Exploring The Andorians More “The Aenar” Works!

The Good: Moments of character (especially Tucker!), Special effects, Acting
The Bad: Very predictable plot, A little light on character overall
The Basics: “The Aenar” finishes off the big Andorian and Romulan arc well and foreshadows important events aboard the Enterprise.


Even though Brannon Braga had left Star Trek: Enterprise by the time the Federation-founding arc of the series , some of the episodes have a Braga-esque feel to them. Brannon Braga was known for episodes of the Star Trek franchise that featured a reversal at the very end of the episode. “United” (reviewed here!), which preceded “The Aenar” featured a reversal at the end of the episode that was very Braga-esque. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to discuss “The Aenar” intelligently without revealing that last-second reversal. Knowing that the Romulans were using what appeared to be an Andorian was a decent way to end “United” and it set up “The Aenar” well.

“The Aenar” is the third part of an arc that has served to foreshadow the impending Romulan War, which would lead to the creation of the United Federation Of Planets. Given how little was known about the Andorians before Star Trek: Enterprise, “The Aenar” enhances the Andorian race without actually contradicting anything from the rest of the franchise – at least as far as Andorian culture and physiology goes.

As peace talks between the Andorians, Vulcans, Tellarites and humans become serious, the Romulan leadership becomes frustrated with the result of the drone ship’s mission. As the Romulan Senator, Vrax, exerts pressure on Valdore, the Enterprise crew and Shran analyze the data brought back by Reed and Tucker. When Phlox reveals that the drone ship’s pilot was closely related to the Andorians, Valdore plans to launch a second drone ship to fight the growing alliance. When Shran reveals that the brainwave belonged to an Aenar, the Enterprise heads to Andoria to try to find the reclusive subspecies of Andorians. When Shran is hurt exploring the ice caves in which the Aenar live, his best chance for survival becomes the pale, telepathic, Andorian subspecies.

At the Aenar compound, Archer meets with the Speaker of the Aenar, who reads his thoughts. The Speaker is shocked to realize that Archer might be telling the truth about an Aenar piloting the Romulan drone ship and she genuinely wants to help the Enterprise stop the drone ship. After testing the telepathic remote control technology on T’Pol, Shran and Archer have to avoid ice worms and convince the captured Aenar’s sister to join their cause. Jhamel is more able to adapt to the telepathic remote control and as the Romulan drone ships race toward Enterprise, she becomes the best hope for stopping the Romulans.

“The Aenar” is one of the rare episodes in the Star Trek franchise where the guest character and guest star is given the chance to shine. On one of the bonus features to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, actor Jeffrey Combs discusses the broad range of roles he has played in the Star Trek franchise. He muses about, but writes off, the possibility of him ever becoming a Star Trek captain. In “The Aenar,” he plays with enough emotional range to defy his own prediction. As Shran, Combs is emotive and smart and plays the character as a natural leader. In “The Aenar,” the only real defect to the performance is more of a writing problem; Combs fails to have the death of Shran’s Talas resonate into this episode. Given how important Talas was characterized as being in “Babel One” (reviewed here!), the fact that Shran does not mourn more is frustrating. Even so, Combs is a wonderful actor and “The Aenar” gives him a chance to give a truly well-rounded performance. His physical performance, wherein he is constantly off balance as a result of the events of “United” is brilliantly presented.

It’s not made clear enough in “The Aenar” how a doped-up Aenar is an effective tool for the Romulans. While the idea that the Aenar might fit into a Romulan-developed technology is interesting, to control the controller seems like he would be less adept than they would need to manipulate the controls.

The real character work in “The Aenar” is a brief arc involving T’Pol and Tucker. Tucker takes a very defensive stance toward T’Pol when the Vulcan first officer attempts to use the experimental remote control technology. Tucker claims to be acting professionally, but his interest in T’Pol is obviously personal. Tucker’s request for a transfer is an interesting one that actually enhances his character; he’s not a guy who deals with loss well and that plays out well in “The Aenar.” The rest of the characters pretty much do what is expected of them; Phlox lets Jhamel determine her own fate and Archer is predictably heroic in trying to establish peace and understanding.

The acting in “The Aenar” is homogenously good and Brian Thompson’s Valdore is a decent-enough antagonist to realistically have starships named after him, which attentive viewers know will happen given that the main Romulan ship in Star Trek: Nemesis (reviewed here!) is called the Valdore.

The resolution to “The Aenar” is frustrating, less for its predictability and more for its military stupidity. The fact that the entire Romulan War could have been averted by StarFleet recovering one of the drone ships makes it inexplicable that the Enterprise crew would help destroy it! That said, “The Aenar” is a decent episode and a good end to the three-part arc begun in “Babel One.”

The two biggest gaffes in “The Aenar” are:
2. The use of remote control holographic drones in this time period makes it ridiculous that a race like the Romulans, with closed borders, would ever risk their personnel on starships in the future in episodes like “Balance Of Terror” (reviewed here!) and “The Defector” (reviewed here!),
1. Given Archer’s experience with Shran at the Aenar colony, Captain Pike should never have been fooled by the Talosians in “The Cage” (reviewed here!). Telepaths obscuring the truth should have become something that StarFleet built a defense against.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season here!
Thanks!]

7/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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So Much Retcon! “Observer Effect”

The Good: Good acting, Moments of plot, Moments of retcon character
The Bad: Some continuity issues, Generally light on character development
The Basics: Cleverly reinserting the Organians back into the Star Trek narrative; Star Trek: Enterprise’s “Observer Effect” makes the Enterprise into an alien laboratory for a decent story!


For a science fiction geek such as myself, it is actually pretty surprising that – though I had heard the term retcon many, many times – it was not until last year that I learned what “retcon” meant. “Retcon” means “retroactive continuity:” the basic idea that ideas told to viewers or readers later in a narrative that allude to prior events have actually existed all along. A prequel series like Star Trek: Enterprise is all about retcon. In the fourth season, the show more actively attempted to lay the seeds for Star Trek (The Original Series). One of the big episodes for retcon was “Observer Effect.”

“Observer Effect” illustrates how difficult it can be to retcon well. Two masters of Star Trek history (Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens) work in the episode to retcon a story that has a virus brought to the Enterprise and while it has some problematic aspects in tying into the original Star Trek, it actually has pretty decent retcon work for the character of Hoshi Sato. After more than three years, we learn why she was not in StarFleet when Archer found her in “Broken Bow” (reviewed here!).

Opening with Reed and Mayweather, clearly possessed, playing chess and talking about an experiment in progress on the planet below in detached terms, the Enterprise crew is observed by two aliens under circumstances that always resolve with at least one death. The planet that the ship is in orbit of is described by Sato as a “Klingon garbage dump.” As she and Trip return from the planet, Trip collapses, coughing. In decon, Sato begins coughing as well. As Phlox studies their blood samples, he discovers a silicon-based life virus.

As the aliens inhabiting Reed and Mayweather become frustrated at their lack of ability to get critical information about how the crew is reacting to the virus, organisms take control of Phlox and T’Pol. After Sato leaves Quarantine, Phlox has Tucker and Sato knock themselves out. When he sees them speaking to one another, he realizes there are entities jumping between crewmembers. After his memories are erased by the entities, Phlox develops a dangerous treatment to kill the silicon-based virus.

“Observer Effect” is fun for fans of the original Star Trek when the identity of the “invaders” is revealed. Despite references to the Organian Peace Treaty even into late Star Trek, before “Observer Effect,” the Organians (before this episode) were only seen in “Errand Of Mercy” (reviewed here!). To the credit of Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, “Observer Effect” is a clever way to bring the Organians into the prequel without ruining Star Trek continuity. In fact, the Reeves-Stevens’s are smart to make multiple references to the Klingons, which puts the planet in the episode along a reasonable path for the Organians to be found farther down the line along the same vector.

Because most of the episode deals with reactions by invaders, there is very little actual character development in “Observer Effect.” The Doctor fights like hell to save Sato and Tucker, Archer does the heroic thing while trying to save their lives; these are long-established character traits. Instead, the episode’s real character development comes more from a retcon of Hoshi Sato. Sato is re-characterized as a former troublemaker, gambler, and aikido blackbelt. Given how Sato has never illustrated any combat ability before now, that aspect is an unfortunate retcon. The rest is actually gratifying to hear; why Archer handpicked a non-StarFleet officer for his communication’s officer in “Broken Bow” has been one of the show’s enduring mysteries (never actively focused upon).

The acting in “Observer Effect” is quite good. Dominic Keating and Anthony Montgomery open the episode remarkably well; their acting informs the viewers just as much as the lines they speak. Throughout the episode, all of the performers give wonderful performances. All of the primary cast is given the chance to show off a different way of presenting their “possessed” characters and they make the distinctions well, without ever going over-the-top.

Despite the continuity issues, “Observer Effect” is a worthwhile story that plays with Star Trek continuity fairly well.

The three biggest gaffes in “Observer Effect:”
3. The Federation did not encounter a silicon-based lifeform until “The Devil In The Dark” (reviewed here!), almost a hundred years after this episode. Given how close the planet with the silicon-based lifeform is to the central planets of the Federation, it is unrealistic that it would take a hundred years to encounter another one,
2. Phlox has Tucker set his hypospray to a specific drug. Even in the 24th Century, hypospray technology utilized another device to fill it with the medicine it injected. McCoy and Dr. Crusher both are seen frequently pressing the hypospray into a desk-based device to get the medicine they need to inject. Better technology should not have existed a hundred years prior,
1. The Cardassians are referenced by the Organians. Given how far out this planet would have to be, there is no logical reason they would have made it to the Organian test planet.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season here!
Thanks!]

7/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Reworking The Prequel Well, “Cold Station 12” Continues The Augment Arc!

The Good: Good acting, Engaging story, Decent special effects
The Bad: Irksome flaw in Soong’s character, A little light on character development
The Basics: “Cold Station 12” is one of the strongest middle acts in a longer arc of Star Trek: Enterprise and it puts the Enterprise crew in a compelling dilemma.


The fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise did not take very long to get going with its stated purpose. The show sought in its fourth season to realign Star Trek: Enterprise with the rest of the Star Trek franchise. Almost immediately, the show had an arc that dealt with the genetically-engineered humans, who were left over from Earth’s Eugenics Wars. In the previous series’s in the franchise, the left over genetically-engineered humans were all full-grown and sent away on sleeper ships, unfortunately revived through a mistake hundreds of years later. With the arc that began in “Borderland” (reviewed here!), that is retconned.

Following directly on the events of “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12” has Archer going toe to toe with the Augments. In this case, the Augments are genetically-engineered humans reanimated from fetuses stored after the Eugenics Wars. The existence of Eugenics Wars-era fetuses does not contradict anything previously established in the Star Trek franchise, but it does make it seem strange that Dr. McCoy (at least) would not have been better able to identify Khan when the Enterprise first encountered him in Star Trek.

Opening with a flashback to eleven years prior, where Dr. Erik Soong tells the Augment children of their importance and greatness, the young Malik is excited to learn there are more Augments in the Universe, which Soong tells him the youth must one day rescue. In the present timeline, Soong, having been liberated from the Enterprise by the surviving Augments, charts a plan to rescue the remaining Augments from Cold Station 12. Soong charges Malik with the task of rescuing the Augments without killing any of the humans at Cold Station 12. The Enterprise arrives at the Augment’s colony and there they find Ludar (Smike), a young man who is not an Augment, but is unwilling to help Archer track down the Augments. On the Klingon Bird Of Prey, Malik plays Soong by lying to him about how Raakin died and he confides his distrust of Soong to Persis.

When Tucker realizes that Soong and the Augments took incubators, Archer fears that Soong is going to grow the 1800 remaining Augment embryos to maturity if he can reach Cold Station 12. Archer also learns that Phlox’s associate, Dr. Jeremy Lucas, is now on staff at Cold Station 12. Soong’s Augments hijack a Denobulan ship which they use to gain access to Cold Station 12, where Soong imprisons most of the staff and begins interrogating Dr. Lucas. Soong tortures Lucas as Archer and a team infiltrate Cold Station 12.

“Cold Station 12” might be one of the better episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, but it has some flaws that are irksome for fans of the larger Star Trek franchise. The first big one is that Dr. Soong is characterized as brilliant, yet he resorts to torture not only once, but twice. Torture has never been a reliable means of gaining information, which Picard notes quite potently in “Chain Of Command, Part 2” (reviewed here!). Soong gets an explicit example of how torture does not work when Malik tortures one of the scientists on Cold Station 12 to death without breaking Dr. Lucas. Yet, he allows Malik to do the exact same thing a second time and expects a different result.

Sadly, Dr. Lucas’s character – which is instantly compelling and smart by how internally strong he is – is diminished when Lucas breaks. Dr. Lucas has to realize that the Augments must not be allowed to leave Cold Station 12 with the fetuses and he ought to have been trained to resist longer. Barring that, why Lucas did not sacrifice himself, his crew, and the fetuses when the facility came under siege is somewhat disappointing. Come to think of it, one of the whole purposes of Star Trek Enterprise was to illustrate how hard life for the early explorers was supposed to be: when the Augments note that another ship might be along soon and be less reasonable than Archer, that is an unfortunate leap on their part; there are no other StarFleet ships as fast as Enterprise or in the area that could realistically menace the Augments. As a result, Lucas should have been more willing (not less) to destroy the facility to prevent the Augments from taking the fetuses.

That said, “Cold Station 12” is a pretty wonderful action-adventure episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. On the character front, Archer starts to illustrate some real characteristics of a traditional Star Trek captain. He treats Smike with compassion and tries to connect with him on a very personal level. He talks about a philosophy, consistent with Roddenberry’s ideals of self-determination, where Smike would not be held accountable for his parents’ crimes. Archer is good in the episode, though Brent Spiner’s Dr. Arik Soong steals the show.

In “Cold Station 12,” Spiner illustrates what viewers might have hoped in “Borderland.” Soong is a villainous idealist, much like a James Bond villain, and in “Cold Station 12,” he plays Erik Soong as a misguided idealist working to correct wrongs of the past with his own philosophy. While that philosophy is ridiculous – Soong seems to think the Augments were merely the product of bad training and poor education as opposed to having a genetic defect that heightened their aggression in addition to their ambition to an unhealthy level, as evidenced by Soong’s failure to correct the genetic problems associated with Khan – it is present. Spiner plays Soong as more smart and desperate than angry and as such there is not a hint in his performance of Lore, which is nice.

Alec Newman also overshadows the performers in the b-plot (T’Pol and Tucker attempt to remotely detonate Cold Station 12 from the Enterprise when Archer’s diplomacy fails) as Malik. One suspects he watched Ricardo Montalban’s performance as Khan to make Malik resonate and the performance works. Newman is a credible Eugenics Wars-type character.

On the continuity front, “Cold Station 12” actually has some clever aspects. Sure, T’Pol is still not in a StarFleet uniform and the transporter is now being used pretty frequently, but writer Alan Brennert actually manages to make something very subtle in the episode. In Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, Saavik quotes a general order to Kirk about having shields up when communications with an approaching StarFleet vessel cannot be established. “Cold Station 12” provides an explicit reason (by inference) for why such a directive would be necessary in the future! That’s pretty smart retconning.

Ultimately, “Cold Station 12” is a fast-paced, relatively smart action-adventure episode that leaves viewers eager for the next episode in the arc!

The three biggest gaffes in “Cold Station 12:”
3. Cold Station 12 has a security parameter that allows the station’s crew to be incapacitated by a gas. In the original Star Trek, in episodes like “Wolf In The Fold” (reviewed here!), no such protocol existed; Spock releasing a gas through the environmental control systems took quite a bit of time and was a serious hassle,
2. Given this incident with Augments and how it would have been part of StarFleet records, Khan should have known about the ability to remote-control StarFleet facilities by Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (reviewed here!). In short, Kirk and Spock’s gambit to drop the Reliant shields should not have worked because Khan should have known that StarFleet vessels and facilities could be destroyed remotely,
1. Archer has quite a bit of specifics for Smike pertaining to the young man’s parents and he notes that they have quite a bit of information on them. This directly contradicts assertions in “Space Seed” (reviewed here!) and other episodes that mention how records from around the Eugenics Wars and World War III were lost and fragmented. As a result, there is no reason Archer should have such records, but Kirk, Picard, etc. would not.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Fernando Chien, please visit my reviews of:
Iron Man 3
Red Dawn
The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

7.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Getting To Know The Enemy Is The Goal Of A Successful “Stratagem!”

The Good: Interesting story, Good performances, Good effects
The Bad: No real character development, Huge plot/character/ethical hole in the storyline
The Basics: “Stratagem” progresses the serialized story of Star Trek: Enterprise by having Archer capture and work over Degra, the lead Xindi scientist.


With all of the time travel, alternate universes, and false realities in the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise, it takes a lot of investment on the part of the fans to care about continued mind games by the time “Stratagem” comes up in the season. “Stratagem” smartly avoids trying to fool the viewer while the episode creates an elaborate plot to explore how Archer fools the leader of the Xindi weapons team. More than any other episode in the third season, “Stratagem” focuses on Degra.

The episode is also one of the most potentially divisive episode of the third season; the episode very obviously uses classic conditioning and shared obstacles to build trust between two people. This is actually a common form of torture for information and the fact that Phlox uses Regulan blood worms and drugs to get information from Degra to distort his sense of reality is troubling. “Stratagem” can easily be argued to be an “ends justify the means” episode, but the troubling level of unethical acts Archer and Phlox engage in – without any debate from T’Pol – is disturbing. On the plus side, the “it’s okay to torture the villain” story is well-balanced by humanizing Degra. Degra’s character is fleshed out in ways that were only previously vaguely insinuated at before in Randy Oglesby’s brief performance in prior episodes.

A small shuttle carrying Degra and Archer evades a Xindi Insectoid attack. With their escape successful, Degra is instantly suspicious, but Archer works to convince the befuddled scientist that they have just escaped from a Xindi Insectoid prison camp where the two had shared a cell for the prior three years. Archer tells Degra the story of the prior three years; how after the test that was sabotaged in “Proving Ground” (reviewed here!), Degra was captured by the Xindi Insectoids and shortly thereafter, Archer was kidnapped and the Enterprise was destroyed. While the Xindi Council worked to complete the weapon and destroy Earth, the Xindi Insectoids were building a fleet which they used to wipe out the other Xindi sects. According to Archer, the Xindi Insectoids were just using the rest of the Council to take over the Expanse and Degra is quick to agree that that seems plausible.

Soon, though, it becomes evident that Archer is manufacturing the incident and the story in order to get information from Degra. While Archer utilizes drugs and blood worms to extract information from Degra, the episode flashes back to how Archer came to be in possession of Degra and the tight-lipped Xindi gives Archer little other opportunity to get information from him. After manufacturing the shuttle and the story, Archer slowly builds Degra’s confidence to find the location of Azati Prime, a classified world where Archer believes the Xindi are building their doomsday weapon. The plan starts to fall apart when Degra becomes suspicious and starts to test Archer for knowledge he does not have.

“Stratagem” has a desperate quality to it that none of the episodes since “The Expanse” (reviewed here!) has truly possessed. The attack on Earth led to a seasonlong journey that has not seemed especially pressing, despite the fact that there have been glimpses of the Xindi preparing their new weapon. The concept for the season is a good one, but the sense of desperation that leads to “Stratagem” seems forced. That makes the episode far more troubling than realistic. The means do not justify the ends and considering that Archer gets the name Azati Prime almost immediately from the Xindi computer core, the elaborate way that Archer tries to get more information is pretty reprehensible. In fact, given that Archer has the name Azati Prime and Degra, he could easily have stalled the Xindi weapon simply by keeping Degra aboard. There was no real need for torture.

Despite the plot-centered nature of “Stratagem,” the additional character details about Degra work well. Unfortunately, Archer never gets to Degra the way he managed to get under the skin of the Xindi Arboreal in “The Shipment” (reviewed here!). As a result, there is something of a character anticlimax in “Stratagem.” The episode keeps tight on the plot and Degra never comes to truly admit that the Xindi weapon is wrong. If anything, Archer’s actions only solidify the distrust Degra has in the humans. It seems strange given how far Archer and Phlox go in the episode that they did not work to leave Degra with some sort of post-hypnotic suggestion that the weapon is wrong or that the humans do not deserve to be wiped out.

Instead, “Stratagem” is unimaginative in its plotting and character work. However, the performances are solid. Randy Oglesby makes the previously efficient and clear-headed Degra seem entirely reasonably frazzled. Oglesby is a wonderful character actor and here he starts to layer Degra. Oglesby is not given a lot of work to do – the character is fleshed out with additional character details – but Degra is not asked to do any emotional heavy lifting. Strangely, neither is Scott Bakula. Bakula is pretty straightforward as Archer and the performance is not at all demanding for him. Still, he does a fine job at convincing the viewers that Archer can manage the deception he is perpetrating against Degra.

Best for truly moving forward the urgency of the third season plot of Star Trek: Enterprise, “Stratagem” still has a troubling concept, but a decent execution.

The two biggest gaffes in “Stratagem:”
2. The fact that StarFleet uses torture of this type should have made Riker much more resistant to the same techniques (or more aware of what was happening to him) in “Frame Of Mind” (reviewed here!),
1. The Xindi suddenly are using “subspace vortices” that seem to operate much the same way as the transwarp conduits in “Descent” (reviewed here!). Given that, the transwarp conduits should not have been as much of a novelty or anomaly by the 24th Century.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the penultimate season here!
Thanks!]

5.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Straightforward, Pointless, Action Time Travel Is Found On “Carpenter Street”

The Good: Not boring, Special effects are fine, Leland Orser
The Bad: Simple problem/simple solution for the plot, No character development, Most of the acting is unimpressive
The Basics: “Carpenter Street” breaks the trend of Star Trek episodes doing time-travel episodes that are complicated, smart, and popular with the fans.


In the history of bad ideas, chief among them for Star Trek has got to be time travel stories that contradict Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future. Roddenberry’s future was hinted at several times and episodes in the modern canon have largely failed to live up to that, most notably the Star Trek: Voyager two-parter “Future’s End” (reviewed here and here!). “Carpenter Street” continues Star Trek: Enterprise’s disregard for established Star Trek history as it occurs largely in 2004. Given the serialized nature of most of the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise, the inclusion of time travel episodes – this is the second in the last four episodes, following “Twilight” (reviewed here!) – in the arc muddies the intensity of the story being told.

“Carpenter Street” has fish out of water elements that Star Trek fans will find familiar, though Captain Archer driving a contemporary automobile lacks the level of charm of Kirk driving in “A Piece Of The Action” (reviewed here!). And social notes, like about how the Earth’s fossil fuels are almost entirely exhausted, feel much more forced as they come in the form of asides as opposed to vital components of the episode.

In the past on Earth, a Xindi-Reptile facility is being supplied by a lone man, Loomis. Loomis knocks out a prostitute and abducts her for the Xindi, without knowing what the Xindi need her for (though he knows the victim’s blood type from a clinic at which he worked). Temporal Agent Daniels appears on the Enterprise to inform Archer that three Xindi have appeared in Detroit, Michigan, one hundred fifty years in the past. Archer and T’Pol use a device given to them by Daniels to teleport back in time and space to Detroit. There, they steal a car and money from an ATM to get around to find the Xindi-Reptiles and bring them back to the future.

Loomis, meanwhile, is rounding up people with different blood types for the Xindi. The Xindi offer to pay the suddenly cautious Loomis double for the last three humans they need and his hunt for the other people is interrupted by Archer and T’Pol finding his apartment. Archer, eager to get into the facility to find the Xindi, volunteers to be Loomis’s B negative blood donor. Archer has to chase the Xindi down to get the weapon (a virus, he believes) the Xindi are building and return them to Enterprise and the future.

“Carpenter Street,” named for the location of the factory the Xindi are using for their medical experiments, has Loomis terrified that he might be aiding “terrorists” and the post-9/11 America is accurately embodied by Loomis. There is a mild amount of comedy to be had from T’Pol and Archer visiting a fast food restaurant (not a brand name one), but it is very dated (super sizing and a lack of vegetarian options are only mildly amusing in the long-term).

The fundamental flaw with “Carpenter Street,” though, is that it lacks a sense of menace or sensibility. The Xindi’s plan is not immediately evident, so there is no ticking clock in the episode. The Xindi appear to be hiding in the past while building their secondary weapon alluded to in a prior episode. But that plan seems needlessly complicated; the Xindi Reptiles could more easily have swarmed Enterprise for the biological samples they needed from humans with far less risk (plus the added benefit of ridding the Expanse of the force that is intent on stopping them. But, just as Star Trek: First Contact (reviewed here!) has a fundamentally flawed time-travel aspect, the existence of Xindi time travelling technology means that the Xindi, if they failed to accomplish their mission in “Carpenter Street” could just as easily return to an earlier time period and try again.

In fact, why the Xindi go back to 2004 is ridiculous considering there is an ample blood supply in, say 1200 B.C.?!

On the acting front, the episode is dominated by Scott Bakula and Leland Orser. Jolene Blalock unfortunately emotes quite a bit of disgust as T’Pol and Bakula is too busy being an action hero and hothead (Archer beats Loomis for information, which is ridiculous). Leland Orser, on the other hand, plays a junkie and slimeball exceptionally well and it is unlike any other role he had in the Star Trek franchise. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who was masterful in Watchmen (reviewed here!), is terribly underused as a Xindi in “Carpenter Street.”

“Carpenter Street” has no real character development. T’Pol shows revulsion for meat and Porthos, but that’s long been established.

In the final analysis, “Carpenter Street” is a contrived excuse to deliver a time-travel episode (usually a sure ratings boon) that does not expand the Xindi story well and enhances the characters in no meaningful way.

The three biggest gaffes in “Carpenter Street:”
3. Archer beats Loomis up for information. How does he not know that torture has never been a reliable means of getting information, as Picard very powerfully illustrated in “Chain Of Command, Part 2” (reviewed here!),
2. Temporal Investigations is monitoring Earth with timeships, like in “Future’s End.” The StarFleet timecops should have been all over the Xindi on Earth problem before Daniels and his people ever got Archer involved,
1. According to “Space Seed” (reviewed here!) and subsequent Star Trek lore, “Carpenter Street” occurs during the period between the Eugenics Wars and World War III. By this point, Earth’s governments should have basically been collapsed and technology should have been more advanced, which is not evident in the episode at all.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the penultimate season here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Leland Orser, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Twisted
Daredevil
Alien Resurrection
Star Trek: Voyager - "Revulsion"
Excess Baggage
Independence Day
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - "The Die Is Cast"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - "Sanctuary"

3/10

Check out how this episode stacks up against others Star Trek episode and movies, by visiting my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Nothing So Compelling On Liberating Sex Slaves, Why “Rajiin” Flops!

The Good: In-Enterprise continuity, Hints of character growth
The Bad: Soap operatic Trip/T’Pol moments, Some super-cheesy special effects, Moments of stiff performance, Utterly obvious casting.
The Basics: The hot blonde of the week turns out to be bad news for the crew of the Enterprise in “Rajiin.”


The third season of Star Trek: Enterprise is notable in that it had a heavily serialized structure. As the season progressed, elements carried over from episode to episode and there were frequent teasers that utilized the mysterious Xindi Council. By the time “Rajiin” came up, the executive producers seemed confident that the continuous elements of the story – like Archer still bearing the effects of being mutated in “Extinction” (reviewed here!) – could be included because those watching the show were becoming more regular about their viewership.

“Rajiin” illustrates that the search for information – the Enterprise crew has been desperately hunting information about the Xindi – goes both ways. But while the continuity might be fairly good, the specific details are less than thrilling. While Nikita Ager ably plays the alien Rajiin, there is an unfortunately obvious quality to her casting. She is the stereotypical Hollywood blonde sex symbol and her appearance in “Rajiin” makes Archer seem like quite the tool (he was attracted to a virtually identical blonde in “Rogue Planet,” reviewed here!). In addition to the obvious casting, “Rajiin” suffers because it does not make a larger statement; it is very plot-based and thematically limited.

The Xindi Council reluctantly agrees to give the Xindi scientist Degra more time to build his planet-destroying weapon in the wake of the destruction of his laboratory. Despite the council being divided, the researcher is given more time without a mysterious other option being exercised. Aboard Enterprise, Tucker is worried about how the late night visits to T’Pol’s quarters appear to others aboard the ship. At the same time, Archer continues to recover from his mutation infection and he goes in search of a source of Trellium-D needed to insulate Enterprise from the spatial anomalies in the Expanse. On the bazaar barge the Away Team visits, Archer tries to get information on the Xindi and there he encounters a merchant selling sex slaves, including Rajiin. Rajiin escapes the merchant trying to sell her and flees to Archer’s side. After a short fight, the Away Team escapes with Rajiin to the Enterprise.

Rajiin begins going through the Enterprise crew, apparently possessing both the ability to scan (with a biological ability) life forms and exert influence over crewmembers using telepathic abilities. But, after incapacitating T’Pol and Tucker, Rajiin is exposed and she attempts to flee the ship using the transporter. Far from helpless, Rajiin is revealed to be a cold-blooded operative and her apparent allegiance to the Xindi Reptiles makes Archer instantly suspicious.

“Rajiin” works in the larger story arc of the Xindi to show just how determined the Xindi are. Just as Archer has become unhinged in some ways trying to find information about the Xindi, the Xindi are desperately gathering data on humans. “Rajiin” reveals that the M.A.C.O.S. are not indestructible and that the different factions of the Xindi are pursuing different agendas. In addition to the planet-destroying weapon, it seems the Xindi are eager to start work on a biological weapon. In that regard, the agendas defined in the episode – where Rajiin is being used to acquire biological information on humans – makes perfect sense (they would not have had access to human DNA before now).

The episode also shows that some of the Xindi factions are able and willing to work together. The Xindi Insectoids and Reptiles are seen working together in the breakout of Rajiin. In the process, though, the special effects department creates one of the crappiest special effects of the series. The Insectoids shoot barbs by the hundred that look like mini disruptor blasts and the effect is utterly ridiculous.

The only real character development in “Rajiin” comes in the form of Degra. The Xindi scientist, played by Randy Oglesby, clearly expresses misgivings about the Xindi mission using his body language (more than his lines). While the other Xindi want to progress on two fronts – planet-killer and the bioweapon – Degra is not sold on the idea of genocide and that plays out well for the character with its roots being evident in this episode.

“Rajiin” otherwise seems more like a teenager’s wet dream than a substantive episode of Star Trek. Archer falls for the hot blonde, hot blonde bewitches the only two other female cast members, including a pretty sensual massage with Jolene Blalock’s T’Pol featuring a lot of gasping and near-cupping of the breasts. It’s not all that exciting, but director Michael Vejar seems determined to make the psychic rape scene seem more like a sexual fantasy than the violation that it is (which is troubling).

None of the performances are particularly exceptional and Linda Park steps on one of her lines pretty bad (one assumes Vejar wrote the stumble off as an issue with the character being mind-controlled but given the fluidity of her dialogue before and after, it just comes across as sloppy. Even Scott Bakula’s more primal performance – Archer is still suffering effects from his species change in the prior episode and Bakula makes the acting choice to have Archer jerk around a bit more than usual in early scenes in “Rajiin” – do not land all that effectively in this episode.

Ultimately, the net effect of “Rajiin” is that the viewers learn of a second Xindi weapon and that the three men who wrote the episode had a pretty banal sense of the erotic to bring to the Star Trek franchise.

The gaffes in “Rajiin” is . . . Given how easily Dr. Phlox treats T’Pol’s injuries, there is no reason Dr. McCoy shouldn’t have been able to inoculate against the Elasian tears in “Elaan Of Troius” (reviewed here!) and the Lethian Telepathic Attacks should not be nearly as hard to treat in “Distant Voices” (reviewed here!).

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the penultimate season here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Scott MacDonald, please visit the reviews of:
Carnivale
“The Xindi” - Star Trek: Enterprise
Babylon 5: A Call To Arms
“Hippocratic Oath” - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
“Caretaker” - Star Trek: Voyager
“Captive Pursuit” - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
“Face Of The Enemy” - Star Trek: The Next Generation

3.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Dullness Of Simple Survival Is Explored In “The Catwalk.”

The Good: Decent realistic mood, Moments of character, Special effects.
The Bad: Nothing interesting on the performance front, Minimal character development, Pacing, Virtually plotless.
The Basics: “The Catwalk” has the entire crew crammed into one small area, resulting in a series of pointless interactions that drag out for forty minutes.


One of the unfortunate aspects of heavily plot-centered television episodes is that they provide very little room for the actors to stretch and grow; to add nuance to their performances and their character’s persona. With Enterprise there are frequent examples of episodes where the purpose of the episode is to explain how a technology was developed (i.e. “StarFleet actually got early Holodeck technology from X aliens . . . on this mission” or “the first time the transporter was used on people happened when . . .”) and to create a sense that the Enterprise is on its own without the StarFleet resources every other incarnation of Trek has had at its disposal to fall back on. “The Catwalk” is one of those episodes.

“The Catwalk” is unfortunate in that it is hard to care about the characters, especially as they become irritable and whiny. This is a very whiny episode of Enterprise and given how T’Pol shows irritation early in the episode, it feels rather fast like the writers were stretching to make the limited concept of the episode work.

The Enterprise is in orbit of a new planet when it is hailed by an alien race that advises them of an incoming neutronic front. Unable to outrun the massive spatial phenomenon, Tucker and Archer propose taking refuge in a remote area of the ship, the catwalk section in the warp nacelles. There they plan to weather the storm and as a humanitarian gesture, Archer allows the three Takret aboard. Their leader claims they are stellar cartographers, though it quickly becomes clear that they are not. Facing eight days inside the storm, Archer reluctantly powers down the ship so the crew can survive the phenomenon.

After a few days, nerves get frayed. The Takret keep many of the humans awake with their rituals, Reed gets spacesick, and T’Pol and Reed begin to whine excessively and illustrate annoyance with their peers. When the matter and antimatter injectors come online without warning, Trip is sent to deactivate them. In his spacesuit, he discovers aliens working in Engineering and throughout the ship without any protective suits. He also finds an alien ship attached to the Enterprise and he realizes that the warp systems coming back online is not a glitch. Confronting their guests, they learn the truth about the invaders and face more dangers inside and outside the catwalk.

“The Catwalk” is like the Enterprise version of “Starship Mine” (reviewed here!) or any number of other episodes in the franchise where the ship is taken by invaders. However, it takes two thirds of the episode before that even happens, so it plods along in an uninteresting way for the bulk of the airtime. While Reed has been characterized as a pessimist, he has never before simply been a whiny jerk. Reed ought to be a professional, like the rest of the StarFleet crew, so why he treat Trip badly for his lack of ability to prepare for this exact contingency makes him seem more like a jerk than a character with layers of emotion to him.

More disturbing is T’Pol. While only relevant to a single scene, T’Pol illustrates a very un-Vulcan lack of control when she and Archer share close quarters for resting. Even if T’Pol is irked by Porthos, Archer, and the situation, she should not show it. Spock was able to go several days without rest without emoting and he was only half-Vulcan!

All that said, “The Catwalk” does some of what it sets out to do exceptionally well. The crew of the Enterprise is trapped and alone without any other resources to fall back upon. They only have their ingenuity and the idea of that would be far more compelling if so much of the episode was not spent with the crew’s initial adaptation to the spatial phenomenon they encounter. Moreover, after dealing (surprisingly quickly) with the invaders, the episode moves lazily toward an anticlimax that makes the entire episode feel like it was a waste of time.

While not terrible, “The Catwalk” meanders through itself allowing for nothing superlative or exciting to occur before it ends on a low beat. This is a clear stumble in the Enterprise series, though it is not from incompetence or incongruity with the rest of the franchise, merely its failure to produce anything remotely interesting in and of its own right.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophmore season here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Zach Grenier, please check out my reviews of:
Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Pulse
Fight Club
Tommy Boy

3/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Enterprise’s Anti-Bullying Episode: “Marauders” Hits Mediocre

The Good: Decent acting, Good message, Fine effects
The Bad: Obvious, Somewhat simple plot, Mischaracterizes the Klingons.
The Basics: The Enterprise episode “Marauders” is a straightforward, but oddly inconsistent, episode that has an obvious anti-bullying message.


Every now and then when I am watching Enterprise with her, my wife will laugh at one of the absurd lines in the show. Today, when watching “Marauders,” the line was, “I’ve never liked bullies.” She started laughing and noted that no one actually talks that way and, to illustrate, she mockingly said, “I’ve always loved bullies . . . no, wait, that’s not it.” The writing for “Marauders” is like that; it’s so focused on making its point that it is both strangely obvious and riddled with little flaws that make is a better theme episode than an actually entertaining hour of television.

So, “Marauders” starts with references to “Minefield” (reviewed here!) and “A Night In Sickbay” (reviewed here!), which allows director Michael Vejar to get around actually showing a Kreetassan, but as a result the episode starts with one of the least-compelling teasers in the history of the franchise.

The Enterprise arrives at a colony that has deuterium they diligently mine. The Enterprise desperately needs deuterium to power their warp drive and they need it in quantity because the Kreetassans provided them with warp plasma manifolds that require the fuel. But when they arrive at the colony, they meet Tessic who is reticent to part with any of the colony’s deuterium. While they enlist Trip to fix one of the deuterium pumps and negotiate for additional medical supplies that they should not reasonably need, Archer gets the bare minimum of deuterium he can afford to leave orbit with.

Soon, the reason for the miner’s apprehension makes itself obvious when a Klingon ship arrives in orbit. The Klingons beam down and extort the miners for all of their deuterium, which Tessic begs for more time to mine and refine. Given four days to get their deuterium together, Archer and T’Pol work with Tessic and the colonists to train them for hand-to-hand combat. With the Enterprise crew moving the colony as part of an elaborate trap and training the colonists to fight back, the clock is ticking for the return of the Klingons and their inevitable attack on the colony.

“Marauders” is odd in that it belabors the use of T’Pol – who oddly seems to be advocating for killing the Klingons as opposed to any sort of negotiation – over Malcolm Reed. Reed, who is the armory officer and seems like he would be the natural choice for training an army to lead an insurrection is relegated to training colonists on firearms (a scene stolen by Hoshi Sato in a callback to a b-plot of a first season episode). T’Pol then trains the colonists for hand-to-hand combat using Vulcan martial arts and it seems like a strange use of the science officer.

Archer is given a straightforward role in “Marauders,” which is mostly to lecture Tessic on how he needs to stand up to the Klingons (though he openly acknowledges that the Enterprise crew will not be around to deal with any of the consequences of the colonists standing up to their Klingon oppressors). Tessic seems appropriately cowed by the Klingons, but the part wears thin in the face of the support delivered from the Enterprise crew.

When the Klingons arrive, they are presented as more clownish than compelling. First, the Klingon Captain Korok continually acknowledges that he can get the deuterium for his ship anywhere, that it does not have to be this particular colony. So, when the Klingons beam down to the moved facility and cannot find anyone there, why they do not just beam back to their ship and kill everyone from orbit makes little sense. Even worse is that when they cannot find anyone at the colony, not one of them reaches for their tricorders to scan for lifeforms. And yet, almost all of the Klingons have tricorders hanging around their necks (ironically, Star Trek fans will notice that the Klingons actually have 24th Century Bajoran tricorders around their necks). They are lured into the final conflict with the colonists in the most ridiculous way possible.

The themes in “Marauders” are good, but the characterization is weird. The Klingons do not appear as military governors or honorable warriors, they are just silly bullies and the difference is all the difference for making the episode rewatchable. While none of the acting is terrible, it is not superlatively good either and the result is a mediocre episode that continues a loosely serialized arc that is hardly satisfying.

The three biggest gaffes in “Marauders:”
3. T’Pol knows the names of handheld Klingon weapons, which implies a conflict between the Vulcans and Klingons that has never before been implied, much less detailed. Moreover, it raises the question of how it is that the Vulcans can recognize by sight and name Klingon handheld weapons, but not Klingon starships . . . like they fail to recognize in “Sleeping Dogs” (reviewed here!),
2. Deuterium in “Marauders” is mined. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, deuterium is explicitly explained as hydrogen gas. While hydrogen gas is supposedly out in the vacuum of space, it is explicitly plentiful in virtually every nebula in the galaxy. So, why deuterium is so rare and needs to be refined in “Marauders” seems like a ridiculous conceit,
1. T’Pol characterizes the Klingons as slow to adapt in combat. Given their warrior code and how important victory is to them, this seems like a gross mischaracterization of the Klingons and contrary to what we’ve seen of their adaptability in other Star Trek series.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophmore season here!
Thanks!]

5.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Two Pointless First Contacts Make For A Very Average “Civilization.”

The Good: Decent acting, plot, and special effects
The Bad: No real character development
The Basics: “Civilization” is a remarkably average Enterprise episode with no real consequences.


For a change, it is worth noting right up front that the Enterprise episode “Civilization” has no huge continuity issues with the larger franchise. In fact, the first contacts in “Civilization” have absolutely no lasting effects in the franchise, which makes it somewhat pointless. One of the writers of the episode, Mike Sussman, discussed his inclusion of the alien-of-the-week (the Malurians) as an in-joke from the Star Trek episode “The Changeling” (reviewed here!). Unfortunately, in trying to make a clever bit for the most dedicated of Star Trek fans, Sussman makes a ridiculous continuity problem. The Malurians are only referenced in that one episode and they are the subject of Federation study. In “Civilization,” they are more advanced than the humans . . . so it seems like they would be able to detect, well in advance, the Federation science team trying to study them a hundred years later.

That’s fine, as far as “Civilization” goes, but “Civilization” is an utterly unremarkable episode in so many ways. It is not bad, but there really nothing exceptional to it.

Enterprise makes a detour to a Class-M planet that has an actual humanoid population, which excites the humans aboard the ship. At the Akaali Homeworld, Archer decides to go in a different direction from the Vulcans and visit the pre-industrial civilization there, when they discover elevated neutrinos on the planet. Archer, Hoshi, Trip, and T’Pol take the shuttle down to the planet, disguised as natives. There, they discover that the people are dying mysteriously, which Archer learns when he and Trip break into an antique shop and are discovered by the native Riann.

Confronting the shop owner, Garos, Archer and Trip discover the planet has been invaded by a Malurian mining operation. Trying to compel Garos and the Malurians to leave, Archer and Riann get closer. They discover a subterranean Malurian mining operation and when they try to shut it down, it draws the attention of a Malurian ship, which outclasses Enterprise.

“Civilization” is a very basic first contact episode without a strong hook and without any significant follow-up. While there is the minor nit about including the otherwise absent-from-the-franchise Maurians, there is a pretty serious problem with “Civilization.” The Malurians have a huge underground mining operation, which is poisoning the groundwater on the Akaali homeworld. In the episode, it is stated that the Malurian mining operation has been going on for only a few months. How could the mining operation possibly have been started under the Akaali city without anyone noticing? The simple answer would be that the Malurians beamed out the rock to create the initial chamber in which their mining operation began, but then it begs the question why the Malurians wouldn’t beam out the ore once it was mined. Come to think of it, the whole “shuttle abduction” of the refined ore seems ridiculous when the Malurians beam out following their conflict with Archer.

There are also some strangely senseless moments where sensibility is sacrificed for action. When Archer takes on the Malurians, he has enough time to send images of the console to Trip and Hoshi to either deduce the engineering principles from or translate using Enterprise’s computers, but instead he randomly starts pushing buttons and gets into a phase pistol fight.

That said, the chemistry between Archer and Riaan (and actors Scott Bakula and Diane DiLascio) is convincing and makes for a sense of consequence that is sufficient enough to make viewers wish there was more of the Akaali. Jolene Blalock smirks her way through many of her scenes yet again, but otherwise the acting in the episode is fine. “Civilization” has no real consequences and no significant character development, but it is a fun exploration episode.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete First Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the premiere season here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Terrible Writing Plagues “Unexpected.”

The Good: Basic concept, Special effects
The Bad: Huge continuity (in episode and in franchise) issues, No decent performances, Huge ethical issue overlooked, No real character development.
The Basics: Trip Tucker gets more than he bargained for when he is impregnated by an alien female in “Unexpected.”


As a writer, I am big on continuity. After all, I hope when I encounter – and create – a body of work, I can enjoy a story that makes sense (especially in context) from beginning to end. In the Star Trek franchise, there are numerous continuity issues that pop up simply from the fact that Paramount never employed a Star Trek expert fact-checker to keep all of the new stories in line, as far as the details went. But sometimes, there are stories or elements of stories that are just plain sloppy. “Unexpected” is one of those episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise.

What makes “Unexpected” sloppy, as opposed to riddled with continuity problems? Take, for example, the moment – surprisingly early in the episode – where Dr. Phlox reveals to Trip Tucker that Tucker has been impregnated by the Xyrillian female. At that moment, Phlox speaks about how the female impregnates the male Xyrillian in a way that indicates he has prior knowledge of the Xyrillians. However, his very next line is that he has no way to know how long the gestation period of a Xyrillian embryo is. So, which is it? Does Dr. Phlox have prior experience with the Xyrillians where he knew that females impregnated males, but failed to warn Trip about the possibility of such medical risks or does he completely guess about Xyrillian biology and then give up trying to explain? Because if it is the latter, Dr. Phlox is a real bullshitter; when he finds Trip has been impregnated, he has no records or documents about Xyrillian DNA, so he’s just guessing that the growth in Trip’s ribcage is a Xyrillian fetus and not, for example, a xenomorph from Alien (reviewed here!). Sloppy writing . . . grumble.

Enterprise is coasting through space experiencing mechanical malfunctions, like the Captain’s shower failing when E Deck loses gravity. By igniting their warp plasma, they reveal the presence of an alien ship in their wake, which is causing the feedback that is causing the shipwide disruptions. Trip Tucker is assigned to aid the alien ship and after a decompression wherein his body tries to acclimate to the alien environment, he board the Xyrillian ship and discovers the environment is a bit much for him. After a short nap, though, he manages to fix the alien compression coils and he makes a friend of the Xyrillian engineer, Ah’Len.

When Ah’Len has Tucker to a holographic simulation unlike anything the human has ever encountered, they do an exercise that forges a temporary telepathic bond between them. After three days aboard the Xyrillian ship, Tucker returns to Enterprise and the two ships head their separate ways. Within a day, though, Tucker is aghast when he grows a nipple on his wrist and Dr. Phlox informs him that he is pregnant. As the Enterprise tries to track down the Xyrillian ship, Tucker’s pregnancy commences and he begins to exhibit side effects of his impregnation. When Enterprise finds the Xyrillian ship, it is in the wake of a Klingon ship and Archer and Trip’s problems are multiplied.

As far as the basic story goes, “Unexpected” has one massive problem that is never explored and, considering Enterprise is part of the Star Trek franchise, the social message issue not being explored is unconscionable. Initially, Archer, T’Pol, and Phlox chide Tucker about having been unable to control his hormones and having had a sexual relation with an alien in the brief time he was with the Xyrillians. The fundamental flaw is that the chiding never ends and the most likely, probable, explanation for Trip’s pregnancy is never even mentioned.

Trip Tucker was raped.

Commander Tucker was unconscious on the Xyrillian ship for at least an hour. Between that and the fact that he claims to not have had consensual sex with an alien, the most logical explanation for his pregnancy is that he was raped. In fact, given what limited experience viewers have with Trip Tucker by this point, he seems like he is the kind of guy who would brag about “banging the alien chick.” But, no, he is adamant that he did not have sex with any Xyrillians. Ergo, the most logical explanation for his pregnancy is that he is raped. Yet, this aspect is never broached.

That makes the episode a pretty banal concept episode where “heh, der, a man got pregnant! Ha!” instead of something more sophisticated. Like the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Angel One” (reviewed here!) where the only real gimmick to the episode is that the crew visits a planet with a matriarchal society, “Unexpected” has a simple and ridiculously droll concept that is not deeply explored or affords the opportunity for no deeper conversation or concept. Trip Tucker does not have any sort of moralization about keeping or aborting his rape baby, instead, he just wants a parasite removed.

I’m also disturbed when I can engineer a better design than the writers/production designers and “Unexpected” initially set me off for that. Captain Archer starts the episode in the shower when the gravity kicks out. It seems to me that a sensible starship design that actually uses water in the pipes would have an automatic shut-off if the gravity fails and a drain that immediately becomes a vacuum under the same circumstances. That is how smart people design such a system. Why? Because when you’re stuck in space on a journey of several weeks, months or years, it makes no sense to risk your most important officers to the potential of what happens in “Unexpected,” namely the captain slipping and falling in the shower (which, realistically, could have fractured his ankle, knee, or tailbone).

Because there are no deeper moral issues raised, “Unexpected” becomes a lame novelty episode without any real character development. In fact, the episode illustrates T’Pol to be something of a lame tactician when she mortgages the cache built with the Klingons from “Broken Bow” (reviewed here!) on a comparatively low-stakes encounter with the Klingons. Archer continues to be painfully uncertain and shockingly uninteresting.

As for Connor Trinneer’s performance as Tucker, he seems to be channeling William Shatner’s performance from “Turnabout Intruder” (reviewed here!) here. Instead of an organic presentation of Trip as a pregnant man, he begins to impersonate the worst stereotypes of women in playing his character as pregnant. At least he gets that dumbfounded, shocked, open-mouthed expression right when he is told the news of his character’s pregnancy.

Sadly, that is almost all that the episode does do well.

The three biggest gaffes in “Unexpected:”
3. Yet another brand new alien race never again seen or alluded to in the series’s that followed. This might otherwise not be so bad, save that in Star Trek: Voyager when Tuvok is listing off aliens that use biological components in their technology (one of the many allusions to the Breen), and he does not mention the Xyrillians. If the Xyrillians are pretty much local to the Earth/Vulcan area, then it would have seemed like a race he would have mentioned and that the novelty of finding a race that integrated biological and technological components would have diminished after two hundred years,
2. From reality, males have gotten pregnant in our times (less than ten years after this episode originally aired). Therefore, T’Pol is wrong with her conclusion at the end of the episode,
1. In this episode, both StarFleet and the Klingons encounter aliens with (essentially) Holodeck technology. Holodecks were still new in “Encounter At Farpoint” (reviewed here!), so viewers are meant to believe that it took almost two hundred years for the Federation to adapt the Xyrillian technology?! At least as important, the only reason for the Klingons (in context) to be granted the same technology is the implication that they used it to develop their cloaking devices. However, Klingons got their cloaking technology from the Romulans in Star Trek.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete First Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the premiere season here!
Thanks!]

2/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Doctor’s Last Hurrah Illustrates Him To Be A “Renaissance Man!”

The Good: Moments of performance, Moments of plot
The Bad: Problematic plot and character aspects, Mediocre special effects.
The Basics: When The Doctor is extorted by an alien race, he makes some poor decisions in a mediocre episode.


It always surprised me when the “breakout character” for a television show is one that the producers of the show somehow did not figure would be the character audiences were drawn to. In the case of Star Trek: Voyager, the breakout character was the Emergency Medical Hologram. The Doctor was witty, sarcastic, and intriguing and actor Robert Picardo portrayed him exceptionally well. Even after Seven Of Nine arrived on Star Trek: Voyager and took much of the emphasis off Captain Janeway, The Doctor managed to keep a rising number of episodes focused on him. The final one is “Renaissance Man.”

“Renaissance Man” is actually not a traditional Doctor episode. Instead, it is an episode similar in concept to “Warhead” (reviewed here!) where the Doctor’s program is corrupted and, like “Body And Soul” (reviewed here!) has other actors essentially playing The Doctor, though in this episode, the viewer quickly comes to understand that it is the Doctor who is portraying other characters!

Janeway is annoyed by the Doctor when they are on a mission in the Delta Flyer. When the Delta Flyer returns to Voyager, Janeway tells Chakotay that the Delta Flyer encountered a vastly superior alien race that they almost did not escape from. Somewhat irritated, Janeway tells Chakotay that Voyager will be surrendering to the alien armada and setting down on a Class M planet after ejecting their warp core. Facing the real possibility of the crew being stranded on a planet in the Delta Quadrant and Janeway acting twitchy, Chakotay asks the Doctor how Janeway behaved after her interrogation by the violent aliens.

The truth is revealed to the viewer quickly enough; Janeway is not herself. Instead, she is The Doctor, having managed to reprogram his holo-emitter to appear to be the Doctor. Janeway has been abducted by aliens and to get Janeway back, the Doctor must impersonate Chakotay, Torres, and Kim to meet the demands of the captors and get Janeway back safely.

“Renaissance Man” is interesting, but it is essentially a remix of “Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy” (reviewed here!) where instead of simply seeing through his eyes, an alien race compels The Doctor to impersonate others. Unlike “Body And Soul,” where Jeri Ryan had the chance to really impersonate the Doctor and recreate Robert Picardo’s performance, the only actor who really has the chance to “play Picardo” is Roxann Dawson. When “Torres” encounters Paris in Engineering, the Doctor is squeamish about what Paris wants to feed her and Roxann Dawson gets to bug out her eyes and pretend to be The Doctor.

The rest of the actors pretty much play their traditional characters, even when it is The Doctor in altered form playing those characters.

“Renaissance Man” has plot and character aspects that require a level of suspension of disbelief that is far too extreme for me. First, in this episode, we see stasis pods in use. It seems strange to me that Voyager, if it had functional stasis beds still, would not have minimized the risk to the crew by using the stasis tubes and keeping only a skeleton crew awake.

But the big thing for me is that one of the more idiotic races in the Star Trek universe not only extorts The Doctor, but gets him to successfully take command of Voyager. It seems like the commands for the ECH would have been designed to prevent exactly that type of co-opting. Moreover, the crew’s inability to find and neutralize the Doctor fast seemed particularly incompetent. As well, the Doctor’s safety protocols and medical subroutines should have come into conflict with the demands of the aliens. In using sedatives on crewmembers seems like they could have risked his life and violated the medical ethics of “do no harm.”

Finally, in the wake of so many episodes where the Doctor’s program has been corrupted, it seems like there should have been a failsafe to prevent exactly this type of self-modification.

“Renaissance Man” does not have any particularly extraordinary performances from either the main cast or the guest actors. The net result is a fair episode, but not a particularly incredible one.

[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Voyager - The Complete Seventh Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the final season here!
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4.5/10

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© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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