THE PLOT
As Enterprise continues to limp along, stolen warp coil in place, Archer makes his rendezvous with Degra. He shows Degra and another member of the Xindi council the evidence he has gathered about the reptilian bio-weapon and the spheres. He tries to convince these two council members the Sphere Builders are the real enemy of both humans and Xindi. But the negotiations are complicated when serious damage to the Enterprise leaves the ship all but helpless in space - just as a Xindi reptilian ship finds them!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: After a season of trying deceptions and ruthless gambits and making violent decisions, here Archer decides to... tell the truth. He deals with Degra in a completely honest manner, showing him the evidence the Enterprise has gathered within the Expanse. He openly admits that wiping Degra's memory was probably not a good way to earn the other man's trust. Here, he provides nothing but the truth, and trusts that Degra will realize that his earlier "misdeeds" were necessary. His openness pays off, and the scenes between Archer and Degra are consistently the best in a very good episode.
T'Pol: Continues to wrestle with the emotions brought to the surface by the Trellium. She finds her inability to suppress them to be overwhelming, and actually tells Trip that she envies humans their ability to deal with emotions. Though I continue to be uncertain about this direction for her character (her early scene with Phlox, restating exposition from the last episode, was more than a little tiresome), Blalock does well with the material. T'Pol actually doesn't do badly in dealing with her emotions, managing to retain professionalism and judgment in dealing with an exhausted Trip, and giving him some needed emotional support at the end.
Trip: In the wake of the attack, Trip has worked himself to the point of exhaustion. When T'Pol asks him how long it's been since he's slept, his estimate is two days. Connor Trinneer does an excellent job at showing a Trip running purely on adrenaline. At the same time, he is reacting to another loss, of a young woman who worked with him in Engineering. It's clear that this girl reminded him of his sister, or at least that her death has made her remind him of his sister. That and his lack of rest brings his anger toward the Xindi back to the surface, making him openly hostile to Degra. This is an effective plot thread, though it would be more effective if Crewman Taylor had been someone we had gotten to know, rather than simply being one of Trip's largely offscreen crew.
Dr. Phlox: Gets another terrific scene, in which he relieves Trip of duty and orders him to get some sleep. He first tries reason, pointing out to Trip how much worse off the ship will be if Trip works himself past the point of collapse. Then he simply pulls rank, ordering Trip to get some sleep, and then waiting - much like a parent or teacher with a recalcitrant teen - until he actually sees Trip leave for his quarters before going on to his appointment with the captain.
Degra: His guilt, when confronted with Trip's anger, is tangible, but it doesn't stop him from dealing honestly and occasionally bluntly with Archer. I was relieved that there was no reconciliation between Degra and Trip in this episode, and I actually hope there won't be such a reconciliation in the future. More interesting still is the episode's climax, in which Degra is pushed into making the same sort of tough-minded decision that Archer has been making repeatedly this season.
The Xindi: Though Degra's companion Xindi council member is more skeptical of Archer than Degra, he is open to reason. Like Degra, he recognizes that the Sphere Builders must have their own agenda. As Archer presents more and more evidence, he finally agrees that the council should hear the humans' case. As the episode ends, we are left with a divided Xindi. The insectoids and reptilians will clearly want war; the mammalian Xindi will clearly want peace. It will be up to the acquatics which way the council ends up going. Me? I'm still holding out hope that the intriguing mention of the avian Xindi way back in The Shipment might come into play by the season's end.
THOUGHTS
The end of the trilogy of episodes that began with Azati Prime, The Forgotten is fully up to the quality of its two predecessors. These three episodes form by far the strongest run that the series has seen to date, and the momentum is left running as we move toward the season's end.
It's striking how much this season is post-9/11 Star Trek, in a way that the first two seasons (which actually were post-9/11) were not. The parallels between the Xindi attack and the attack on the World Trade Center are blindingly obvious, of course. But there's also the changed state of the crew. Archer, dealing with the need to make harder and tougher decisions than in the past, sometimes compromising his own values. Trip, in a state of post-traumatic stress, which becomes particularly vivid in this episode as a new loss brings his old loss to the surface.
Crew and ship remain badly scarred at the show's end. As Archer says goodbye to Degra, we can see the bruises from the reptilians' beating beginning to yellow, a particularly effective bit of makeup. The ship still looks like it's falling apart from the inside, a far cry from the gleaming corridors of the past. The dim lighting and claustrophobic atmosphere all combine to make this a technically impressive episode, and dramatically effective at the same time.
Rating: 9/10.
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