Day 273: Enterprise, Unexpected

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S1EP4, “Unexpected”

 Summary: After a series of small but irritating malfunctions occur all over Enterprise, the crew finally pins down the source; a small ship hiding in their warp field. When confronted about it, the aliens, a race called the Xyrillians, admit that their own warp engine has gone on the fritz and they were using the Enterprise’s plasma to try to fix the problem. As a show of friendship, Archer sends Tucker over to help fix the engine properly, where he works closely with and strikes up a bit of a friendship with one of them, Ah’Len (Julianne Christie). In fact, the two of them wind up playing a game together, though what Tucker thought was just a fun little trick where you could read each other’s minds turns out to have more significance than he thought. Especially once he starts growing nipples on his arms and developing odd cravings.

Standalone Thoughts: This is another episode where the writers really needed to think about the pacing. It takes over half the episode before we get any actual conflict; until then, the “problems” seem to consist of various minor ship failures and Tucker having trouble acclimatizing to the Xyrillian ship. This might have been fine if the scenes were being played for broad comedy, but they’re mostly presented matter-of-factly, so it feels kind of dull. Not every episode has to have a serious crisis, but even the comedic episodes need to have momentum and energy.

When we actually do get to the issue of Tucker’s pregnancy, things get a little better if you just roll with the absurdity of the situation. However, it may be difficult for some people to look past the fact that Tucker was impregnated without warning that this could happen (and the situation in which it happened is rather…dubious if you think about it), and nobody in the episode seems to address that. Even Tucker doesn’t seem overly angry about being tricked. It’s clear that his situation is being played for comedy, but if this was something the writers wanted to do, they probably should have thought through the circumstances a little more. It doesn’t spoil the episode for me like it does with some people (I know SFDebris really hates the implications), but it doesn’t help what’s already a pretty blah episode. In fact, the blahness just draws even more attention to the issue.

As with “Strange New World”, the episode is watchable, but not overly special (the bizarre situation with Tucker notwithstanding). Having it come right on the heels of “Strange New World” was probably a mistake, because when you have two episodes in a row that are slow to start, people start wondering about the quality of your product. I know it gets better from here, but people in 2001 didn’t. I’d bet this partially contributed to Enterprise’s reputation, and while I disagree with it, I also kind of understand where they’re coming from.

How it Relates to the Whole: I’d say there are two things of note in this episode, one directly related to the show, one connected to Star Trek in general. The specific is that Enterprise has another run-in with Klingons, where the events of “Broken Bow” are mentioned and dealt with, in a way, thus paving the way for future encounters. The general is a glimpse of holographic technology, which won’t appear much more in Enterprise to my knowledge but is probably supposed to be a reference to holodecks (SFDebris certainly thinks so). At least it didn’t malfunction for once…

Other: *The Xyrillian ship and costumes seem to have been designed with a 60’s Star Trek aesthetic, with the shiny jumpsuits, big geometric patterns, and moss growing on the walls. It actually doesn’t feel quite as cheesy as I just described, so points for that.

(This also seems a good time to mention that I won’t be doing a fashion roundup like I did on DS9. The few times we see characters out of uniform, their clothes generally look like things we’d wear here in the 21^st century. A few particularly odd outfits may pop up in individual episodes, though.)

*I am curious as to how Tucker managed to get impregnated if the item used for the transference was holographical. This is even brought up by the episode itself, but never properly explained. Clearly another example of where the writers didn’t entirely think this through.

*At one point, a character says, deadly serious, “I can see my house from here.” It’s cliché and faintly ridiculous, but I’ll admit I was amused by it anyway. Great line delivery strikes again.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Malcolm didn’t have much of a presence in today’s episode, but he was the first one to spot the Xyrillian ship once the hunt for them was on. Given that he’s always on the lookout for enemies, I’d expect nothing less from him.