Episode 38: The Catwalk

One of the stronger, more tightly written episodes of the first part of the second season, "The Catwalk" presents the ship's crew with a two-fold challenge: how do they survive a massive, fast-moving space storm that is more of a threat to their bodies than their ship and can they trust the three aliens who warned them of the storm's approach but have been less than honest about their own situation?

Writers Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong do a nice job of creating tension as the entire crew must seek shelter in the cramped catwalks that run the length of the warp nacelles for more than a week in order to stay safe from the effects of the storm. There is even a little bit of a Henry V sensibility to the early scenes where Captain Archer wanders from group to group to check in and make sure their spirits remain intact.

Sussman and Strong manage to avoid allowing themselves to descend into juvenile humour of Berman and Braga when Tucker quite appropriately realizes he must create at least a couple of makeshift toilets for the crew's use and, even more impressive in light of so many earlier episodes, they admirably avoid adding unnecessary scenes where T'Pol, Sato or any other female crew members strip down for some reason or another.

These are professionals, dealing professionally with a difficult situation.

When the Enterprise crew discovers that the three aliens are actually immune to the radiation and have attracted a small army of their fellows who are busy attempting to take control of the ship under cover of the storm, Archer and his colleagues must figure out whether or not they can trust their guests and, more importantly, how they can get the army off the ship without exposing themselves to lethal doses.

It's a well-developed, suspenseful story that builds to a exciting climax.

The only quibbles I have with the episode are minor. First, once they decide to trust their three alien guests, why wouldn't the Enterprise crew enlist them in helping to shut down the warp engines and trick the army into leaving the ship? The aliens are immune to the effects of the storm and therefore would not have to wear space suits nor would their time away from the catwalks be limited.

Second, why is it necessary for the writers to have included a several short scenes of Tucker, Reid and several others growing snippy and childish while the crew is stuck in the catwalks? They are useless scenes that only serve to make the characters less admirable.

Episode 37: Precious Cargo

I didn't need to wait for the credits to figure out that this awful episode was written by Berman and Braga. A poor retelling of a TOS episode, "Precious Cargo" is yet another juvenile wet dream in which the man-boy, Tucker, "tames" the haughty but oh so sexy princess whom he purportedly rescues from her fate.

The plot is thin and, frankly, ridiculous. Two kidnappers send out a distress signal to find someone to help them repair a malfunctioning cryopod. Their hope: that whoever comes to their aid fixes the contraption without realizing that the woman in the pod is actually a kidnapped princess. I wish I could say that Tucker is smart enough to figure it all out but, no, he's actually so inept in rendering aid that he causes the pod to break down completely.

Meanwhile, these not-so-bright aliens decide they can leave Tucker alone on their ship with their priceless hostage while they enjoy a shower and a nice meal aboard Enterprise. When they realize the pod has opened, one of the aliens returns to his ship, knocks Tucker out, and attempts to flee. He manages to cripple Enterprise -- note, the alien can't maintain the equipment on his own ship but he is completely able to disable Enterprise in mere seconds -- and make his escape, leaving his comrade behind with Archer and the crew.

At this point, it gets silly. Or even sillier. Faced with an uncooperative prisoner, Archer and T'Pol stage a ridiculous fake trial (with T'Pol playing acting the judge and executioner, lying continually throughout) to frighten the alien into helping. Meanwhile, the second alien decides it's wise to leave a trained engineer, untied and unsupervised, in the hold of his ship, with the now conscious princess, while he... well, we're not sure what he does because, as we find out later, his ship doesn't really need him to operate it.

The princess has just emerged from several months in suspended animation, yet shows absolutely no ill effects. The pod fails and she basically leaps out, ready for a fight. Even Khan and his genetically enhanced crew had to do some stretching after they emerged from their pods on the Botany Bay!

The princess, played awkwardly by some unknown actress I can't even be bothered to identify, and Tucker carry out the usual royalty-commoner flirtation as Tucker decides, inexplicably, that they should find an escape pod and flee the alien ship. Remember, he is the chief engineer, he has access to all of the alien ship's controls and equipment (including its internal sensors), he has a universal translator and he has a physically imposing colleague who has proven herself pretty handy with a spanner. And, from what he can see, there is only one fairly inept alien on the ship.

Why he doesn't simply use the handy crawl space to make his way to the bridge and overpower the alien rather than taking the rather risky escape-pod route I'll never know.

Of course, Berman and Braga make sure that, as the story advances, the princess' clothing and her reserve both retreat. By the time they jettison from the ship, spend a harrowing 24 hours jammed together in a one-person escape pod and crash land on a tropical alien planet with a breathable atmosphere, her hair is down and what's left of her clothing is wet and clinging to her. Better still, she's ready for a little action.

Luckily, the bad guy waits until they are finished before he leaves his ship crewless in orbit and attempts to hunt them down. And, even more luckily, Archer and T'Pol arrive just in time to make a childish, snarky comment about their state of undress.

This episode is an embarrassment. It is on a par with the worst episodes of the third and final season of TOS, if not worse. It is written by juveniles for juveniles and could only serve to alienate the intelligent Star Trek fan base.

Episode 36: Vanishing Point

I wanted to like this episode. It is the first episode to offer a leading role to Linda Park as Hoshi Sato and includes some clever ideas.

Unfortunately, the episode presents Sato as being governed by fear, overly emotional and subject to panic. All because of her hesitation over the transporter device.

Now, fear of the transporter is a common trope which appears in just about every one of the Star Trek series, starting with Dr. McCoy's legendary aversion to having his molecules scrambled by the infernal machine in TOS. And early episodes of Enterprise did a nice job of establishing the general suspicion with which the transporter is viewed, starting in the first episode when Mayweather and Reid discuss, with some trepidation, the fact that the device had recently been approved for use with "bio-matter".

And, at first, despite Sato's character flaws that are exposed, this episode promises to do good things with the trope. Berman and Braga, the writers, construct a suspenseful plot in which Sato, her body slowly disassembling after going through the transporter, discovers that aliens, unseen by the rest of the crew, are assembling explosive devices at key places in the ship.

Okay, Sato's disintegration does not proceed along a logical path and there is little attempt to explain how this molecular decomposition transforms itself into movement into another plane of existence, but it's still not bad.

But then, apparently fresh out of ideas, B&B simply arrive at the 40-minute mark and have Sato's transport completed. She materializes safe and sound on the ship and the whole thing turns out to be a product of her over-active imagination.

In other words, it was just a dream. We don't have to explain anything, we don't have to resolve anything, she simply wakes up.

Yuck. But, hey, at least Braga and Berman managed to write into the script that Sato spends most of the episode in a sports bra and shorts. Wouldn't want to ruin a completely unsatisfying plot by failing to sexualize the female lead!

Episode 35: Singularity

A very strong episode, "Singularity" is the latest Star Trek episode that leaves a single character alone to save the ship from ruin.

This time, it's T'Pol who finds herself the last person standing after the radiation emanating from a singularity drives the rest of the crew first into primitive obsessions and then into unconsciousness. Writer Chris Black effectively uses a frame narrative structure, starting with T'Pol, alone on a ship filled with unconscious, possibly dead, crew mates, dictating a personal log about how the Enterprise got itself into this position, then flashing back to the first symptoms of the problem, finally working its way back to T'Pol alone and her desperate efforts to save the ship.

Black does a nice job of creating different obsessions for each main character, injecting humour and a little bit of character development into the story as we move along: Archer's obsession is writing a preface for a biography of his father, Phlox's is finding out why Mayweather has a headache, Tucker's is fixing the captain's chair, Sato's is perfecting a family recipe and Reid's is creating an alert protocol for the ship.

And Black displays great skill in incorporating the Reid obsession into the eventual resolution of the drama: frustrated by Archer's lack of focus on discipline and security for the ship, Reid develops his own protocols ("Reid alert"?), which includes the automatic activation of the ship's weapons when the sensors identify a threat. T'Pol and a half-revived Archer happily discover this last innovation in the nick of time when a massive asteroid threatens to mangle Enterprise.

Add to that the effective use of sound and music to heighten the tension and you have a very effective episode.

Sure, we can quibble -- why is it necessary for the only female character (other than T'Pol) to obsess about cooking of all things? -- but the episode works well and is worthy of praise.

Episode 34: The Communicator

"The Communicator" is one of those episodes that might have worked, that might just have been interesting, if the writers had actually taken some level of care in the creating the story.

Not surprisingly, this one was written by our friends Braga and Berman, who have proven over and over again that they don't take Star Trek fans (or Star Trek itself) seriously. Like so many earlier (and later) episodes written by BB, "The Communicator" manages to ignore the basic rules of the Star Trek universe and leaves plot holes galore.

One of the basic principles of the Star Trek universe, for example, is that the transporter hones in on the communicator's signal. Except in this episode. On an undercover away mission to a pre-warp planet that is on the verge of a world war, Mr. Reid manages to leave his communicator behind.

Uh oh. Contamination! We must retrieve it. You would think the sensors could find it and the transporter simply beam it back up but... nope.

Reid and Archer beam back down to try to recover the communicator and manage to get themselves captured. Identified as spies (and discovered to have different internal organs than the natives of the planet), they are sentenced to die.

Of course, in returning to the planet, they bring with them more technology which, of course, falls into the hands of their captors. While testing their new toys, the aliens discover that a phaser set on stun can actually cause minor fireworks in a wall (!!!!) and a phaser set on kill can cause the wall to explode (!!!!). I'm sorry. I thought stun setting had little or no impact on inanimate objects. And didn't it take one of the ship's full phaser batteries to make a wall of rock explode in "The Cage", which takes place apparently decades in the future?

Nifty.

Okay okay okay. So the Enterprise crew have to stage a rescue before Archer and Reid are hanged. And, thank goodness, despite not being able to find a piece of their own technology on the planet below, the good crew of the Enterprise are able to intercept and decode highly classified communications within the military of the alien world.

And Tucker and Mayweather, in about 10 minutes, can repair the Suliban cloaking device on their captured pod ship they had captured several episodes earlier, despite the fact that Tucker admits he had been working on it without success for the previous several weeks.

And Tucker then figures out how to fly the ship, despite the Suliban lettering, and off they go to stage the rescue.

But, oops, the cloak fails momentarily and more contamination occurs. Then, well, you know, we've already contaminated this culture significantly, so we might as well stage a fire-fight to rescue the captain, even if we're not really capable of hitting any target with our phase pistols.

On the happy side, at the end of the episode, T'Pol (who approved of the violent rescue mission and actually took part in it) tells the recently-rescued Archer that he is admirable because he was willing to die rather than permit any more contamination. Additional contamination in which she happily took part.

And, thankfully, we get the chance to hear an alien bartender tell Archer, for no apparent reason, that Sato is not hard to look at. Joy.

Episode 33: The Seventh

After capturing a Vulcan spy gone rogue on yet another remote space port filled with alien villains and corrupt administrators, T'Pol, Archer and Mayweather are told they cannot return with their captive to their shuttle pod for four full hours because a coating of cleaning acid has just been applied to the landing platform which will burn T'Pol's "pretty little feet" clean off if she ventures out onto the platform.

Moments later, T'Pol wraps three pieces of fabric around each of her boots and safely crosses and recrosses the same platform.

This is the quality of writing featured in "The Seventh" and in so many other Enterprise episodes. Invent a ridiculous barrier when necessary; ignore that barrier when it is expedient to do so.

Or, as Braga and Berman do moments later in the same episode, when you need your prisoner to escape, let him start a fire and then, within seconds, have a burning beam fall from the ceiling to thwart the prisoner's recapture. The burning beam trick is a pretty hackneyed trope and, in this case, completely ridiculous considering the fire that apparently undermined the structural integrity of the building started only moments before from a single candle.

Remarkably, every alien in the place, including your heroes, then runs safely across the acid-soaked platform with no apparent ill effects. The spy and your heroes even get the chance to walk out into the acid and stand around talking, yet suffer no injuries as a result of their exposure to the acid.

From start to finish, "The Seventh" relies on these kinds of inconsistencies and on smart characters doing stupid things to maintain any semblance of a plot or to create any kind of suspense. It's a remarkable example of lazy, poorly planned writing.

The plot, if you can call it that, involves the Vulcan High Command recalling T'Pol to her previous security duties to complete some unfinished business: capturing the rogue Vulcan spy she failed to bring back 20 years before. T'Pol does Archer the courtesy of warning him that he will hear soon from Admiral Forrest, ordering Enterprise to support her in her secret mission, and Archer responds to this respectful act with sarcasm and derision.

Star Fleet then orders Archer to deliver T'Pol to the remote star system where the spy is hiding, provide her a shuttlepod and a pilot, then wait for her to return, all the while asking no questions. As this is a B&B script, Archer reacts to his orders with resentment and anger, taking his frustrations out on T'Pol in front of the rest of the crew.

Despite this most recent example of the kind of aggression and bullying T'Pol has faced from her Captain over the first season and a half, T'Pol approaches Archer in his cabin with a personal request. Archer's response continues to be rude and ungracious (when she initially asks to speak to him about a personal matter, he actually shifts his position so that he can continue to watch a water polo match on his computer monitor rather than offering his clearly uncomfortable science officer his full attention) and yet B&B seem to believe that T'Pol, at this point in their relationship, would feel such personal respect and trust for Archer that she would ask him to accompany her on her secret mission.

Archer accepts and he, Mayweather and T'Pol head out in a shuttlepod, leaving Tucker as acting captain.

T'Pol explains that the rogue spy refused to return to Vulcan after his assignment came to an end, choosing to plunge deeper into the smuggling business he had been sent to infiltrate. The spy is considered brilliant and resourceful; he is believed to have taken up smuggling biological weapons which he sells without remorse to the highest bidder.

Despite the fact that the rogue spy is said to be a brilliant, cagey customer, T'Pol and her posse capture him easily in a bar on the outpost. The acid ploy is introduced, which creates the time for the spy to work his psychological trickery on T'Pol.

But, of course, this is a B&B script so T'Pol is already falling to pieces emotionally as long-repressed memories of her earlier pursuit of this same spy start trickling back into her brain. It seems she killed a man during that pursuit 20 years earlier and underwent what we see, through a series of distorted flashbacks, to be a brutal and barbaric Vulcan cleansing ritual on P'Jem (of course), intended to lock the memory of the incident away and protect her from the guilt.

For some reason, it didn't occur to the Vulcan authorities that T'Pol might not be quite stable enough, emotionally, to undertake the current mission.

To recap, T'Pol the Vulcan is an emotional basket case, the Vulcan High Command and religious leaders regularly engage in barbaric practices on their former secret agents and acid burns only when necessary to the plot.

Speaking of the Vulcans, their ship has just arrived and rendezvoused with Enterprise, upon which Tucker is happily playing acting captain by hosting Reed and Phlox in the captain's mess. When the burdens of command close in on him, however, Tucker retreats into avoidance tactics because, you know, Archer really is a god for being able to approve a required medical treatment that might make people queasy for a while, to give permission to take the main engines off line for a day to permit required maintenance to tactical systems and take a phone call from the Vulcan captain. I believe that this scene is supposed to provide comic relief from the incredibly tense main plot (and perhaps a chance for growth for Tucker) but it just makes the Chief Engineer appear incompetent.

T'Pol, desperate to find some proof of the spy's guilt, runs across the acid covered platform to the spy's ship which is, apparently, unlocked. She opens a bunch of bins, knocks injector casings about with a crow bar, and gives up the search. She walks back to the bar (ahh, that ineffective acid) and continues to fall to pieces emotionally.

Archer takes T'Pol outside to try to help her get herself together, leaving Mayweather in charge of the prisoner. The good ensign is so ineffective that he permits the spy to knock over the table and set fire to the building. For some reason, however, the spy does not immediately try to escape, waiting until Archer and T'Pol return and the burning beam falls from the ceiling to flee.

The Star Fleet posse pursue him back to his ship (ahh that acid) and, again, find nothing. Archer orders Mayweather to power up the ship's life support so that they can sit tight (and comfortable) in wait for the spy to show up and Mayweather spots a troubling inconsistency. All power in the ship was apparently off, so why is there condensation on a panel and why is there an active circuit beneath the condensation?

Mayweather asks his Captain to check it out and the two leave T'Pol alone in the ship's cargo bay. Brilliant man that he is, Archer decides to shut down the active circuit, without warning T'Pol in the cargo bay that he is doing so, so she is unprepared when a forcefield collapses, revealing an additional cargo bay (and an armed rogue spy) that it was hiding. Amazingly, while T'Pol is unprepared for the sudden disappearance of a wall, the spy seems to know it is about to happen and has his weapon ready.

Gun fights ensue and the spy finally gives himself up. Why does he give himself up? Because he has quite stupidly managed to move right next to what appears to be a refrigerator which turns out to contain ranks of bottles of gatorade... sorry, containers of biotoxin which, if struck by a single phase pistol shot, would have killed them all.

Yes, the brilliant spy is that stupid.

The spy tries to flee, figuring that T'Pol won't shoot him in the back because of her overwhelming guilt from the earlier incident. I guess the spy didn't work Archer's degree in psychology into his calculations (or the fact that phase pistols have a stun setting) because, after a few wise words from her Captain (who decides not to shoot the spy himself because that would take away a growth opportunity from T'Pol and would be too easy), T'Pol stuns the spy.

T'Pol and her posse return the spy to the recently arrived Vulcan ship and T'Pol thanks Archer for his support, closing out this brilliantly crafted episode by saying that, if he ever needs someone he can trust, she's his man.

It's remarkable to me that an episode that is so poorly written and so full of holes actually got produced. It's a classic B&B episode, however, right down to the bullying and harassment of T'Pol and the vilification of Vulcans in general.

Episode 32: Marauders

First, let's look at some of the positive things about the episode "Marauders", written by Braga and Berman with a teleplay by David Wilcox:

• We get to see Sato, as an expert, training a group of men in handling a weapon, even if we have to put up with Reed's condescending little smirk and nod of approval;
• We get to see T'Pol, as an expert, training a group of men and women in hand-to-hand combat techniques;
• We get to see that same T'Pol defeat a Klingon warrior using those same combat techniques;
• We get to see a female colonist use her combat training well in defending herself against a second Klingon warrior;
• We are introduced to a humanoid mining community where a woman is the doctor;
• We get to see a humanoid male leader actually admit to feeling fear and the weight of responsibility in keeping his people safe from the Klingon marauders;
• We get to enjoy a very well-written scene wherein Archer talks to the said humanoid male leader about fear and responsibility, about overcoming that fear to fulfill that responsibility;
• We get to enjoy a script that introduces a sympathetic child character, creates a relationship between Tucker and the child, and then manages to avoid the overused trope of having the sympathetic child character do something very stupid at a pivotal moment in an attempt add drama and pathos;
• We get to watch an episode where, despite Archer's unreasonably aggressive and inappropriate approach to T'Pol on the issue of whether or not the Star Fleet crew should intervene, they actually manage to work together (with Reed) to come up with a plan to help the colony while addressing the legitimate concerns T'Pol raises.

In "Marauders", Enterprise arrives at a remote mining colony that extracts and refines the precious substance "deuterium", of which the Star Fleet ship apparently has only two weeks' reserve left. To their surprise, however, Archer and his crew find the colony's leader unwilling to entertain Enterprise's offer to purchase a small portion of their large holdings of the substance. A deal is finally worked out, however, with Archer promising two days' help to repair mining equipment, a quantity of medical supplies and several other pieces of equipment in exchange for the deuterium and a promise to leave immediately after the two days are up.


While the Star Fleet crew interacts with the colonists, it becomes clear that the colonists are afraid of something -- it also becomes clear that the colony is much poorer off than one would expect after having produced and sold large quantities of this very valuable substance for almost decade.


The mystery is solved when a Klingon ship drops out of warp and into orbit, sending a landing party down to bully and harass the colonists while demanding a large quantity of deuterium. The colony leader explains to the Klingon captain that, with several pumps damaged, the colony is behind in its production. The Klingon leader assaults a colonist, threatens the entire community and declares that he will return in four days for his deuterium, which better be ready or else...


Archer is incensed and wants to intervene. T'Pol quite appropriately advises him that, short of killing the Klingon marauders, any intervention by Enterprise would only have a passing effect and would likely lead to massive retaliation by the Klingons once Enterprise has left the area. Both agree that the extortion must be put to an end but the question is how to do so, in a way that won't result in Klingon retaliation and will last after Enterprise leaves the colony.


Archer visits the colony's leader in the dead of night to talk to him about the prospect of resisting. He learns that the Klingons have been plundering the colony for years and that, when the colonists did attempt to resist, a number of colonists died in the battle or were executed afterward by the triumphant Klingons. The colony's leader does not want a repeat of that slaughter and chooses to endure the Klingon marauders and scratch out a subsistence-level living rather than risk resisting again.


Archer has a heart-to-heart with the leader about overcoming fear and living up to responsibility. He tells the leader that he has decided to follow the old Human axiom, "Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime", and train the colonists to resist effectively.


With now just three days before the Klingons return, Reed and crew hatch a plan to cap and disguise the deuterium wells and move the colony a short distance away, so as to permit them to lure the Klingons into a trap. Sato, T'Pol and Reed train the colonists in combat skills and tactics while the work to move the colony goes on.


The Klingons arrive and find the colony empty. A series of brief fights (both hand-to-hand and with weapons) takes place as the colonist/Star Fleet force attempts to frustrate and confuse the Klingons while drawing them into the area of the capped deuterium wells. Once the Klingons are in place, Reed sets off explosives planted at the top of a circle of wells, trapping the entire Klingon force in a hell-fire of burning deuterium.


The colony leader then confronts the marauders and tells them that the colonists are now capable of defeating the Klingons so they better leave and never come back. The Klingon commander, in a truly un-Klingon act of cowardice, turns tail and runs.


In most ways, "Marauders" is a fun, well-paced and well-conceived episode. The characterizations are strong and the actor (Larry Cedar) who plays the colony leader does a nice job of conveying the anger, frustration, shame and fear his character is feeling. As I said above, the scene between Archer and the colony leader is especially well written and performed. And it is refreshing to see two male leaders, Archer especially, admit to feeling fear and the burden of responsibility. Kirk was especially good on that count and it's nice to see that someone in the Enterprise creative team recognizes the importance of permitting a Star Fleet captain to be Human.


As usual, however, the episode does have its share of problems, mostly from a plotting and technological continuity stand point.


For example, the Klingon ship doesn't spot Enterprise in orbit around the colony planet when it first arrives. This is a surprising lapse for the ever vigilant, ever aggressive Klingons.


And the idea that the Klingon transporter system wouldn't alert them that the coordinates of the colony itself have changed between their first visit in the episode and their second makes no sense at all. Either the Klingons would have beamed down to the same coordinates, and found themselves inexplicably in an empty field, or they would have scanned before beaming, realized the colony had been moved and been more wary in beaming down. Either way, the game should have been given away immediately upon their arrival.


I also don't get why it was necessary to provide the colonists with all that training (both to improve their accuracy with their weapons and to improve their hand-to-hand combat skills) when their plan to lure the Klingons into the middle of the well-heads appears to have required neither skill. In fact, despite having the advantage of being on higher ground and having a clear shot at the Klingon marauders, the colonists do not appear to hit a single Klingon with their weapons fire. And further, the hand-to-hand combat depicted, while fun and truly satisfying for both the characters and the viewers, also seems completely unnecessary to their plan.


Wouldn't it have been easier (and a heck of a lot safer) just to let the Klingons beam down, stun them all, then place them in them in the middle of the well heads?


With all of that in mind, the idea that a Klingon captain would turn tail and run at the end of the episode is contrary to everything we've learned about Klingons (well, everything we've learned about Klingons from other Star Trek series; Enterprise seems to be trying to rewrite the Klingons as a bunch of cowards). The Klingon captain admits that there are plenty of other sources for deuterium so, based on our knowledge of Klingon conceptions of honour and the warrior mentality, we would expect him to beam back to his ship and attempt to exterminate the colony from orbit as punishment for its resistance.


That, of course, would necessitate Enterprise to intervene openly to save the colony, which is an eventuality Archer was hoping to avoid. But it would be more consistent with Klingon behaviour established in Star Trek lore.

Episode 31: A Night in Sickbay

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga wrote this episode. I'm not sure I need to say anything more than that for you to know what I'm about to say.

In the course of 42 minutes, B&B manage:

• to write a decon chamber scene where Sato, in her underwear, rubs jelly on T'Pol, in her underwear, who rubs jelly on Archer;
• to write a gym scene where T'Pol, dressed in her skin-tight exercise outfit, runs for several minutes on a treadmill;
• to write a second decon chamber scene where Sato, in her underwear, rubs jelly on T'Pol, in her underwear, who rubs jelly on Archer, in his underwear, which then turns into a sex scene between T'Pol (who gets naked) and Archer after Sato leaves;
• to make Archer look like a childish, immature, aggressive, insensitive bully;
• to make Archer look like an idiot.

And yet, I guess, the episode is supposed to be funny and charming and we're all supposed to walk away thinking, "What a wonderful man Jonathan Archer is, what a great and powerful leader."

Perhaps more amazing, the plot is basically copied from a TNG episode where Picard, while preparing to make a very difficult, very formal presentation to an alien race upon which a great deal depends, is distracted by and trapped in a holodeck program, only to emerge at the very last minute and deliver the presentation perfectly. And that TNG episode, whose name I can't recall, managed to create an entertaining plot without demeaning and sexualising women!!!

In the B&B version, one of Enterprise's five warp plasma injectors is beginning to fail (which is really odd since, in the previous episode, Enterprise was fixed from top to bottom by an evil automated repair station, right down to the creak in the deck plates in Archer's ready room) and, out of an abundance of caution, the ship travels to Kreetassia to obtain a replacement. We met the Kreetassans in "Vox Sola" when Archer managed to insult them by eating in their presence.

The problem is, on this visit to the Kreetassan capital city, Archer has managed to insult the Kreetassans again, this time by permitting Porthos to urinate on a sacred tree outside the meeting rooms. Yes, you read that right, Archer actually thought it wise to bring his dog on a critical away mission that involved sensitive negotiations with easily offended aliens. He is THAT stupid.

Upon their return to Enterprise, Porthos falls ill. The ship's doctor, who has about a million university degrees, is then required to devote his entire attention to saving a beagle. Meanwhile, Sato and T'Pol play maid servant to Archer's various moods, doing their best to act as a buffer ...

I can't write about this seriously. This episode is so stupid and so repulsive that it is not worth watching, not to mention writing about.

Archer is abusive and childish. T'Pol, Sato and Phlox spend the entire episode mothering their immature captain because, you know, that's what women and aliens are for. Sorry, wait, T'Pol alternates between mother and object of sexual desire, mother and lover. If it weren't for the fact that she actually gets a line or two here and there where she tries to call Archer on his irrational and offensive behaviour, she would be a complete write off in this episode.

I guess one could argue that Archer's might just grow throughout his "Night in Sickbay", coming out of the experience with a new respect for the people around him, but it doesn't excuse B&B and their continuing predilection for the celebration of misogyny, aggression and bullying.

Horrible episode. Awful and offensive.

Episode 30: Dead Stop

In the DVD commentary, Mike Sussman explains that he and Phyllis Strong were handed an interesting challenge: create a dramatic episode that deals with the damage to Enterprise caused in the previous episode, "Mine Field", in an innovative way.

The result is "Dead Stop", half drama, half horror, with an homage to the episode "Shore Leave" from TOS thrown in.

Tucker explains to Archer that Enterprise's damage is so severe that it will take months for Tucker's team to effect repairs. Even then, he needs to find a significant quantity of "duterium alloy" before he can start. The option of heading back to Star Fleet's repair facilities is out, however, since the ship's hull damage has limited her speed to just over Warp 2, putting Star Fleet help more than a decade away. (Nobody suggests contacting Star Fleet and asking them to send a Vulcan ship out at Warp 7 to meet them with a team of engineers and repair crew, a trip that would take a week at most, but...)

Archer decides, since Enterprise has always been willing to help others, perhaps they should seek help themselves. So Sato sends out a distress call. A Tellarite ship radios from afar, sending them a set of coordinates. Desperate for help, Enterprise limps to the coordinates and finds a strange, automated repair station floating in space.

An invasive scan follows and suddenly the station begins to reconfigure itself to suit both Enterprise and its crew. The station offers to repair all of the Star Fleet ship's damage in jusr over two days for a fairly cheap price (200 liters of warp plasma) and to play host to Enterprise's crew in a spartan but impressive lounge. The only real tension comes, at first, when Tucker and Reed take it upon themselves to attempt to break into the station's main computer area, potentially putting the repairs at risk. The station responds calmly, however, merely transporting the two back onto Enterprise's bridge.

Archer finally responds like a true commander and tears a strip off the two juvenile officers before confining them to quarters.

Meanwhile, the station's technology and repair work continue to impress and, when the station even heals Reed's leg injury suffered in the previous episode, everything seems too good to be true.

Of course,in a "Shore Leave" like turn, we find out that it really is too good to be true.

Mayweather is found dead in one of the cargo bays that was under repair, having suffered a significant electrical shock. Archer, in typical fashion, responds with anger and takes his rant to the station's main computer. Dr. Phlox calmly begins a routine autopsy as T'Pol begins to search for the cargo ship carrying Mayweather's family. Sato comes down to Sick Bay to say goodbye to her good friend (who knew they were friends? who knew that Mayweather was a practical joker?) and witnesses Phlox's big discovery: the body on the table is a fake, a replica created specifically to fool the Star Fleet crew.

So the question arises: where is Mayweather now and who has taken him? Archer goes back to Reed and Tucker and asks them if they could break into the station again. This leads to an assault on the station, with Reed leading T'Pol and Archer back toward the computer centre while Tucker stalls for time as he delivers the payment for the completed work.

Reed purposely trips the station's automated defensive transporter so that T'Pol and Archer can plan a way past it and, when they finally get to the central core, they find a series of bodies hanging in various states of decay, each linked into the computer core. It would seem that every ship that has visited the station in the past has "paid" by unknowingly contributing a member of its crew to become part of the computer's system.

With the station's automated voice bleating about intruders (but, for some reason, not transporting them back to Enterprise or changing the atmospheric conditions in the computer core to kill them), Archer and T'Pol rescue Mayweather and get him back to the ship. Tucker, meanwhile, has left the plasma drums in the station and also returned to Enterprise, which is now under attack by the station, which is shutting down all of her systems.

Archer gives Reed the signal and Reed sets off the explosives they have hidden inside the plasma drums, tearing the station to pieces and permitting Enterprise to escape. The last shot finds the station beginning to repair itself.

Not as strong an episode as the two that preceded it, "Dead Stop" does have its positive attributes.

Episode 29: Minefield

"Minefield" would be a fantastic episode... if only it didn't foreground Armoury Officer Malcolm Reed who is rapidly developing into one of the most irritating continuing characters ever to appear in a Star Trek series.

We start in the Captain's Mess, where a clearly uncomfortable Reed sits down to breakfast with his Captain. Reed's life is his work and he appears to have no other subjects of conversation than duty and duty rosters, weapons and warheads. Archer, meanwhile, seems to believe that any male he encounters must love sports so, when his attempt to draw Reed into a conversation about England making the World Cup final, the two have nothing left.

Fortunately, T'Pol interrupts with news that Enterprise's scanners have located a Menchara Class planet not far away. For some reason, this seemingly routine news means meals are interrupted -- Archer and Reed head, with no small measure of relief, to the bridge.

The planet seems great, uninhabited but with plenty to investigate, and Archer orders Enterprise into standard orbit. No sooner does Mayweather move to comply than a massive explosion tears a chunk out of the ship's saucer section, injuring scores of crew members, including Sato, who is taken to Sick Bay with a severe concussion.

A panicked investigation discloses that Enterprise fell victim to a cloaked mine and, worse, that a second mine has attached itself to the primary hull, right near the impulse engine. Using the technology developed during "Storm Front" that was used to reveal the cloaked Suliban ship in that episode, the crew realises that Enterprise is, in fact, surrounded by an entire field of these mines.

Needing to deal with the explosive on their hull first, Archer sends Reed out to examine and, if possible, detach or defuse the mine. I doubt it is appropriate protocol to send a single crewman out on such mission -- safety would demand that space walks would be done in pairs, at least -- but Reed is alone as he informs Archer that the mine has two magnetic legs by which it clings to the ship's hull and a proximity sensor that appears to have malfunctioned, otherwise the mine would have blown up on contact.

Meanwhile, Archer orders Tucker to begin the work necessary to detach the section of the hull to which the mine is attached and permit it to float away into space, a just-in-case option that would leave their impulse manifold dangerously exposed.

A warship suddenly decloaks aft of Enterprise and it is a credit to the series' creative team that the warship is instantly identifiable as Romulan. With Sato unavailable, T'Pol uses the universal translator to try to decipher the warship's radio-only communication but fails, resulting in two warning shots fired. Archer orders Mayweather to begin the very difficult task of piloting the ship back out through the mines using thrusters and the warship disappears.

Reed continues his work but the mine suddenly sends out a third magnetic leg, which manages to pierce Reed's own leg and pin him to the hull. Archer dons a space suit and heads out to help him and we are treated to an extended interaction between two men with little wit and no charm as Archer works to defuse the mine. Reed alternates between doom and gloom (as per his behaviour throughout Shuttlepod One") and hectoring Archer about his lax and undisciplined leadership style. Archer, meanwhile, tries to keep Reed talking about his family history to distract them both from the tension of their situation as the Captain works to defuse the mine, following Reed's instructions.

Remarkably, Reed has gone from knowing nothing about the mine in early scenes to being an absolute expert on even the smallest details of the weapon's design and operation.

Sato works on translating the alien's language while still recovering in Sick Bay and is soon able to explain to T'Pol and Tucker that the aliens, who call themselves "Romalins", have claimed the planet and warned Enterprise to leave or be destroyed. T'Pol immediately corrects her pronunciation -- "It's Romulans", she says ominously.

Mayweather does yeoman's work in piloting the ship out of the minefield but two Romulan ships decloak aft of Enterprise. With translation now possible, T'Pol listens as the Romulan commander says that their scans show Enterprise is ready to release the hull section to which the mine is attached and orders Enterprise to do so and leave at warp speed. Tucker (who just loves to interrupt when his superior officers are on the phone) shouts out that they have a man trapped on the hull who will die if they comply with the Romulan command -- the Romulan commander says, too bad, you've got 80 or so more inside the ship who will also die if you don't comply.

Archer comes back inside and hatches a plan: he will bring two shuttle pod doors back out to Reed. Enterprise will release the hull plate, Archer will cut the mine's leg so as to free Reed (although that action will set off the mine's proximity fuse) and then the two men will use the shuttle pod doors to shield themselves from the blast and, with luck, make it back to Enterprise.

The only problem is, the Romulans don't want to wait that long. They hold fire when Enterprise releases the hull plate but charge weapons when it becomes clear Enterprise is not immediately going to warp. Archer and Reed (in a manner that is never explained) make it back into the ship's hold just in time and Enterprise goes to warp before the Romulans can fire.

If Reed and Archer weren't so ridiculously irritating, both individually and together, this would actually be a great episode. There is a lot to like here: the presentation of the Romulans, for the most part, matches Star Trek lore about this dangerous race; the tension is pretty good; and the secondary characters (Sato, Mayweather and Phlox -- in other words, those characters who are not white males) actually get significant screen times and are permitted to perform their jobs effectively to make a real contribution to the outcome.

Episode 28: Carbon Creek

A charming episode that permits an exploration both of an earlier period in Earth's history and of Vulcan-Human relations on a personal scale.

As part of banter over dinner, Archer brings up the issue of performance reviews. As part of his review of T'Pol's file, he noticed that, while on Earth, she had paid a visit to Carbon Creek, Michigan. In answer to his inquiry as to purpose of her visit, T'Pol agrees to "tell a story" for the gratification of her captain  and Tucker.

It would seem that T'Pol's second fore-mother (her great grandmother), T'Mir, paid a visit to Earth in the late 1950s as part of a Vulcan survey crew sent to monitor the Human race after the launch of its first artificial satellite, Sputnik. As a result of a malfunction, the Vulcan ship crashes in a remote area of Michigan, killing the captain and leaving T'Mir in command of the two surviving crew members. They don't know if their distress call was actually sent before the crash so they settle in to try to survive until help arrives.

One of the crew members, Mestral, shows an interest in getting to know the local Humans. T'Mir resists the suggestion until the Vulcan rations run out and the crew faces a choice between interacting with Humans and starving to death. To their surprise, the violence-addicted, nuclear-weapon testing, primitive Humans welcome them into their community and, as time passes, the three obtain employment I(T'Mir in the local pub, Mestral in the mine and the third unnamed Vulcan as a handyman) and begin to develop relationships with the Humans.

T'Mir is hesitant, Mestral is interested and the third Vulcan resists the temptation entirely. When Mestral's relationship with the divorced owner of the local pub, who is saving desperately to permit her precocious son to attend university, begins to take on a distinctly romantic flavour, T'Mir attempts to intervene.

An explosion in the mine traps a group of humans underground and Mestral, over T'Mir's objections, decides to use Vulcan technology to help to rescue them. Once the decision is made, the three Vulcans work together to save the Humans without exposing their tech. Mestral becomes something of a local hero.

Just as they have given up all hope of rescue, T'Mir's communicator beeps. A Vulcan ship is three days away. The three begin to prepare to leave. T'Mir spends one last evening at the bar and, after closing, begins to meditate. The bar owner's precocious son arrives and chats with her about meditation, Earth religions and the fact that he has had to give up his scholarship and his hopes of attending college due to lack of money.

T'Mir heads back to the Vulcan ship and retrieves an item, which she then takes with her on a trip to the big city. There, she reveals the item to be a satchel with a Velcro closure and her plan to be to sell the technology for Velcro in order to obtain sufficient funds to permit the son to attend college.

T'Mir leaves the money in the tip jar on the bar and then permits Mestral to remain behind to spend the rest of his life exploring the Human race, telling the arriving Vulcan captain that both Mestral and the captain died in the crash.

Tucker and Archer challenge the truth of her story and T'Pol refuses to confirm or deny it. When she returns to her quarters, however, she pulls out the purse T'Mir had carried with her to the city, lending some credence to the tale.

It's a nice episode. The exploration of the Human race on the cusp of space travel is interesting and the fact that, but for Mestral, the Vulcans express sincere concern that the Humans' technological knowledge has far outpaced their maturity. The seeds of Vulcan mistrust of Human development, so clearly established in the 22nd Century, are sewn here.

I would have preferred to have seen at least passing references to the climatic and atmospheric differences between Earth and Vulcan (Earth is colder, its air "thicker", its gravity weaker) so as to create at least some form of link with Trek lore. I don't see any justification for the decision to have T'Mir's silhouette projected so crisply on a hanging sheet as she strips naked to don Human apparel near the start of the story -- it's a childish indulgence of the more prurient natures of the show's creators and completely unnecessary in an otherwise high quality episode.

Episode 27: Shockwave Part 2

Blah blah blah, a little torture, a lot of T'Pol in her underwear, a little completely nonsensical technobabble and you've got "Shockwave Part 2".

Archer is trapped in the shattered remains of Earth's distant future with a distraught Crewman Daniels and no apparent way to return to his own time... or any other time, for that matter. Meanwhile, T'Pol permits Silik and his Suliban chums to board Enterprise to confirm that Archer is no longer there, leading to the entire crew being held prisoner in their own cabins and the ship being piloted back to the Suliban Cabal's space center.

Silik then discovers that, for some reason, his mentor from the future isn't answering his calls, a very convenient development for the Star Fleet crew.
As they search through the remarkably intact remains of some famous American library which I no doubt am expected to recognise, which is still packed with remarkably preserved paper books (I mean, the paper has apparently survived some kind of war and then something like FIVE CENTURIES and still holds up pretty well), Daniels refuses to tell Archer anything about the future he left behind (why, since they are apparently trapped, he worries about contaminating the already destroyed timeline I'll never know) but does tell Archer that he is the absolute key to everything good that comes after his initial voyage on Enterprise.

T'Pol is dragged into the Suliban interrogation chamber in her skivvies and pumped full of truth drugs She writhes and shakes and proceeds to tell Silik the truth, though her truth does not include any information about where Archer went or how he got there, so she's not much use. Tucker manages to figure out a way to get the comm system working well enough to contact Reed, then Sato, then finally T'Pol. He doesn't seem interested in talking to any other member of the crew, however, even though many of them might be more useful to him than a Communications Officer, for example. Nope, main cast only for this episode.

Daniels finally hatches a plan to build some sort of a device using Archer's 22nd Century scanner and communicator that will permit Archer to communicate with Enterprise -- it's a miracle. Daniels sends Archer off to search for certain materials he needs for his work, a scene that is slightly reminiscent of Kirk's search for the materials Spock needs to access his tricorder's memory in the 1930s in "City on the Edge of Forever". Archer actually asks the question we've all been asking -- why not just send me back in time to a week before all the problems started, rather than to the precise moment I left -- and Daniels explains that he has already made one history-altering mistake so he's not willing to risk making another.

The explanation, of course, is no explanation at all. But at least Archer asked the question.

A drugged out and slightly delirious T'Pol is returned to her quarters by the frustrated Suliban, only to find Archer's face floating at the ceiling above her. Archer is talking to her from nine centuries into the future and, even more amazing, he can actually hear her too. Yep, Daniels sends a cheesy projection of Archer's face along with his voice back through time and, despite the fact that he has sent absolutely no microphone tech back as well, Archer can hear and decipher the delirious Vulcan's mumblings.

Did I mention that, for some reason, Daniels sends Archer's face back to T'Pol's quarters even though Archer should have expected T'Pol to be on the bridge at this crucial time? It's almost as if Archer and Daniels know that the Suliban have imprisoned all the Enterprise crew in their quarters!

Archer feeds T'Pol an intricate plan. T'Pol communicates that plan to the others through Tucker's makeshift comms system and soon we have a scantily clad, sweat soaked Sato worming her way through the air ducts to obtain hypo sprays from Phlox (who, apparently, keeps large quantities of sedatives in his quarters) and the to deliver them to Tucker and Reed. In a classic B&B twist, Sato manages to lose her sweaty t-shirt just before arriving at Reed's quarters, creating a wonderful opportunity for some cheesecake with a dose of hyper-sexualisation to boot.

Reed volunteers to go into Crewman Daniels' quarters to obtain some piece of technology he left behind and then to permit himself to get captured and tortured until he divulges to the Suliban that Archer ordered him to destroy the technology before it fell into Suliban hands, for fear that the Suliban would use it to contact someone. This is an interesting twist since it implies that Archer and Daniels knew, somehow, the Silik was having problems contacting his mentor from the future. How did they know this? Your guess is as good as mine.

Silik takes Daniels' technological doo-dad and rushes back to the chamber where he contacts his mentor from the future and tries again. But it's a clever trick. Daniels needed his doo-dad in the Suliban future contact chamber to permit him to combine his technology with the Suliban technology to transport Archer back to the present. Archer bursts out of the time stream, pummels Silik into submission and demands free passage.

Meanwhile, Tucker and Reed overwhelm the Suliban engineers running Enterprise's engine room and then begin a fake warp core breach. Convinced that Enterprise is about to blow up, the Suliban drag it away from the helix cluster and set it adrift, fleeing in the opposite direction to avoid getting caught in the matter-antimatter explosion of Enterprise's engines.

As soon as they're free, T'Pol, Tucker and Reed turn off the breach and Enterprise goes to warp. Things seem good until 30 or so Suliban ships catch up to them and begin to tear her to shreds with their advanced weapons. Just when all seems lost, the Suliban ships call off their attack and Archer reveals that he is in the sole remaining Suliban ship with Silik as his prisoner.

Enterprise then continues on its merry way, only to receive a transmission from Star Fleet telling them that, while it appears clear they were not at fault for the original destruction of the mining colony that started the whole mess, the Vulcans are still bullying Star Fleet into cancelling their mission.

Archer gives an impassioned speech, T'Pol challenges the illogic of the Vulcan arguments and the treachery of their own behaviour. Admiral Forrest advises Archer that Star Fleet command must consider the situation.

This gives B&B another chance to put T'Pol in her jammies for a late night chat with Archer, who delivers the news that T'Pol's arguments carried the day and Enterprise is to be permitted to continue its mission.

Yep. T'Pol plays most of the episode in her skimpy pajamas, Sato is first portrayed as fearful, weak and unprofessional and then, when she actually comes through in heroic fashion, loses her top and suffers the indignity of arriving at her moment of glory with her hands clasped over her breasts for the enjoyment of her male colleagues and the masturbatory teen viewer.

All the rest of the characters in the show are male. And the plot is ridiculous.

Oh, and Tucker is at his best. First, when the Silik orders to his soldiers to kill Star Fleet crew at the slightest sign of resistance and T'Pol has ordered compliance, our idiot engineer immediately resists, attempting to assault a Suliban soldier. He disobeys a direct order from his (female) commanding officer and puts the lives of all of his crewmates at risk.

Then, when Archer and T'Pol are attempting to present a strong, impassioned and logical case to the Star Fleet leadership, Tucker explodes in anger and starts yelling at the Vulcan contingent in the group. He interrupts two of his superior officers to shout at and insult his superior officers' superior officers and puts the entire mission at risk.

And nothing is done about it.

B&B have outdone themselves with this embarrassment of an episode and this embarrassment of an officer.

Episode 26: Shockwave Part 1

If you made it through the entire first season of Enterprise and were still watching when "Shockwave Part 1", the season-ending cliff hanger, rolled across your television screen, this wretched piece of television must have been the final straw, the last nail in the coffin of your loyalty.


Written by Braga and Berman, "Shockwave" is a confused, poorly plotted, poorly paced and often silly two-parter that failed to renew interest in the series and actually led to a further drop in the show's ratings.


By re-introducing the "Temporal Cold War" and slinging Archer hither and yon in the time line, "Shockwave" also re-committed the series to a path that was sure to drive away even the most loyal of Star Trek enthusiasts. Used intermittently in a television series, time travel provides interesting possibilities -- used as the basic underlying premise of a television series like Enterprise, time travel undermines everything that happens, may happen, did happen and ensures that there is no possibility of drama or tension.


Because it ensures that anything that happened is un-doable, routine time travel sucks the suspense from every episode.


And, with "Shockwave", B&B double down on their commitment to time travel as the basis for season two of Enterprise, ensuring that any fan who managed to overlook the series' many many other faults (from poor writing to homophobia, from nonsensical plots to the celebration of bullying, harassment and xenophobia, from hackneyed characterization to the presentation of a future Human society as being less advanced and less mature than the Human society watching the show on TV) will choose not to return for the new season.


Enterprise is invited to visit a very successful mining colony planted decades before by an alien race. While the colony has blossomed from a few brave souls into a thriving community of almost 4,000, its mining efforts have laced the planet's atmosphere with an explosive compound that could be ignited by the superheated exhaust of any small space craft that enters the atmosphere. Ignition means immolation of the entire colony.


Having learned long before that the transporter device is safe for the transport of living beings, Enterprise of course chooses to avoid the risk of sending a shuttle to the planet and beams Archer, T'Pol, Reed and Tucker to the surface for the visit.


Oh wait, no they don't. Despite the availability of the proven safe transporter, they send a shuttle anyway.


But of course this very successful colony, having become well aware of the immolation risk they themselves have created, has invested some of its massive profits into building a protective dome over their installation so that, even if the atmosphere is ignited, the colonists and their assets are well protected.


Oh wait, no they didn't. Despite decades of successful mining and significant growth, the colonists have decided that, well, you know, it's no big deal that the penetration of any alien space craft into their atmosphere could set their very air on fire and burn them all instantaneously out of existence. Because, you know, no alien race would ever raid a successful mining colony!


So down goes the shuttle, up goes the planet's atmosphere and, poof, 3,600 colonists die.


Despite the fact that all investigations show he did everything according to the colony's safety protocols, Reed can't help but blame himself (I've finally figured out which character in literature Malcolm Reed most reminds me: Eey'ore from the Winnie the Pooh stories!).


Archer also descends into a funk of self-loathing and, when Star Fleet cancels Enterprise's mission at the behest of the Vulcans, Archer accepts the order without challenge (but with a lot of hand-wringing).


T'Pol challenges his little pity party but to no avail. Sato and Mayweather pledge their allegiance to their great and glorious leader and vow to defend him against anyone who might suggest he or his mission was a failure.


Then Archer wakes up in the past and Crewman Daniels re-appears and explains to him that the Suliban, using stealth technology, had set up the Enterprise shuttle to ignite the atmosphere in order to cause Star Fleet to cancel Archer's mission, all for the sake of the Temporal Cold War. Daniels also provides Archer with the information he needs to return to the present and gather damning evidence against the Suliban so that Enterprise's mission can continue.


Which begs the question: if Daniels can return Archer to the day after the incineration of the colony, why can't he return Archer to the day before the incineration of the colony so that he can expose the Suliban plot, save the colonists and, in the process, save Enterprise's all important mission?


Ahh, yes, that vexing time-travel question: If all is un-doable, how do you choose what to un-do?


And, if all is un-doable, why should anyone get bent out of shape by what happens?


Archer returns to the day after, uses Daniels' intel to expose the cloaked Suliban ship (which conveniently chooses to hang out at the colony planet for a full 24-hours after its mission has been accomplished) and steals a set of data discs from it that prove Suliban involvement in the destruction of the colony.


Archer does not, however, choose to destroy the Suliban ship.


When challenged as to why he is not worried that the Suliban might pursue and catch Enterprise before it reaches safe harbor with its precious data discs, Archer actually quotes "old biblical movies": "because it is written."


Brilliant man that he is, he actually believes that, with time travel now established as being completely routine and with time lines so changeable, he can actually trust that Daniels' history is actually trustworthy.


Needless to say, the Suliban do chase down Enterprise but, on orders from the future, demand only that Archer surrender himself. Because, as we all know by now, Captain Jonathan Archer alone stands between the proper development of history and all hell breaking loose. No one else matters but our buddy JA.


What is really impressive is the ease with which, what, 30 or so Suliban helixes overtake Enterprise, which is travelling at Warp 4, and the fact that these 30 little ships all have cloaking technology and apparently weapons that are more powerful than those on Enterprise.


With that much technology and firepower, why haven't the Suliban already simply overwhelmed all the forces of good in the galaxy and imposed their will on it?


Archer chooses to surrender himself in order to save his ship and crew but, when he steps through the docking hatch into a Suliban ship, he ends up instead in the 31st Century. With Crewman Daniels. Among the ruins of Human civilization.


A distraught Daniels then tells him that, ten minutes earlier, all was well in the 31st Century. Daniels was having a nice breakfast and enjoying the view. And now, all is lost. Some change in the distance past has resulted in a fairly recent (in terms of centuries, of course) completely annihilation of the Human race and its mother Earth.


Worse still, Daniels no longer has any means to return Archer to his original time period. That technology, too, was destroyed. Fade out. End of season. End of the show making any sense at all.


The time travel aspects of this show (and of this series so far) have made the plots so patently silly that it's almost not worth discussing. I still can't figure out why the Suliban don't simply kill Archer on one of their many opportunities to do so, if the good captain so all fired important to the TCWar. And I have no idea how Daniels, alone, managed to survive the destruction of Human history and to remember both the before time and the after time.


Isn't it a fact of Star Trek time travel that, if a time line is changed as a result of time travel, those actually in the time line have no idea that a change has occurred? This fact is made very clear in any number of Star Trek time travel episodes, including "Yesterday's Enterprise", where only the mysterious Guinan seems to have even the remotest inkling that things have changed after Enterprise C goes back to its property time.


In TOS's "City on the Edge of Forever", the argument is that the landing party was protected from the change in time caused by McCoy's interference in the 1930s by its proximity to the Guardian of Forever. In the movie "First Contact", the Enterprise crew is protected from the impact of the Borg interference in Human First Contact by the fact that Enterprise was caught up in the Borg time portal at the time of the change.


Yet Daniels states very clearly that, ten minutes before Archer's arrival, he had been sitting having a pleasant meal in an unchanged 31st Century. Then, everything changed and he found himself amid the devastation of the change. How is that possible?


Okay okay okay. You can drive yourself mad trying to work it all out, especially when the writers don't even follow their own rules.


I think it is also important to point out that, once again, B&B were so short on ideas for this two parter that they indulged themselves in valueless efforts to waste time and, I guess, build suspense in two scenes in this episode: first, when Enterprise begins to experience warp field fluctuations while fleeing with the data discs; and second, when Archer finds himself in the past, the day before Klang is captured at Broken Bow.


B&B spend a good three minutes trying to build up suspense with the warp field fluctuations issue. Tucker is called to the bridge and everyone scratches their heads, worrying about what is happening. Yet we soon learn that the fluctuations are caused by the presence of numerous cloaked Suliban ships all around Enterprise. Why do the Suliban delay in contacting Enterprise and ordering her to deliver Archer to them? It makes no sense at all. The attempt to build suspense is silly since it depends on irrational behaviour from the Suliban.


And, I'm sorry, but there was absolutely no reason to spend several minutes having Archer trying to figure out where and when he was when Daniels transports him back in time. Daniels was already there. Why bother with all the other stuff? I can only guess that the show was a couple of minutes short and they needed some filler.


Meanwhile, as all of this time travel garbage is going on, the deaths of 3,600 innocent colonists in a silly and contrived situation are all but forgotten.


Awful television. An insult to Star Trek fans everywhere. If only we could go back in time and ensure that B&B were never assigned to any role related to Star Trek. Now that would be timeline change worth fighting for.

Episode 25: Two Days and Two Nights

Enterprise finally gets to Risa. It goes down hill from there.

Apparently, the entire crew drew lots as to who would get to enjoy two days and two nights on the pleasure planet and, apparently, the 12 winners of that lottery included the Captain, the Chief Engineer, the Chief Tactical Officer, the communications and helm officers. Sounds to me  like the odds were never in the favour of the supporting crew.

Reed and Tucker make the trip just to get laid. Of course, they fail. Mayweather heads to the planet to indulge  his never-before-revealed addiction to rock climbing. Of course, he falls. Archer travels to Risa to get some rest and do some reading. Of course, he falls victim to a Tandaran agent in a bathing suit, conveniently outfitted with a dog friend for Porthos.

Sato endures the mockery of Reed and Tucker for wanting to travel to Risa to flex her linguistic muscles by learning some languages without the aid of the Universal Translator and ends up the only one of the five who actually enjoys her visit (and gets laid in the process).

The teenage-boy plot is not worth writing about. Suffice it to say, the number of shape-shifting races in the Universe is increased by one as Reed and Tucker's lady friends turn out to be a pair of unrecognisable aliens who rob them of their clothes. Amazingly, these shape-shifters are capable of being scantily clad females one minute and fully-uniformed, fully armed males the next. Where they hid their pistols in their female guises I will never know.

With regard to the Tandarans, it seems clear now that Berman and Braga intended them to become another major power with an intelligence agency that is second to none. They never did complete that plan but, anyway... It's impressive that the Tandarans were able to place an appropriately-aged, surgically altered female agent on Risa, in a room right below the one that is assigned to Archer, with a dog for Porthos, complete with knock-out drugs under her finger nails even though Enterprise was thrice delayed on the way to Risa and it was more probable than not (considering the lottery) that Archer wouldn't even be coming to the planet.

Of course, this remarkable agent is so cool with Archer, even turning down his early invitation to dinner, until all of a sudden she breaks down and starts to grill him on the Suliban, giving away the game and forcing her to knock him out with her killer manicure and declare "I can't have you interfering", creating the expectation of an on-going Tandaran plot that never materialises.

This is extremely poor writing, lacking in subtlety and skill. It's like Berman and Braga suddenly realised they were 30 minutes into the episode and needed to move things along. So they have their carefully crafted character change direction completely and become a loser agent.

Sato, meanwhile, proves herself to be a truly remarkable linguist, learning the Risan language (complete with an incredibly vast vocabulary) in a matter of hours. Wowee. Then she meets a handsome man who, though impressed with her abilities, challenges her to learn his incredibly complex language that even his own people can't master. Sato fails linguistically but wins in the field of romance.

Back on Enterprise, Dr. Phlox has decided to take a two-day hibernation, leaving Ensign Cutler in charge of Sick Bay. When Mayweather falls and suffers a nasty reaction to a Risan painkiller, Cutler is out of her depth and they have to wake Phlox. In a hibernation-induced stupor, Phlox manages to save the day, an ongoing scene that is intended to bring big laughs.

"Two Days and Two Nights" is basically a throw-away episode, filled with heterocentrism and homophobia (especially among Tucker and Reed), and contributing nothing much to the ongoing stories of the ship and its crew.

Episode 24: Desert Crossing

A very strange episode from Braga, Berman and Bourmanis, "Desert Crossing" puts the entire crew's professional lives on hold while Archer and Tucker go on a manly expedition to a desert planet for a homo-erotic sports ritual with an extremely macho local leader.


At the same time, "Desert Crossing" explores the growing reputation Archer and his crew are gaining across the galaxy and the potentially problematic impact of intervening in local conflicts without really knowing the bigger picture.


Still trying to reach Risa for some shore leave, Enterprise receives a distress call from a small ship with engine problems. Always willing to help, Archer diverts Enterprise and meets the ship's lone occupant, a charismatic man named Zabral. In gratitude for the help provided, Zabral invites Archer and Tucker back to his home planet to enjoy his hospitality and to take part in a regular sporting ritual (which turns out to be a barely changed version of lacrosse).


Enterprise parks in orbit. Archer and Tucker make their way to the desert-dominated surface while the rest of the crew... twiddles its collective thumbs and dreams of shore leave. In an excruciatingly bad scene of male bonding, Archer, Tucker and Zabral enjoy the local delicacies and Zabral plies Archer with gifts. For once, the Star Fleet men don't display their usual xenophobia in sampling the local cuisine until... the testicles of the beast are served to them as a particular delicacy.


The incident is supposed to be funny, I guess, but it comes across as a stunning mixture of xenophobia and homophobia -- Archer and Tucker visibly shudder as soon as they find out what the little meat balls are, then distract their host while they spit out the very tiny sample they tasted.


The scene is made even more ironic by the strong homo-erotic flavor of the rest of the visit, as Archer and Tucker strip naked to the waist to play a sweat-soaked, full-body contact sport, complete with big long sticks and a ball, with an all-male group of locals.


Meanwhile, Enterprise received a transmission from the head of the planetary government, demanding to know why the Earth ship sent a shuttle pod down to the camp of a known terrorist. When T'Pol explains that her captain had gone to enjoy Zabral's hospitality, the local leader warns her that Zabral will probably not permit Archer and Tucker ever to leave again.


T'Pol signals Archer, interrupting all the body-rubbing and sweating, to warn him and convince him to leave the planet. Zabral intervenes and refuses to let him go. Zabral admits that he is the leader of a rebel faction that is fighting for its rights on a planet that, until recently, had a strict caste system that denied basic rights to his people. Zabral adds that he has heard from a Suliban escapee from the penal colony (see "Detained") that Archer is a hero of the downtrodden and an expert in desert tactics -- all he wants is Archer's help in his fight for the rights of his people.


Just then, government mortars begin to bombard Zabral's camp. Archer and Tucker decide it is safer to escape into the desert than risk dying under the government weapons or staying to deal with Zabral. T'Pol, meanwhile, contacts the planetary government to demand that they stop the bombardment -- the leader refuses, saying that Enterprise promised to remove its crewmen from Zabral's camp and has failed to do so, clear evidence that Enterprise is supporting the rebels. The leader further warns T'Pol that any effort by Enterprise to intervene (or send a shuttle pod) would result in an attack on the Star Fleet vessels.


Faced with a seemingly unbeatable planetary detection grid, the Enterprise crew searches for a way to intervene. Meanwhile, T'Pol and Sato engage in a brief conversation on the challenges of any first contact: Sato asks T'Pol how the Vulcans made the decision to make first contact with Americans in Montana, since such a decision created the risk that other world powers would see that as the Vulcans taking sides in Human conflicts. T'Pol then explains that all first contacts have risks, that Vulcan had created a series of rules that must be followed in every first-contact situation and that Archer and Star Fleet would soon see the wisdom in that and create their own directives (get it, Prime Directives) on the issue.


While Archer proves himself a super-human in surviving in the extreme heat of the desert (and keeping a failing Tucker going too), Zabral arrives at Enterprise demanding to be permitted to dock. He tells T'Pol and Reed that the rebels have worked out a very complex path through the detection grid and is then convinced by the Enterprise crew 1) that Archer is not the hero he has been led to believe, nor the desert tactician he has been touted to be and 2) that Zabral had a moral obligation to help Enterprise find their lost crew members.


Zabral flies a shuttle pod to the surface. Their search for Archer and Tucker proves fruitless, however, until the local government begins to bombard a section of the desert that Zabral believes if completely empty of life or building. T'Pol realizes that the local government must have found her captain so the pod first knocks out the mortars, then rescues their dying fellow officers.


If it weren't for the fact that two female characters are permitted to have an intelligent, interesting conversation with each other about important moral and philosophical issues, I would say that this episode is a complete write-off.


The opening scene where Reed and Mayweather ogle photos of some of the woman on Risa is patently offensive, for example. The idea that the entire ship should simply sit in orbit and wait while Tucker and Archer get their macho ya yas on the surface is highly problematic. I've already discussed some of the problems with the early scenes at Zabral's camp and this portrayal of Archer as a super-being is hilarious, especially when at least part of the episode seems designed to debunk the growing myth that surrounds Star Fleet captain across the galaxy.


There is also a lot to talk about with regard to the contradictory presentations of the planet' defenses, including the idea that the planet's government has ships that could threaten Enterprise but chose not even to challenge her when she entered orbit and sent a shuttle pod down to a known rebel base. But it's just not worth the time or the energy to go into any detail.

Episode 23: Fallen Hero

Brannon Braga, Rick Berman and Chris Black wrote the story, Alan Cross wrote the teleplay as Enterprise comes up with its second good, solid episode of Star Trek in a row with "Fallen Hero".


The start is not promising: in typical B&B fashion, the teaser of "Fallen Hero" focuses on sex, with T'Pol in the middle of things. The Vulcan science officer advises Archer and Tucker over dinner that she has noticed an increase in tension among her Human crew mates. Her research suggests that sexual activity might help ease that tension, especially for senior Human officers who are forbidden, by Star Fleet regulation, to release their sexual tensions in relations with lower ranks.


T'Pol recommends that Enterprise redirect to a planet called "Risa" (which came to fame in TNG) and, after some coaxing, Archer agrees.


No sooner does he make that decision but the good Captain gets a call from Star Fleet, ordering Enterprise to head to a planet called Mazar with all good speed to pick up a Vulcan ambassador (V'Lar) and deliver her to the Schran (okay, the name of the Vulcan vessel is the Sh'Raan but it sure sounds like it shares its name with our favourite Andorian).


As usual, the Vulcans aren't explaining why they need Enterprise's help and Archer is given yet another chance to rant. The Vulcans are also not explaining why their ship will take seven days to get to Mazar, while Enterprise apparently can get to Mazar, pick up the ambassador and be back to meet the Sh'Raan in just three days. The Sh'Raan, we learn later, is capable of Warp 7. Enterprise maxes out at just under Warp 5. The math just doesn't add up.


Putting that aside, we then launch into a pretty gripping story of intrigue and mistrust. The Mazar seem only too happy to see the last of V'Lar, delivering her to Enterprise almost as soon as the Star Fleet ship arrives in orbit. We learn that V'Lar is a hero of T'Pol's and had a significant impact on her decision to pursue the career path that led her to Enterprise; we witness T'Pol struggle with the actual woman that V'Lar presents, both because V'Lar is much less rigid as a Vulcan than T'Pol expects and because V'Lar admits that she has been required to leave Mazar in the wake of allegations she has committed a number of crimes and abuses of her position, allegations she does not contest.


In the meantime, Enterprise finds a Mazar warship on its tail, demanding the return of the Vulcan ambassador. When Archer advises the Mazar captain that he will need to get Star Fleet approval before complying, the Mazar ship opens fire. At this point, we learn that Enterprise's torpedoes are not particularly effective and, worse, that Enterprise can't fire her new, improved phase cannons while at warp. Fortunately, the Star Fleet vessel is able to drop out of warp and disable the Mazar ship with her phase cannons, permitting Enterprise to flee.


Archer then challenges V'Lar to explain what is going on. If he is expected to put his ship and crew at risk for her, he wants to know why. When V'Lar refuses to explain, Archer orders Mayweather to turn Enterprise around and head back to Mazar to return the ambassador. It's a bit childish, this brinksmanship, but it is also both understandable and effective.


T'Pol and V'Lar sit down to talk through the significant trust issues that mar relations between Vulcans and Humans, between Archer and Vulcans, between Archer and T'Pol, and, through that discussion, manage to iron out their own interpersonal issues. It turns out that the decision to accuse V'Lar of certain misconduct is merely a strategy to remove her from the danger posed by the negative factors of Mazar society which she was investigating in the interim before she can testify.


T'Pol then approaches Archer and, while refusing to explain the whole story, asks Archer to trust her and turn Enterprise around. In a key moment in their relationship, Archer agrees to implement T'Pol's request without further questions.


Enterprise turns around but is soon set upon by three Mazar ships, crewed by the Mazar bad guys. Outgunned, Enterprise increases her speed to maximum and then beyond. The Mazar ships are pushed to their limits but Enterprise is too and the Sh'Raan is still too far away. With V'Lar's help, Sato tries to get a message to the Vulcan ship through the Mazar interference but there is no way to know if the message was received.


Archer risks all on the assumption that Enterprise can hold out at warp 4.97 longer than the Mazar ships can but, in the end, he loses. Enterprise is forced to drop out of warp and the Mazar ships open fire, crippling her. The Mazar captain then boards Enterprise in order to collect V'Lar and Archer does his best to stall for time, including hiding V'Lar in a medical imaging chamber with the claim that she was badly burned in the battle.


The Mazar finally get tired of waiting and rifle the medical chamber with laser fire. Meanwhile, the Vulcan ship arrives and drives off the Mazar ships to protect Enterprise. Faced with the probable destruction of his ships under the superior weapons of the Sh'Raan, the Mazar captain surrenders to Archer, smug in the assumption that he has accomplished his mission and killed V'Lar.


As the Mazar officers turn to leave Sick Bay, V'Lar greets them at the door and promises that their current crimes will be added to her evidence. The Mazar are permitted to depart with their tails between their legs (no, Mazar don't actually have tails) and V'Lar takes her leave of Archer and T'Pol, telling them she senses a relationship of respect, trust and even friendship between them.


Despite the fact that time and distance are really messed up in this episode (including the fact that Enterprise travels back toward Mazar for a long long time before T'Pol convinces Archer to turn her around again, yet they don't encounter the Mazar taskforce until much later), "Fallen Hero" is a very enjoyable, effective episode.


The presentation of Vulcans is much more balanced than in earlier episodes and the show even attempts to explore the legitimate grounds for the distrust between Vulcans and Humans. Further, the relationship between Archer and T'Pol is nicely developed and advanced and we can see a real friendship starting to develop.

Episode 22: Vox Sola

"Vox Sola" offers some of the cheesiest "special effects" I've ever seen in film or television since, well, since Star Trek in the 1960s. TOS has papier maché rocks; Enterprise has silly string aliens.


And yet, "Vox Sola" is a remarkably effective, creepy, fun episode. I cringe when I think about it. That slime the alien leaves on its victims? Those ultra-fake tendrils? Yuck.


A brief, unsuccessful first contact with an alien race (the "Cretassans"?) has two lingering impacts: 1) Sato suffers a crisis of confidence after her failure to provide adequate translation services during the first contact and 2) a strange, gooey, silly-string alien invades Enterprise from the Cretassan ship.


While the alien sets up camp in a cargo bay, Sato beats herself up about her own failure and interprets every comment her crew mates make to her as criticism. Sato, who complains that the Cretassan language is the most complex she's ever encountered, is especially sensitive to T'Pol, who simply advises her to learn from her failures.


Two minor characters (Rostov and Kelly) go to investigate power issues in the cargo bay and are the first to get sucked into the alien. Archer, Tucker and Reed then head in to see what's up and only Reed escapes. The effects, though cheesy, are remarkably effective and downright creepy as the two minor and two major characters are slowly enveloped in the goo.


T'Pol and the crew identify four approaches to the problem: Phlox looks at it from a medical standpoint; Reed takes the military route; Mayweather takes Enterprise in search of the Cretassans to see if they have any info; and Sato is finally permitted to pursue her suspicion that the alien is sentient and the Star Fleet crew could communicate with it.


Phlox confirms that the alien is sentient and, further, that it is slowly absorbing the four Star Fleet crew into its own body. He warns that soon there will only be one being in the cargo bay once Archer, Reed, Rostov and Kelly are completely absorbed. Phlox also refuses to permit Reed to torture the segment of the alien that they are studying in Sick Bay in his efforts to find a weapon to use against it.


When it becomes clear that attacking the alien means injuring their colleagues (see "Lights of Zetar" from TOS), Reed turns his attention to building a force field that will permit Sato to enter the cargo bay safely as she attempts to communicate with the alien.


Meanwhile, after some verbal jousting, Sato and T'Pol form an alliance to work together on decoding the alien's language, which appears to be mathematical in form. During several extended scenes where the two female characters work together on the problem, they are also able to resolve their own personal conflict as T'Pol assures Sato, in a typically unemotional Vulcan manner, that T'Pol considers Sato to be an asset to the ship and that T'Pol only pushes Sato because she knows the linguist can achieve great things.


Mayweather finds the Cretassan ship but, when hailing frequencies are opened, realizes he is alone on the bridge, facing the unenviable prospect of having somehow to communicate with a race whose language is ridiculously difficult and who get offended quite readily. To Mayweather's surprise, however, the Cretassan captain has taken it upon himself to learn English (??) and, once Mayweather has apologized on behalf of his captain, the Cretassan is willing to help.


Mayweather describes the alien (white with tendrils) and the Cretassan confirms that they had visited its home planet. Instead of being insulted that Mayweather seems to be accusing the Cretassans of inflicting the alien on the Star Fleet crew, the Cretassan sends the coordinates of the alien's home planet.


Using Reed's newly perfected force field, Sato and T'Pol enter the cargo bay and, as their crew mates' life signs fade, start to try to communicate. Several creepy, anxious moments ensue but finally they are successful. The alien gives them latitude and longitude coordinates on its planet and releases the captured crew.


Last scene, Enterprise returns the alien to its home world and it reintegrates itself into the main part of its body that it had left back on the planet.


Beyond the simple effectiveness of its suspenseful and creepy plot, there is much to like in this episode (story by Braga, Berman and Fred Dekker, teleplay by Dekker):

1. The discussions of the linguistic challenges posed first by the Cretassan language and then by the alien language are interesting, intelligent and worthwhile;
2. The inclusion in the plot of three members of racialised communities (Sato, Mayweather and Kelly, played by African American actress Renée Goldsberry) with reasonably major roles is a refreshing change from the usual all-white all-male productions;
3. The inclusion of a crew member with apparently Russian (or similar background), in the form of Rostov, is also nice, since it took TOS a full season and a public outcry to add a Russian to the crew;
4. It is great to see an episode with significant roles for women and, most particularly, to see entire scenes played out with female characters interacting with each other while conducting the important work of the ship; and
5. It is awesome that Enterprise finally encounters a truly alien alien and, except for Reed, responds to the challenge in a thoughtful, rather than an aggressive and judgmental way.

There are, of course, small problems:

• If the alien is actually part of a greater whole, why did a piece of it decide to leave the larger body and stowaway onboard the Cretassan ship?
• Why would T'Pol at first reject Sato's suggestion that she work on decoding the alien's language ("we don't have time," she says) when Sato was not needed as the rest of the crew pursued other options -- wouldn't it make sense to order to her to get started rather than permitting her to sit around waiting?
• Why would the Cretassan captain bother learning English after that very negative encounter with humans? And how did he manage to master it so fully in so short a time that he would understand the word "tendrils"? Surely, "tendrils" would not be among the first 1,000,000 words a newcomer to English would add to his vocabulary. I've been learning French for most of my life and I couldn't tell you what the French word is for "tendrils";
• How do the Star Fleet crew members recover so quickly once they are released? Weren't they near death? and
• If Star Fleet has been working on perfecting a forcefield for years (as Reed tells T'Pol), how is that Reed can perfect the technology in less than a day? Will we see more forcefields in future episodes?

The problems are small and the episode surprisingly good. After a couple of really bad shows, "Vox Sola" was a nice surprise.

Episode 21: Detained

If we believe the episode "Detained", the Suliban and the Tandarans have been at war for eight years, ever since the Suliban Cabal began its genetic enhancements. The Tandarans are aware of the Temporal Cold War and have an extensive intelligence network that spans the galaxy.

Further, the Tandarans have the advanced technology required both to fend off the Suliban Cabal attacks for almost a decade and to spy on all the other major powers in the area, including the Klingons and the Vulcans.

And, for some reason, we have never heard of them.

As far as my rather faulty memory serves, the Tandarans do not appear again in Enterprise, they are never heard from in TOS, they make no noise in TNG or DS9 and Voyager manages to last seven seasons without ever mentioning them. I don't even recall a mention of Tandarans in any of the films in the Star Trek canon, nor in the animated TV series. I guess it is possible that the Tandaran race plays a major role in one or more of the ubiquitous Star Trek novels, or in a fan-made web series, but I've never heard of them.

A major race, with claims to a significant sector of the galaxy, with the military and technological ability to fight toe-to-toe with the Suliban cabal, and we never see them again?

Oh wait, isn't that woman Archer encounters on Risa a Tandaran? Okay, so chalk one up for B&B. They actually made this race somewhat significant for two whole episodes.

Okay, sarcasm aside, at least B&B were trying to do some real Star Trek in "Detained". Like "A Private Little War" from the Original Series, "Detained" is intended to place a real life, morally challenging situation, place it into the sci-fi context, and then examine it in some detail.

In this case, the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War is re-examined in the Star Trek context. Archer and Mayweather wake up in a Tandaran internment colony that has been built for the sole purpose of "relocating" Suliban people who, until the advent of the Cabal, had been happy, contributing members of Tandaran society, living on Tandaran worlds.

It would seem that our Star Fleet officers flew a shuttle craft into Tandaran space and were shot down. When Archer explains the situation to the Tandaran warden, all seems well. Archer and Mayweather will be transported in three days' time to Tandar Prime for a quick hearing and then be released.

Then things start to go south. Archer begins to mingle with the Suliban, the Tandarans (apparently) start to suspect that Star Fleet has had a little too much interaction with the Suliban in the past, and the warden starts to demand that Archer provide the Tandarans with information about the Cabal.

Archer, upset with the very existence of the internment camp and the fact that children are kept there and families kept separated, refuses to cooperate. Suddenly, their trial is postponed and their detainment at the camp is extended for another two months.

Meanwhile, back aboard Enterprise, T'Pol attempts to negotiate with the Warden but is constantly interrupted by Tucker, who threatens and fumes. When they learn the trial has been postponed, T'Pol orders Enterprise to the prison colony to help Archer and Mayweather stage a prison break.

The Suliban prisoners are hesitant allies. They are none of them soldiers and they prefer to remain detained rather than be killed in a botched escape. Enterprise, however, overwhelms the Tandaran defences and the escape succeeds.

It's an allegory, fine. It sends the absolutely true message that the U.S. (and Canada) were wrong to imprison their citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Great. Agreed. Absolutely true.

But it is so filled with holes that it is almost not worth watching:

• Enterprise's sensors can pick out two humans among more than 100 Suliban and Tandarans in a matter of seconds, a feat of which their sensors never were capable of before;
• Enterprise beams a communicator down to Archer and Mayweather but no weapons. With the limited number of guards at the camp, two phase pistols should have been enough to overwhelm the entire Tandaran force and permit the prisoners to go free safely;
• Archer and Mayweather were shot down in their shuttle pod yet, at the end of the episode, their shuttle pod is in good enough shape to fly away home without any repairs;
• T'Pol makes the tactically questionable decision of permitting Tucker to fly another shuttle pod down to attack the camp, despite the fact that Enterprise is right behind him, having disabled two Tandaran security vessels;
• The Tandarans have managed to battle the Suliban for eight years, yet Enterprise can disable two of their ships with a single torpedo for each?
• Reed, with a phase pistol in his hand, leaves it to his explosive charges to deal with the head Tandaran guard and two of his cohorts, rather than just stunning all three?
• If the Tandarans are an ally in the battle against the Suliban Cabal, why not now circle back, demand that they dismantle the internment camps as a condition to a mutual cooperation pact?

And so much more. It is, however, nice to see Mayweather get to play a more major role in an episode.