Archer and Trip, traveling in Shuttlepod One, are mistaken for smugglers. They are confined on board a prison ship heading for the prison planet Canamar. When a group of prisoners stages a jailbreak, seizing control of the ship, Archer decides to play the part of the smuggler he was arrested as.
He talks Kuroda (Mark Rolston), the mastermind of the escape, into allowing him to act as pilot. But when Archer discovers that Kuroda intends to destroy the ship, with all aboard, to fake his own death, he must take desperate action to avoid a slaughter!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: He does a good job of sizing up Kuroda, and manages to maintain his cover while keeping Kuroda from killing anyone. His faith in T'Pol and his crew shows itself in that, prior to the prison break, he is willing to sit still and trust that he and Trip will be found and released (which, indeed, was about to happen). His exchange at the end with the Enolian official shows once again how very well Scott Bakula does "angry" scenes. That's a strength he didn't often get to show on Quantum Leap, and one which this show's writers would be well-advised to take more advantage of.
Trip: His engineering skills allow him to provide the prison transport with a fatality-free escape from two warships at one point. When Archer delegates to him the near-impossible task of subduing the Naussican to prevent Kuroda's plan to destroy the ship, Trip uses guile to trick the Naussican into a vulnerable position. It's also amusing watching Trip deal with a particularly talkative and annoying bench-mate.
Villain of the Week: Mark Rolston is Kuroda, the ruthless master criminal who engineers the takeover of the prison transport. He is an effective enough villain, even if all he's missing a mustache to twirl and a damsel to tie to some railroad tracks. He does take a liking to Archer, or at least to Archer's assumed smuggler persona. There are hints of a deeper characterization when he talks about the first time he was sent to prison, and how that put him on his current path. Unfortunately, that one scene aside, he's pretty much a black-and-white villain. Adequate to help carry a standalone episode like this, but that one scene hints at something more that might have been done with this episode's basic set-up.
THOUGHTS
Canamar is a filler episode with a stock plot. It's well-done filler, as far as it goes. But following on the heels of three strong episodes, all of which felt like they were advancing the show's overarching world and characters, even a decent filler episode has a slightly empty feel to it.
Also, while it works well enough within the confines of being a stock plot, there are a few moments (Kuroda's story about his first conviction, Archer's outrage at the offical at the end) which point to how this episode could have had much more depth, and could have done much more with its basic concept. Unfortunately, these moments exist almost in isolation from the rest of the show. Canamar is reasonably fun to watch. So was Civilization, back in Season One. Like that episode, Canamar leaves the viewer with a slightly hollow feel.
It does its job of filling 45 minutes in an entertaining manner. But it's too content to be ordinary, when a little more thought could have made the episode into something more interesting. Passable filler, but a bit dispiriting in its sheer ordinariness.
Rating: 5/10.
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