Episode 75: Countdown

The action continues in the third season's penultimate episode, "Countdown", written by André Bormanis and Chris Black.

Sato is aboard the Xindi Reptilian vessel and faces torture if she doesn't agree to help the Reptilians decode Aquatic data in order to discover their launch codes. In order to arm and fire the weapon, the codes of three different Xindi species are required and, to date, the Reptilians and Insectoids only have two. Sato resists and, in a scene reminiscent of The Wrath of Khan, the Reptilians inject some form of creature into  her brain to make her more cooperative, at least for as long as she remains sane.

Archer is able to convince the Aquatics to join the Primates and Arboreals in opposing the Reptilian plans to launch the weapon without the consent of the Council. Based on T'Pol's assurance that they were making progress in decrypting the data from the Sphere and finding a way to disable the Sphere network, Archer promises to free the Xindi of the Spheres if the Aquatics help to save Earth.

As Enterprise prepares for is assault on the Reptilians, Insectoids and the weapon (which have dropped out of warp in order to begin the arming sequence for the weapon), Major Hayes plans the assault on the Reptilian vessel to retrieve Sato. In an extended action sequence, the Enterprise-led assault force attacks the weapon and it is only the intervention of the Sphere People, who cause a nearby Sphere to send a nasty set of spatial anomalies to protect the weapon, that the assault fails.

On the other hand, Hayes and his team successfully save Sato, though too late to stop her from providing the arming codes to the Reptilians. Unfortunately, Major Hayes himself is fatally wounded in the effort. 

Thanks to the spatial anomalies, the Reptilians and Insectoids are able tocreate a warp conduit and escape with the now armed weapon. Only Degra's ship is fast enough to catch up with the weapon before it destroys Earth so Archer and an assault team prepare to move to that ship. The Xindi remind Archer of his promise, in relation to destroying the Spheres, and Archer orders T'Pol, Tucker and Mayweather to take Enterprise to Sphere 41 and do everything in their power to destroy it.

Inside the warp conduit, the Insectoids challenge the Reptilians on the role of the Sphere People (it is now absolutely clear that they built and control the Spheres) -- the Reptilians destroy the Insectoid ship in order to make sure nothing stops their plan to destroy Earth

The second in the three-part climax to the season-long Xindi plot, "Countdown" hums right along with lots of action, lots of intrigue and enough to savour that it's hard to find any time to be critical.

I am disappointed that the show runners chose to have the two most alien of the Xindi races (the Reptilians and Insectoids) play the role of the bad guys while the two most human-like (the Primates and the Arboreals) are the good ones. That's too easy and too inline with the xenophobia that plagues this series.

On the other hand, the recovery of T'Pol and her struggle to control her emotions continues to progress on a slow, credible rate, with some nice scenes in which she struggles and yet succeeds.