Day 350: Enteprise, The Augments

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S4EP6, “The Augments”

 Summary: Having successfully stolen the genetically engineered embryos, Soong wants to take them to a safe place to raise them. Unfortunately, Malik thinks the time has come to fight (or at least prove the genetic superiority of the augments), and offers up a different plan. He stole several nasty diseases from Cold Station 12, and wants to put them in a torpedo and detonate them over a Klingon planet. The Klingons will blame the humans and start a war that will keep both sides distracted while the new augments grow up. Soong doesn’t want to take any more lives than necessary, so Malik turns against his father. Which is a mistake, because this is something Enterprise can almost certainly use to their advantage.

Standalone Thoughts: This episode is generally very fast-paced, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a good thing in that it doesn’t feel like it’s forty-two minutes long, which is generally the mark of a good episode. It’s a bad thing in that some of the things that have to happen to resolve the conflict can feel a bit rushed as a result. “Cold Station 12” made it obvious that Malik would turn against Soong, but Soong’s response to it seems to be to lose faith in augments entirely, and it just doesn’t feel like that was properly developed. The predicament from the end of the last episode is also fixed a bit abruptly (and a little too neatly as well; I felt like there was something more that could have been done with it), and the ending is also tied up perfunctorily, though it includes a scene that ultimately serves no purpose and didn’t need to be there. I don’t think we needed another episode for it to have felt more natural, but perhaps they should have cut down on the Orion stuff in “Borderland”, which would have allowed for more growth.

You might think from all that that I don’t like the episode, but that’s not true. I think “Cold Station 12” is probably the best of the three, but this one is also pretty good. Spiner does a fine job showing Soong’s conflict between protecting his children and saving innocents, and while I wouldn’t say Newman is a great actor, his Malik does feel right for the situation, which is what really matters. There’s good action, tension, drama, a great scene where Archer bluffs against a Klingon, and a nice amount of the “normal humans versus augments” trope we were promised. It might not have been executed as well as it could have been, but we got enough, especially in the last two episodes, that I would overall consider this a good story arc. Now to see if the next arc can take what the showrunners learned from doing this one and make it come out even better.

How it Relates to the Whole: On an Enterprise-centric level, this episode mostly just continues to explore the Tucker/T’Pol dynamic, though as I said in “Borderland”, I think it also inspires a later arc. On a Trek-wide level, though, the episode is filled with references and callbacks. Mention is made of the Briar Patch, which I’m pretty sure shows up in the movie Insurrection. Archer delivers the words “Garbage scow” to a Klingon in what I’m almost certain is a nod to “The Trouble With Tribbles”. Malik not only name drops Khan, but has a moment that feels like something out of The Wrath of Khan. There’s even a familiar sounding Klingon name mentioned at one point that might be the same Klingon we met in “Broken Bow”. And of course, it’s blatantly obvious what the last few lines of the episode are supposed to be alluding to…

Other: *First, we need to discuss that matter from yesterday. Near the end of the episode, Udar, the not as perfect augment, was shot. I thought perhaps he would recover from it, showing that he’d managed to get the same sort of protection his siblings had. Instead, he’s never mentioned in this episode, so I have to assume he was in fact killed. This is a disappointment and feels like a waste, since it would have been interesting to see Udar in more direct conflict with his supposedly superior siblings, helping to fight them and discover his own self-worth. Sure, it’s cliché, but it’s the sort of thing that would work well for the idealism of Star Trek. You missed an opportunity there, writers.

*This episode does highlight something that’s kind of been downplayed until now. Archer gets beamed aboard shortly after doing something dangerous to save his life, and Tucker calls for a medic. The reason he does this is because Phlox is currently unavailable. However, we’ve never seen any indication that Phlox has a medical staff; look closely during crises where there are a lot of casualties and you’ll see he’s being assisted by people from all the various departments. The closest he ever really got to a nurse was crewman Cutler, and of course they can’t use her anymore (it’s never stated, but I’ll assume they made her a casualty of the Xindi conflict). So who takes over when Phlox is indisposed? Every single other Trek doctor has had assistants—even the holographic doctor from Voyager got help from Tom Paris and Kes at times. It just seems like a really odd detail to overlook.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Malcolm’s the one who suggests the plan to disguise their warp signature to look Klingon, when you’d think Tucker would be the one to have that idea. Given the other skills he’s shown over the course of this show (piloting, command, programming), I’m starting to feel like he could fill in for practically every major position on Enterprise if he had to. All we need is some sort of indication that he’s reasonably good at other languages.