Day 322: Enterprise, Anomaly

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S3EP2, “Anomaly”

 Summary: A particularly bad Delphic Expanse anomaly has hit Enterprise, draining their power and leaving them mostly dead in the water. This makes them a prime target for a group of raiders, who steal a number of supplies (including most of the fuel for the warp core) and then beam out. The only bit of good news is that one of them (Robert Rusler) was captured, where it comes out that a) he’s from a race that lives outside of the Expanse (they’re called Ossarians) but their ship was trapped inside, and b) he believes that the only way to survive in the Expanse is to let go of morality. The Enterprise gives chase to the Ossarian ship as best they can, eventually finding an odd sphere that the raiders use as their base of operations. Archer just intends to get their stuff back, repair Enterprise and get out, but then a new discovery comes to light. Which may make Archer reevaluate what the Ossarian told him.

Standalone Thoughts: I’ll admit, while the episode contains some good ideas that are worth exploring, the majority of the episode just feels kind of blah. There’s very little suspense or action in the scene where the Ossarians board Enterprise and steal the materials, and there’s not much conflict in the scene where they find the sphere and get their supplies back either. In fact, if you just happened to catch this episode on TV and didn’t know about the previous two episodes or the fact that there was a season-wide story arc, you might think the Enterprise wound up in a random area of space where weird anomalies happened, and that this was just a one-off episode. The visuals are decent and the dialogue (especially the first conversation between Archer and the Ossarian) sounds good, but the tone just feels off.

Then we get to the last act, and things suddenly take a turn for the better. I’m of two minds about the event that acts as a catalyst—part of me knows it was foreshadowed, the other part thinks it happens way too quickly and too early—but I can’t deny that it’s effective. And after that, things get more tense, and the episode brings the Xindi element back to the forefront. It definitely allows the episode to end on a high note, but it makes judging the episode difficult, especially in my hypothetical ranking system. In the end, I guess I’d put it right on the cusp of the lower-middle; the last act props it up significantly, but the bulk of it keeps it from being considered upper tier. Still, that last act is encouraging for things to come, though if my memory serves, the next episode doesn’t immediately take advantage of much of it…

How it Relates to the Whole: While most of the subplots that were established in the previous episodes are put on the backburner today, the crew gets a lucky break at the end of the episode that will most likely come in handy for later episodes, we get our first look at Enterprise’s brig, and we get an explanation for why trellium-D is so important. It doesn’t feel like this is an overly relevant episode for the majority of the runtime, but it’s still got some important material lurking in there.

Other: *I’m ninety percent sure this is a digital boot;

(color brightened to make my point)

…which strikes me as an odd thing to have to digitize. I would have thought the old “object on a string” trick would serve the purpose just as well and be less distracting.

*One of the anomalies the Enterprise runs into causes Archer’s cup of coffee to fly off his desk and start falling in slow motion, to the point that after returning from the bridge, it’s still falling. Archer angrily grabs the cup and sets it down, but doesn’t bother to do anything about the coffee. I know he’s frustrated and under stress, but if it were me, I’d have tried to scoop the coffee back into the cup to try to prevent a mess later on. No sense making a bad day worse, right?

Badass Malcolm Moment: This would probably be way better in gif form, but I have no talent for that sort of thing. Suffice it to say that this;

(brightened and contrasted to show that that is indeed Malcolm there)

…makes for a very impressive entrance when you see it in motion. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in a Bond movie. Then again, I wouldn’t object to seeing Keating in a Bond movie either…