If you have been reading this blog, you know that it is not often that I watch an episode of Enterprise and find myself thinking: "Now that's good Star Trek".
"Observer Effect" is good Star Trek. It's a spine-tinglingly creepy hour of television. Well designed. Well written. Well paced. Using the full regular cast to good effect. Drawing on, and contributing to, Star Trek lore.
What's even more remarkable is that, though the episode features two distinct, expertly drawn, powerful guest villains, it features no guest actors. Body-less in their natural state, enemy aliens inhabit the bodies of different members of the crew as the show progresses.
Even as they move from Mayweather and Reid and into Phlox and T'Pol, then back to Mayweather and Reid, then into Tucker and Sato, etc., two distinct personalities develop such that it takes the viewer only a few moments of dialogue to decipher which of the aliens inhabits which crew member after each switch.
It's powerful, effective and impressive writing from Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens who, if my memory serves, made their writing debut on Enterprise with "The Forge" earlier in Season Four.
In the teaser, Reid and Mayweather sit in the crew's mess, playing chess, discussing the simplicity of the game and how the people around them will respond to what they found on the planet below. It takes an agonizing minute before we realise that something is different about these two and, when Reid says in a patronizingly satisfied voice that at least one person dies every time, we know for sure. Whether their bodies have been inhabited or replaced by aliens, these are not our familiar friends.
We soon find out that Enterprise has been sending teams down to the planet for exploration purposes and that Klingons at least had been there before them. Tucker and Sato report in from their shuttle pod and, even as they request permission to dock, Tucker succumbs to a coughing episode that leads him to collapse. Tucker and Sato are placed in medical isolation and Phlox soon discovers they have been infected with a silicon-based pathogen that will soon kill them if no cure is found.
The resulting desperate scramble to find a solution is punctuated by truly creepy, anxiety inducing scenes of Mayweather and Reid calmly discussing the agony their crewmates are enduring and rating the rationality and intelligence of their colleague's response. We soon learn that humans are being tested by some advanced, non-corporeal race to see if humans have sufficient rational intelligence to warrant preparation for first contact. How rationally do they respond to the hopeless situation; how well do they balance the impetus to save the lives of their infected comrades with the rational imperative to protect the rest of the crew from inevitable contamination and death if the carriers of the pathogen are not successfully dealt with?
Hundreds of races have been tested in this same way, to the point that the aliens can assess the progress of the Enterprise crew in percentages as compared to other species tested. And, as Reid repeats several times, at least one death is always the result, though often many people die during the test.
The Klingons, for example, simply tossed the infected crew out the air lock. Problem solved.
Archer remains committed to saving Tucker and Sato, however, and inspires some sympathy from the younger of the aliens, who wonders if the test itself is too barbaric. Once Archer and his crew have proven their intelligence (in coming very close to developing a cure in time) and their willingness to take risks and even make sacrifices for their friends, the younger alien argues, the test should be suspended and the cure provided.
The older alien (Reid, usually) argues first that it is not their place to question a testing procedure that has been in place for more than 900 years and second that, since they are not responsible for the situation (they did not create the pathogen nor place it on the planet, they joined the Enterprise crew only after the planet had been located and the pathogen had infected the crew), it was not their place to interfere in the natural development of the human race by saving them from the pathogen.
Phlox manages to figure out what's going on (seeing on a medical monitor the alien-inhabited but supposedly sedated Tucker and Sato standing up in their isolation cell, calmly discussing the status of the testing of the humans) and the viewer begins to feel a little bit of hope, only to have that hope crushed. The aliens approach Phlox, in the bodies this time of Archer and T'Pol, and, after he protests about the barbarity of their behaviour, erase his evidence and his memory so that the test can continue.
The episode is so well written and acted that I actually felt painfully deflated at that point: these aliens are all powerful and completely willing to let members of the Enterprise crew die. I hate to admit it but I actually decided that the show runners must have decided a change of cast was necessary to save the show and Tucker, Sato and finally Archer were to be written out.
Phlox, with his memory wiped, figures out a cure but he and Archer need to don environmental suits and move the now unconscious Tucker and Sato to Sick Bay to put the cure into action. The suits' gloves prove too clumsy for Phlox to do what's necessary so Archer sacrifices himself, removing his helmet and gloves to handle the equipment, but the effort still fails. Sato dies, Tucker is dying and Archer is now infected.
Archer tells T'Pol over the comm to take command and promises that, if Tucker regains consciousness before he dies, he'll let T'Pol know. Tucker then dies, leaving a grieving Archer alone in the contaminated Sick Bay.
After a heart-rending beat, Tucker suddenly sits up in his bed. The younger alien has inhabited his body and wants to tell Archer what has been happening. Sato then sits up, the elder alien in tow, and the two get into an argument over the younger's breach of protocol and his intention to interfere in human development. Then come the magic words that must have made all Star Trek fans shake their heads in wonder: "We are Organians".
Ahhhh, so that's it. First introduced in the TOS epsiode "Errand of Mercy", the Organians are an advanced, peace-loving non-corporeal race that is committed to non-interference as long as the lesser races leave them alone.
"Observer Effect" is yet another stage in Enterprise's effort to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of Star Trek loyalists by bringing back (re-introducing?) one of TOS' most talked about alien races.
Archer then turns on his inner Captain Kirk (see "Arena", for example, or "Spectre of the Gun"), facing down an advanced race and questioning its right to call itself "advanced". If permitting other people to suffer grievously for no purpose, if sitting back and observing as lesser beings struggle against such devastating challenges is their definition of "advanced", then he's not interested in being advanced. If they want to understand kindness, empathy, sacrifice, and all the other wonderful emotions they claim to value, then they should display them now.
Needless to say, Archer's arguments strike a chord, especially with the younger Organian, and the situation is soon resolved in the Enterprise's favour. Archer and crew have no clue what could have caused the cure of Tucker and Sato, who were clearly dead, and have no memory of any alien presence on the ship but they are happy to be healthy, happy and safe once more.
I am not sure how I feel about having the Organians portrayed in this cold-blooded way but it works in the context of this episode. And, okay, there is no way a race as advanced as the Organians would need to enter Tucker and Sato simply to have a brief confab about the ongoing testing that permitted Phlox to figure out what was going on, but that's just a minor issue.
"Observer Effect" is an excellent episode and one that must have made at least some of the Star Trek fans who had stuck it out this far feel hope that Enterprise might just be able to turn things around.
All seven of the regular cast get significant, meaningful screen time. We get some interesting character development for both Tucker and Sato (who knew she was an akido black belt who got tossed from Star Fleet training for breaking the arm of her commanding officer when he tried to break up her floating poker game?) and we get treated to a tense hour of television.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
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