Enterprise 3x18 "Azati Prime"

rating: ****

the story: The crew finally intercepts the Xindi weapon.

what it's all about: As proof that the whole season really is one big arc, the seeming climactic moment occurs now rather than at the end of the season...And then we discover that it won't be that easy. 

Daniels and the Temporal Cold War find a kind of redemption here, it must be stated.  In "Carpenter Street" a few episodes earlier, they'd been used as a kind of plot convenience.  Here they are used with pin-point accuracy.  For the first time ever, Daniels offers solid proof of a positive good in the future, an Enterprise-J that's involved in a battle with the Sphere Builders, the aliens manipulating the Xindi. He gives Archer proof that the Xindi in fact join the Federation in the future, and that will end up convincing Degra, the Xindi scientist who designed the weapon and whom Archer conned into giving them its location in "Stratagem," to abandon the cause and switch sides.  And then we discover that Dolim, the lead Xindi-Reptilian, will turn out to be the lead villainous Xindi...

All that accomplished in one episode, after building up material throughout the season.  It's remarkable, and probably unparalleled in Star Trek until Discovery, the first purely serialized series in the franchise.  It provides ample dramatic material for the rest of the season and makes the rest of it more desperate than the original mission itself, which was already desperate, but hadn't always felt like it was, until this moment, when all the stakes and players are finally revealed.  Kind of Shakespearean, really!

And it's probably the most thoroughly satisfying serialized material of the whole series.  Deep Space Nine wrung a lot of great material out of the Dominion War, but with only a single season to work with, Enterprise rises to the task and proves the worth of the whole experiment.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Meets or exceeds the standard of serialized storytelling in Star Trek lore.
• series - The unquestioned great moment of the serialized aspects of the Xindi arc.
• character - Archer rises to the occasion as a bold leader.
• essential - You can't appreciate the arc or the series without savoring this moment.

notable guest-stars:
Matt Winston (Daniels)
Randy Oglesby (Degra)
Scott MacDonald (Dolim)
Tucker Smallwood
Rick Worthy