THE PLOT
Degra, the Xindi scientist in charge of developing the weapon, wakes up in an unfamiliar place... a shuttle, taking fire by Xindi insectoids. Piloting the shuttle is a slightly grizzled, long-haired Archer, who uses his natural authority to push Degra into helping him evade the insectoids. Archer then tells him something impossible: that Degra has lost his memory due to interrogation, and that he and Archer have shared a cell on an insectoid prison planet for almost three years!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: It is no spoiler to reveal that the entire shuttlecraft scenario is an elaborate deception. Having captured Degra, Archer realizes that he has a better chance at getting information by using guile rather than blunt force. He uses what he's learned of the Xindi, particularly about the divisions between the different species, to make Degra believe the scenario he has created. Bakula gives this version of Archer an amusingly roguish element, which he effectively drops at any point when Archer steps out of the simulator and stops playing the role.
Degra: Though the episode is not the two-hander it at first appears it will be, Degra is the only other character who gets any significant focus. There have already been hints that he had reservations about the Xindi weapon. Now we see that he is developing the weapon in large part because of a fierce devotion to his children's safety. That same love for his children caused him an emotional reaction when viewing the Xindi test, however. "7 million... I wondered how many of them were children," he confesses in a vulnerable moment. He is firmly devoted to the Xindi campaign, however, sharing the other Xindi's certainty that humanity will wipe out the Xindi in the future. I hope the absolute certainty of the Xindi fears is fully explained at some point. If their terror of humanity boils down to "a guy claiming to be from the future told them so," it will feel like a cheat.
THOUGHTS
Another Mike Sussman script, another good episode. I don't think he's actually written a bad one yet. Strategem effectively picks up where Proving Ground left off. The debris field from the weapons test is used. The script even makes use of the Andorian ale Shran left Archer. I do appreciate the way this season mostly feels like one unified whole. It gives the entire thing a much greater sense of momentum than was previously the case.
Scott Bakula seems to enjoy chances to step outside "Archer the Captain," and there's a relaxed and almost roguish quality to his scenes in the simulator with Degra that is quite different from his normal performance, and quite a bit of fun to watch. The Archer/Degra scenes are the core of this episode. They make up most of the episode's running time, and thankfully they are very well done in terms of showcasing both characters and in terms of telling the story.
I admit that I was initially hopeful that the episode would be a virtual 2-hander, a more adversarial version of Shuttlepod One. I did, at least, appreciate that the episode has enough confidence in the viewer being able to put the pieces together to allow more than a third of the episode to go by before revealing exactly what is going on. Indeed, the entire first 15 minutes of the episode is basically shown to us from Degra's point-of-view, which is an effective change-up. A part of me still wonders if the script couldn't have kept going with that, giving us the entire episode from Degra's viewpoint, at least until the end. But what we get works rather well, so I don't feel too inclined to complain.
Rating: 8/10
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