Day 311: Enterprise, Canamar

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S2EP17, “Canamar”

 Summary: While on an away mission, Archer and Tucker are accused of being smugglers by the local police and are arrested. The two of them are placed on a prisoner transport heading to the Canamar prison colony, with the guards not believing their protestations of innocence. Just as the Enterprise manages to make contact with the government and explain the situation, one of the prisoners, Kuroda (Mark Rolston), breaks free and takes over the transport, having his own plans of what to do with it. The one piece of good news is that the pilot was injured, which means Archer can volunteer his services and possibly save the day. Well, he’s almost certainly going to save the day since he’s the main character, but the question is how much he’ll be able to do before the Enterprise shows up to lend a hand.

Standalone Thoughts: Even if this episode is basically variations on a theme, I’d say it’s a well-executed series of variations. The whole episode revolves around Archer pretending to be a smuggler and getting into Kuroda’s good graces while also trying to avoid causing serious harm to anybody, which can sometimes come off as self-righteous (see DS9’s “Past Tense”) but manages to avoid that trap here. I credit that pretty much entirely to Bakula, who has just the right body language and attitude that you can see the real Archer underneath his smuggler façade, even as he goes along with the less risky parts of Kuroda’s plan. It adds a bit of darkness to the episode and possibly to the character, and I think the episode is better for it.

Slightly less successful are the scenes involving Tucker. I’m guessing the intent was to break the tension with humor by having Tucker deal with an annoying prisoner (Zoumas, played by Sean Whalen), but it runs into the problem of “a deliberately annoying character is still annoying”. It doesn’t help that it’s just kind of there, with no plot relevance or payoff. It’s not enough to bring the episode down, but it’s definitely the weakest part of the episode. Still, it’s another fine episode, suggesting the showrunners have gotten their groove back. No promises, of course, but at least they leave me satisfied in the here and now.

How it Relates to the Whole: I don’t think there’s going to be any direct followup to this, but two episodes from now, Archer and possibly Tucker too are going to find themselves arrested again. Whether or not they make reference to the events of this episode remains to be seen.

Other: *The teaser for this episode, while at least offering up some suspense and conflict, does suffer from one problem; it makes Malcolm state the obvious. Shuttlepod One (and like I said, it’s always Shuttlepod One) is floating vertically instead of horizontally, and it’s covered in scorch marks. And Malcolm’s conclusion? The shuttlepod was shot at and the power is offline. I guess he needs to scan it to make it official, but I think most of us could tell all that just by looking at it.

*Normally, the alien makeup on Enterprise is perfectly serviceable, and you just accept them as aliens without thinking too much about it (except maybe to go “ah, another forehead alien race”). However, Zoumas, in addition to being annoying, also has something dangling from his cheeks that makes it look like the makeup crew just glued green gummy worms to his face. It’s…distracting, to say the least.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Malcolm winds up being involved in most of the search and rescue process, but if you want one single event, I guess I’ll pick when he gets to the “rescue” part, especially the fact that he’s the one that keeps coming back to help. Once again, I hope someone gave him some recognition for it, even if he says he was just doing his job. He deserves praise if nothing else.

After the Fact Update: Even if the upcoming episode makes no mention of this incident, the writers certainly had it in mind; the whole episode sprang out of the intended climax for that episode. Producer Brannon Braga thought the idea had potential, so they made it a full episode instead. Why they didn’t space the stories out a little more, though, I have no idea. On another note, I wasn’t entirely off with my gummy worm comparison; those things on Zoumas’ face are fishing lures. It’s interesting to see unexpected items being used as makeup/costumes/props, but I think more effort should have been put in to disguise these particular items.