Three great points!
Gotta love The Dope, man.
If Vulcans could indeed be envious, wouldn’t they be red? 
Oh, I see Tars is here. You have a TV Guide yet? 
This should keep Tars busy for a while. Too bad her pic in TV Guide isn’t as nice as the ones there.
Does anyone recognize any of those alien prisoners on board the ship? Couldn’t they at least throw in a couple recognizable aliens from ST past? It’d be nice to see a Ferengi or maybe a Betazed…
There was a Nausican.
Kn(*)ckers: How did you sleep all the way to Australia? Halfway there, the airplane has to turn over lest everything be upside down or antipodal or whatever the Brits call it. Didn’t you wake up when all the blood rushed to our head?
Thanks Mr. Boy. I don’t write the episodes, I just make them better.
-Rue. (BASF)
You do understand that, at least in theory, they’re trying to avoid introducing too many races that didn’t show up until TNG, right?
Granted, we’ve already seen Ferengi, and viewscreens, and about a hundred races that get absolutely no screen time in TOS, TNG or later, but hey. At least they’re trying.
Aren’t they? 
… and here I thought Nausicaans were teenaged girls in aviator’s helmets…
I don’t get it.
Is it a Buffy inside joke?
No, Miyazaki, I think.
Re “Canamar” — Decent. Not great, but not sucky either. Call it a B overall, with the last ten minutes a C.
I liked the first three-quarters of the episode just fine. It was fairly unpredictable, making plot choices I didn’t always expect. For example, the cliche would have involved corrupt officials, an illegal arrest, and an attempt by that diplomat dude to obstruct Enterprise’s pursuit. But no, instead, they said, “Oops,” and called ahead to release the prisoners. I liked that; it kept me off balance.
I also liked Trip’s role in the story. His relationship with the Naussican thug was fun, and his slow burn at Chatty Algae was nicely handled, even if the writers overdid it a bit.
I thought Archer’s deception of the criminal dude was plausible. He didn’t try to convince the guy he’d been in the neighborhood for a while; he used his actual Earth background nicely. I thought they might have gone farther, too, something along the lines of, “This is our first time here, actually, and we got caught right out of the gate. Don’t take it personally, but I’d rather I never laid eyes on your shithole planet.” Have the criminal guy eye him acidly for a second, then burst out laughing. You know, a bonding moment. Would have helped the trust thing. But that’s just me.
And I thought Archer’s kiss-off at the end was appropriate. Of course he’s pissed. Of course the Linoleums screwed up, badly, and of course there will be repercussions. I would like to see some of those echoes in future episodes, as humans continue carving out a place for themselves. I don’t need to see a whole episode back here or anything, but humanity is having a major impact already, and it needs to be acknowledged. Even a single-line reference to “what happened on Linoleum” as a bit of supporting evidence in some turning-point-of-the-series-arc episode would be appreciated.
What I didn’t like:
I’m getting tired of the inability of the writers to craft solid endings for their episodes. This manifests itself in two ways in this episode.
First, there’s the obligatory fistfight. I mean, come on. I like an action scene as much as anybody, but it’s kind of a cliche, don’t you think? I know, this is a conscious throwback to Kirk-era Trek, when the good captain couldn’t get through an hour anywhere without punching somebody. But please, don’t make it so obvious: “Archer and Main Bad Guy duke it out in final five minutes.” Mix it up a little. More on this in a moment.
Second, too many episodes have ended too abruptly. The main plot is resolved, we get like two lines of dialogue, and then the executive producer credit comes up. The best Trek always gave us a minute of decompression time, as the characters reflected on what happened, offering their thoughts, seeking context, or whatever. (“I really could see five lights.”) In this one, Archer lays the smackdown on that bureaucrat, strides away, and I’m thinking, okay, this is where he and Trip have some exchange to let us know that they’re pissed but that they have to get back to business. Something like this, after they turn the corner: Trip: “Can I look at your report before you send it out? So’s I know you don’t miss anything.” Archer: “Believe me, this is going to be a painfully complete catalog of stupidity.” T’Pol: “In that case, perhaps you would appreciate my perspective from here.” Archer: “As long as you don’t candy-coat anything.” T’Pol: “Bureaucratic incompetence is far from sweet.” Archer nods appreciatively. Fade out. Y’know, nothing to advance the plot, really, but something to give us perspective on how these characters are beginning to work together and respect one another and all that.
On another subject: Did Travis even say a line this week? I actually laughed out loud when his Big Moment in the show was to respond to Phlox’s line, “Reed thinks they’ve been kidnapped,” by turning to T’Pol and giving a Determined Look of Action, so she could tell him, “Set a course.” I mean, crap, even Uhura had more to do on the bridge than this guy.
But my biggest problem so far with the show is one of artificial conflict. What do I mean by that? It goes back to the fistfight I mentioned above. And here’s the thing:
We know these characters aren’t going to die.
Don’t put Archer on a crashing ship and try to convince me there’s a chance he’ll perish in a meteoric fireball. (Odd shades of Columbia, by the way. My wife winced when I pointed it out. I wonder if the producers considered delaying the episode. Anyway.) I know he’s going to get off the ship. We all know he’s going to get off the ship. There’s no suspense about that. We’re all just waiting to see how he gets away, which is why the fistfight strikes me as such an uninspired choice: We know how it’s going to end, so as viewers, we’re just waiting.
Go back and consider the best episodes of Trek to see what I mean. Just pulling one out at random… “The Inner Light.” That’s the one where Picard’s brain is captured by the alien probe and he lives an entire fantasy life in an hour while his body lies on the bridge. Conceptually, it’s very cool, of course. And in the context of the show, the other characters have to be worried about his survival, to give urgency to their actions.
But that’s not what’s really important. What really matters to us in the audience, as viewers engaged with the characters, is what happens emotionally to them, and how they are changed by what happens. We know Picard isn’t going to die, so we aren’t interested in that question. We are interested in how this experience is going to affect his personality, his outlook, his worldview.
All of the best Trek keeps this in mind. “City on the Edge of Forever,” for example. We know Kirk & Co. are going to get back to the ship at the end; that’s never going to be in doubt in an episodic series. No, the serious dramatic question is whether or not Kirk can live with himself after consigning a woman for whom he may legitimately have feelings to a necessary death.
Or “Darmok.” Again, Picard isn’t going to be killed by the Id Monster. The dramatic question centers on the ability of Picard and Crew to figure out how to communicate in time to save the alien captain and win a peaceful relationship with this new species.
The point is, it doesn’t work dramatically if the only question in the balance is whether or not Archer (or some other major character) will be killed in the adventure, because we already know the answer. No, there has to be something else important at stake to really get us involved.
To that end, I would have added a wrinkle to “Canamar.” Specifically, I would have made the ringleader guy not a badass criminal. Well, not an amoral villain, at any rate: more of a freedom-fighter type, somebody standing against a corrupt regime who has had to sell his soul just to survive. He’s done awful things Archer cannot condone, but he’s still on the side of right, ultimately, albeit just barely.
The overall arc of the episode doesn’t change much, but it totally alters what’s at stake at the end. Instead of a generic bad guy trying to kick Archer’s ass, we have a conflicted antagonist, somebody with whom Archer wants to connect, a potentially valuable ally. Then the final fight isn’t about Archer living or dying; it’s about Archer succeeding or failing to win the other man’s trust. The dramatic question hinges not on survival, but on Archer’s effectiveness as a leader. So when at the end, the other guy refuses and Archer is forced to leave him behind, he takes with him a deep bitterness, a sense of personal loss. And what’s more, his closing rebuke to the alien bureaucrat carries additional sting; he’s as angry at himself for failing to rescue the other man as he is at the idiotic government that created this situation.
That is what creates real, engaging drama, in my opinion. Enterprise is close, and needs only a small bit of tweaking. They’ve got all the ingredients, but in my opinion they’re misusing them. We could really get engaged with the situation and the characters, but the producers are wasting energy trying to fool us into believing the lives of the regulars are in doubt, with nothing else particularly at stake.
That’s why, for me, next week’s rerun, “The Communicator,” actually may be one of the best of this season. Despite its long list of problems (characters behaving stupidly, the suddenly remembered cloaking pod, etc.), what’s at stake, really, is apart from whether or not Archer and Reed get executed. We know they won’t, so we don’t get engaged in that aspect of the story. What we really want to know is whether or not the crew will be able to extricate themselves with minimal damage to the civilization, and the fact that they fail, and badly, is quite significant.
But then we get that ridiculous wrapup, with a dumb joke about Trip’s partially cloaked hand, and I have to conclude the producers just plain don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what they have, and they don’t know what matters in the story, and in consequence they’re losing us as viewers.
Sorry this was so long, but wasted potential just bugs the crap out of me.
the panda!!!
Seemed to me that he did have to sell his soul just to survive. Mr. Badass Criminal first saw the inside of a prison at an early age, explaining to Archer that he was falsely accused. Though he wasn’t standing against a corrupt regime, he was fighting an oppressive one. One that would imprison a kid for five years just because someone higher up in the social structure said he was stealing.
You sure that’s not a hampster, Tars?
Cervaise: Maybe. I’m thinkin’ about it. 
I just can’t believe we drug out an Enterprise thread to two pages.
Cervaise: On the similarity to the Columbia disaster, my guess is that, when they filmed this months ago, there was a 10-20 second CGI scene where the transport slowly broke to bits and exploded, scattering little pieces of transport all over the place, and, a week or two ago, people at Paramount said, “How about we just cut that part out at the end…” It’s a kind of ship explision they’ve rarely done on Star Trek, and it seems odd that they would pass up the opportunity (usually, they just blow up in space).
That one is four pages, and still popping up. the episode after is at three, but gets less replies. and we have a whole month to act crazy until new episodes, so these threads are going to get a lot of wear and tear.
Tars, buddy, you just got wooshed. A little tiny woosh, but still.
And I wondered if I could do it to a Trek Doper.
D&R
I agree, which is why I said that Enterprise has been “close.” They had everything they needed to make a real conflict out of it, but they elected to follow the narratively simplistic path, and make the guy an unapologetic criminal. Yeah, he’d been falsely imprisoned to begin with, but according to his own autobiographical sketch he quickly chose to abandon his morality. Now, if instead he’d been someone like DS9’s Kira, but a lot darker and more conflicted, they would have had something interesting. But no: he was a generic unrepentant villain, and his death was basically meaningless, both in terms of the show and, more importantly, to Archer (beyond basic empathy). Like I said, they had the ingredients, but just missed something really good.
Your points concerning the villain’s character development are well taken, Cervaise. Your version would have made a more interesting conflict. Alternatively, if they were wedded to the idea of making him truly villainous, they could have developed Archer’s character a bit in a new direction instead. They could have played up the viciousness a bit, dropped the poor-falsely-accused-child, and let Archer willingly abandon him. Recall that our good captain was trying to carry the semiconscious schmuck to the shuttle right before the fight.
Reed: “…can’t hold the docking seal much longer.”
Archer: <looks back at semiconscious schmuck> “I’m on my way.”
Reed: “What about him?”
Archer: <expression hardens> “He’s already dead.”
<Hatch clangs shut.>
Later, in that introspective interlude, Archer can question his actions, and either agonize or receive justification. Either way, it makes him look tougher than the fistfight.
I like his being an asshole just fine. They’ve done the “Good Bad Guy” from Oedipus to Bonanza.
Why wasn’t he a charming ladies man who ate babies? that would have been so cool. And he could have slept with T’Pol with the intentions of getting her pregnant so he could eat the baby! Trek needs more baby cannibal villians!