Day 341: Enterprise, E2

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S3EP21, "E2"

Note: The episode title is actually written with the two as a variable (in other words, "E squared"), but I can't get the equation to appear properly in the review. Just wanted to make sure I represented the title accurately

 Summary: Archer and Degra have agreed to speak to the Xindi council about everything that’s been going on. In order to get there, the Enterprise will need to travel through a subspace corridor that’s found in a nebula guarded by a race called the Kovaalans. Archer plans to sneak and then fight his way through, but just before they enter the nebula, they get a hail…from themselves. A battered and modified Enterprise, led by a man with pointed ears called Lorian (David Andrews) appears on their viewscreen and tells them not to go inside the nebula. Lorian comes over to our Enterprise and explains; when Archer tries to go through the corridor, something will go wrong and throw the Enterprise over a hundred years into the past, long before the Xindi have ever heard of Earth and nearly three decades before First Contact between Humans and Vulcans. Lorian and his crew, made up from descendants of the original crew (with some alien blood thrown in), are here to try to make sure Archer makes the rendezvous with Degra this time. Plans are made, tech is exchanged, and our crew can’t resist trying to learn more about their futures. This is especially true in the case of Tucker and T’Pol, who learn that Lorian is their son. Which means that they may have to finally stop dancing around the issue about how they feel about each other.

Standalone Thoughts: On the whole, I would say this is a perfectly fine episode. I’ve always liked the trope of “characters meet their descendants because of time travel”, and I think it’s fairly well executed here. I also like how the episode feints in the direction of “there’s actually something sinister going on”, but makes it more complex than that sort of plot usually is. The acting is good, and the sets for the future Enterprise are just the right blend of familiar and different to put the concept over. In short, while I wouldn’t consider this episode one of the best of Enterprise or one of my favorites, it’s got that “pleasantly watchable” quality from the early seasons, and that’s good enough for me.

However (you knew there was a “however” coming), there is one aspect of this episode that can be distracting and/or frustrating for plot continuity fans. Way back in “Future Tense”, Tucker and Malcolm had a conversation about what they would do if they found a database detailing their futures (and specifically, their future spouses). Malcolm was all for looking, since it would save a lot of time and heartache, while Tucker argued that by knowing what would happen would make him wonder if he was doing things because he genuinely wanted to, or because he knew that was how things would play out. This episode was a prime episode to put their perspectives to the test, but it seems like the writers might have forgotten about that conversation. You can argue that Malcolm is confronted by a possibility that hadn’t occurred to him (what happens if your future isn’t one you like very much), but it’s barely touched on in the episode and never comes up again. Tucker, on the other hand, has done a complete 180 from his position in “Future Tense”, actively pumping Lorian for information and clearly doing some digging to get more details about his relationship with T’Pol. I don’t have a problem with this per se, since there are a lot of reasons why Tucker would do this. Maybe he changed his opinion, or he couldn’t resist the temptation, or he’d been harboring feelings for T’Pol for a while and was using this as a way to try to convince T’Pol that it was a good idea. My issue is that there’s no indication that Tucker ever held his original “Future Tense” opinion, when this was a prime opportunity to revisit that conversation. It doesn’t directly diminish my enjoyment of the episode, but like I said, it feels like a missed opportunity. But if that’s the biggest complaint I have, I think I can safely call this a pretty good episode otherwise.

How it Relates to the Whole: While this episode advances the Xindi plot a little (mostly at the end), what it really does is put the idea of T’Pol and Tucker as a couple in the heads of both the characters and the audience. The audience already suspected things were going in that direction, but now the characters are thinking about it consciously and verbally instead of subconsciously. And that’s going to lead to some interesting developments down the road…

Other: *I do like the little beat early on in the episode where Tucker comes to see if T’Pol’s ok, using his neuropressure sessions with her as an excuse. It’s a role-reversal of how they got into doing neuropressure in the first place, and it’s both good continuity and shows us that things can go both ways.

*By contrast, I don’t really like the way they filmed the “flashback” scenes explaining what happened when Enterprise was flung back into the past. The colors are washed out, and the camera is the worst combination of jerky and slow motion. It’s distracting at best and irritating at worst. Just having it in black and white (or maybe even just letting it play out normally and assuming we’re smart enough to figure out what’s going on) would have been perfectly fine, thank you very much.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Malcolm offers up a smart plan to try to avoid detection while they’re in the nebula. According to the future Enterprise, it doesn’t entirely work, but that doesn’t mean the idea wasn’t solid. If I was Archer, I certainly would have agreed to it with zero hesitation.