“The Xindi”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 3, Episode 1
Production episode 053
Original air date: September 10, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. We open on the Xindi Council, who are concerned about the Earth ship that has entered the Expanse. They’re concerned that it’s a prelude to an invasion. One councilor, Degra, says he needs time to run more tests on the weapon, while another councilor, Dolim, is tasked with finding out more about Enterprise.
Six weeks into the Expanse, and Enterprise has learned very little about the Xindi. They finally have a lead, albeit a slim one, that there’s a Xindi on a mining planet. This lead came from a freighter captain whom Reed describes as being of questionable character. Archer, however, is determined to follow up on it, as they have suffered six weeks of bupkis up until now.
In the mess hall, Sato joins a bunch of the Military Assault Command Operations (MACO) personnel who’ve been assigned to the ship, including Major Hayes, the CO of the team, Sergeant Kemper, and Corporals Chang and Romero. She introduces herself, because somehow, despite the fact that they left Earth more than three months ago, Sato has never managed, on this incredibly small ship with a complement of around a hundred people, to encounter these new personnel until now. Sure.
T’Pol goes to sickbay, where Phlox tells her two things: One, Tucker is having trouble sleeping and Phlox recommends Vulcan neuro-pressure to help him, as pharmaceuticals aren’t cutting it. Tucker has refused it when Phlox has suggested it, so the doctor asks T’Pol to try suggesting it. Two, Phlox’s study of the Xindi pilot corpse they recovered on Earth has revealed that the pilot was apparently reptilian. Why it took this long for him to come to this rather basic anatomical conclusion (remember, the pilot’s corpse was brought on board when Enterprise was on Earth being refit, which took several weeks, if not months, followed by the seven-week journey from Earth to the Expanse and the six weeks since they entered the Expanse) is left as an exercise for the viewer.
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They arrive at the mining planet, which has a horrid atmosphere. Most of the overseers of the mine are wearing masks and inhalers. The foreperson (who speaks in a raspy voice and whose face is covered in boils, just in case it wasn’t clear that we weren’t supposed to like him) says he’ll give Archer and Reed a Xindi named Kessick in exchange for some liquid platinum. Tucker is able to scrape platinum off some of the housings and liquefy it. Archer, however, demands to see Kessick. The foreperson produces a finger (claiming it was removed due to an unfortunate accident), which he gives to Archer. Phlox examines the finger, and is surprised to learn that it shares some DNA with the pilot, it’s definitely not a reptilian being. He analogizes the relationship between this finger and the pilot to the similarities between a human and a chimpanzee.
Archer and Tucker go down and give the foreperson the platinum and they’re introduced to Kessick. After Archer has to pull Tucker off of Kessick, who assaults him solely on the basis of his species, Kessick says he’ll help them if Archer and Tucker will help him escape. The miners here are all prisoners. T’Pol then contacts Archer to inform him that there are some warships en route. Archer decides to cut and run, but he discovers that he and Tucker are now locked away in the mine with the other slaves. Attempts to re-contact Enterprise are met with static.
T’Pol doesn’t buy the foreperson’s assurance that Archer and Tucker are indisposed and unable to come to the phone right now, nor that the heavily armed ships that are on approach are just carrying cargo, oh, and the landing strips are being deionized for the cargo ships’ arrival, so Enterprise shouldn’t send their other shuttlepod down. Reed wants to take a security detail on a rescue operation, but Hayes points out that this is what the MACOs are there for, and so Reed reluctantly agrees to let the MACOs handle the rescue, though Reed himself is in charge.
Kessick offers a way out to their shuttlepod. Suspicious, Archer wants to know why Kessick hasn’t made use of this escape plan before, and Kessick responds that there was never a spacefaring vessel on the other end. Kessick also informs Archer that there are five Xindi species, all from the same homeworld. The three of them crawl through ductwork, and climb ladders, and almost get burned alive by unexpected fire, and have to wade through sewage, and all the other prison-break clichés before finally breaking through. However, several overseers are lying in wait for them. Kessick tries to make like Archer forced him to go along with the escape plan.
Then Reed and the MACOs (totally the name of my next band) show up and a firefight ensues. In the end, Kemper shoots the foreperson with his mad sharpshooter skillz, and Kessick is mortally wounded, though he lives just long enough to provide coordinates to the Xindi homeworld.
Phlox pretends to give Tucker a sedative (it’s really a placebo) and sends him to T’Pol’s quarters on a fake errand. T’Pol mentions that she can’t sleep, and the neural nodes she needs to stimulate are on her back, which she can’t reach. She removes her robe and shirt (wah-HEY!) and asks Tucker to stimulate the nodes (ahem), which Tucker does reluctantly and awkwardly. When he’s done—which somehow isn’t accompanied by heavy bass and brass on the soundtrack—T’Pol offers to return the favor, ordering him to disrobe, and dammit, I’ve seen this movie in the 18+ sections of the Internet…
Eventually, T’Pol comes clean about what Phlox prescribed (how her getting topless was part of that is left unclear). Tucker angrily asks why Phlox didn’t just suggest it himself, and T’Pol reminds him that the doctor did, and he refused, and she expected him to refuse this offer too, because he’s a stubborn ass. His manhood thus tiresomely attacked, Tucker defiantly removes his shirt and allows himself to be massaged by a hot chick.
Enterprise arrives at the provided coordinates, but all they find is a massive asteroid field. T’Pol estimates that this used to be a planet, which exploded more than a century previous. Obviously, there’s more to the Xindi than they thought. Archer orders them deeper into the Expanse.
The Xindi Council is informed of Enterprise’s arrival and departure at their former homeworld. They’re now headed to Orassin distortion field, which sounds suitably scary. Dolim, one of the reptilian councilors, says that the weapon better be finished soon, or he’ll destroy Enterprise with or without the council’s approval.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? By way of reminding us that things are weird in the Delphic Expanse, the equipment in one of the cargo bays keeps flying back and forth across it for no obvious reason.
The gazelle speech. Archer is very strident and macho and goes on at great length about how it doesn’t matter if the info comes from a questionable source, we need answers, and by gum, we’ll get them by any means necessary, whatever it takes, and every other dumbshit action cliché!
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. Reflecting her resignation from Vulcan High Command, T’Pol is now wearing civilian clothes.
Florida Man. Florida Man Stars In Impromptu Porn Movie With Science Officer.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox encourages T’Pol and Tucker to do the opening of a porn scene in order to get the engineer to relax.
Better get MACO. We’re introduced to Hayes and three of his soldiers. Reed doesn’t like them, but they successfully pull off rescuing Archer and Tucker without sustaining any casualties beyond the guest star alien.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Apparently “Vulcan neuro-pressure” is a euphemism for nookie. Or, at the very least, an excuse for people to take their shirts off…
I’ve got faith…
“The doctor knows how intransigent you can be.”
“Intransigent?”
“Unwilling to compromise.”
“I know what it means, but it just so happens, it’s not true. I’m as willing to compromise as everyone else!”
“Then take off your shirt.”
–T’Pol makes fun of Tucker, then modulates into a porn scene.
Welcome aboard. We’re introduced to several recurring characters in this episode, starting with the Xindi Council. The ones who speak include Tucker Smallwood and Randy Oglesby as Xindi-Primate councilors, Rick Worthy as a Xindi-Arboreal, and Scott MacDonald as a Xindi-Reptilian. (The Xindi-Insectoid and Xindi-Aquatic councilors are CGI creations that speak in a subtitled alien language that is provided by uncredited voice actors.) The council will next be seen in “Rajiin.” All four of the above-listed actors have appeared on Trek before: Smallwood in Voyager’s “In the Flesh”; Oglesby in “Unexpected” as well as TNG’s “Loud as a Whisper,” DS9’s “Vortex” and “The Darkness and the Light,” and Voyager’s “Counterpoint”; Worthy in Voyager’s “Prototype” and “Equinox” two-parter, DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire,” and Insurrection; and MacDonald in TNG’s “Face of the Enemy,” DS9’s “Captive Pursuit” and “Hippocratic Oath,” and Voyager’s “Caretaker.”
In addition, this episode adds the MACOs to the storyline, including recurring regulars Steven Culp as Hayes, Nathan Anderson as Kemper, and Daniel Dae Kim as Chang, as well as Marco Sanchez as Romero, who only appears in this episode. Anderson (who previously appeared in Voyager’s “Nemesis”) will show up again in the very next episode, “Anomaly,” while Kim (who previously appeared in Voyager’s “Blink of an Eye”) will next appear in “Extinction,” and Culp is next seen in “The Shipment.”
Finally, Adam Taylor Gordon makes the first of two appearances as a younger version of Tucker, a role he will return to in “Similitude.”
Other guests include Stephen McHattie (last seen in DS9’s “In the Pale Moonlight”) as the foreperson, and Richard Lineback (previously seen in TNG’s “Symbiosis” and DS9’s “Dax”) as Kessick.
Trivial matters: This episode establishes that the Xindi includes five different species: Xindi-Primates, who are pretty much humans with funny foreheads; Xindi-Insectoids, who are giant sentient bugs; Xindi-Arboreals, who are humans but with more facial prosthetics and more hair; Xindi-Reptilians, who are, well, reptilian; and Xindi-Aquatics, who look like giant sealions. The Xindi Council is made up of ten members, two from each of the species.
The military personnel Forest and Archer discussed in “The Expanse” are established as the MACOs, because, I guess, they thought “Space Marines” would sound silly.
This episode debuts a new remix of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” over the opening credits that is a bit faster-paced and more rock-and-rollish. It doesn’t really help.
We see the new command center on Enterprise, which used to be a storage bay.
Sato pegs Kemper as being from Duluth due to his accent. Actor Nathan Anderson is from Duluth—the line was changed once Anderson was cast, as it was originally written that Kemper was from Canton, Ohio.
Culp was previously cast as Commander Martin Madden in Star Trek Nemesis, but the scene with him—which was a particularly idiotic scene on multiple levels—was cut, for which the universe should be grateful. (Hayes is a much better role for him anyhow…)
It’s been a long road… “The son of a bitch lied to us!” Watching this episode was a milestone for me. Prior to commencing this rewatch in November 2021, I’d watched most of the first season, bits of the second, and almost all of the fourth. But until I sat down to watch “The Xindi,” I’d never seen a single, solitary episode from Enterprise’s third season.
So I dove into this, curious to experience this bold new direction in an attempt to garner viewer interest that the lackluster first two seasons failed to do.
Gotta say, I’m not impressed yet.
The episode does look good—director Allan Kroeker is always reliable for a visually impressive piece of television—and there are some nice bits here, particularly the Xindi Council. The notion of a five-species planet is a good one, and a refreshing change for a franchise that tends toward the Planet of Hats model of alien worldbuilding.
But overall, this script is sloppy and uninteresting and ridiculous, and that’s before we get to the start of Trip And T’Pol’s Porn Adventures.
I was thrown out of the story very early on when Sato sits down to introduce herself to the MACOs, and again when Phlox announces that the kamikaze pilot corpse was reptilian. The notion that Sato never came across the MACOs in thirteen weeks and that it took Phlox this long to figure out that a corpse is reptilian leaves my disbelief choking for air on the side of the road.
And after the promise of a weird region of space so full of random craziness that the Vulcans went to great lengths to urge Starfleet to give it a miss, what do we get as our introduction to it? A bog-standard prison break storyline that listlessly ticks all the boxes (promise, betrayal, secret passage, near-death while escaping, re-capture, violence-drenched rescue). All of Kroeker’s directorial skills can’t make an exciting silk purse out of this cliché-ridden sow’s ear.
Then we have the first of what promises to be a simply endless number of Vulcan neuro-pressure sequences, which make Bruce Wayne’s mention of “milk and cookies” in the Batman ’66 episode “Batman’s Waterloo” look positively subtle by comparison. This is a spectacularly inept method of building on the chemistry between Jolene Blalock and Connor Trinneer, particularly since it’s based, not so much on their chemistry, but on how good they each look with their shirts off.
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest Trek work is the Klingon-focused role-playing game mission for Star Trek Adventures entitled Incident at Kraav III, which he wrote with Fred Love. It’s available from the fine folks at Modphius Games.
I’m curious what’s containing the liquid platinum, considering platinum has a melting point of 3215 degrees F (1700 C). I guess thermos technology has considerably improved in 130 years.
As much as I ended up liking the Trip/T’Pol romance, I’d forgotten just how gross and exploitative it felt in the beginning.
I also think that the Xindi Arc could benefit from being done as one of those tightly serialized ten-to-thirteen episode seasons that they have on Discovery or Picard. It has some good moments towards the end of the season, but it takes far too long for anything to happen.
Finally I submit that the remixed version of “Faith of the Heart” is actually worse than the original.
I‘m not going to lie, watching Doctor Phlox’s scene with the XO caused me to break out into “Matchmaker matchmaker” from FIDDLER ON THE ROOF: the sequel, with Trip & T’Pol sharing a therapy session, struck me as beamed in from a different show entirely but it DID make me laugh aloud so I can’t think too much evil of it.
As for the rest of the episode, I rather enjoyed it (Especially Mr McHattie cheerfully sleazing across the screen and adding a little more gravel to his voice with a few succulent chunks of scenery): I’m especially fond of the name ‘MACOs’, for no reason one could easily define, even though I’m not one of those fans who can think of ‘Starfleet Marines’ as anything but an oxymoron.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, it’s entirely possible that Ensign Sato has encountered the MACOs before, but either not had (or not taken) the opportunity to have a full conversation with them under informal circumstances – especially if Hoshi has mostly been kept on the bridge during NX-01s flight towards the Delphic Expanse and these MACOs have been working a different shift.
Oh, and I now have the mischievous mental image of Doctor Phlox, cheated of his chance at one threesome with Trip, making a cunning plan to ease him towards another one by setting him up with T’Pol … (I think this is a joke, but we’ll have to see how the evidence presents itself for or against this crackpot theory over the course of this season).
It’s a mediocre beginning to the season arc, but there are better episodes ahead. I found the Xindi arc frustrating on a number of levels, particularly the absurd fantasy physics of the anomalies and other technobabble, but there were some ambitious ideas here, flawed in execution but certainly a major step up from season 2.
I agree that the five Xindi species are a nice idea. The biology — along with the rest of the “science” this season — makes no damn sense whatsoever, but the idea and the execution are otherwise terrific. We get so many monolithic species/nations/cultures in Trek, so it’s nice when we get a civilization that isn’t limited to a single species, like the Dominion or the Xindi — although giving the Xindi a common genetic origin undermines that a bit. And the integration of live humanoids and CG nonhumanoids was impressive, the sort of thing that no prior Trek series except TAS was ever able to manage so smoothly. (And I remain disappointed that Discovery has made no attempt to follow suit even with much more advanced CGI, giving us a 32nd-century Federation Council scene consisting entirely of humanoid councillors, at most with weird heads on top of conventionally human-shaped bodies.)
The Hoshi/MACO scene is weird, but I choose to assume it’s an unannounced flashback occurring shortly after the ship sets out from Earth during “The Expanse.” There’s really nothing in the scene that ties it with any other scene in “The Xindi,” so there’s no reason it couldn’t have happened much earlier. I doubt the same fix works for the Phlox scene, though.
As for neuropressure, it was definitely introduced to be titillating, but at the same time it’s a logical extrapolation from the Vulcan nerve pinch. If they can use neural pressure as a combat technique, it stands to reason they can apply it in more therapeutic ways as well.
Quoth ED: “Oh, and for what it’s worth, it’s entirely possible that Ensign Sato has encountered the MACOs before, but either not had (or not taken) the opportunity to have a full conversation with them under informal circumstances – especially if Hoshi has mostly been kept on the bridge during NX-01s flight towards the Delphic Expanse and these MACOs have been working a different shift.”
Possible, yes. Likely, no. They left Earth thirteen weeks ago. That’s more than three months. And the conversation makes it sound like they just reported on board and Hayes has to tell Kemper who Sato is, as if the MACOs wouldn’t already be completely familiar with the crew roster at this point. Also, if the MACOs are any good at their job, they’d have rotating shifts so any of them would be ready for anything. And since they’ve been tasked with protecting the crew, they should know everyone — certainly the alpha-shift bridge crew.
So no. That scene was written by people who weren’t thinking about what they were writing as they were writing it. Because it makes absolutely no sense.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
First off whomever thought the remix of the intro music was a good idea should be retroactively fired. It took an interesting approach to the opening credits (not a great one but different) and made it worse.
Second, Steven Culp was one busy dude professionally. If I have my dates right he had a recurring roles on West Wing, JAG, ER, and Enterprise plus did guest spots on about 10 other shows. He was far better at this than the aborted Martin Madden, who we should note did appear briefly in our interpid recappers Q & A.
Third, I liked that there was an antagonist who was unique to Enterprise, especially since so much of the rest of the series was “the first time we ever encountered X” and was like a greatest hits of Next Generation and TOS aliens but it wasn’t a great introduction to them. Did we have to do “this is a weird part of space” and they couldn’t just be a somewhat suspicious race that Enterprise has to figure out what to do with?
MACO instead of Space Marines most likely was to avoid potential issues with Games Workshop even though it’s 2 district settings. Even circa 2002 Warhammer 40k, with Space Marines as the Poster Children for the game was well enough known that GW could have raised the issue in court.
I figure given the tense nature of the mission, the tough-as-nails Major Hayes might have been keeping the MACOs busy with endless drills during most of the voyage. Similarly, Sato might have been overly busy sorting through comm signals in this new area of space. So it doesn’t seem too crazy that there wasn’t a ton of socializing on Enterprise during the early phases of this mission, with everyone still in shock from the attack.
As for why Phlox couldn’t identify a reptilian species for several months, I’ve got nothing.
@8. krad: I must admit that Mr Bennett’s flashback theory makes a good deal more sense than mine own (and by this point it’s probably clear that I’m very much ‘audience’ rather than ‘critic’, so by now you should be quite used to metaphorically patting me on the head, then whispering “Filthy casual” while walking away from my latest attempt at a ‘No-prize’ solution to your most recent quibble). (-;
To be fair, ENT is far from the only TV series that inexplicably has the characters avoid having significant expository conversations during the months-long gap between seasons. It’s a common problem, though it’s exacerbated here by the added time jumps within “The Expanse” and by the smallness of the ship. (At least Buffy the Vampire Slayer and similar shows could excuse it by having the characters separated during summer vacation.)
@krad: I would like to apologise for suggesting you might whisper something as plummy as “Filthy casual” – being a New Yorker you’d have probably gone with “D*** Dirty Casual” (or something a little more pungent) instead. (-;
I can’t believe the same group of people chose the theme to Voyager and the theme to Enterprise. They are like night and day.
The continuing tension between MACOs and crew always felt forced to me, and I always thought that if anyone on the ship connected with them, it would be Reed, with his family’s military history.
And speaking of forced, the inclusion of romance scenes in the show was pretty awkward. You wonder how they perpetuated the species in those days.
The five species that made up the Xindi, on the other hand, were pretty cool. Too many aliens on Star Trek shows not only looked too human, they acted too human as well. The Xindi were delightfully strange.
“He wasn’t a particularly helpful Xindi, Doctor.”
Not at all bad, although I’m not sure how far along it advances the ongoing plotline. Probably the most important thing we learn here is that the Xindi are actually five different species. (What Phlox actually says is that they’re more closely related than humans and chimpanzees.) But the ending asks more questions than it answers, and I’m not sure we ever get proper answers to them. Why does Kessick use his dying breath to give them co-ordinates that won’t help them find his people? (Was he delirious, or is he older than he looks and doesn’t know of his world’s destruction?) If this isn’t the homeworld that the Xindi think humans will destroy, what is? (The base planet they’re on at the moment, which I think is meant to be temporary? A permanent home that they settle in the future?)
(Incidentally, Kessick is another character who’s never actually named in the episode. I’m beginning to suspect that all these supposedy nameless major guest characters, eg the chief engineer from ‘Cogenitor’ and even the main villain of this episode, actually do have names but they were never mentioned on screen and no archivist has ever tracked down the appropriate paperwork to find out what it is.)
As for the episode’s main plotline, well, it’s tense enough but the villains are rather faceless and nondescript. The action sequence that concludes the episode is okay, but it’s basically one group of extras fighting another group of extras in poor lighting and at times it’s hard to tell who’s who. (I really couldn’t tell whether the evil foreman was the guy that got shot at the end after sniping at them and fatally wounding Kessick or not.) In fact, first time I viewed this, I found the lighting so bad that I couldn’t tell if it was Tucker or Reed that accompanied Archer to the surface. The fact it was both, at different times, didn’t really help me keep track.
Archer’s already having to keep Tucker on a leash, having to stop him from roughing up Kessick, although he’s willing to abandon him himself at one point. (An absolutely stupid moment that I reversed in my rewrite.) The tension between Reed and Hayes will come to fruition later on. Mayweather gets only a handful of generic lines, which is pretty much the extent of his character for most of this season. Tucker addresses T’Pol as Subcommander still, even though she’s resigned that rank, which will continue to be a feature throughout the season. (I got around this by addressing her as “Number One”, although I had everyone else still call her “Subcommander”.) I like Reed’s rather bemused reaction to Archer’s attempts at an expositional pep-talk in their first scene.
First appearance of the Xindi Council, although none of them are referred to by name. (The novelisation of this episode and ‘The Expanse’ had to make up names for most of them, many of which were contradicted later in the season. The novel The Evil That Men Do tried to reconcile this by saying one was the first name and one was the surname.) It’s interesting that the Insectoid representative is by far the most aggressive at this point, with the Reptillian being quite passive. (Somehow, Krad, you completely missed this detail and assigned the aggressive role to Dolim instead?) Also the first appearance of Major Hayes. Publicity material for the episode highlighted the other three speaking MACOs here – Kemper, Romero and Chang – but they’ll disappear after two, one and three appearances respectively, without making much impact. (Why they cast a reasonably high profile actor like Daniel Dae Kim as third MACO from the left I’ll never know.)
Incidentally, I saw Scott McDonald at a convention shortly before this, and, having already done TNG, DS9 (twice) and Voyager, he noted he was hoping to do an Enterprise, revealing he was offered a role as a Starfleet officer in the pilot (Commander Williams?) but turned it down in the hope of getting something bigger. He got his wish: I believe he’ll be in eight episodes this season, including the last three, as the Xindi-Reptillian leader later named as Dolim.
Channel 4’s tendency to render episodes near incomprehensible began in earnest here, as they removed the shot of the severed finger, making it very hard to tell what exactly Archer was looking at. (I had to work it out from Kessick’s “nine-fingered” comments later.) They also improved the episode greatly by removing the shot of T’Pol cupping her bare breasts. (I remember seeing this episode first at a convention, where that shot was greeted with an overall feeling of “…Huh.”) Still, I do like the extremely aggressive reverse psychology T’Pol deploys in that scene.
I’m not sure if it’s worth keeping track of T’Pol’s multi-coloured catsuits: She seemed to wear at least three here (a red one, a light blue one and a kind of pinky one), not including her off duty wear. Phlox, after asking T’Pol if she has any siblings, states Tucker had one sister as if she was his only sibling, even though Tucker mentioned a brother in ‘Fusion’. The foreman states there’s nearly a hundred people aboard Enterprise, but he’s probably guessing.
I had completely forgotten there was a remix of the theme tune for this season. I guess they were going for a Deep Space 9-style “more frenetic” version, but instead it came out as “more cheery”.
Since we’re talking about Commander Madden, I must admit I ran with the character, had him carry on as the Enterprise’s first officer and succeed Picard as captain before dying early on in the Talenthan War. (I admit I’ve only seen that cut scene once but I don’t think we can really judge Madden’s character from one scene!) I look forward to Picard Season Three completely contradicing this and having to do a lot of welding…
@17/Alan: Although — spoiler alert — the way they ended up using the Xindi species was a bit xenophobic, in that the three mammalian species all turned out to be not so bad, while the Reptilians and Insectoids remained pure evil. So it was classist, by the taxonomic definition of class. ;)
Also…I’ve not found any proof of this and really can’t be bothered to look through old magazines to check, but I’ll swear at the time the Xindi species that Randy Oglesby and Tucker Smallwood’s characters belonged to was referred to as Xindi-Humanoids, yet somewhere along the line it seems to have changed to Xindi-Primate. Maybe someone realised how imprecise that was when at least three, arguably four, of the five Xindi species are humanoid!
Well, as a quite unsociable person myself, I can imagine it taking 3 months until I gather to courage to talk to someone, even in such a close environment. However, I don’t remember details from the conversation and whether it was realistic, at the time I was watching I assumed it was a few weeks.
cap-mjb: The name “Kessick” is from the script. It was just never spoken aloud. McHattie’s character was just called “Foreman” in the script.
Much as I love Daniel Dae Kim, he wasn’t that high-profile yet — he was a working character actor at this point. He didn’t really become high-profile the way you’re thinking until Lost.
And the Commander Madden scene was a) embarrassingly stupid on every level (and containing “humor” that wasn’t funny, which puts it in line with the rest of the movie, at least) and b) ridiculous because Worf should’ve been first officer of the Enterprise. He was a lieutenant commander on the command track whose last post was as strategic operations officer for an entire sector during a war, so it makes absolutely nothing remotely resembling sense that he would be at any position lower than first officer.
Salix caprea: Hoshi Sato has been pretty clearly established as the opposite of unsociable…. :chuckle:
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Charles: I seriously doubt that any thought was given to Games Workshop by anybody on the Enterprise production staff. This is a franchise (particularly in the Berman era) that has historically avoided pulpy names like “Space Marines,” and I seriously doubt that any consideration for GW ever entered into it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s undoubtedly a clumsy season opener with very little in the way of forward motion. You can tell they’re not used to the pivot into serialized storytelling. Not particularly bad, but still a sedate opener, though we do get the first real plot set up of the T’Pol/Tucker relationship.
And for what it’s worth I appreciate the introduction of the MACOs, and Hayes is one of the show’s better characters. Culp really sells the hard line officer aspect – a younger Jellico, in a way.
I’ve always assumed Hoshi Sato felt intimidated by the presence of the MACOs, hence avoiding them for the early part of their mission until she worked up her courage to establish up a dialogue. Let’s not forget she was once terrified of even being in deep space – Hoshi Sato isn’t the most eager person to plunge into the unknown.
I also enjoy the introduction of the Xindi council. To me, that was a very smart choice. Through the eyes of Degra, not only we get to see their politics and disputes up close (giving a much needed boost to the Trek universe as a whole), but we also get to see things from their point of view. In a way, if the Xindi arc is Brannon Braga’s attempt at redoing his original plans for Year of Hell, then putting council scenes independent of the crew’s own story makes sense. It’s ENT’s version of Annorax.
Having said that, it’s ironic that the Bush/Cheney-esque war hawk council members happen to be the most alien-loooking of the bunch: the Reptilians and the Insectoid. Meanwhile, the mostly humanoid-looking Degra turns out to be more moderate and mild mannered. I wonder if that was intentional or just an accident. One can’t help but not notice some mild racial implications.
Aesthetically, it already feels different from previous seasons. Colors, cinematography, T’Pol’s new wardrobe. Kroeker, Zimmerman and Marvin Rush’s joint efforts make for a show that feels much closer in look to the original series. As for the new, reworked song. I’m not the biggest fan of the upbeat faster rhythm. I actually loved the original version.
Well, we may have gotten the top Florida Man section locked in early at least. XD
I can buy Hoshi taking three months to build up the nerve to talk to the stand offish military types.
As an unabashed Trip-T’Pol shipper, I guess it’s Tri’pol, I had forgotten how…awkward the start was in this episode. I have zero repulsion for any fanservice no matter how juvenile or poorly executed. But knowing where it goes, it still puts a smile on my face.
The five species Xindi was an excellent idea until the insects and the reptiles became the de facto evil ones. That was rough. I can get it if they were the more aggressive but then backed off when presented with evidence, but Dolan (I think it was) just went way too hard. To the point where it was a bit stupid. For someone aggressive and paranoid he never considered he was getting played. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
On to the next one.
I see I’m not the only one who thought it was stereotyped to have the non-mammal councillors be the caricatured evil ones.
Quoth Eduardo: “I’ve always assumed Hoshi Sato felt intimidated by the presence of the MACOs, hence avoiding them for the early part of their mission until she worked up her courage to establish up a dialogue.”
Quoth Mr. D: “I can buy Hoshi taking three months to build up the nerve to talk to the stand offish military types.”
Hoshi Sato is a teacher and a communications officer. Talking to strangers is literally her job. Her anxiety as portrayed relates to the unknown dangers of space travel, not any kind of social anxiety.
This is simply the writers wanting to do the introduction scene without thinking about the timing of it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
krad: I’ve never actually seen Lost, so that didn’t affect my assessment of Daniel Dae Kim. He’d been the main guest star on an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, he’d been a regular on the short-lived Crusade, he’d had a recurring role on Angel and another one on 24 (which, admittedly, I’ve never seen either, so I’m not sure if it was more substantial than Chang or not). And here he is being vastly underused as a character with no real personality, no relevance to the plot and virtually no dialogue, who could have been played just as well by any day player hanging around the studio. Even in 2003, that felt odd to me. I don’t know if they had big plans for Chang and he wasn’t available?
Okay, I’m fully expecting you to disagree with me and pick this apart but… Worf becoming first officer has never made much sense to me beyond “We did it because we love Worf.” He’d left Starfleet and become an ambassador. The film confirms Data was still next in line for first officer. I know there’s a deleted scene which reveals Worf isn’t an ambassador anymore (but doesn’t portray him as a likely candidate for first officer either, so if it’s counted, it’s only in broad stroke terms) and I know the tie-ins jumped through a lot of hoops to try and make Worf being first officer fit in with his role in the film and his history. But with the first officer promoted off the ship and the second officer who was meant to replace him dead, it doesn’t seem particularly strange to me that Starfleet would give the role to a commander from outside the ship, who likely had experience in executive positions on a starship, rather than giving it to a lieutenant commander who’d been out of the service for up to four years just because he was the next most senior person on the opening titles.
It’s a shame that the tie-ins chose to rehabilitate Captain John Harriman on the grounds Starfleet wouldn’t really have given the Enterprise captaincy to an incompetent (writers could easily have chosen to say he was transferred off after the disastrous shakedown cruise and Sulu or Chekov was made captain of the Enterprise-B), yet Commander Martin Madden has been dismissed as a joke because his limited screen time involved him being the butt of a rather childish practical joke by Riker (which, given that modern Trek portrays several people, including Riker, addressing Picard in an informal manner, seems rather hypocritical!) and exiled from continuity on a technicality.
@30/cap-mjb: “It’s a shame that the tie-ins chose to rehabilitate Captain John Harriman on the grounds Starfleet wouldn’t really have given the Enterprise captaincy to an incompetent (writers could easily have chosen to say he was transferred off after the disastrous shakedown cruise and Sulu or Chekov was made captain of the Enterprise-B), yet Commander Martin Madden has been dismissed as a joke because his limited screen time involved him being the butt of a rather childish practical joke by Riker (which, given that modern Trek portrays several people, including Riker, addressing Picard in an informal manner, seems rather hypocritical!) and exiled from continuity on a technicality.”
Uh, no, you’re rewriting history there. Madden was never part of continuity to begin with, because his scene was not actually in the final film. Deleted scenes are not part of the actual story, any more than the chunks of marble left on a sculptor’s floor are part of the final statue. Creativity is often a process of trial and error, so lots of things get tried out and abandoned along the way, whether in the story phase, the script phase, or the filming phase. The only parts that count are the ones that make it into the final product. Every movie has hours of footage that doesn’t make it into the final edit. Including some of that footage as bonus features on DVDs does not give it canon value; it’s just a glimpse at what might have been, but wasn’t. Martin Madden does not have “limited” screen time; he has zero screen time that actually counts. He does not canonically exist at all. He is Commander Not Appearing In This Film. That was not the tie-ins’ decision, but the decision of Stuart Baird and his editor when they settled on the final cut of Nemesis.
cap-mjb: The fact that he was out of the service for four years is a good reason why Worf would take so low a position as first officer of a single ship, which is actually a step backward from where he was on Deep Space 9. Going back to being a security chief — the position he had two grade-ranks ago — is a bridge too far. He’s a lieutenant commander on the command track who’s also a decorated war hero. First officer of the Enterprise is the lowest position he’d have…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Oof. I…did not…enjoy this episode. Was I supposed to?
But! “Better Get MACO” may be my favorite rewatch category, giving serious competition to “Mr. Vulcan” and “Thank You, Counselor Obvious”. Hats off to you, krad.
Archer’s “we’ll do whatever it takes, dammit” blustering was not inspiring, and Tucker is as insufferable as ever. Was I supposed to like him? And, I’m sorry, I don’t like that Phlox maneuvered T’Pol to do the “Vulcan neuropressure”; I’m sure it wasn’t meant to, but it felt skeevy, perhaps an opener to the eventual softcore porn scene in T’Pol’s quarters: “He’s on his way to you now; you have your work cut out for you, hubba hubba” (I never realized how much they contrived to get Jolene Blalock nearly naked on this show until now).
I did like seeing the only woman MACO on the rescue team kick some ass; nice to see a woman on this show kick ass and not need to be rescued by a dude.
Overall, the episode is gray and blah, improved only by the introduction of the Xindi Council, Major Hayes and the MACOs.
krad: There’s no firm evidence in the finished film that he’s either a member of the Enterprise crew or back in Starfleet at all, let alone security chief. (The only mention of that is in a deleted scene which, as CLB has just pointed out in great detail, doesn’t count.) Which is why he was far from being the logical choice for first officer. Plus, of course, he had a reprimand during his time on DS9 which indicated he was unfit for command, which tie-ins have pretty much handwaved away as “Yeah, well, Sisko was wrong about that.”
The Xindi-Aquatics do not look at all like “giant sealions” they do not look even vaguely mammalian. I do not know what the designers were going for exactly but hey look more like aquatic dinosaurs or a very weird variety of turtle.
Apparently, according to Memory Alpha, Dan Curry took inspiration from “an aquatic reptile called a ‘mosasaurus.”
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Xindi-Aquatic
CLB: I accept every word you’re saying, but I’d be more inclined to believe it was as simple as that if the novels hadn’t seemed to pick and choose which supplementary material to use. One novel treated the deleted plot point of Crusher leaving the Enterprise for Starfleet Medical as in continuity, just to have her come straight back. (Plus, of course, the tie-ins were published alongside a novelisation which did include Madden!) So it feels like there was a conscious decision to decide the character didn’t exist.
The Faith if the Heart remix is to the original like beige is to ecru. Ever actually listen to the lyrics? I challenge anyone to compile a list of insipid cliches in as few words.
Have to agree that Tucker and T’Pol seem to be jammed together physically simply because they have attractive body parts. Their chemistry otherwise, at least to me, seems non-existent at this point. Although I think they got better later in the series when they endured some shared tragedy together. I remember that being fairly poignant.
This is my first time through Enterprise. I’d dropped Voyager around Season 4, and was juggling a new marriage, and town, when Enterprise was airing. I’ve watched a cherry-picked list of essential episodes from seasons 1 & 2, and checking some of KRAD’s posts for the ones I skipped has confirmed this was a good choice. (Yes, looking at you, Precious Cargo.) The intention was always to watch all of Season 3 & 4, and, lo and behold, I arrived at season 3 at the same time as the Rewatch.
I do find the shift to War Captain Archer (and crew) jarring. I share KRAD’s distaste for the jingoism of the post-9/11 era, and cringe at the memories Enterprise’s reaction to it brings up. Give me early BSG for commentary on this era every time. Star Trek could have shown that extending an understanding, humanitarian hand is more effective in diplomacy, as well as interrogation. But that’s a topic to be explored more down the road, I imagine.
As for the episode itself, I agree it’s an insipid start to rebooting the series. As ever, so much potential, so much wasted. However, Stephen McHattie is always worth the price of admission, regardless of how much scenery gets chewed up. When my father, Barry Boys, was at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in the early ’80s, with Colm Meaney, among others, McHattie was cast as Petruchio in “The Taming of the Shrew”. The director decided that, instead of riding in on a horse, he should enter on a motorcycle. They settled on a dirt bike. Stephen would start up that bike at the back of the orchestra, ride down the side aisle, and up the ramp onto the stage. The round he got as he lowered the kickstand, and flashed his wicked grin at the audience, was thunderous.
cap-mjb: There couldn’t possibly have been a conscious decision to say Madden didn’t exist, because canonically he doesn’t exist. The only decision that could’ve been made would be to use him, because he’s not really part of the story. Tie-in authors do, indeed, have the ability to choose what to use from various deleted scenes and things if a) they think it’ll make for a good story and b) that bit doesn’t contradict some other bit of onscreen material (which always takes precedence).
The thing is, the “character” of Martin Madden is a nothingburger. He’s a caricature in one brief scene for a very unfunny gag. There’s no reason to use him for anything — unlike, say, Harriman, who is an actual character who appeared in a film as opposed to Madden, who didn’t. Or, unlike, say, Crusher’s being made head of Starfleet Medical, which was something that could be used for story purposes in the A Time to… series as a subplot and in Death in Winter as the spine of the storyline.
As for Worf, everything in the film is firm evidence that he’s back in Starfleet and is security chief of the Big E because he spends the entire movie in uniform and working tactical. Which is, for reasons I outlined in comment #32, ridiculous, though I was able to come up with a workaround in A Time for War, a Time for Peace.
Personally, I’d rather he was still an ambassador, partly because I invested a lot of story time in chronicling his diplomatic adventures, but alas. But there are a lot more story possibilities in showing his development as a first officer than to have him stuck back in the same position he was in two grade ranks ago.
Oh, and the decision wasn’t “Sisko was wrong,” regarding Worf’s future command possibilities, the decision was “Worf is a war hero who did lots of impressive things after the reprimand he got for being put into an impossible situation that he never ever under any circumstances should have been put in in the first place.” (See my rewatch of “Change of Heart” for the full rant on why that entire thing was idiotic.)
https://www.tor.com/2014/10/03/star-trek-deep-space-nine-rewatch-qchange-of-heartq/
Of course, season 3 of Picard will probably shitcan all this……. *chuckle*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who could’ve sworn this was the rewatch of “The Xindi”…….
“The notion that Sato never came across the MACOs in thirteen weeks”
@krad – I was in a unit where we had about 75 people, serving in an overseas location and all in the same building day after day. Six months into the deployment I met about eight people I had never come across, who worked in the building and had deployed with us. I know it may exasperate you, but in all the lead up to deployment and then hitting the ground and setting up and becoming operational we had just never crossed paths. Plus there’s different work schedules and other factors, so it is not far-fetched to me at all. I think this one is bugging you and it, from my own experience, comes across as real.
Just my $.02.
Nick M: Did all 75 of you spend all your time, waking and sleeping, in that building without ever leaving it for any reason?
Working in a building and living in a spaceship are not equivalent…………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@37/cap-mjb: “I accept every word you’re saying, but I’d be more inclined to believe it was as simple as that if the novels hadn’t seemed to pick and choose which supplementary material to use. One novel treated the deleted plot point of Crusher leaving the Enterprise for Starfleet Medical as in continuity, just to have her come straight back.”
Yes, of course, and I’ve included unused material in my books such as the name Barak for Mark Lenard’s Klingon commander from ST:TMP. As Keith said, we’re free to use anything that’s useful to our stories as long as it doesn’t conflict with established canon. But why would we want to use a pointless, barely-there character from a scene so bad and stupid they cut it entirely out of the movie? What could we possibly gain from establishing that Riker’s replacement was just another brown-haired white human? That’s the least imaginative route they could’ve gone. Making Worf the first officer worked far better, and a number of my colleagues did some really excellent work with him as the E-E’s first officer, showing how his years on DS9 and as an ambassador had deepened him.
“(Plus, of course, the tie-ins were published alongside a novelisation which did include Madden!)”
And the novelization for Generations included the original version of Kirk’s death that was replaced in reshoots, with the paperback novelization being rewritten with the final ending. Novelizations, by their nature, have to come out along with the film, and their text therefore has to be locked down months ahead of the film’s release, which means they often fail to reflect changes made in the film’s editing process. So it wasn’t a conscious choice on the novelizer’s part to defy the filmmakers’ choice to omit the Madden scene; the novelizer simply didn’t know at the time that the filmmakers would decide to omit the scene.
“So it feels like there was a conscious decision to decide the character didn’t exist.”
As Keith said, the character canonically does not exist, so you’re defining this question the wrong way around. We simply saw no value in establishing his existence in the novels, though Keith did establish the existence of an alternate-timeline version of him, IIRC.
@40/Agent6: ” Star Trek could have shown that extending an understanding, humanitarian hand is more effective in diplomacy, as well as interrogation. But that’s a topic to be explored more down the road, I imagine.”
I think you’ll be satisfied with how the season arc ends up in this regard. It’s important to remember that characters’ viewpoints at the start of their story arcs are often intended to be wrong, so that they can outgrow them. Like how Kirk initially wanted to kill the Gorn and the Horta.
@17. AlanBrown: Given that Mr Reed’s military background is ‘Navy’ and the MACOs are (more or less) ‘Marines in SPACE!’ there’s no guarantees that any connection between these two parties would be at all friendly … (-;
@44/CLB Thanks, that’s good to hear. My “down the road” comment was intended to convey hope that we’d see some self-examination and growth as this progressed.
@41 – “Crusher’s being made head of Starfleet Medical”
Which is so stupid I defy the best authors to come up with a reasonable explanation why a commander would be head of Starfleet Medical when such a position would be filled by an admiral.
krad: I’ve always said that the biggest piece of evidence against Worf being back as security chief is that he’s not wearing security colours, he’s wearing his old DS9 uniform. Which is why I went with the idea that he’s still an ambassador and was just helping out while there for the wedding, wearing the uniform from his last posting. (But yes, as I said, I’m fully expecting Picard Season Three to be…difficult to reconcile!)
CLB: I realise the behind the scenes reason for the novelisation including the deleted scene. I guess what I’m saying is that you didn’t just have to have looked at the DVD extras to have heard of the characters. A lot of people reading the novels probably read that too and so would have known who he was. (Thinking back, I’m not really sure why I kept using him, except it provided a ready-made character to fill a position in the hierarchy when I needed the other available candidates elsewhere.)
kkozoriz: Because she’d already held the post 14 years previous?
(And yes, sorry we’ve spent more time discussing the scene with Steven Culp that most people didn’t get to see rather than the episode with him in that we did!)
” Xindi-Aquatics, who look like giant sealions. “
If these reviews were not normally such high quality I would overlook this mistake and move on but “sealions” cannot possibly be what you intended to write. The reptile faced Xindi Aquatics bear no resemblance to those whiskered hirsute sea dogs. The scenes with the aquatics were dark and murky at times, the CGI has aged, and the scenes were brief but they weren’t that difficult to see.
I hope you will correct this oversight so that this review will meet the usual high standards.
@48 – It didn’t make sense either time. She simply doesn’t have the seniority nor the rank to hold the position of Head of Starfleet Medical.
But her name was in the credits so she can’t just be reassigned to another ship or to serve in some capacity at SF headquarters. She’s got to run the entire department and then return to the exact position she held previously. Because reasons.
Sure, the Vulcan neuropressure scene is silly and exploitative, but it is the only thing I remember from this episode, that and the new theme song, which really annoyed me. I had just about gotten to the point where I liked the old one, and then the had to go and remix it or whatever it is they did.
≭ I’ve done a rewatch, all series in order, and the movies. I’ve endured lackluster plots, Ferengis, Neelix, Spock’s Brain, even Precious Cargo up until now. Nothing has been as bad as the hackneyed dialogue in this episode, though. Militaristic tuff-guy chewing out of Malcolm, cribbed from George W. Shrub’s speechwriters? Ugh.