Episode 90: The Aenar

Yep, I am really running these episodes together. I watched them all in a row and have a hard time keeping track of what went on in each individual show.

That being said, the third episode of the trilogy, "The Aenar", is fairly easily distinguishable since its plot is a single cohesive unit.

With the help of Schran, the Enterprise crew discovers that the white-skinned Andorian who is telepathically operating the Romulan Marauders is a member of the Aenar, a blind but reclusive subspecies of Andorians that lives deep within the ice cap.

Meanwhile, pressure mounts on the Romulan general in charge of the Marauder program to overcome the “setback” with the two Marauders now available to him. A scientist colleague clearly feels badly about what they are doing to the Aenar.

While Archer and Schran visit the Aenar in their underground city to seek help, Tucker, T’Pol and Phlox attempt to build a telepathic control device (the telepresence unit) of their own so that, if the Aenar agree to help, they can try to interfere with Romulan control over the Marauders.

 While they work, Tucker struggles with the loss of his relationship with T'Pol and continues to be distracted by it.

The Aenar who is controlling the Marauder, Garab, turns out to be the brother of the interim leader of the Aenar, Jumell, who yearns to save him and to escape the permanent cold of her city.

T’Pol agrees to test the machine, despite the risk and Tucker’s fears. At first, the Aenar refuse to help as helping would require violence. 

The Romulans launch their two drones, on a mission to find and destroy Enterprise, and the Aenar leader, Jumell, then agrees to join their mission to save her brother. A cargo ship goes missing, clearly a trap, but Enterprise goes off to investigate.

Jumell lets herself be hooked up to Enterprise's telepathic machine and finds it “strangely enjoyable” but then things go wrong and she’s badly injured. Schran has taken a liking to her and she to him.

When Enterprise arrives to investigate the disappearance of the cargo ship, a Tellarite freighter appears but it’s one of the Marauders. Jumell decides to try to reach her brother to get him to stop. Meanwhile, the Romulans decide to send in the second ship even though it might not be necessary and could damage their pilot.

Jumell makes contact with her brother, Garab, through the devices and tells him she’s on the ship he is attacking, She learns that the Romulans told him he was the last surviving Aenar. Garab then decides not to continue and instead makes the two drones attack each other. The Romulans kill him but not before both drones are destroyed.

Jumell is devastated but pleased that at least her brother did not die alone. Enterprise returns her and Schran to Andoria. Schran leaves, with an apology and the statement that he probably won’t get another command. Tucker puts himself on report for missing a 10-degree variance in the emitter. Archer refuses to punish him but Tucker insists that he be transferred to Columbia for personal reasons, not admitting to Archer that he wants to get away from T’Pol.

Archer grants his request.

Despite some nice scenes and the introduction of a very interesting subspecies of Andorians in the Aenar, this episode feels sloppy and somewhat incoherent. To be honest, it felt to me like it was thrown together at the last minute by Manny Coto, who wrote the story, and André Bormanis, who wrote the teleplay. The Tucker subplot appears contrived and rushed and the early threat by the Romulan admiral to use the two Marauders to hunt down Enterprise never really comes true.

Jumell appears early to be completely seduced by the idea of leaving the cold of her home city and joining Enterprise on her mission, then declares that the Aenar will not cooperate in such a violent venture, then says she wants to help her brother. No explanation for her inconsistency is ever offered.

Jumell is badly injured by a test run of the telepathic device, then uses it with absolutely no damage during the battle scenes. The writers attempt to explain this in a clumsy way in Tucker's admission to Archer that he missed a variance in the emitter but, as I said before, it seems contrived, like a last-minute rewrite to address a flaw someone noticed on the last day of filming.

Further, Garab's willingness to pilot the Romulan Marauders makes no sense, given the fact that the Romulans kidnapped him and he comes from a strictly pacifist society. Again, the last-minute explanation for his behaviour (that he believed his entire race was dead) does not constitute a reasonable explanation for why a confirmed pacifist would be a somewhat willing participant in causing so many deaths.

This latest trilogy represents a significant step backwards from the improving quality of the episodes that preceded it. That's unfortunate, since I really felt that Enterprise was starting to hit its stride under show runner Manny Coto.