Enterprise 3x2 "Anomaly"

rating: ***

the story: The crew discovers the existence of the spheres.

what it's all about: While the Xindi arc continues to build at a slow pace, "Anomaly" establishes two additional, crucial layers to the season that will become more important as the story progresses.

The first of them is an extension of something that was previously explained in the second season finale, "The Expanse," that the region the crew has to explore is filled with dangerous anomalies (hence the name of the episode).  But what they didn't know, previously, was that some of the danger would come from other ships trapped in the region.  "Anomaly" gives the impression of Voyager's "The Void," where Janeway's crew was similarly at the mercy of other ships attempting to survive a strange region of space, forced to decide whether or not they would help each other.  It's an interesting insight into the greater mechanics of the arc, and how many moving parts there are within it.

What's fascinating is that this is actually the first time Archer exhibits the pressure the mission has placed on him.  Some observers have noted that he becomes driven, in this episode, to similar extremes as Janeway in "Equinox, Part 2," where they both use an airlock as a means of de facto torture.  There will be other moments in the season where Archer's desperation is on display, and much more personal ones (notably "Similitude"), but "Anomaly" effectively internalizes the mission for him in a way that had previously been reserved only for Trip, who lost his sister in the original Xindi attack. 

The other major soft development is the introduction of the spheres, which will become another investigation across the whole arc.  What they are and who built them and why...these will become crucial to the whole story.

Lastly, "Anomaly" will get a kind of sequel later in the season, "Damage," which will once and for all settle the matter of its overall relevance.  But more on that when it comes up.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Casual viewers still won't really understand why any of this is important.
• series - But the episode establishes several key elements crucial to the rest of the season.
• character - Archer begins to feel the pressure of the mission.
• essential - In hindsight a hugely important episode in the arc, really.

Enterprise 3x1 "The Xindi"

rating: ***

the story: The crew begins its search for the Xindi in a processing plant.

what it's all about: After the big setup at the end of the second season ("The Expanse"), "The Xindi" kicks off the ambitious season-long serialized arc...in a manner that seems like a fairly slow start.  But it's got a ton of stuff it does accomplish, and its unique handling of this kickoff is itself pretty clever.

The biggest thing the episode accomplishes is introducing a host of recurring characters.  One of the things fans loved most about Deep Space Nine was its humungous assortment of recurring characters, who helped make the series feel lived-in.  Voyager never quite attempted to duplicate that, and even Enterprise in its first two seasons used recurring characters somewhat sparingly.  But the third season, at least in the third season, changes that.  Technically the only recurring character introduced in the episode to receive a proper introduction is MACO Major Hayes.  But the Xindi Council, including members who will become much more important as the season progresses (Degra and Dolim), also debuts, and it's this early peak at it that's the episode's best selling point.

Otherwise our crew attempts to make do with scratching for clues.  Some reviews upon its original broadcast remarked that it was downright disappointing to see Archer scramble through a sewer system rather than, y'know, engage the Xindi.  And it is a little disappointing that a season premiere, especially one that kicks off a major arc, has a relatively soft approach.  But it also eventually leads to a killer ending, one of the many mysteries the season will solve: why are the Xindi trying to protect a home planet that was...apparently obliterated years ago?

So in that sense, it's a really clever way to go about the premiere.  The majority of the episode is spent acclimating to new circumstances.  The MACOs are a major addition.  If none of them ultimately spends a lot of time in the spotlight, their presence alone is a key element of the season.  They even end up being featured in the later film Star Trek Beyond!  The concept itself is a fascinating addition to franchise lore, and entirely in keeping with a rougher early Starfleet still operating with spare parts from entities outside of itself (Mayweather and Reed, you'll recall, came from such origins, too).

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Casual viewers will probably end up baffled and underwhelmed.
• series - But Enterprise fans will eat it up.
• character - The incredible wealth of introductions is almost itself worth it.
• essential - Especially in hindsight, as some characters fleetingly seen here become much more important later.

notable guest-stars:
Steven Culp (Hayes)
Randy Oglesby (Degra)
Scott MacDonald (Dolim)
Tucker Smallwood
Rick Worthy
Daniel Dae Kim

Enterprise 1x26 "Shockwave"

rating: **

the story: The mission is cancelled after a horrific accident, but turns out it's really meddling from agents of the Temporal Cold War.

what it's all about: "Shockwave" is a blunt concept, too obvious in at least one element.  It might be the reason fans never warmed to the concept of the Temporal Cold War.  It's all obvious setup for a season finale: the crew finally managed to screw up that badly?  And Archer's stuck in the future with no time travel devices to get him back home?  And of course the second season premiere quickly resolves both of these issues, and it's back to the status quo as if nothing ever happened.  It just feels too cheap, especially for being a featured element of the series.

Silik doesn't have the same chemistry with Archer as he did in "Cold Front," and that's a major problem in and of itself.  Daniels is as fascinating as always (well, as he'd been in his debut, "Cold Front"); in fact he's the best part of this finale and an even better part of the second part.  But again, here he's mostly relegated to setup.

The Temporal Cold War deserved a much better push if it was going to be featured in such a climactic moment.  Maybe learning more about "Future Guy," the shadowy instigator of the Suliban, but not only do we learn nothing more than when we saw him in the pilot ("Broken Bow"), we never learn more about him, even with the rushed wrap up of the arc at the start of the fourth season ("Storm Front").  And that's the most disappointing thing of all.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Will casual fans really care about too-obvious material?
• series - Despite reservations, it does serve as a reminder of the Temporal Cold War, and its scope.
• character - Archer's the one caught in the crosshairs, as always.
• essential - It's the most painful thing to say about a season finale, that it isn't essential.

notable guest-stars:
John Fleck (Silik)
Matt Winston (Daniels)
James Horan ("Future Guy")
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)

Enterprise 1x25 "Two Days and Two Nights"

rating: **

the story: The crew attempt to enjoy some r&r.

what it's all about: For the past few episodes this trip to Risa kept getting interrupted, creating one of the more esoteric serialized stories in franchise lore.  Risa is the pleasure planet previously featured in Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, so this is another of those soft hooks.  The episode itself is actually pretty much composed of separate vignettes for one or more characters.  Everyone has something to do.  Admittedly, Mayweather's is minimal compared to everyone else's, getting treated by a compromised Phlox, attempting to get some hibernating in.  Hoshi has the happiest experience.  Trip and Reed have perhaps an even more awkward experience together than in "Shuttlepod One."

And Archer discovers backlash from "Detained."  The aliens who'd been harassing innocent Suliban send an undercover agent to spy on him. It's a soft continuation of the story, but it's appreciated for having been done at all.

Otherwise a fairly deliberately low key affair, just spending time with the characters.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - It' doubtful that casual fans will care too much about a visit to Risa.
• series - Some soft serialization in a follow-up to "Detained."
• character - Everyone gets in at least one moment.
• essential - Not especially.

notable guest-stars:
Kellie Waymire (Cutler)

Enterprise 1x24 "Desert Crossing"

rating: ****

the story: Terrorists try recruiting Archer to their cause.

what it's all about: There's a little something of everything to love about this one: big ideas, time well-spent with a pair of characters, continuity, and Clancy Brown.

Let's just get Clancy Brown out of the way.  Clancy's a big personality.  He's never really found that one (or two or three) projects that squarely put the spotlight on him, but he's always been an outsize highlight in the material he has chosen.  Scoring him, which surprisingly took this long to accomplish, is a major coup for Enterprise.  He instantly makes the episode seem that much bigger, just by being in it, and he sells the material as few guest-stars could have.  Anyone else, that lost dimension is the difference between mediocre and great.

But there's a lot more working around him, too.  "Desert Crossing" is a rare opportunity to see old friends Archer and Trip on an adventure together.  For Trip, the experience ends up eerily similar to "Shuttlepod One," and with different interpersonal dynamics we get a different experience out of him, which I think works better for him.  ("Shuttlepod" works as well as it does because of Reed.) 

The episode also acknowledges the loose serialization of the series to this point.  Clancy's character references the events of "Detained" as the reason he's convinced Archer will be able to help him.  That's a great way to give further dimension to a story, something Enterprise was particularly good at.  A lot of serialized TV storytelling can begin to feel too insular, events blending together in a bad way so that it's just something that keeps happening.  Knowing how to link stories together is its own kind of skill.

The big ideas are terrorism and Starfleet noninterference policy.  Terrorism was a big thing in Next Generation, with memories of Irish unrest permeating episodes that never quite seemed capable of exploring the idea.  Bajorans had been terrorists in Deep Space Nine, and of course between them there was also the establishment of the Maquis.  Fans were actually upset that the Maquis in Voyager weren't rebellious enough.  I don't think they ever really managed to reassess that in the wake of 9/11.  Enterprise eventually tackled 9/11 (it launched literally in the shadow of the attacks) in its third season, but "Desert Crossing" is like a soft preview of the topic.  Archer decides that Clancy's terrorists, like the Bajorans, and even the Maquis, were probably right in their actions.  This isn't really to say terrorism itself is a justifiable tactic, but that there's always a need to assess the justice of a cause. 

Anyway, it's another example of Archer considering a Starfleet protocol of noninterference.  In the real world we see oppression in a country and it's probably hard to not condemn the oppression itself, but...what to do about it is usually a far more difficult matter.  What are you ultimately signing up for?  Are you willing to make the commitment?  How does it change you to become involved?  These are the kinds of questions Archer asks, and helps further explain the basis of the Prime Directive (previously explored in "Dear Doctor" under very different circumstances), one of the central tenets of franchise lore.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Exploring the concepts of terrorism and the Prime Directive.
• series - Loose serialization strikes again.
• character - Fine spotlight for Archer and Trip.
• essential - It's hard to describe an episode that deals with terrorism as "fun," but this is one of the most straight-up enjoyable experiences of the first season.

notable guest-stars:
Clancy Brown

Enterprise 1x23 "Fallen Hero"

rating: ***

the story: An embattled Vulcan ambassador requires rescuing.

what it's all about: Sometimes a bad situation stays bad because there's never a breakthrough in communications.  That's the thing about Enterprise.  It posits a relationship between humans and Vulcans that's a bad situation, because Vulcans find humans primitive.  Anyone who saw Star Trek: First Contact knows humans were certainly in a bad place when they first met.  It shouldn't be surprising.  Cochrane certainly wasn't a "great man" until history started making its judgments.  It definitely seemed to help, not only his achievement but his engine becoming so important; the Cochrane we glimpse in "Broken Bow" is a lot more civil than the one in First Contact. 

Anyway, so despite that warm fuzzy moment at the end of the movie when we see the Vulcan remove his hood, relations themselves weren't automatically warm and fuzzy.  That was merely a cathartic moment speaking for itself, after a tumultuous experience battling the Borg and making sure Cochrane's flight happened at all.  Not only does it attract the attention of an alien ship, but it's Vulcan, and it feels like the birth of the future in a snapshot.  But nothing's ever that simple.  Vulcans ultimately find these human upstarts primitive.  And I say again, is that really so surprising?  The only surprise is the depth and persistence, but again, a bad situation tends to stay bad until there's a breakthrough, and Enterprise is all about making breakthroughs.

"Fallen Hero" doesn't seem like it's a breakthrough story.  There are a lot of breakthrough stories in the first season, and subsequent ones.  But ultimately, it is.  It's the first time the crew encounters a friendly Vulcan, someone who will take them at face value rather than history or cultural development.  The crew helps the ambassador out of a sticky situation, and that does the trick.  It begins to thaw a sticky situation.  Ironically, it's very similar to a couple of experiences with Klingons earlier in the season, and yet the results are the complete opposite.  That should be telling.

Somewhat more intriguingly, however, is the plot itself, why the ambassador is in a tricky situation.  It's politics.  There was plenty of Klingon politics in Next Generation, and plenty of Bajoran and Cardassian politics in Deep Space Nine, but I think "Fallen Hero" still manages to mine new franchise territory.  The Vulcan ambassador's situation turns out to be that her reputation has purposely been smeared for political expediency.  The idea practically is politics, certainly politics as it's been practiced by Americans for over two hundred years.  It's ridiculously petty, but it seems to work every time.  This is an episode that seeks to point out the stupidity of it.  Later, "Judgment" sort of echoes this lesson, with a Klingon.  Irony.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Insight into the eventual thaw of human/Vulcan relations.
• series - Another example of how Archer makes bridges.
• character - The thrust of the episode is more the experience of it than a spotlight on Archer or T'Pol, or even the ambassador.
• essential - Intriguing insight into the pettiness of politics.

notable guest-stars:
Fionnula Flanagan
Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest)

Enterprise 1x22 "Vox Sola"

rating: **

the story: The crew struggles with an entity it can't communicate with.

what it's all about: "Vox Sola" is a long-delayed (relatively speaking) straight-on spotlight for Hoshi's linguistic skills, as she hones not just her personal abilities but the budding Universal Translator as well. 

That's all well and good, but it's actually kind of more relevant as the first of two appearances by the Kreetassans, both times featuring massive cultural misunderstandings that the crew never saw coming.  In the later "A Night in Sickbay" from the second season, the whole episode is dedicated to the incident, but in this one, it's a little more tangential to the plot, even if it's a featured element.  Different cultures have different customs, and interpret the customs of others in different ways.  In Next Generation, this concept was handled clumsily, downright stupidly, in "Justice," one of the worst episodes of the franchise. A lot of fans considers "Night in Sickbay" a similarly poor episode, but I never have.  "Vox Sola," meanwhile, seems like it can be lost in so much goo, stuff that dominates the visual aspect of the episode, the amorphous representation of the lifeform Hoshi must scramble to understand.  But it's much better understood for what it does around the goo, which admittedly has sometimes been a problem in Star Trek.  Once you establish a memorable element, for good or ill, the episode tends to be dominated by it.  In this instance it would be a considerable mistake.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Seems like a fairly standard episode.
• series - But it's not.  it's actually significant for a later episode.
• character - Hoshi gets a mild spotlight compared to her more sensational appearance earlier in "Fight or Flight."
• essential - The Kreetassans are more relevant in their next appearance.

notable guest-stars:
Vaughn Armstrong