The athelas late review
In brief: I liked it. A lot.
I really enjoyed “Azati Prime” six weeks ago. It had good plotting, interesting ideas, and lots of ‘sploshuns. But its main drawback was that parts of it were rather shallow; it was largely a matter of the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys. “Damage”, on the other hand, has hard moral choices and also is obviously a part of a larger plot.
The Xindi stop attacking Enterprise just after Reed says that “we can’t take much more of this”. Contrived? Maybe, but the explanation makes a bit of sense. Degra and Co. obviously conspired with the Aquatics to pretend that the entire Council ruled against the ReptoGuy (which is what I said in an earlier post, but I had only seen the first act by then). This is confirmed when they, not the entire council, were talking with the transimensionalalien (Trannie). I’m still unconvinced that Degra and Co. would believe Archer so easily, but I’m willing to give B&B some slack for now. Next week’s episode looks like it may have some rationalizations.
Nice work on the damaged Enterprise throughout, inside and CGI’d outside. I especially like the static on the comm. It’s a nicely pervasive reminder of the ships condition. The casualty count seems a bit low, though. If E-deck were depressurized, wouldn’t that have killed off 20% of the crew right there? OK, it’s a small deck. Let’s say 15%=12 crewmen. Reed mentioned hull breaches on decks C, D, and E. Let us say two people killed per deck. That makes 18. Add the seven or so people we saw flying into space and we have a total of 25, not counting those who died because of getting hit on the head by falling rafters, etc. (And how did they recover the corpses of those seven people if only three people were missing?)
The Trannie did look a lot like the female changeling (Oda, feminine form of Odo). Again, I find Degra’s belief in Archer in that scene odd, but I’ll wait for next week.
T’pol’s emotionalism was nicely done, but I think that her heavy breathing was too overdone. Just like with Dukat’s masquerade as a Bajoran, I guess we’ll never be free of the Shakespearean All-Convincing Masquerade that’s So Darned Obvious. And I find her motive for taking T-D bad “I wanted to explore emotion!”. If I wrote this episode, I’d make her motive, or at least her initial motive, to be attempting to develop resistance to Trellium D so that the ship could be coated with it and be protected from anomalies.
I think that the plot is better than most people give it credit for. In their initial rendezvous with the V-heads, Archer wants the warp coil, yes, but since they wouldn’t sell and they hadn’t discovered that message yet, he doesn’t yet have a reason to steal it. And why would he want to borrow the coil then? He doesn’t know of any rendezvous point yet, and no matter how far he goes in the few days he borrows it, the Xindi will still be able to come after him. Afterwards, as he says, any negotiation that comes off as too insistent would get their suspicions up, and he couldn’t risk it.
There was some nice agonizing over the decision. Archer’s conversation with Phlox was great, as mentioned. The rectangle-table discussion was good as well, and Archer’s final scene with Trip provided a strong ending.
Anyone notice that when Enterprise swoops in for the kill, it is shown coming down from the top of the screen? The only other time the ship was shown like that (at least, in a significant sense) was in “The Xindi”, and that was a different shot with a very different context. This way gives Enterprise a menacing quality; it’s actually quite a chilling shot.
Good obligatory firefight scene, although the ship looked a bit undamaged. Nice to see one of the Good Guys (although that label is obviously a bit simplistic now) get shot. And they used the transporter! I also liked how Damar was too nice (“mercy is not a quality that will serve you well in the Expanse”!) to shoot Archer before he beamed away.
The only complaint I have with this episode, besides the nitpicks above, is that there’s too much going on. Degra’s change of heart, Archer’s return, the V-heads, T’pol’s emotionalism, repairs to the ship…this leaves shortchanged some scenes that I would like to have seen. More debate on Archer’s decision, a longer negotiating scene with the V-heads, more about the Trannie (though that would probably spoil the mysteriousness, so never mind). The plus side is that the threads indicate an ongoing story arc, and the main story was wonderfully crafted. Why on earth didn’t they do this in all of season 3?
Final rating: 4/4 spheres.
(Others for scaling: AP: 3.5 Hat: 1.5 DO: 3 Har: 3 Strat: 4 ProGro: 3.5 CR: 2.5 CS: 2 Sim: 4)
(Daniels mentioned Ithanites, not Illyrians, so there goes my theory. Damn)
(Darn you, Aesiron, for summarizing your dream out of context! You’re as bad as the UPN trailers!)
(Yay, I’m an Andorian! I love Andorians! (twirls around his antennae))
(One bottle of Andorian ale to whoever can place T’pol’s quote of Archer: “We cannot save humanity…what makes us human”)
