Day 305: Enterprise, Precious Cargo

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S2EP11, “Precious Cargo”

 Summary: The Enterprise answers a distress call from a cargo vessel run by two Retellians, who says that they’re ferrying a doctor in a stasis pod and need to repair the pod or risk using up what little food and air they have. Tucker is assigned to the case, and he can’t help but notice that the passenger is a beautiful woman (Padma Lakshmi). Then the pod malfunctions just enough for her to wake up, and one of the Retellians panics, knocks Tucker out, and flies off from Enterprise, leaving his associate Plinn (Leland Crooke) to take the fall. It turns out that the two of them captured the woman, Kaitaama, who’s both a noblewoman and slated to become the head of her government, and were planning on holding her for ransom. Now the Enterprise has to figure out how to track the Retellian ship down, while Tucker has to get Kaitaama to stop putting on airs and help him get her out of this situation. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one has the harder job.

Standalone Thoughts: This episode contains two classic tropes, the group of visitors who aren’t as innocuous as it first appears and two people who dislike each other/have very different personalities or stations in life who are forced to work together. And for the most part, that’s the biggest thing that struck me about the story. There’s nothing actively wrong with the execution, but it’s material you’ve seen before, in other media if not in Star Trek specifically. So what winds up happening is you just sit back and enjoy the ride, watching things go through their paces, including the inevitable but not entirely earned conclusion of the bickering between Tucker and Kaitaama. It may be more entertaining to you if you like that particular trope, but for me, it didn’t quite work.

There is, however, one scene that’s noteworthy, for both a right and a wrong reason. I won’t go into details because of spoilers, but the short version is that Archer resorts to subterfuge to get Plinn to talk. On the one hand, it’s funny, both because it’s creative and because we know the actual personalities of the characters. On the other, I’m not entirely sure Plinn would have bought it. He’d seen and interacted with Archer and a few others before everything went wrong, so Archer’s explanations of how things worked on the Enterprise might not have rung true to him. Then again, he was in a stressful situation, and all his rational thought might have gone out the window (or the airlock). Even so, I think a few extra lines of dialogue acknowledging this disconnect might have made this scene work that much better.

I have to be honest and say this episode is fairly low in the season rankings for me. It’s not bad so much as unoriginal, and doesn’t really do anything new with classic tropes, like “Marauders” did. Even the infamous “A Night in Sickbay” at least has some unique things happening in it, even if they’re wrongheaded. Again, though, these tropes aren’t ones that particularly appeal to me, so maybe people who really like them will have a better time. As is almost always the case, this sort of thing is a matter of opinion.

How it Relates to the Whole: While things were left open for the possibility of a followup, I don’t believe anything actually comes of it. Really, about the only connection this episode has to anything else in the show is proof that Tucker manages to be the one who has the biggest problems whenever he gets involved with other alien races and cultures. We’ll be seeing an even clearer example of this later in the season…

Other: *The episode opens with a shot of the Enterprise while harmonica music plays. A few seconds later, we find out it’s Tucker who’s playing it. He’s really not helping to dispel the idea of him as a redneck/hillbilly, is he?

*When asked if they can have a bath, Archer says the Retellians will be taken to “guest quarters”. The problem is, I didn’t think Enterprise had guest quarters, because in “Fallen Hero”, Hoshi had to give up her quarters to V’Lar, and if anyone was going to get guest quarters, it would be a well-respected Vulcan ambassador. It’s not a gigantic continuity error in the grand scheme of things, but when you watch a show in quick succession, you notice things like this.

*On the other hand, we have what looks like a continuity error at first glance only to make perfect sense if you go back and watch carefully. After the Retellian ship breaks loose from Enterprise, we see Archer and T’Pol arrive back on the bridge to pursue. We pan over to Mayweather giving them a rundown of the situation, and you can clearly see that the tactical station is empty. We pan back to Archer…then cut to the tactical station, with Malcolm at his post. However, if you pay attention during the pan back to Archer, you’ll see someone moving across the bridge (and towards the tactical station) at the top of the shot. If I had to guess, Malcolm was in the turbolift with the other two, but the camera moved away before we could establish that fact. So it’s jarring initially, but it’s actually not as bad as it looks.

Badass Malcolm Moment: After being ordered to follow Plinn back to the docking port because Archer suspects foul play, Malcolm plays it very cool and handles the situation with just the right amount of polite sternness. Even if the action isn’t particularly impressive, his attitude is.

After the Fact Update: There may be a reason I wasn’t too fond of the episode; both the original writer (David A. Goodman), and the writer who reworked it (Brannon Braga, who also helped create the show) didn’t like the end results either. Plus, Goodman was new to both Enterprise and one hour long shows in general, which didn’t help matters, and Braga tried to turn the episode into a screwball comedy on his pass, which obviously didn’t quite work out. Even if I don’t always see eye to eye with most Trek fans, at least I seem to be on the same page as the creators.