The Enterprise is orbiting an uninhabited Class M planet that is teaming with plant and animal life (um, technically that doesn't make it "uninhabited," but I'll give them that one). Archer and Trip are looking forward to combining a survey of this world with some needed R & R. Then an alien ship hails them. A deadly radiation storm is on its way. The alien captain recommends they immediately go to Warp Seven to escape the storm. There's only one problem; the Enterprise's maximum speed is Warp Five.
With no choice left but to weather the storm, Archer orders a particularly well-shielded maintenance shaft be converted into temporary quarters to house the entire crew for the duration. "The catwalk" proves to be endurable, if uncomfortable. But when a power surge forces Trip into a radiation suit for a trip to engineering, he discovers that their friendly alien saviors are hiding their own agenda.
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: Scott Bakula gets some of his best material in a while, as Archer is pushed into a desperate solution to save his crew. I enjoyed the scenes of Archer mingling with the crew, exchanging a few friendly words with his people to try to keep their morale up. Bakula gives a restrained, relaxed, highly likable performance in these scenes. And by pulling back on the "tense captain" mannerisms, he makes Archer's transition to crisis mode in the episode's final act that much more effective.
T'Pol: T'Pol's buried compassion shows itself when she recalls a Vulcan ship's encounter with a similar storm. She observes that the Vulcan ship was "nearly destroyed." Archer, upon researching, discovers that the Vulcan ship was destroyed, with all hands on board. Confronted with this, T'Pol insists that she "remembered incorrectly," not willing to admit that she sidestepped the truth to reduce the crew's fears. We also discover another bit of her background, as she tells Archer of a Vulcan ritual in which she was dumped in the desert and left to survive on her own for ten days. For all her expertise, T'Pol is not comfortable mixing with the general crew, and seems genuinely surprised when Trip says he's glad to see her at the "movie night" at the close of the episode, and invites her to join them for future ones.
Trip: Tripcomes up with the solution for the emergency quarters in the catwalk, enabling the entire crew to survive the storm. His preparations provide one of the series' few good Mayweather scenes as well, as Travis reminds Trip that they will need a toilet - something Trip admits he had not considered. Trip is given the discovery of the alien infiltration. Then, because he has already been exposed, he is unable to directly participate in keeping the warp reactor offline, and is forced to talk T'Pol and Reed through doing what he'd clearly much rather be doing himself.
Reed: Reed is susceptible to motion sickness, but his fear of acknowledging weaknesses leads him to cover this up. His mode of coping is to become extremely snippy and antagonistic, leading to an argument with Trip over the lack of shower facilities in their emergency quarters. He actually seems much more at ease when the alien infiltration is discovered, and he gets to go out into the ship and do something. Reed has no fear of danger, it seems. He's much more afraid of simple human failures, such as motion sickness and body odor, than he is of invading aliens.
THOUGHTS
A big step up from Precious Cargo. Mike Vejar's direction emphasizes the sense of claustrophobia within the catwalk. There are nice little touches, such as the command compartment being just a touch too small so that Archer has difficulty when he attempts to lie down after his circuit of morale-boosting.
The script, by Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong, is well-structured. There is just enough development of the crew simply enduring the storm in the catwalk to allow some strong character moments: Reed's motion sickness, T'Pol's "camping trip," Phlox's enjoyment of the small spaces because they remind him of home. Just as the basic catwalk idea has about run its course, the script takes a turn as Trip discovers that aliens have infiltrated the Enterprise, avoiding this episode simply becoming a large-cast version of Shuttlepod One.
The episode succeeds where so many episodes have failed. There actually is a sense of jeopardy. The episode takes time to show the command crew debating options and preparing for the storm. The cast all play their roles with conviction, and we genuinely believe that the storm is as dangerous as they say it is. When the alien military men invade the ship, the rules for the crew going out have been firmly established. The EVA suits will allow them 22 minutes outside the catwalk. There are only three suits, so a direct confrontation is out of the question. If the aliens get the warp engines fully online, the heat from the warp engines will kill the entire crew.
This leads to a taut climax, in which Archer uses misdirection to trick the alien captain. Mayweather and Trip convey information to T'Pol and Reed to get the warp reactor offline, while Mayweather steers the ship in accordance with Archer's tactics. As that little summary shows, this allows most of the regulars to get a good share in the climax. Even Mayweather gets at least two good scenes, which is two more than he usually gets.
The CGI of the storm is quite impressive. Archer looks out at the approaching storm early in the episode, remarking that he "never expected it to be beautiful." It is quite beautiful, both when seen in approach and when seen enveloping Enterprise. The episode shows various views of it, with blues and whites predominant, and it works both as spectacle and as threat.
Rating: 7/10.
Previous Episode: Precious Cargo
Next Episode: Dawn
Search Amazon.com for Star Trek: Enterprise
Review Index
No comments:
Post a Comment