Tom Salinsky

ENT S03E07 The Shipment (). The Xindi have a new weapon to test (funny, that first one seemed pretty damned efficient to me) and it will be ready in a matter of “weeks”, so Archer had better hope his new intel is kosher. Because our crew is finally turning up on the Xindi’s doorstep and making off with a suspicious alien thermos flask from some Planet of the Apes-style squabbling scientists.

I don’t really get the Xindi. Over on Deep Space Nine, the complex overlapping and intersecting beliefs, approaches, loyalties and rivalries between the Founders, the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar made the Dominion fascinating opponents. But as far as I can tell the Xindi are just generic baddies who happen to have five different makeup jobs. So what? And remember, we’re introduced to them by means of a massive weapon delivered to Earth which claims seven million lives in less than a minute. That means they’re nearby, single-minded and ready to go. Exactly one episode later, they are debating among themselves, skulking on the other side of the galaxy and still building their super weapon. Both things can’t be true at once.

But in Archer’s refusal to destroy the weapons complex and start a war, we get a glimmer of what Star Trek used to be about. Peaceful solutions. Curiosity about other cultures and species. Diplomacy over aggression. And the different styles of the different Xindi do begin, slowly, to mean something. We still get plenty of “Let’s Kick Some Alien Ass” together with “Headmaster Archer Will See You After School” but there are some welcome shades of grey here. Doorbells that go “bing-bong” are a universal constant apparently.

ENT S03E08 Twilight (). We haven’t had very many cover-of-a-comic-book teasers in Enterprise so far, but here’s Archer, confined to quarters by “Captain” T’Pol, arriving just in time to see the now fully-operational Xindi super weapon unconvincingly reducing Earth to molten slag. One or other of these concepts on its own might have worked better. As it is, we know that none of this is real, so we just waiting to find out if it’s a hallucination, simulation, bad dream or video game (the effects look pretty video game-y). T’Pol looks great in uniform and it’s a mystery to me why Archer doesn’t just give her a field commission now she’s no longer part of the Vulcan High Command and he’s out of contact with Starfleet.

Anyway, it’s always fun to enjoy these counter-factual narratives and it lets us do things like bump off Travis (hard to imagine he’ll be much missed), put some talc in Scott Bakula’s hair, reduce the galactic population of humans to a rump of some 6000. All good stuff, but the question is not “what will happen next?” It’s “how will this be undone”. It’s a forty-minute deleted scene, and yet it’s never less than entertaining while it’s on, and even moving when Phlox gently probes the extent of T’Pol’s love for the shadow of her former captain, who is essentially a victim of space-Alzheimer’s.

“The helm’s not responding,” reports Travis. “Alter course,” suggests Malcolm, obliviously. This somehow solves the problem. Once-logical Vulcans now make catty comments about other people’s fashion choices.

ENT S03E09 North Star (). We’re in a western setting, and a rough one at that, with lynchings and pauper’s burials. Trip and T’Pol have to barter for horses, while Archer asks questions in a local tavern. For American television shows, summoning up the old west comes as easily as corsets and bonnets for the BBC, and the production values here are top notch, with a desaturated colour grade adding to the atmosphere. These good ol’ boys are celebrating their victory over the “skags” in what seems like an unnecessarily sadistic manner, and before long, we get a riff on the famous Jack Palance “Pick up the gun” routine from Shane. It takes a while before we discover why this conflict between aliens and primitive humans is any of Enterprise’s business but the drama is well maintained even if the mystery is more annoying than engaging. Fundamentally, this is a reversion to type: our crew lands on a planet, finds a wrong and rights it. It has nothing to do with the Xindi or the Temporal Cold War, or any other ongoing story strand, but it’s good solid stuff, even if our regulars are just names once more.

ENT S03E10 Similitude (). Enter Manny Coto who gets sole screenwriting credit on this episode and who will have a very big role to play as this series continues. Someone has carked it. And because it’s one of the six people that Archer could reliably pick out of a police lineup, there’s a whole big funeral and everything (MACOs and redshirts are expected to make their own arrangements). In what’s becoming quite a frequent trope of Enterprise, we flash back two weeks to a pre-rigor morris Trip Tucker who is giving T’Pol a foot massage (he’s the foot fuckin’ master). When the warp core goes kablooey, we’re off the Dr Phlox’s Medical Ethics Wonder Emporium, where the latest cure for mild cases of death involves growing a twin Trip and harvesting its brain. One can imagine Rick and Morty having gleeful fun with such an idea, but here it’s all hand-wringing and brow-furrowing, but this doesn’t at least make sense, and mean something, and the barnacles on Enterprise’s hull make for a nice ticking clock. Speaking of which, the fifteen-day lifespan essentially solves the moral conundrum, unlike the very similar situation in Cogenitor. The irony that it’s the same Trip who “freed” Charles now benefits from his own walking, talking dish of the day, although this goes unremarked upon. Alas, the twist ending is rather too easy to see coming and there isn’t really enough story for 45 minutes, but we’re an awfully long way from drivel like Rajiin.

You can tell things are serious early on, because Archer hasn’t shaved for a couple of days.

ENT S03E11 Carpenter Street (). This isn’t so much a cover-of-a-comic-book opening as an is-this-even-the-right-show opening, but the horrid theme tune is there to reassure us. That aside, for the first eight or so minutes, our optimistic science fiction series about exploring strange new worlds is replaced by a seedy, contemporary and entirely Earthbound story of kidnapping incapacitated sex workers. It’s all a bit grim. Maybe not surprisingly given this opening, time travelling Crewman Daniels is the one of the main guest stars, who despatches Archer and a sceptical T’Pol back to 21st century Detroit to put right what once went wrong and soon they’re stealing cars, robbing ATMs and generally blending in pretty well. But tracking down three vampiric Xindi is never all that interesting and Archer is back to his brutalising Jack Bauer-esque ways, more’s the pity.

ENT S03E12 Chosen Realm (). Enterprise’s latest passengers see the hazardous anomalies as the breath of the creator, but who have other things on their mind than simple devotion and prayer. In fact, this 9/11 parable has taken a left turn into hijacking and suicide bombing. This is pretty tasteless, but if you can overlook the real world parables, it’s good exciting space adventure stuff. Enterprise gets another hole blown in its side, and we’re going to be facing the same problem that we saw on Voyager pretty soon – once the ship starts taking real damage, you either have to pretend that it didn’t, or pretend that it’s just as easy to repair way out here as it would be at home, or have your super-duper-hero vessel getting increasingly feeble as the season progresses. There are actually some big advantages to option #3 but somehow I don’t think that’s where we’re headed. Nice to see the religious nutjobs giving Archer a hard time about his Jack Bauer shenanigans a few episodes back. Quite right too, nutjobs. Archer’s feint with the transporter is pretty nifty, and is given a little extra fillip when you consider that the wonky thing might very well kill him. And how about that nasty squeeze of vinegar at the end. This is very, very strong stuff.