There isn't enough plot to fill two complete episodes, and what plot there exists is so outlandish that even James Bond's producers would have rejected it, and yet we still get "Demons" and "Terra Prime".
It would appear to me that, by the time they wrote and produced this, the Enterprise show runners were already pretty sure the show was going to be cancelled at the end of its fourth season. So why bother? Just slap something together and go home, right?
Enterprise is called back to Earth for a very important conference -- a trade conference that builds on the bridges Archer and crew have built between the Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Dinobulans and a couple of other races. The hosting "Minister", who, for bored, sloppy or lazy writers, is sufficient to represent the blank face of "government", gives no credit to the all-being Captain Archer and, in protest, his loyal crew almost refuses to play nice for the gathered media.
Despite what should have been top level security considering the oft-described galactic importance of the conference, an itinerant, half-mad suspected member of a Human-Supremacy Group (Terra Prime) manages to stumble in among the delegates with a phial full of some kind of bio-matter, despite being shot in the chest with a phase pistol, and pass the phial along to T'Pol before succumbing to her injuries.
Despite what should have been top level security considering the oft-described galactic importance of the conference, T'Pol is permitted to bring the phial back to Enterprise for analysis. Surprise surprise: the phial contains a single hair from a baby, a half-Human, half-Vulcan baby who just happens to share the DNA of T'Pol and Tucker. Oh my my.
Star Fleet Security takes on the investigation, 'tis true, but they make so little progress that Reid intervenes and, with the help of his secret agent pal, tracks the Human-Supremacy Group to a moon mining operation. John Paxton, the owner of the mining operation, is a student of the infamous Colonel Green (we met him in a TOS episode; his beliefs in maintaining the purity of the human race led to the murder of millions after the third world war).
Meanwhile, an old girlfriend of Mayweather has shown up in the guise of a member of the media and manages to convince him to entertain her aboard Enterprise. Will they get back together? Will their career-centred lives ever come together? Is she a journalist, a Terra Prime operative or perhaps the Star Fleet Security agent she eventually claims to be?
Tucker and T'Pol volunteer to go undercover at the mining operation to try to recover their daughter because, you know, they really really love her and no one on the moon would ever recognise two of the three most famous people on Earth since Enterprise saved the planet from the Xindi.
The two are captured almost immediately (duh!). Paxton then gives the order and his mining installation suddenly transforms into a warp capable space ship (Transformers were apparently all the rage in 2005) that launches itself from the moon.
Before anyone can stop it, it goes briefly to warp and then arrives at Mars, where it lands and, in one motion, takes control of a giant ray gun that apparently Earth installed on Mars to ward off comets, asteroids and such.This ray gun is virtually unprotected yet has the power to blast big chunks off the face of the Earth (like, for example, Star Fleet headquarters and most of San Francisco) all the way from Mars.
If you have been following Enterprise, of course, you'll realise that the existence of this unprotected giant ray gun located handily on Mars renders the entire Xindi plot unnecessary since the Xindi could have sent a single ship to Mars to take over the ray gun and then would have had Earth at their mercy.
Paxton gives all aliens on Earth one hour to leave the planet or else he'll turn the ray gun on Star Fleet headquarters. He tells Tucker he had better help them fine tune the aiming device on the ray gun or else hundreds of thousands of innocents may die in his planned attack on Star Fleet.
While T'Pol coos over her daughter and gets all motherly (that is, after all, the proper role for a woman, the script suggests), Tucker resists, fights, works, and finally escapes the bad guys, only to roam the mining operation for no apparent reason, and Enterprise works out a plan to rescue their crew mates and the baby and maybe save San Fran as well.
Mayweather's lady friend warns him that there probably is a Terra Prime operative on Enterprise and, if there is one, he probably knows about their plan to attack the ray gun. Mayweather refuses to be fooled again and jumps in the shuttle pod with Reid, Phlox and Archer. Guess what? Yep, someone did sabotage the shuttle pod and it's only Mayweather's ability to fly it in manually that saves the day.
T'Pol figures out that Paxton, the Human Supremacist, relies on a treatment that involves Rigelian DNA to stay alive (the brilliant and clever parallel to Hitler's Jewish ancestry should not be forgotten) but her attempt to threaten him with that information fails.
Archer and his team arrive, shoot one security guard and manage to find Tucker next. Then they get to the control station where, apparently, Tucker is the only one who knows how to shut off the ray gun before it fires. There follows an uh-oh moment when Tucker is shot, leaving only Archer (who else?) to save the day.
Meanwhile, Sato is left in charge of Enterprise with the order to destroy the Mars installation (and everyone in it) rather than let the ray gun fire. She stands strong in the face of the Minister, who orders her to fire, in order to give Archer as much time as possible.
Archer shuts off the weapon but then carelessly wanders into the path of a pressurized window that he knew was about to blow out. When it does blow, Archer is knocked off his feet, giving Paxton a chance to re-initialise the weapon.
Sato does nothing. The ray gun fires. But, oh thank goodness, Tucker had managed to throw off its aim at some point in the previous hour or so and no one noticed.
The conference resumes but, this time, Archer is permitted to give the opening address and he gets a standing ovation, started by his old pal Vulcan ambassador Soval. Meanwhile, Tucker and T'Pol share a boo-hoo moment over the death of their daughter (whom they named Elizabeth, in honour of Trip's sister), though Tucker shares the news that Phlox has figured out what was wrong with the baby and can fix it if ever Humans and Vulcans ever want to try again to have a baby.
Oh yes, and finally, Reid investigates the sabotage of the shuttle pod and traces it back to none other than Kelby, the new chief engineer and rival of Mr. Tucker. Kelby protests and identifies another crew member as having replaced him on the shuttle maintenance team.
The crew immediately decides that this Terra Prime agent must be planning to kill the Minister, who is still on board Enterprise, and rush to his aid. Archer, however, is intercepted by the agent who has the good Captain at his mercy. But, you know, no good Star Fleet crewman who has ever served aboard Enterprise with the great all-being Jonathan Archer could ever dream of harming a hair on his pretty little head so the agent shoots himself instead.
Is it possible that this is Captain Terrell's great grandfather? But, unlike that future Reliant captain who refuses to shoot Admiral Kirk, despite having a strange ceti eel curving around his brain stem, this young lad had his entire life ahead of him, had not really done much wrong to that point, had no such agony inflicting critter in his head and had nothing to dear from Paxton, his version of Khan. So why does he kill himself instead of turning himself in, taking a ten year sentence for sabotage, and head back out into the world as a reformed 30-year-old?
The plot is so preposterous that it is almost not worth critiquing. And the continuing deification of Captain Archer is almost vomit-inducing.
I really despise lazy plots like this one (and Nemesis, by the way) that suggest that the bad guys have been able to build massive ships/weapons/installations right under the government's noses and then use them in an almost-successful bid to overwhelm the forces of good.
I really despise lazy plots that have people shot with phase pistols, stumble into intergalactic conferences and deliver a bio-matter bombshell, and then die, without any one ever explaining the who's, what's, when's, why's and how's of her behaviour or her death.
I don't get why this massive ray gun would be left completely unprotected. I don't get why the Vulcans, Andorian, Tellarites and their pals don't have ships of their own in orbit for the security of the conference. I don't get why Star Fleet security would try to slip an operative aboard Enterprise to try to find the Terra Prime agent rather than simply warning Archer and his crew and I certainly don't get why Star Fleet's security operative would waste so much time seducing and sleeping with Mayweather when she should be investigating.
And let's talk about Sato. Hooray that she is finally given a chance to command. And hooray that she stands so strong against the interference of the Minister. But her orders were clear and her goal simple: Destroy the Mars installation before the ray gun can fire at Earth. She fails miserably. Why isn't she in the brig, court-martialled, something?
No comments:
Post a Comment