The Enterprise encounters an alien ship carrying a group of pilgrims. They are traveling to a stellar nursery, in order to view The Great Plume of Agosoria, which they associate with the beginning of the universe. Archer invites them aboard, granting them a tour, as they all wait for the Plume. The tour takes an unexpected turn when a plasma storm nearly destroys the Enterprise. Only the disconnection of a conduit before the storm saves the ship... a disconnection that was not performed by any member of the engineering crew.
The mystery deepens when Archer is told by Crewman Daniels (Matt Winston), that the crewman is actually an agent from the distant future, here to stop the Suliban from changing history during the Temporal Cold War. The Suliban, Silik (John Fleck), whom Archer had encountered back in the Pilot, has infiltrated the pilgrims. Daniels enlists Archer's aid to find Silik - but Silik may be one step ahead of both of them...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: Silik raises a very good point, in his confrontations with Archer in this episode. Archer rushes to trust Daniels, with very little evidence to indicate that he should. Is it simply that Daniels appears human, and Silik appears... Well, sort of scaly and creepy and lizard-like? Archer shouldn't trust either of these characters as far as he can throw them, and yet he almost instantly takes Daniels' side. This, along with his issues with the Vulcans, may point to a buried streak of xenophobia in the captain (which, as with his other flaws, would be interesting to see genuinely explored).
It is interesting that he recalls that on their first meeting, Silik tried to kill him. That's actually only partially true. Silik was initially completely disinterested in Archer. He only tried to kill the captain when Archer made it clear that he knew more than he should. Archer was there; he should remember that at least as well as I do. Archer's selective memory here is interesting. Also, and I know I've said it before, but his impulsiveness and his insistence on trusting people he has no particular reason to trust... This *needs* to blow up in his face, and soon.
T'Pol: Her skepticism about Daniels' time travel claim is refreshing, and raises a good point. Daniels showed Archer a fancy light show with technology far in advance of humanity's. On the other hand, as T'Pol and Trip point out, they've already seen plenty of technology far in advance of humanity's. Nothing they've seen proves that Daniels is from the future - a point both Trip and T'Pol seem to agree on (and which Archer, in typical fashion, ignores).
Trip: In addition to actually agreeing with T'Pol's caution on this occasion, Trip gets an amusing moment during the tour. His assumption that these pilgrims must be simple folk, and that the Enterprise's engineering system must be beyond their understanding, gets turned on its head when it turns out that several of the pilgrims know as much - probably more - about warp systems than he does. Yet another reminder that the technology that still impresses the humans is old hat to many of the aliens they encounter.
Villain of the Week: Silik the Suliban returns, and he's still creepy. I enjoyed his attempts to reason with Archer. He does have a point: We do not, at this point, actually know that Silik represents "the wrong side." We're led to assume this, because of the events of the Pilot. But it's entirely possible that Daniels represents the "wrong side," and that Silik - while certainly motivated by self interest - may actually be the lesser of two evils. Even Archer acknowledges that they know nothing about Daniels, even at the end. And when Archer prevents Silik from ultimately completing the last bit of his mission, Silik's last words to him are to hiss that Archer may have imperiled his own future. Why should Silik bother? Why not just get out of there? Maybe Silik is telling the truth... or at least, believes that he is.
THOUGHTS
For the second disc in a row, we have a mediocre episode and a downright bad episode followed by a very strong installment that promises even more interesting things to come.
I'm feeling more convinced than ever that this show would have benefitted from shorter seasons, to cut out the filler. Can you imagine the first part of this season running something like this?
Broken Bow
Fight or Flight
Strange New World
Breaking the Ice
The Andorian Incident
Cold Front
That would be probably the strongest and most interesting start of any Trek spinoff, ever. Unfortunately, pointless filler episodes keep intruding to gum up the works. Instead of 26 episode seasons, 13 to 16 episode seasons would have served this show far better.
Ah, well. At least this was a good one. The Temporal Cold War comes up for the first time since Broken Bow. There, it was fancy window dressing for an otherwise fairly typical Trek plot. Here, it is the plot. Archer is given one bit of information, then another bit of entirely conflicting information, and ends the episode knowing possibly even less than when he started. He does know now that cold warriors from the future have an unhealthy interest in Enterprise... or does he?
I keep coming back to the doubts expressed by T'Pol and Trip. They raise a good point. All the proof Archer (or we) have of a Temporal Cold War stems from two different guys claiming to be from the future and one of them showing Archer a light show. What if there is no Temporal Cold War? Silik's superior could easily be from a more advanced current race, using technology and genetic upgrades to lie to the Suliban for reasons of his own. Similarly, Daniels - aware that Archer has encountered Silik, and guessing that Archer has been told of the "Temporal Cold War" - could be simply telling Archer a convenient lie to enlist his aid. Just because two different people on opposite sides have told Archer the same thing, that doesn't make the thing they told him true.
The episode is directed with quite a bit of visual flair. Silik makes his escape from the Enterprise in a moment that looks like it belongs on the big screen, not the small. The light show Daniels shows Archer is impressive... as is the The Great Plume, for that matter. Finally, I loved the final shot of the episode, leaving us with the image of the seal on Daniels' locked quarters. The open ending has left us with more questions than answers, and a sense of ominous things to come - which, at this point in an arc, is exactly as it should be.
Rating: 8/10. Good stuff.
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