The Enterprise crew is preparing for a much-needed shore leave on the planet Risa when they receive orders for an emergency mission. They are ordered to pick up V'Lar (Fionnula Flanagan), a Vulcan ambassador accused of criminal misconduct on the planet Mazar, and take her to a Vulcan ship for return to her homeworld. Archer realizes, however, that there is more to the story than the Vulcans are letting on when a Mazarite ship attacks them in transit. Now Archer must make a difficult decision: turn back to Mazar, enraging the Vulcans and ensuring V'Lar's death in the process; or continue to the rendezvous, and risk the lives of everyone under his command.
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: His mistrust of the Vulcans is raised again, and enhanced when he realizes that V'Lar is not telling him the full truth. I cannot agree with his actions after the initial attack. By turning the ship around, he not only is blurring the line of his actual orders, he is also giving the Mazarite attackers time to prepare a stronger assault. Archer does well in the final conflict, delaying the Mazarites and then bluffing them... but I can't help but think that his desperation tactics would have been unnecessary had he not reversed course twice, giving the attackers plenty of time to regroup. At least he's come to pretty much fully trust T'Pol, to the point that her simply asking him to complete the mission is ultimately all he needs to go through with a risky course of action.
T'Pol: Her interactions with V'Lar are very much those of someone who has met a childhood hero, only to be left disappointed. She clearly disapproves of V'Lar's willingness to meet the humans on their own, emotional ground. It is after seeing V'Lar engaged in humorous banter that she begins to wonder if the charges against the ambassador might be true. Not only does V'Lar sense T'Pol's disappointment in her, Archer cannot help but notice it as well. T'Pol's faith in Archer continues to be demonstrated, when she insists to V'Lar that the captain can and should be trusted.
Reed: We once again see how much he enjoys a chance to put his weapons in action. When Trip accuses him of liking it when Enterprise is shot at, he sensibly replies that he prefers "shooting back." It is clear that Reed is less interested in peaceful exploration, and more interested in gunplay. Between this and his willingness to resort to torture tactics (as seen in the previous episode), there might be some interesting places to take this character, if the series ever decides to take a darker turn.
THOUGHTS
Fallen Hero begins as one type of episode, and ends as another. The first half is fairly quiet, appearing to be focused mainly as a character piece for T'Pol. The openly gregarious ambassador is a clear foil for T'Pol: outwardly genial and humorous, in contrast to T'Pol's severe front. That V'Lar's presentation of herself disappoints T'Pol is made clear. T'Pol is perfectly willing to believe the best about V'Lar before the ambassador arrives and behaves in "too human" a manner. When Archer confronts T'Pol about her borderline rudeness, it seems set to be one of those forced character episodes that Next Generation produced far too often.
Then the Mazarite ships arrive, fire on Enterprise, and the episode abruptly becomes an action piece - a chase, with Enterprise being pursued by technologically superior ships to a rendezvous point. At this point, the episode begins to find its focus. V'Lar's conversation with T'Pol, in which the two discuss the "good reasons" why the Vulcans kept information from humans, shows that she really is a proper Vulcan beneath the genial exterior. One presumes she cultivates that geniality to aid her in her work.
In her conversation with Archer, she makes the best case yet for exactly why the Vulcans may have been right to hold the humans back. "You had just emerged from a global war," she tells him, informing him that the idea of the recently-warring humans suddenly taking their place in the stars frankly terrified the Vulcans. Her reasoning seems sound, and Archer spluttering about "100 years of good behavior" seems to be mainly his own bottled resentment talking. It's nice to see some acknowledgement that the Vulcan/Human issues have more than just one side to them.
The final chase is quite well-realized. There's some genuine tension as Archer has Trip push the ship to its breaking point. For a while, it seems to turn into a race as to which ships' engines will die first: Enterprise's, or the Mazarites. It is made explicit that both sets of ships are being pushed to the limit. Archer's final delaying tactic is a desperation move, but a well-judged one.
That said, I can't help but think that V'Lar makes a potentially serious error in judgment revealing herself to the Mazarites at the end. Surely allowing them to leave in the false belief that she was dead - thus making any future attempts on her life pointless - would have been more logical than popping up to gloat?
In the end, this is another good episode... Though I hope both the need for shore leave, and the damage the Enterprise clearly took here, are addressed in the next episode, and not simply forgotten about.
Rating: 7/10
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