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Star Trek Enterprise (ENT) Season 3, Part 2

Season 1, Part 1 - Part 2 - Season 2, Part 1 - Part 2 - Season 3, Part 1 - Part 2 - Season 4, Part 1 - Part 2

The episode descriptions are given in normal text, my comments in small text. Rating: 0=worst, 10=best (rating system)

Proving Ground December 6, 2153: Hoshi and T'Pol have retrieved 30% of the computer data that had been erased by the religious fanatics, when the ship runs into an anomaly. An Andorian ship commanded by Shran comes to the rescue. Following traces of the tagged kemocite shipment and with the help of Andorian sensors, the testing range for the Xindi planet killer weapon is found. The two ships join in an endeavor to get their hands on the prototype. However, under orders of the Andorian Imperial Guard who say they need it to deter the Vulcans from invading Andoria, Shran grudgingly betrays Archer and keeps the weapon in his ship's cargo hold. With the help of the activation code his crew has been able to retrieve, Archer forces Shran to release the weapon which then detonates not far away from the Andorian ship. Still, someone among the Andorians has made details scans of the device and sends them to the Earth ship in an encrypted message.

This was the second best episode of the season so far, only "Twilight" managed to impress me more. "Proving Ground" appeared to be a quite conventional action story at the first glace, with Shran's betrayal as the only twist. Still, it bore a great deal of character interaction, it tied together the Xindi and the Andorian story arcs, and it may prove invaluable for both of them. The continuity to "The Shipment", to "Chosen Realm" and to the previous Shran episodes was remarkable. Moreover, it was simply exciting to watch.
But the highest praise must go to Jeffrey Combs as Shran. It was his outstanding performance that made something special of this episode, his facial expressions and his intonation gave Shran's character an intensity like no other guest in the series and like only two or three of the regular cast. As glad as I was that his character changed after "The Andorian Incident" where he was nothing more than another predictably sadistic Weyoun clone to me, as much I appreciated that he didn't ultimately become Archer's buddy here. And that there were limits to his effort to forge an alliance between his people and the "pinkskins". Shran was palpably sorry that he had to betray Archer, but in his pride he didn't admit to him that he was only grudgingly following his orders. The female Andorian officer Talas was another positive surprise, as it was the first time that another member of this race had more than a few lines and gave us a personal account. Most importantly, the Andorians provided us with some insight into their vital desire to protect their planet. I appreciated that, even if it showed the Vulcans in a bad light once again. Quite contrary to Shran and his people, the Xindi remained two-dimensional. There was nothing to learn from their usual Council of Evil except what we already knew. The Xindi once again failed to reveal anything of their motivation, it was all about boring schedules -- about as exciting as the monthly meeting of marketing people of a company who have no idea of the actual products.
Remarkable quote: "We are looking for a rare element - Archerite." (Shran, to the Xindi)
Remarkable scene: We see the back of Archer's head in front of the viewscreen, so that it looks like antennae were attached to it when Shran appears on the screen.
Rating: 7

Stratagem December 12, 2153: After capturing Degra, the designer of the Xindi weapon, Archer has Phlox wipe out his short-term memory and has Trip and Malcolm create a scenario in which the Xindi-Humanoid would reveal the whereabouts of the weapon. Degra finds himself on a shuttle, escaping from an Insectoid prison after three years he allegedly spent together in one cell with Archer. He is tricked into setting a course to the building site at Azati Prime, but then he notices that the scenario is a ruse. Since the way there would take three weeks at maximum warp, the Enterprise crew create another fake setting in which Enterprise arrives at the star system, and Degra has to confirm that it's the right place.

At the beginning, even still some time after the teaser, it almost looks like the author of the episode were shamelessly repeating the stunt of "Twilight", something that can definitely be done only once or twice in a whole series run. Earth destroyed, Archer deranged, only that it's now Degra who is suffering from amnesia. Ironically, Archer couldn't know anything of the events in "Twilight", so there is neither a particular continuity nor a continuity breach in "Stratagem". The basic idea just doesn't strike me as very imaginative, although it was quite obvious that it wouldn't turn out as yet another time travel. I have to concede that the story plays with this overused plot idea as well as with the "Archer captured once again" cliché which are both ironically alluded to. But exactly in this idea lies a weakness of the episode. After fifteen minutes the "we're in the future" hoax is exhausted, as any viewer should have a clear idea by now what is really going on. But instead of re-invigorating the plot, the switch to the real world and then to the past slows down the pace even more. In my view it would have been far more appealing to show the story in chronological order, building up suspense gradually instead of exploiting what little mystery potential it has to see Archer with messy hair and together with his enemy in a shuttle.
The rest of the episode after Archer rejoining Degra in the shuttle partially makes up for this possible mistake. Speaking of clichés, another one that was tackled was the "drive-of-the-week" concept of a familiar Earth ship 220 years later. Archer is discussing the possibility of creating a spatial vortex with Tucker as if he really intended to try that and as if a small firmware update were sufficient. Fortunately it's not as easy as on Voyager, and everything was faked to trick Degra yet another time. Yet, here lies another deficiency. It is just too blatantly obvious that the final five minutes, with Archer asking the Xindi engineer for help while the ship is rocking, all shown from the Xindi perspective, must be yet another ruse. Once again, it would have been more exciting if we had seen the preparations from the point of view of the Starfleet crew.
The simulator is quite credible as a predecessor of the holodeck. Unfortunately, it is susceptible to the same kind of malfunctions. When the ship is bombarded by radiation from the debris field, the simulator goes nuts due to the inevitable power overload, and it doesn't seem like one could simply pull the plug...
Remarkable quotes: "The red giant may be a red herring." (Trip), "These overgrown grasshoppers..." (Archer)
Remarkable facts: The Xindi Council was created to find a new homeworld for all the Xindi species. But a unification never took place. The neural pathways of Xindi-Insectoids and Xindi-Humanoids are nearly identical. 
Rating: 5

Harbinger December 27, 2153: Enterprise frees a small vessel from a gravimetric anomaly. Its passenger, an unknown alien, claims to come from a transdimensional realm. He begins to cross walls as if they were not there and tries to disable or destroy the ship, until he can be stopped. In the meantime, Trip has become friends with Amanda Cole, one of the MACOs. When T'Pol finds out about their neuropressure sessions, she becomes jealous and eventually confesses that she has feelings for Trip. Malcolm and Colonel Hayes have a dispute about the combat drills and the responsibility for the ship's security which culminates in a fist fight, upon which Archer angrily orders them to settle the conflict.

What the f*ck. I knew that this day would come, and I was hoping for the authors to treat Trip's and T'Pol's delicate relationship with the due decency. The two would have deserved it, because I used to be fond of their characters. I don't mind the gratuitous glance at T'Pol's bare backside. So Vulcans do have butts, what a glorious discovery. I also don't mind the coincidence that Amanda Cole was a high school girl from Florida and that she was way too cute for a MACO (BTW, didn't play Jolene Blalock a Marines chick with a tattoo on her butt in "JAG"?). Rather than that, it made me mad how Berman and Braga, along with Manny Coto, couldn't resist taking the opportunity and please the target group with extremely adolescent fantasies that are by no means becoming of Star Trek. "Harbinger" was not Trek any longer, but a trivial run-of-the-mill soap with adult people behaving like high school kids. The episode was devoid of the responsible and professional conduct as we should expect it from adults, most of all in Star Trek. Except for the problematic character development, the episode was devoid of any substance too.
Whilst I have to admit the things that lovers or uptight rivals use to say to each other are rarely well-phrased in reality (although I'm not so familiar with the latter situation), I don't remember listening to such cheesy and trivial dialogues as between T'Pol, Amanda, Trip and Reed in a long time. Even the dreaded "Night in Sickbay", while its plot was still a tad more pointless, had better lines than "Harbinger". Also, the two plot threads about Trip & T'Pol on one hand and Reed & Hayes on the other hand were awkwardly cluttered together, and switching between them usually took away what little suspense could be built up in any of them. But the worst of all was the unnecessarily cruel and downright sickening school yard pounding between the two idiots Reed and Hayes. For once I could fully understand Archer's anger about their intolerable conduct, although his own involvement into the episode was not very laudable either, seeing how little he cared about the life of the injured alien ("...bend a few ethics") even before the guy turned out hazardous. I don't think that I should praise Archer just because his subordinates annoyed me more.
The plot thread about the mysterious alien was about the only thing that reminded me of Star Trek but it didn't manage to save the episode either. First of all, the idea of the mysterious alien who holds a secret and hides his powers has been overused to death in the four previous incarnations of Trek, and it was just too obvious that he wasn't what he pretended or appeared to be. Secondly, the plot thread was extremely thin as it was conceded less than a third of the screen time. It was uninspiring because it relied entirely on clichés that were only casually used instead of sufficiently exploited, like the ubiquitous anomaly-of-the-day that plays no role in the following, aliens with genetic(?) improvements (Suliban), or the little surprising ability to penetrate walls (Daniels). Thirdly, letting the alien vanish without revealing anything of his origin, mission or motivation was the worst possible ending for this episode. We only learn as much as he claimed to be a prisoner, who volunteered for an experiment, and now he turned out to be just another bad guy in a long line who are out to destroy humanity. So what? Although there are a lot of problems, the Xindi story line has grown on me, because it is overall very consistent. This way, I like it whenever a little mystery remains at the end of a good episode. Without knowing about the upcoming "Azati Prime" I was already sure that the strange guy and his intentions would be picked up again later. Maybe then it would make at least a bit of sense why the Xindi or anyone would set up a complicated trap like this one, if they could simply openly attack Enterprise. Anyhow, it was extremely counter-productive to throw away what little potential the idea of the transdimensional alien had. In other words, I was waiting for something to reconcile me, but all I got was a cheap villainous sneering from the alien.
Rating: 0

Doctor's Orders Date not given: An anomaly is building in the flight path to Azati Prime, and while the Denobulan brain is not supposed to be affected Dr. Phlox has to shut down the human and Vulcan crew's neocortexes by placing them in a comatose state. After a while he begins to hallucinate, and when the edge of the anomaly is still too far away because it is expanding, he sees no other way but to activate the warp engine against Tucker's advice, with T'Pol assisting him. After passing the anomaly, Dr. Phlox notices that T'Pol wasn't awake all the time, and that he only had a hallucination of her.

Yawn. I can't think of such a boring Trek installment in a long time. I admit I watched "Doctor's Orders" after a ten-hour work day, but it was in fact the first time that I almost fell asleep watching Trek. The more Phlox was fighting his hallucinations, the more I had to struggle to keep my eyes open. I already didn't care a lot about this episode when it was still called VOY: "One" and Phlox's name was Seven of Nine. Both are members of a species who are afraid of the solitude and who begin to have delusions once the rest of the crew is asleep while the ship is crossing an anomaly that would damage the human brain because there is for once no inoculation against it which is why they have to go into suspended animation and our resident alien is the only one immune to it. The rehash was blatantly obvious as hardly ever before. Much less was I positively surprised when I noticed that another very similar episode with the old "only and exactly one of the crew is unaffected" cliché, "Singularity", was on air just a year ago. Not to mention T'Pol's recent paranoid delusions in "Impulse" which were a lot like Phlox's here. It was clear from the very beginning that hardly anything in "Doctor's Orders" could be considered as authentic and that the Insectoid wasn't actually there either (also because we could expect the Xindi to take a break after a couple of episodes of action). I was still hoping for an unexpected turning point all the time, but there simply wasn't one. The little bit of suspense was solely drawn from the simple hallucination horror.
There was at least one point that was supposed to be an interesting twist, but I felt rather cheated than amazed when Phlox saw that "his" T'Pol was only an illusion. It was a deception to me because she was acting independently all the time, not like a dream image that would appear or disappear erratically and that would say or do silly things. Phlox's perception of T'Pol was just not how illusions may be shown on TV. Even if we try to excuse T'Pol's pseudo-authentic presence presuming that Denobulan hallucination might actually be like that, it was not the way they could be credibly presented, because it crossed the line to being perfectly real to a perfectly aware (yet quite sleepy) human audience. Just like Bobby under the shower a long time ago. Furthermore, revealing the fact that T'Pol was only an illusion rendered the episode even more pointless than it had been anyway until then. In this light I only wonder why the two didn't have a little affair or why there wasn't an embarrassing disclosure while they were alone, as this is what the writers would customarily do with characters who are not bound to the laws of the real world. At least they could forego this silly temptation, although their abstinence ultimately doesn't help save the episode. On the contrary, the only thing that may have caught my interest within the boundaries of the boring plot would have been to know why of all crew members T'Pol was in Phlox's dream all the time.
I admit that Phlox was never among my favorite characters, and maybe I would have found the episode a bit more appealing if it had been either focusing on another character, or if it had been more about the real Phlox and not about the delusional version. And seeing Phlox naked is definitely something I never asked for, especially not one week after T'Pol's butt exposure. By any means, this was a totally uninspiring filler episode. And yes, I do wonder if there is something wrong with me if I give out zero points to consecutive episodes, but even if I should be utterly unfair, that's my privilege on my site.
Nitpicking: Finally, one question remains unanswered. Who cared about the Xindi? From what we know they could appear and attack everywhere, and inside that anomaly the ship would have been absolutely helpless. Especially since the anomaly was popping up from nothing, it would have seemed obvious that somewhere inside the Xindi or the Sphere Builders may have just been waiting for Enterprise.
Remarkable fact: A chart that Phlox accessed correctly showed the warp drive's peak transitional thresholds up to Warp 4.
Rating: 0

Hatchery No date given: Enterprise discovers a crash landed Xindi-Insectoid vessel. A landing party finds a dead crew and a hatchery whose life support will fail soon. After coming into contact with an egg, Archer strives to save the hatchlings at any rate, and he even orders antimatter supplies of Enterprise to be sacrificed to power the hatchery. While T'Pol and later Reed are relieved of duty for acting against him, Hayes is left as the only officer to stick to the captain. The rest of the senior crew unite in a successful mutiny. Phlox finds out that the egg contained a sophisticated neurochemical that made Archer develop a father instinct for the hatchery.

We should be concerned about Archer's state of mind. The man who let a whole race die because of rashly made up personal ethics, who almost killed a man who had no business with his true enemies and who saved a bioweapon from extinction now does everything to foster a bunch of nasty insects, at the expense of his crew's lives and of all life on Earth. It certainly wasn't quite like that in "Hatchery", but there were moments when I thought that Archer was all serious about it instead of going with the more plausible (at least in the Trek Universe) explanation that someone or something controlled his mind. I'm still undecided if I liked that outcome or if we should have better attributed it to Archer's tendency of erratic behavior.
We've had plenty of "mind control" episodes in Trek and several of them only recently, so I didn't care a lot about this part of the story. Likewise, the idea of a mutiny to get rid of an irrational captain is not new either. What was interesting to me is the timing of the episode. The story arc was taken to an extreme that we wouldn't have expected at this time. It was woefully counter-productive in a positive way and in the best tradition especially of Deep Space Nine. Archer, who was always obsessed with finding and fighting the Xindi suddenly found himself playing their nurse and he was trying to be trekkier than Roddenberry could have ever imagined. On the other hand, the ethical aspect gradually faded in the following. Archer made quite a good point in the beginning when he noted that the crew would probably come to the help if they had found infant (Xindi-) Primates. So why shouldn't doing the same for the Insectoids be possible and adequate? Just because humans have a natural instinct to hate everything with more than four legs? The episode still owes us an answer to this question. Yet, maybe we really don't want to know if intelligent insects could ever be sentient too.
Remarkable facts: Xindi-Insectoids are genderless and they reproduce asexually. Their usual life span is twelve years.
Remarkable set: The hexagonal shapes were the obvious choice for an insect ship, but overall they reminded me too much of the Suliban design. Some of the structured hatches even looked exactly like on Suliban vessels.
Rating: 4

Azati Prime No date given: Upon arrival at Azati Prime Tucker and Mayweather take the captured Xindi shuttle to cross the detection grid erected by the Xindi. They find the weapon submerged in an ocean, almost ready to launch. Daniels transfers Archer to the future and tries to explain to him that the Xindi were tricked into the war by the Sphere Builders, a future enemy of the Federation. But Archer takes the shuttle on a suicide mission to blow up the weapon. The mission fails, and he is captured by the Xindi-Reptilians. Although Archer almost succeeds in convincing Degra of humankind's true intentions, the Xindi begin a devastating attack on Enterprise...

I liked the episode simply because it was exciting to watch, like already "Twilight" earlier this season. No matter if a reset button is pushed in the end (which is still pending here), it is possible to make such an extremely action-heavy episode at most twice per season. Aside from the problem with its budget consumption there is nothing that wears out faster than plots that go to extremes. I don't think this opportunity was wasted here. Still, I would have had many reasons to dislike "Azati Prime".
War showed its ugly face in the episode when Archer and Tucker refused any attempt to seek the diplomatic solution proposed by Daniels and T'Pol and particularly when Archer ordered the helpless Xindi outpost to be eliminated. One might say that this was only pragmatic, to kill a few for the sake of many others. But isn't this exactly how the ruling class and the military have always justified their courses of action through human history? To paraphrase Picard, how many collateral damage does it take before it becomes wrong? The perhaps worst part of the story is that I was not even shocked that of all Starfleet captains Archer was capable of consciously killing innocent people (although Sisko's poisoning of the Maquis planet was at least as appalling). Fortunately Reed's and T'Pol's upset facial expressions demonstrated that the episode was not considered as a plea for preemptive strikes, but overall their protest could have been more determined.
In addition, I have a serious issue with the overt racism in the episode. Archer's reaction to the Reptilians who had captured him may have been understandable, but his insults (for instance, about the brains of the size of a walnut or about the turtles served in his favorite restaurant) were by far the worst ever uttered in a Star Trek episode. We always have to bear in mind that the conflicts between the species in the Trek Universe were always intended to be an allegory to the racial struggles on present-day Earth. What adds to the impression of racism is that in the end the humanoids or primates, those who are visually similar to each other, more or less united against those who are very different, namely the Reptilians and Insectoids (who did not appear themselves, but their ships were seen). Although this outcome may seem realistic, it is clearly not Trek-like to form alliances out of racial preference, even if they are evil alliances. If this was supposed to tell us that the 22nd century still has to evolve to the place we know from the future, it may be acceptable to show these obvious throwbacks. Yet, I wonder if a Trek that occasionally abandons fundamental morality with the excuse that it's not yet the time for it can be my Trek any longer.
Concerning T'Pol's emotional state, I am not sure if it was the right time to let her emotions surface in the form of an obvious illness. Provided it was an illness and not a sudden and inexplicable affection for Archer, which I think would have been an awful idea, considering that the attempt to introduce some jealousy went awry already in "Harbinger". Anyway, there may have been a better time than one where everyone was on edge anyway.
I have come to appreciate the Xindi story arc, and "Azati Prime" was definitely an exciting culmination point. Still, the more I think about it, the fewer genuine ideas can I find in the episode. The most important part of the story was definitely what Daniels told Archer, although Archer's repeated time travels have become boring by now. And, for what it's worth, the destruction of the Xindi outpost was something we haven't seen before. Most of the rest of "Azati Prime" was a composition of facts and motives we already know too well. Just like the trick with the alien shuttle ("Broken Bow"), the diving stunt (VOY: "Thirty Days"), not to mention the fatigued "Archer captured by evil aliens" cliché. And the imminent destruction of the ship screams "reset button", just like in "Twilight".
The time travel aspects of the episode are analyzed on a separate page. Aside from the usual logical problems I wonder when and how the Sphere Builders pursue which goal and why. They are transdimensional, they want to rebuild our space to suit their needs, they can scan the timeline, that much we know. But it all doesn't seem to make much sense. In "Anomaly" the spheres were said to be at least 1000 years old, so are they transforming space for so long a time? If this were true, why don't we ever hear of an ever expanding Expanse in TOS or TNG? If it's all a parallel timeline and the spheres are not supposed to exist in the Trek universe we used to know, why would the Sphere Builders involve the Xindi who are quite obviously utterly unreliable allies? If they could go back in time and build the spheres, couldn't they wipe out Earth some time further in the past while they were at it?
Remarkable ships: In the 26th century we not only get a glimpse of the Enterprise-J, but also of at least two familiar designs: the Prometheus and the Dauntless. However, it is questionable if exactly these classes can be supposed to exist in the far future.
Rating: 7

Damage No date given: The Xindi break off their attack thanks to Degra's intervention, leaving Enterprise crippled and with at least 14 of the crew dead. The captain is found in an escape pod from a Xindi-Aquatic vessel. Archer hopes that he may trade a warp coil from a damaged alien vessel, but the aliens refuse. In the meantime, T'Pol confesses to Phlox that she has become addicted to Trellium-D which evokes strong emotions in her. Archer decides to take unethical actions and take the warp coil from the alien ship by force. The mission succeeds, and soon Enterprise can warp on. 

While "Azati Prime" was an overall good drama with many interesting points to discuss, this episode falls short in many respects. I see "Damage" as a visually impressive yet story-wise half-hearted conclusion. The episode fails to tie most of the loose ends together and to offer new perspectives. Not everything can be postponed eternally, even in a story arc of one season or longer. Still, only the most obvious and immediate problems are picked up from the previous episode at all, the rest like the involvement of the Sphere Builders and of Daniels, as well as the quarrel between the Xindi factions is not or hardly further developed here. The Aquatics are given a visually awesome appearance, only to utter a single insignificant phrase. Instead of exploring all the possibilities of the new situation (such as peace), Enterprise is once again left on its own, seeking for some Xindi asses or equivalent parts of their body to kick. Agreed, immediate peace may not have been realistic, but who says that the sudden end to the attack on Enterprise is? The only difference to the season so far is that the ship is now badly damaged. But even this opportunity is not really sufficiently brought into play. Ironically Phlox in his decent grief is the only one who acts as we would expect it from a human being in such a crisis. Archer once again proves to be a reckless maniac (who I don't consider to be able to command a ship at all), and junkie T'Pol is out of her Vulcan mind anyway. Would we really care about how they act and what they say? The rest of the crew are just like mindless repair robots. At least the ongoing repairs are likely to remain an important point in the following episodes, only for continuity's sake.
But more damage than to the ship is done to the spirit of Star Trek. It obviously isn't enough that one character makes a very bad decision. Why does it have to be Archer with his ruthless looting as well as T'Pol with her irresponsible drug addiction in one episode? Star Trek was always about human beings who have improved or who strive to improve themselves, as unworkable as this may seem. We may accept the crew crossing the line once in a while, but not so often as recently. I have the impression that the writers have forgotten that Archer already ordered the helpless Xindi outpost to be eliminated in "Azati Prime". Or how he almost killed an alien who had no business with the Xindi at the beginning of the season. Now he acts brutally once more, but it is almost like he pretends it's the first time when he talks to Phlox about crossing the line to unethical conduct. Although it's just a matter of intra-series continuity in the first place, I think that forgetfulness about one's own misdeeds is just as bad as the misdeeds themselves.
Stupid Treknology gives the episode an additional bad taste. Not only is the alien technology miraculously compatible with Enterprise's needs. The episode even manages to completely redefine what a warp coil is. On any Federation ship, a warp coil is and always was a huge component inside a nacelle, and there are quite a lot of them necessary to propel the ship. But here it suddenly becomes a small part in engineering that can be easily transported out. This utter misconception is in the tradition of Voyager's many "drives-of-the-week" and particularly the so-called "transwarp coil" in "Dark Frontier". But even Voyager got the basic Treknology right in "Nightingale", where the nacelles were dismantled to service the true warp coils. The obvious error could have been effortlessly avoided by calling the component that Trip needed a dilithium matrix.
Remarkable fact: Phlox has been a doctor for 40 years. He thinks that he has twice acted unethically.
Preliminary crew losses: 14 (confirmed), 3 (unaccounted for)
Rating: 3

The Forgotten No date given: The battered ship meets with Degra's vessel, who is demanding evidence for the secret activities of the Xindi-Reptilians and the Sphere Builders. In the meantime, Reed and Trip have to seal a ruptured plasma conduit that is dangerously close to the reactor. Archer has Trip write a letter to the parents of the dead female Crewman Taylor. Trip's grief about his sister's death resurfaces, and provokes hostile reactions to Degra. The Xindi-Primate, however, assists Enterprise by destroying a Xindi-Reptilian ship, and he suggests that Archer speak in front of the Xindi Council to make his point.

"The Forgotten" is a bit like a toned down version of "Damage". I would even go as far as suggesting that "Damage", where everything that happened had a negative impact, if any, might well be wiped out from my memory. I wouldn't miss anything, except it would have to be explained how Archer got back to the ship. With less of the "Now we're evil" feel the new episode is clearly a tad more Trek-like again. Still, a good deal of it is again spent to show a fight and people keen on fighting. This new direction of Trek lately is where very different expectations and very different opinions of fans collide. Of the ones who want so far typical Trek stories where problems are solved with wit and wisdom, even if this appears unrealistic and makes the story overly figurative. On the other hand of those fans who enjoy keeping up generic conflict and military action, just for the thrill of it. I don't deny that the latter can make up for fine stories as well, but it's not what I want to see permanently.
I liked Trip's hostile reaction to Degra, as it was very human. Only that I contest that it was required to "resurrect" his sister to that end and additionally trigger the sentiment with his thoughts about Crewman Taylor's death. As if Trip had completely forgotten (as the episode title says) about Lizzy all the time, which sheds a strange light on his emotional state, be it influenced in that direction by T'Pol's Vulcan neural pressure or not. As for Degra himself, probably nothing could really explain his swift change of mind, and the fact that he suddenly fights his own race, even if from his point of view Archer may be the lesser evil. But at least Degra's deliberation is a sign that there may be a consensus in the end -- something that we honestly wouldn't expect to be achieved by Archer even if he gained the upper hand and afford leniency.
The first thing that really annoyed me about "The Forgotten" was the "interactive hallucination" of Crewman Taylor that appeared in Trip's dream. "You're not real." How often have we heard this little sentence on Star Trek and especially on Enterprise lately (and to be fair, on other scifi or mystery shows likewise)? This cheap and contrived quirk is what the writers routinely apply whenever they have no better idea how to bring emotions to the screen. As if dreams were in true color and widescreen format, and as if it were still exciting to wonder whether it's a dream or rather an alien shapeshifter, time travel, holodeck deception or something else along these lines. It's also a pity to use a talented actor like Connor Trinneer like that. At least he could make up for this failing in his other appearances. The closing scene with him reading the now final version of the letter to the Taylors was a more than worthy ending to an overall average episode.
Likewise, I didn't care at all about T'Pol's difficulties to cope with her new emotions. As a matter of fact, we have seen her in so many similar situations before, always deemed new exceptional cases, like in "Fusion" (mind meld), "Stigma" (illness), "Bounty" (Pon farr) and "Impulse" (Trellium-D). Neither Spock nor Data and not even Seven were exploited so often like that in such a short time. Now it's Trellium-D that she's been taking purposely, but it can't really show us anything interesting except that Jolene Blalock is a good actress. Finally, I didn't like the flashback overkill. Not only does every recent episode have a recap, "The Forgotten" furthermore had Trip's already mentioned dream sequence about his sister and, in addition, Archer explained everything that had happened to Degra, which was done just too thoroughly, as if infrequent viewers were supposed to be kept updated in the first place.
Remarkable quote: "Have a seat. I have to use a hand scanner. The imaging chamber is still offline. -- Commander Tucker reassigned the repair team that was working here. He said the armory was a higher priority. You'll see how low a priority I am next time he burns his fingers on a plasma conduit." (Phlox)
Crew losses: 18 (which may include Fuller from "Anomaly" and the dead crew member from "Chosen Realm", excluding Taylor who was not yet confirmed dead at that time)
Rating: 5

E² No date given: Outside a subspace corridor that would be a shortcut to the meeting with Degra, the ship stumbles upon another Enterprise NX-01. This Enterprise 2 has been thrown 117 years into the past inside that corridor. The ship's crew, all descendants of the present Enterprise 1 crew, are determined to stop the Xindi. Captain Lorian, the son of T'Pol and Trip, proposes to modify Enterprise 1's engines to increase the ship's speed to Warp 6.9. But T'Pol 1 as well as T'Pol 2 who is still alive on E2 advise against it. Lorian feels guilty that he already failed to avert the first Xindi attack on Earth. He takes the chance, steals the warp injectors from E1 and attempts to escape with E2 to reach Degra in time. Archer has to stop Lorian by force. They come to a truce and join forces on their way through the corridor and the hostile Kovaalans waiting there, with modified impulse engines to avert the time travel. This time E1 leaves the corridor in the right time, but E2 stays behind. It remains unknown what happened to the second ship.

It may have been an unsuited time for an accidental time travel (without Daniels or any future guys involved) at the climax of the story arc. Still, I liked this episode. "E²" is basically a variant to the well-known theme from DS9: "Children of Time". We meet our descendants, and we learn what would be if we commit a certain error or avoid it, depending on the point-of-view. But "E²" is anything but a remake because the overall situation is very different here, as is the moral dilemma and even the logical implications of the time travel, which are discussed on a separate page. Personally I appreciate that this time there is no sentimental argument along the lines "Look at these cute children. We have to sacrifice ourselves, otherwise they will never have existed". I found this twisted reasoning of the DS9 episode always annoying because it didn't work out at all logically, least of all as a justification for Sisko's decision to save the allegedly predestined future of the crew at the expense of their real life and their free will. The elegant solution not to care about this question by making a mystery of the destiny of E2 seems to me like the correction of an old error. I only wonder why not even Lorian or T'Pol 2, who would have had all the time to ponder about it, take into account the possibility that the ship might eventually vanish from time. And if they still don't expect anything like this, why don't they transfer at least their children to E1, if this ship is rather meant to survive in Archer's and Lorian's plan (we actually don't know, though)? Aside from that, there was only one plot hole. What would Lorian have saved by only destroying the first probe when it was launched, without further "contaminating", as he expressed it, the timeline? Without him telling anything to the authorities on Earth, the Xindi would have had all time in the world to built another probe without meeting any resistance on their next attack. Moreover, isn't it likely that the crew of E2 with their technological and genetic cocktail contaminated the timelines of other species to the same extent as they would have done with Earth's?
The characters on E2 didn't strike me as particularly interesting, they seemed too "synthetic" to me, and only old T'Pol and Lorian were conceded more than a few lines anyway. Old T'Pol was just like we could expect her to be, a bit wiser, a bit more human. The only surprise was her strong affection for Archer, although she had been involved with Trip. Lorian, on the other hand, seemed familiar to me from the beginning, and not primarily because his appearance was quite obviously similar to Trip's. When he ruthlessly went to steal the warp injectors from the other Enterprise exactly like Archer did in "Damage", it came to my mind that he was not only acting like Archer on this one occasion, but the whole time. His obsession to fulfill his mission, his remorse about not being determined enough, his pondering and hesitation, it was all as if he were rather Archer's son.
Interestingly, the battle with the two Enterprises, the alien ships and the anomaly bore a astonishing similarity to the one in TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise". I could imagine that this was a quite intentional homage. Another thing was probably not meant as a homage, but rather a perpetuated misconception from Voyager: just make a few minor modifications to your warp engine, and it will go a lot faster with this "drive-of-the-week". Fortunately the improved drive was neither used nor played a major role anyway. But we need to wonder how much of the improved technology will stay on Enterprise.
Remarkable quote: "Are you suggesting that the other Enterprise never existed? If you're right, then why would we remember them?" (T'Pol)
Remarkable facts: Enterprise 2 spent 117 years in the Expanse, preparing to stop the Xindi. They exchanged technology and also procreated with several different species. Dr. Phlox also found a way to combine the human and the Vulcan genome. Lorian is the son of Trip and T'Pol. He was 14 when his father died. The first officer is Karyn Archer, a great-granddaughter of Jonathan Archer. When everything failed to stop the first Xindi probe from being launched, there was still the chance to set a collision course. Lorian says that he hesitated because his emotions took over. E2's permanent presence may be the reason for the Xindi wanting to know how many other Earth ships are in the Expanse.
Remarkable homage: NX-02, the ship under construction seen in "The Expanse", is going to be named Columbia. 
Rating: 7

The Council No date given: While a team in a shuttlepod is examining the interior of a nearby sphere, Degra has finally arranged for Archer to speak at the Xindi Council. The Humanoids and Arboreals trust him, and the Aquatics are beginning to doubt the words of the Sphere Builders whom the Xindi call "Guardians". After a second meeting the Reptilians agree with postponing the weapon's launch. But this is only a ruse to gain time and get rid of Degra who is killed by Reptilian leader Dolim. The Insectoids and Reptilians launch the weapon from beneath the planet's surface, but they would need another one of five codes to activate it. Enterprise, Primates and Arboreals engage the Insectoids and Reptilians, but these manage to escape with the weapon into a subspace vortex, after kidnapping Hoshi...

Archer's much-anticipated appearance at the Xindi Council could have been more exciting. To me it seemed a lot like a TV courtroom drama where amateur actors re-enact with exaggerated emotional behavior what had or would have been in reality a dry presentation of evidence. Archer had said everything of importance when he explained his point to Degra in "The Forgotten", and already at that occasion it was a mere recap of events. There wasn't really anything to add this time, and honestly the swiftly made up "holographic evidence" of the Sphere Builder looked much like the cheap deception the Insectoids thought it was. Maybe this impression of awkwardness in Archer's testimony was even appropriate for the situation, seeing how futile it let his effort look. It was unfortunately not the time to convince anyone or even gain a new ally. At most he could say something like "Here I stand and pledge I'm not your enemy". But maybe it was just this attitude, rather than the debated evidence, that made the Aquatics reconsider their position?
Archer has noticeably chilled out after his excessively violent and criminal outbursts in the past few episodes. On the other hand, this makes his character predictable and less interesting here. Hoshi and Phlox have a few nice scenes. But most of the praise goes again to Trip as a character. Trip's conflict with Degra resurfaces, but he manages to overcome it by just working with the Xindi-Primate for a while, which gives the episode some Trek-like moments. For a last time Degra can convince as someone who has changed his mind and is uncertain how to deal with his former enemies for whose welfare he feels responsible. It's quite the contrary with Dolim, who promises to the dying Degra, "I am going to find your wife and children...and do the same to them. Your traitorous bloodline will end at the tip of my blade." This is simply disgusting, but apparently what a true villain is supposed to say.
Despite the obvious deficiency of mostly showing standard situations as we have seen them so often this season, this episode was extraordinarily exciting, maybe more than "Azati Prime". I can't really tell why, but there was an impression of the story really moving on, even before the weapon was actually launched in the end. Degra's death and Hoshi's abduction contribute to this impression, as well as the superb visual effects. Above all the fight against the robot arm (a drone or robot being something very seldom used in Star Trek without a good reason) and the mountains of the Council planet were well-done. Only the visuals of the weapon launch seemed a bit lacking, it looked too artificial and toy-like. The Sphere Builders were another disappointment. They reminded me too much of Founders dressed as Borg Queens in a Bajoran Wormhole environment. They would have deserved something radically different from the familiar looks. 
Remarkable homage: T'Pol quotes the old Vulcan saying, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Crew losses: Reed speaks of 23 men and women lost so far on this mission, 1 in this episode (Corporal Hawkins).
Rating: 7

Countdown February 13th, 2154: Hoshi is supposed to crack the missing launch code of the weapon, for which purpose Dolim infects her with a neural parasite.  While Trip and T'Pol are still analyzing the data gathered on the spheres, Archer meets with the Xindi-Aquatics and promises them he knows a way to disable the spheres, whereupon they agree to intercept the weapon. After her resistance has been broken, Hoshi has decrypted the third launch code. A fleet of Aquatics, Primates, Arboreals and Enterprise enters a subspace vortex and runs another attack on the weapon. Hayes and his team free Hoshi, but he himself doesn't survive. The Sphere Builders interfere and create an anomaly that allows the Reptilians and Insectoids to escape with the weapon. But the Insectoid leader has become suspicious because the emerging anomaly was evidence for Archer assertion - that the Guardians are actually the Sphere Builders. Dolim has the Insectoid ship destroyed. In the meantime, a team with Archer and Reed leaves Enterprise and switches to Degra's ship on a suicide mission to board and destroy the weapon.

This must have been the most thrilling installment of Enterprise so far. Even though I usually dislike episodes that pick up a cliffhanger only to close with another one, it was worth the venture this time, because "Countdown" turned out spectacular from the first to the last minute. Much of that impression came once again from fantastic visual effects. I'm generally skeptical about excessive use of VFX because they have often distracted the fans from boring writing. Here, however, the ships and probes (the Insectoids and Aquatics anyway) contributed to the story as if they were additional actors. Only the pathetic ploy not to mention that Enterprise was hiding inside the huge Aquatic vessel and suddenly open the gates was definitely dispensable. It was quite predictable anyway because one could previously see through a window in the dining room that Enterprise was not in space.
There were a few touching and a few cruel scenes in the episode, but neither of it was taken too far. I was particularly glad that we could see relatively few of Hoshi's ordeal. With Major Hayes's death the series suffers another great loss after Degra. This is more evidence that the arc is supposed to end very soon. It is interesting to note that Hayes made his peace with Reed before he died (shot during beam-out, something to be discussed in Treknology circles), just like Trip and Degra. Well, it is already a cliché: Don't come to terms with a rival too quickly in a Trek series -- you might not survive it. Should we be worried about Trip and T'Pol who were coming closer together again? Back on the topic of special effects that were more than just supporting, the destruction of the Xindi-Aquatic vessel was just as touching to me as the death of a "real" character.
A critical remark should be allowed, though. The final chapter of the Xindi arc in general and "Countdown" in particular is lacking the complexity that has been part of all newer Star Trek incarnations. As opposed to the final chapter of DS9 (an obvious choice for a comparison) we notice that Enterprise has usually only two or at most three plot threads, and each of them is straightforward. The plot twists of the Xindi arc (at least until after "Countdown") are not necessarily predictable, but they all lie within the range of the military premise, meaning victory, stalemate or defeat. As explained earlier, it isn't boring at all and it doesn't strike me as overly militaristic either. Still, it is simplified Star Trek with a tendency to focus on action instead of more "cerebral" qualities.
A final remark: How much beatings can our brave ship still take? It isn't really in one piece anymore since "Azati Prime". Nonetheless, it has been in combat in all of the five following episodes. Without replicators, I wonder how any major system can still be kept operational.
Remarkable ship: We see the interior of the large weapon for the first time, and it is somehow reminiscent of a Death Star - yet skillfully modeled. The reactor core is a re-used Romulan mine! 
Crew losses: at least 1 (Major Hayes)
Rating: 8

Zero Hour February 14th, 2154: The Xindi weapon and Dolim's ship exit the subspace conduit near Earth, pursued by Archer's team on Degra's ship. Another vessel arrives at high warp to aid them - it's Shran. Archer, Hoshi, Malcolm and the MACOs beam over and begin to disable the weapon. Meanwhile on Enterprise, the attempt to destroy Sphere 41 turns into a race against time, as the ship needs to enter the transdimensional realm for that and is boarded by the Sphere Builders. But the venture succeeds and the sphere network is obliterated. On the Xindi weapon, Archer sets the final sequence to destroy it, but is challenged by Dolim. The sphere explodes before he can be beamed out. When Enterprise arrives back at Earth, there is no sign of Starfleet Headquarters, but the shuttle of Trip and Travis is attacked by ancient U.S. Air Force fighters. Archer is alive and finds himself surrounded by ugly German Nazis - and an ugly alien dressed as a Nazi...

A writer needs an unusual instinct to wreck an otherwise decent episode in its very last second. B&B may have thought that it was about time to revive the tradition of the Nazi fetish in Star Trek. Although I was prepared for the ending thanks to the inevitable spoilers conveyed to me against my explicit wishes, I was still shocked to see the alien in the SS uniform. The setting of TOS: "Patterns of Force" of 1968 was absurd enough, but may be still excused as a one-time mishap. Ironically this first and rather naive take on the Nazi issue was the only one with a clear statement against totalitarianism and racial hatred. Moreover, only some 20 years after WW II and with most veterans still alive it was explicable that Star Trek would come up with a Nazi episode, something that other US TV shows had too. In 1997 Brannon Braga opened a new chapter of the Space Nazi arc with VOY: "The Killing Game", the Hirogen travesty show. No doubt this installment was much better written than the cluttered TOS episode. But I must say that I was extremely lenient back in 1997, although on Voyager the Nazi theme served as nothing more but a platform for action and violence, the reflection about which came much too rashly in the very end. Now it is 2004 and we are left with yet another installment of alien Nazis. I can already hear the protests and yes, it's only three episodes out of 600, but that's three too many. Worst of all this abomination of an episode cliffhanger needs to be continued along the same lines and will go on for at least another 45 minutes. How often does Hollywood still want to defeat Germany? How bizarre does a setting have to be that an author couldn't throw in a few Nazis? How far can falsification of history go? Only a naked alien Nazi domina with high boots and a whip would have possibly been more obnoxious, but this is where American television draws a line. In contrast, vilification of a foreign nation and indirect desecration of the victims of the Holocaust just for the fun of it are deemed acceptable. It's sickening that something like this is possible and that it does not entail serious protests. Shame on you, Mr. Berman! Shame on you, Mr. Braga!
This is the place for my view on the issue and not a place for discussion. Still, I will try to anticipate a few objections that will follow. I am German. As opposed to apparently the vast majority of US citizens and in accordance with most of my fellow countrymen I'm not proud of my country. But I feel like defending us where we are being treated with unjustified contempt. Where is Germany in Star Trek? Aside from rare casual references there has never been anyone or anything German on Star Trek. Well, with the striking exception of the three Nazi episodes (and an upcoming fourth one). So is it that we should feel honored to be featured more often than other nations that have no place in an all-American universe? Germany has a recorded history more than four times as long as the USA, it has been the home to countless world-famous composers, philosophers, authors, inventors or physicists. Reducing all this to the twelve years of one barbarian regime completely misses the mark. It was a long enough way to overcome the years of 1933-1945 that had brought insufferable pain upon Europe. Germany is grateful for the support that it has received to recover after the war, in spite of the German war crimes that were naturally present in the minds of the former enemies. Today Germany is a country with people of all flavors who want to and have a right to live their lives in peace and without being treated as if they were all latent criminals.
But some wartime traditions last much longer than they can be helpful, and the anti-German stance of Hollywood is among them. It doesn't seem to matter that present-day Germany has a toothless self-defense army and is scorned for its cowardice not to boldly follow Uncle Sam into the Iraq War. On the other hand, perhaps it's just the right time to come up with something to disparage the country no matter how. I may be over-sensitive and biased in this particular respect, but I can't help the impression that old (Nazis) and new (Old Europe) preconceptions about Germany are stimulating each other. It would go too far to assert that exactly this, jumping on the bandwagon, was B&B's motivation. But subconsciously there is a proven recipe "Need villains - take Germans" in Hollywood (with Japanese and Arabs being temporary "rivals" for the top position of Hollywood's Most Hated). The German movie villain stereotype has been consistent and self-sustaining in Hollywood as long as since the early years of WW I (One!), when the US Government funded anti-German propaganda movies to prepare their citizens, many of them of German descent, for a war against Germany.
Specific animosities aside, Hollywood's goal to entertain at all cost is another aspect of the problem. There is no doubt that every entertainment industry in any country takes into account to aim at the lowest instincts of their audience, be it with cheap sex movies, with dreadful reality shows or with making fun of people of other nations or races. All this televised trash "polarizes" at best, but at worst it offends groups that often don't know to do anything against it, at least if they don't fall under the protection of "political correctness". Even a revered director like Spielberg couldn't help using stereotypically dull Movie Nazis and Germans in his "Indiana Jones" movies and the TV series. But he made up his mind and, besides his work with the Shoah Foundation, created "Schindler's List", a remarkable history lesson against the tendency to forget, a testimonial of humanity amidst an inhumane regime (I have mixed emotions about "Saving Private Ryan" which is still too much of the against-all-odds American Hero drama to me, although it doesn't fail to condemn war). It would be arrogant to demand that 45 minutes of Star Trek could or should only try to accomplish the same as "Schindler's List". But where it is not possible to treat the horror of war and Holocaust with the due decency, it should not be attempted at all. It must remain our goal to remember what atrocities human beings were capable of doing and may do again if we are not aware of the beginnings - not just in Germany. The absurdity of aliens cross-dressing as Nazis is anything but helpful.
Other remarks: No I didn't completely focus my attention on that alien Nazi, I am aware of other issues too. There were a couple of good ideas in the episode. Such as the Reptilians who each ate a mouse (a mammal) in their opening scene, which may be easily taken as a symbol for the imminent destruction of the human homeworld. The nifty scene featuring the foundation of the Federation with Archer playing an important role was out of place and seemed quite contrived, but the date (2161) was correct, and humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites were mentioned as the founding members. I also liked how the transdimensional beings tampered with Enterprise's systems by just penetrating them with their hands. On the downside, the episode was full of already overextended clichés, like the dull twist with the skin damage and a slight variant of the inoculation against radiation (the neuroleptic compound), like the modulation of the weapon frequency to be able to hit the enemy, like the inevitable battle of Good vs. Evil on a dying ship. But most of all I was annoyed that once again a distributed system was physically destroyed in a chain reaction, (cf. Earth's power system, the Hirogen comm network, the Borg transwarp conduits). Should we be worried about the internet?
Okay, under normal circumstances the episode would have scored seven points. I feel like reducing that to zero because of the ending, but let's say three points because it's Valentine's Day. And even though it is extremely unfair to anticipate my rating, I have a feeling that the follow-up will go down as low as zero points.
Remarkable quote: "Go! And tell Archer we're not even anymore. He owes me." (Shran)
Rating: 3

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