Trip is testing an upgrade to Enterprise's warp engines, one that will allow the ship to travel smoothly at Warp 5 and thus greatly increase the odds of success in their mission. His test is proceeding smoothly until the ship hits a magnetic field, one which threatens to rip the ship apart. Trip shuts down the warp engines in time - but is severely injured in the process.
As Trip languishes in a coma, Dr. Phlox proposes a drastic potential cure. He has a rare simbiont, one which has the ability to become a clone when it is injected with a living being's DNA. If injected with Trip's DNA, it will become an exact replica, and Phlox can harvest its neural tissue to save Trip. There is a catch, however. The simbiont will be a fully functioning being, one which will be born, grow old, and die at an accelerated rate. Its total expected lifespan? Fifteen days.
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: Is aware of the moral issues surrounding Sim's creation, but justifies it by the ship's need for its chief engineer in completing the Xindi mission. He develops a genuine bond with Sim, and there's an excellent scene in which he leads up to telling the child Sim the truth while Sim plays with Archer's shuttle toy from the captain's own childhood. Another strong scene for the darker Archer of this season has him threatening to force Sim into consenting to the operation. Bakula plays very well with Archer's complex reactions to Sim in this scene, playing a mixture of anger and disgust (at both Sim and himself) as he says that he will do whatever he thinks is necessary, "even if it means killing you."
Trip/Sim: Connor Trinneer pulls double-duty in this episode, portraying both Trip and "Sim," Trip's clone. Trinneer does an excellent job as Sim, creating a character who is both Trip and not quite Trip. When it is discovered that Sim will not survive the operation, he gets to go through all the stages to accepting that: anger, lashing out at Phlox and Archer; denial and bargaining, clinging to a desperate and unlikely hope to extend his own life; and finally, accepting the inevitable. It's an excellent performance.
T'Pol: Jolene Blalock does an effective job of showing T'Pol's reaction to Phlox's pronouncement to prepare for Trip's death. She gets some excellent scenes with "Sim," showing discomfort at Sim's interest in her - a discomfort that is doubtless accentuated by his looking exactly like Trip.
Dr. Phlox: John Billingsley gives a typically excellent performance, showcasing Phlox's paternal side to good effect. Phlox bonds with Sim almost instantly, and Billingsley is charming when holding and talking to the infant Sim. In the final scene between Sim and Phlox, wonderfully acted by both performers, Billingsley's response to Sim's "You've been an excellent father" genuinely choked me up - not so much the line as the delivery, particularly the little expressions and tics on Phlox's face at this point.
THOUGHTS
Co-producer Manny Coto, brought on board for the show's third season, gets his Enterprise writing debut here. He does an excellent job with his first episode, which falls short of being the best of the season only because of the brilliance of Twilight.
Coto shares the defining trait of Mike Sussman, Twilight's writer: A very strong grasp of story structure. The episode starts off with a terrific teaser, one pretty well guaranteed to bring the viewers back from the credits. After that, early scenes focus on Trip, making sure to re-establish his engineering brilliance (to "show" Archer's reasons for insisting on Trip's importance to the ship) and his relationship with T'Pol. He crafts a situation for the ship that gets them into just enough trouble to create tension for the characters throughout the episode, but not so much trouble that we can't focus on the "A" plot with Sim.
The stories with Sim and the magnetic fields are very well intertwined. It's not exactly revolutionary that Sim ends up being the one to get Enterprise out of the field, but I enjoyed the way the scene was executed. It's a nice character touch that Archer doesn't quite trust Sim the way he did Trip, and is about to call off the attempt when it finally works. And just as that situation is resolved, the "A" plot goes into overdrive with the revelation that the operation to save Trip will kill Sim. Rather than allow the "B" plot to become an intrusion, Coto resolves that plot before pulling the major trigger of the "A" plot.
Effects work is typically excellent, with the field particularly eye-catching. Praise should also go to guest casting, with the actors playing the child and teen Sims bearing a very strong resemblance to Trinneer. The episode also features one of the strongest music scores the show has seen to date.
Entirely irrelevant to the quality of the finished episode, but the DVD also offers three deleted scenes (at least two more than is average). Most episodes' deleted scenes are clearly filler, where the question isn't why they were cut so much as why they ever actually got shot in the first place. Here, two of the three scenes are quite good, and the last one would have particularly enhanced the episode - though I honestly can't think of anything in the episode that I'd want cut to make room for it.
Make no mistake, Similitude is emotionally manipulative. But I don't necessarily regard that as a flaw, not when the manipulations work. With a strong pace, excellent character scenes, and terrific performances across the board, this is one of my Top Ten episodes of the series.
Rating: 10/10.
Previous Episode: North Star
Next Episode: Carpenter Street
Search Amazon.com for Star Trek: Enterprise
Review Index
No comments:
Post a Comment