormone" that the Xindi egg injected into Archer when he first examines him, dismissing the Xindi spray as a "defense mechanism" that is intended only to burn the skin of the victim, clearly without doing a thorough examination. This makes no sense. The Captain of Earth's only hope is sprayed by something awful by an egg of his mortal enemy and you don't do a thorough examination? You simply assume?
Once again, this could be easily resolved. When Phlox conducts his initial examination of the Captain, he says: "I've done a full examination and find nothing more than the burn". Later, after the Captain has been shot by Tucker, the Doctor says, "This hormone was untraceable by our medical scanners when first injected -- once it began to exert its influence, however, the scanners were able to find it in his body."
Sloppy sloppy sloppy writing. Representative, I worry, of a singular lack of caring on the part of the creative team, especially about these placeholder episodes that don't contribute significantly to the overarching plot but merely serve to fill the 26-episode commitment for the season.
If you put these two major reservations aside, however, "Hatchery" works well. The writers make sure that Archer has what appear to be valid reasons/arguments for protecting the eggs, at least in the early going, and you can see the conflict within the Enterprise senior crew as it becomes more and more clear that Archer's decisions are dangerous.
Once they make their decision to move against the Captain, T'Pol, Tucker and Reid act quickly and with determination and their stealthy approach to overwhelming the MACOs whom Archer has enlisted to serve as his personal army is convincing.
I wonder how the American military (especially the Marines) enjoyed this episode, however, as the MACOs are presented as mindless automatons, incapable of independent thought, uncritically following even Archer's most problematic orders, while the Enterprise crew come across (at least in the end) as analytical thinkers willing to question authority when it's absolutely necessary to do so.
The other reservation that I will express, and this is aimed not specifically at "Hatchery" but at the tendency that has come to light across the arc of this season, is the concern that Enterprise is becoming more and more a men-only club. And a white-men-only club at that.
Mayweather and Sato play only minor, background roles in these mid-season episodes and are not even recruited into the plan to take on the MACOs and overthrow the Captain. Rather than the full participants that they began season one as, Sato and Mayweather have been allowed to fade almost completely from the main plots, assuming roles more at the level of Sulu and Uhura in TOS than the characters from currently racialized communities in later series, such as LaForge, Sisko, Kim and Tuvok.
The fact that TOS was filmed in the 1960s and was seen as revolutionary simply for the fact that it had African American and Asian senior officers on the bridge makes this regression in Enterprise, filmed 35 or more years later, even more problematic.
By mid-third season, the level of diverse representation on Enterprise, whose major characters comprise four white men (Archer, Tucker, Reid and now Major Hayes), a Vulcan woman (T'Pol, who is constantly sexualized and trivialized) and a non-human male (Phlox), has regressed to the 1960s.
Who's to blame for that?
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