Big “eh” from me on this one.
I appreciate that they’re really trying to figure out the characters’ internal conflicts. Forcing Archer into a choice between completely unpalatable alternatives is a good move, but I think it was narratively mishandled. First, since we meet the V-heads and then they leave, we know they’ll need to come back, so there’s no suspense waiting for Archer to make his decision; it would have been much more shocking if he’d decided on the spot while they were still docked together the first time.
Also, he isn’t trusting his own crew, which is taking us into Harry Potter “things get bad when people don’t tell each other the complete truth” territory. Instead of agonizing internally and barking at Malcolm et al. when they question his orders, it would have been a lot more dramatically interesting (not to mention true to the setting) to have Archer simply tell his people what he wanted to do. “I have decided we have no choice but to steal the warp coil. I am aware this is an act of piracy. I am aware this is a criminal violation of an innocent vessel, and I fully expect to be court-martialed for it. However, I cannot live with the alternative, while I can live with being prosecuted if it means succeeding at our mission. But I can’t make that choice for any of you…” And then each individual gets to decide whether to participate or sit out. That would have been an interesting debate.
I also don’t find much value in T’Pol being a dirt-junkie. It’s artificial conflict, and it doesn’t inform the character. It’s an external influence, not an intrinsic characteristic, which to me has been the greatest failing of the show’s character development all along. In other words, once we get the monkey off the Vulcan’s back (or the horse out of her spoon, or the dragon out of her steeplechase, or whatever the kids are calling it now), she’ll be Back To Normal and everything will be hunky-dory. The writers/producers have not shown willingness to build these problems directly into the characters, which as I have said before turns them into pleasantly blank action figures; it’s as if the show is afraid of making somebody unlikable and thus doesn’t take any risks with them. Somebody above brought in Jack Bauer for comparison, which I think proves my point completely. T’Pol’s apparent addiction has nothing to do with who she is as a character and is thus a waste of narrative effort. (I also didn’t much care for the distorted point-of-view scene illustrating her withdrawal; I thought it went on far too long, well past the point where we got what was going on. And the giant French-press looking superhookah was just dumb.)
The scripting, also, continues to be clumsy. There’s no rational reason that V-head vessel would be in the area conducting surveys without having been harassed by Xindi warships all the way to the location, other than narrative convenience. There’s no rational reason the Xindi council would have called off the attack and let Enterprise go free, with their captain no less, merely on the suspicion that things may be more complicated than they appear. At the very least they would have boarded the ship and taken everybody into custody, with the small concession of keeping the reptilians at a distance from the prisoners. Also, it completely beggars belief that Starfleet EVA suits would be so fragile that a three-meter fall would dislodge a critical component like that, except, again, for scripting convenience. I’m starting to feel patronized, a bit: “We need danger here! Ignore the fact that it doesn’t make any sense, just feel the danger! Okay, now we need a positive reversal and an escape from the danger. No, this doesn’t make any sense either; don’t worry about it. Just feel happy that the crew is safe now.”
And yeah, the preview for the climax they’re heading toward doesn’t look very promising. More of Braga’s empty mindfucking, a la Time Squared. That stuff rarely works; occasionally you get a really kickass scene, like that thing at the end of Parallels where duplicate-Riker is ranting about “the Borg are everywhere!” which rescues a mediocre episode, but more often you get dreck like Remember Me.
I did kinda like the scene where Mysterious Alien (who reminded me a bit of the sidekick in Last Starfighter, plus boobs) visited the Xindi council; the rationalizations of all the behind-the-scenes machinations were pretty solid (“I have preserved your authority”), and for the first time I can recall show a character whose motives aren’t completely obvious. I’m legitimately interested to find out who this alien is and what’s going on with her (him/it?).
So, after a couple of not-too-bad episodes, I’m still not seeing any indication that the writing is being lifted from the quagmire of sloppy plotting and weak character development. But as I keep saying week after week, it’s so close.
It’s just such a corporate product: safe, middle-of-the-road, motivated more by a desire to protect and insulate a moneymaking property and less by a desire to tell good, interesting stories. Basically, they just need to grow some balls, y’know?
