“Anomaly”
Written by Mike Sussman
Directed by David Straiton
Season 3, Episode 2
Production episode 054
Original air date: September 17, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Porthos is upset for some reason, and no amount of petting helps. Then the ship starts acting weird, with bits of deck and bulkhead rippling like liquid waves, with gravity going out in selected and unconvincingly focused bits, and so on. Eventually, main power fails and they drop out of warp. Reed manages to get emergency power up, but Tucker reports that the laws of physics apparently are on strike in this region of the Expanse and he can’t get the warp drive back online.
Sensors detect another ship nearby. Mayweather heads there at one-quarter impulse—which is their top speed at present—and Archer, Reed, and a trio of MACOs go over on a shuttlepod to find a whole lot of dead bodies. Some were killed by particle weapons, others died when life support failed.
Another ship shows up and sends over a boarding party via transporter. They loot the ship, and the mix of Archer, Reed and his security detail, and the MACOs all utterly fail to stop any of the pirates. It’s left to Tucker—armed only with a stick—to knock out one of the pirates, and he keeps the rest at bay with the arcing electricity that shows up every time he turns the warp engines on. One crewmember, an engineer named Fuller, is killed.
The pirates bugger off, and Phlox recognizes their prisoner as an Osaarian, a species known to both Denobulans and Vulcans. However, they don’t know that much. Archer puts the pirate—named Orgoth—into his shiny new brig and questions him. Orgoth says that his people were simple traders who came to the Expanse only to be trapped there. They couldn’t get out past the thermobaric clouds—one of their ships was destroyed—and they had to figure out a way to survive the anomalies. Once they did that—with trellium-D—they started looting other ships. They didn’t kill people at first, but that changed before long.
Orgoth refuses to provide Archer with the means to track the pirate ship. Tucker and Reed continue to make repairs, eventually getting weapons and hull plating working again. At one point, Tucker and Reed sit in the mess hall discussing Fuller’s death, with Tucker gloomily saying that he’s likely the first of many casualties.
The Osaarians have masked their ion trail, so Enterprise can’t follow them. T’Pol, however, determines that the other ship that was looted did figure out a way to penetrate the masking, but their life support died before they could use it.
Enterprise uses that method to track the ion trail, but there’s an odd gap in the middle of it. They fly into the gap, which turns out to be a cloaking barrier that hides a gigunda sphere. Sensors can’t penetrate the sphere, but there’s a hatch that a shuttlepod might fit through. Archer takes Mayweather, Reed, and three MACOs to investigate. They manage to break in and find a ton of stuff, including most of the items stolen from Enterprise. The Osaarians are obviously using this sphere as a storage unit. They retrieve most of what was stolen (some of it isn’t there, probably immediately put to use on the Osaarian ship, like antimatter), and also the sphere’s manifest.
T’Pol reports that the sphere is over a thousand years old and giving out massive gravimetric disturbances, which may be responsible for the anomalies. While translating the manifest, Sato discovers that the Osaarians attacked a Xindi vessel.
Archer goes into the brig, pulls out his nine-millimeter and says, “WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?”—no, wait, that’s Jack Bauer. Sorry, he instead takes Orgoth to the airlock and threatens to open it. Once Archer starts to decompress the airlock, Orgoth agrees to cooperate, admitting that they downloaded a database from the Xindi ship.
The Osaarian ship comes through the cloaking field, likely pissed that Archer went through their things. They could run, but Archer really wants that database, so they get into a firefight long enough for Sato to hack into the Osaarian ship and download the database. Once that’s done, they leg it.
Buy the Book
Dead Country
Archer gives Orgoth back to the Osaarians, just like he promised he would. Orgoth says he’s still too compassionate to survive in the Expanse, which is a ballsy thing for him to say to a guy who got what he wanted.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? One component of warp drive is the Cochrane equation, presumably pioneered by Zefram Cochrane, which is supposed to be constant. However, it isn’t in this region of space, which means Tucker has to rewrite warp theory on the fly.
The gazelle speech. Archer shows that he’s a real man who doesn’t take any crap by shoving Orgoth in an airlock, because screw the rules, he’s the kind of guy who gets shit done.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol expresses caution regarding tracking the Osaarians, as they’re very dangerous, but Archer counters that, if they don’t get their stuff back, they’re screwed, especially since the Osaarians took all their spare antimatter.
Florida Man. Florida Man Defends Engine Room With Stick.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox encourages Tucker to continue his neuro-pressure sessions with T’Pol, as pharmaceutical solutions could result in dependency. When Tucker insists that he can’t justify spending an hour in T’Pol’s quarters every night, Phlox proposes a third alternative, involving placing leeches on his chest and abdomen. Because Tucker is, at heart, an eight-year-old, he says, “Icky poo poo” and decides to go see T’Pol.
Good boy, Porthos! The first sign that something’s wrong is Porthos being all squirrelly. Always pay attention to the dog…
Better get MACO. Three MACOs join the boarding party for the looted ship and the sphere, and the MACOs aid in the defense of Enterprise when its boarded, though they add nothing to either mission, not doing anything that Reed’s security detail couldn’t have handled. Indeed, the whole point of having the space Marines is to help them with things like repelling boarding parties, so you’d think they’d be better at it…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. We see the boarding party changing into their EVA suits in a locker room, thus getting a good look at Scott Bakula, Dominic Keating, Nathan Anderson, Sean McGowan, and Julia Rose in their underwear. And yes, it’s an all-gender changing room, which the optimistic can see as progressive and the cynical can see as an attempt to riff on Starship Troopers.
I’ve got faith…
“Creating a stable warp field isn’t easy when the laws of physics won’t cooperate.”
–Tucker mirroring one of Scotty’s most famous lines.
Welcome aboard. Robert Rusler plays Orgoth, while Kenneth A. White, Ryan Honey, and Ken Lally play various Enterprise crew. Lally will return in “Rajiin.”
On the MACO side of things, this is the last of two appearances by Nathan Anderson as Kemper, and the first of four appearances by Sean McGowan as Hawkins. Plus we have Julia Rose in her one and only appearance as McKenzie. Though not seen again, both Kemper and McKenzie will be mentioned in future episodes as still being around.
Trivial matters: This episode introduces three important parts of the season’s storyline: the spheres, trellium-D (which Microsoft Word keeps autocorrecting to “trillium”), and the Xindi database, all of which we’ll be seeing a lot of going forward….
This episode marks the first time a member of Enterprise’s crew has been killed.
It’s established that Enterprise now has a brig—presumably one of the things they got in the refit during “The Expanse.”
Writer Mike Sussman’s original notion was to have the pirates be Orions, thus introducing humanity to the pirates who have been part of Trek lore since “The Cage.” It was changed during the rewriting process to the Osaarians, who are never seen again.
Finally, for something really really trivial: This is one of two Trek episodes with the title “Anomaly,” the other being a fourth-season Discovery episode. It’s the only time a title has been duplicated precisely. There are several instances where the difference is an article (e.g., TNG’s “The Emissary” and DS9’s “Emissary”) or pluralizing (e.g., TNG’s “Brothers” and Discovery’s “Brother,” Enterprise’s “Strange New World” and SNW’s “Strange New Worlds”) and two movies have had subtitles that match TV episode titles (TNG’s “First Contact” and the 1996 movie, Voyager’s “Nemesis” and the 2002 movie).
It’s been a long road… “Mercy is not a quality that will serve you well in the Expanse, Captain.” This would’ve made a better season premiere than “The Xindi.” For one thing, there’s actual plot movement, with the discovery of the spheres, the downloading of the database, and the revelation about the use of trellium-D. True, we got a bit of plot movement last week, but that was really just finding out that there are five Xindi species instead of one. “Anomaly’s” revelations are also wrapped around a much more exciting storyline.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make this episode good, only better than last week, and the biggest problem with it is the same one I had with “The Expanse” and with Tucker’s behavior in “The Xindi”: the macho idiocy that suffuses this episode, with Scott Bakula setting his jaw and getting that distant look in his eyes and throwing Orgoth into the airlock to show that he’s tough on terrorists, and he’s gonna get the job no matter what it takes and what morality and rulebooks we have to throw out the window.
The worst thing about this episode is one that has often been endemic to television and movies, and which was more like epidemic in the years between 2002 and 2005 in particular (yes, 24, I’m looking at you), to wit, that torture actually works as a means of getting information. It doesn’t. Torture is only good for terrorizing your victims, it’s useless as an interrogation tool. But this episode was written at a time when the United States was engaging in government-sanctioned torture against suspected terrorists during the “war on terror,” the theoretical objective of which was to gain intelligence about Osama bin Laden. (Tellingly, we didn’t actually get any useful intel about bin Laden until after we stopped using torture and instead used standard proven interrogation techniques.) Because we were also in a wave of hyper-patriotism at the time in the wake of the terrorist attacks in September 2001, questioning the use of torture was muted by the appearance of a lack of patriotism.
Trek has even been aware of the fallacy of torture for questioning in the past, as the last time torture was used as a plot point, it was in TNG’s “Chain of Command, Part II,” which also has Rick Berman’s name in the executive producer credit, and for which Brannon Braga was a staff writer on the show. That episode understood that torture wasn’t at all useful as an interrogation tool—indeed, Gul Madred got all the actionable intel he needed before the credits rolled—but is instead the tool of sadists who want to demoralize their enemies.
And here’s Archer, our main protagonist, using it. Happy joy.
A much more realistic use of torture here would’ve been to have Orgoth lie to Archer, give him some answer that sounds convincing. This is what often happens, as people being tortured will literally say anything to make the torture stop.
At the very least, Archer stands by his word at the end and lets Orgoth go, which results in Orgoth sneering at him.
Worse, Archer’s channeling of Jack Bauer puts T’Pol back in the position of killjoy hall monitor who has to propose caution in order for Archer to shout her down. It’s a thankless role in these types of stories—almost always given to a female characters, too—and one who has to be made to look like an idiot in order to beef up the main character’s tough-guy cred. T’Pol and the Archer-T’Pol relationship, the deepening of which was one of the best parts about the mostly dreary second season, deserve better.
Also, it would’ve been really cool if they’d gone with Mike Sussman’s original idea of the pirates being Orions and this storyline providing the origin for their piratical lifestyle. Instead, they’re generic Star Trek Prosthetics-On-The-Face Aliens who are never seen again. What a waste.
The episode’s not a total disaster. The action sequences are well done, though I gotta wonder what the MACOs are for exactly, if they can’t manage to make any headway against people boarding the ship. And the effects of the ship going wonky and of the sphere are pretty good for 2003-era CGI….
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest Star Trek work includes co-authoring the Klingon-focused Star Trek Adventures gaming module Incident at Kraav III (with Fred Love) and writing the DS9 short story “You Can’t Buy Fate,” which will be appearing in issue #7 of Star Trek Explorer this spring.
As always, thank you, thank you, thank you KRAD for the comments on the inefficacy of torture. That invalid trope is a moral blot on the SFF landscape with the potential to do serious real-world harm, and we need to keep saying it!
S
I didn’t like the fanciful concept of the anomalies, or the pirate plot, but the episode is notable for featuring the series’ first crew fatality, Crewman Fuller. The producers consciously avoided killing a member of the crew until they could find a story where it would carry real weight and not just be a redshirt death with the heroes laughing again by the final act. And this highlights the thing I admire most about season 3, the way it consistently treated death in a mature and honest manner, portraying it as something that had a real impact on the crew rather than just being an incidental action beat. That’s one thing that ENT handled better than any previous Trek incarnation.
The novel Last Full Measure clashed with this somewhat, since it had a whole slew of MACOs die in a story set immediately before “Anomaly” — not to mention how Archer’s dark turn with the interrogation is similarly undermined by the same novel taking a similar step. It also conflicts with “Anomaly” on how many neuropressure sessions Trip’s had. It makes me wonder why LFM wasn’t set later in the season, where it would seem to fit better.
I’ve been saying what you said about the MACOs in this episode for years. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who feels that way about them.
There is one thing introduced in this episode that I love: the brig. For one simple reason: it has a door. Two doors, in fact. Not a forcefield, a DOOR. A door that doesn’t open if the power fails. Maybe it’s stupid, but it made me irrationally happy to see.
RaySea: Yeah, but force fields are space-y and future-y!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I realize that it’s a season down the line, but using the Orion’s here might have lessened their impact in the Augment arc. Perhaps the Nausicans would have been a better choice. We already know that they resort to piracy thanks to events in Season 1. IF they were used here, it would have raised the question of how they’re resistant to the effects of the expanse AND Archer might have less reason to go all macho on them.
#4
I felt the same way about the door in Wesley Crusher’s dorm room at the Academy. A door! With hinges! Even a wood door, I seem to recall.
What I noticed was integrated teams of MACOs and regular crew, and possibly even some indication of training together. Either significant progress from last episode, or gross incompetence from the command staff for breaking the integrity of their units. But then Archer had to ask about zero-G experience. Wouldn’t they drill for something like that on shipboard assignment?
Regarding the unisex locker room, why worry about such little details if they are not even all humans in the crew?
I thought this episode did an absolutely excellent job of keeping the fact that the Delphic Expanse is almost as creepy as it is dangerous nice and clear in the audience’s imagination, as well as being at the very least above average in just about every other respect – with Archer’s “enhanced interrogation” the only point on which it lost points (and more than a few points at that).
If nothing else it’s interesting to wonder what the Delphic Expanse looks like in the days of the Federation (say a century or so later, during the days of Captain Pike & James T. Kirk) and just how believable residents & visitors find the old stories of lethal strangeness in the Expanse (Also, I wonder if some planets trade on such folk memories for the sake of their tourist trade?).
If we review Anomaly in episodic terms, it would be easy to dismiss it as a clone of 24, right down to the Jack Bauer stump speech. But in the long run, this episode is a vital piece to the puzzle and the season’s overall arc. Archer’s belligerent actions and attitude (not with the Osaarians specifically) WILL have consequences down the line – and it will reinforce the need for the more honorable Starfleet approach as well as the need for diplomacy.
The episode also reinforces the fact that they’re far away from home and any other Earth/Vulcan support system. They’re trapped in a sector rampant with dangerous anomalies as well as actual threats. The whole scenario with the ship falling prey to pirates like the Osaarians is a microcosm and a glimpse of what’s to come (without diving into spoilers, I’ll get back to this issue on episode 3.19).
Anomaly also thankfully avoids the Redshirt issue, and actually addresses Fuller’s death. This is also a setup for later in the season.
@9/ED: ” If nothing else it’s interesting to wonder what the Delphic Expanse looks like in the days of the Federation (say a century or so later, during the days of Captain Pike & James T. Kirk) and just how believable residents & visitors find the old stories of lethal strangeness in the Expanse (Also, I wonder if some planets trade on such folk memories for the sake of their tourist trade?).”
As I mentioned the other week, ENT made a point of establishing that the Expanse was extremely far away from Earth, months’ travel at maximum speed with, presumably, hardly any stops or side trips along the way. So it’s probably beyond even where Kirk’s Enterprise was exploring a century later, or where the E-D or the DS9 crew generally operated (since so much of those series took place around established worlds rather than the far frontier). They presumably did that on purpose to justify why we didn’t see the Xindi in the later shows.
Right, but as was said last episode, it’s not like Archer’s actions in this ep were held up as admirable or the right response to the situation. Yes there’s the issue of your lead character taking morally incorrect actions, but this is the starting point of an arc. Archer does eventually learn his lesson and return to being the upstanding citizen after his wobble, not to mention get his actions thrown back in his face both in terms of the torture (“Azati Prime”) and the piracy (“Damage”). I mean, the episode is called “Anomaly”, and that doesn’t just refer to spatial anomalies – it refers to Archer’s behaviour as well.
The way I see it, Archer is trying to prove to himself that he will do whatever it takes. He knows this is not normal behaviour, especially for him. He knows this is outside the bounds of what is ethically acceptable. But the Osaarian was challenging him that he didn’t have what it takes to survive in the Expanse. Practically daring him.
So Archer did what the other guy was telling him was necessary, surely knowing deep down it was wrong but feeling like he had to prove that he could do it. He’s got huge pressure on him this season – he literally has to save his entire planet almost singlehandedly. And he’s thinking that he can’t allow the under-normal-circumstances ethical rules to get in his way.
@9 ED,
SPOILER ALERT:
If I recall correctly, the victory here causes the Delphic expanse to collapse or dissipate as it’s created by the spheres. So it simply doesn’t exist by Kirk’s time.
I’m much more interested in where The Delphic Expanse is located in regard to the known areas in the Galaxy. Star Trek Online places it between Earth and Klingon space, which doesn’t really hold up. I always felt it should be in the Alpha Quadrant, in-between Earth and the future Cardassian Union or Breen and Tzenkethi territories. Moreover it would also make sense if it was just Galactic Down and “Beneath” what we’d typically see for Federation Territory in the Galactic disc.
Not using the Orions? Come on. The Orions were born for the role. And having the Orions be villains gives the Expanse some bonafides. Bad call…and probably more expensive on the makeup too.
Florida man questions efficacy of being massaged by a beautiful Vulcan, instead considering becoming a drug addict or being bitten by leeches.
@12/DS9Continuing: “I mean, the episode is called “Anomaly”, and that doesn’t just refer to spatial anomalies – it refers to Archer’s behaviour as well.”
Wow, I never considered that interpretation before. It makes the title a lot less boring.
And you’re right. These episodes aren’t saying that Archer is right to buy into the same post-attack gung-ho mentality that Americans did after 9/11. Depicting the behavior is not endorsing it; it’s just acknowledging that it’s a plausible way for people to react.
Still, Keith has a point too, in that showing torture or threats actually working as a means to obtain reliable intelligence is perpetuating a dangerous myth, even if the story questions the morality of it. I mean, that’s the usual pro-torture argument, that it’s worth compromising your morals if it’s “the only way” to get urgent information. So saying “It’s immoral but it works” is just feeding the pro-torture mentality. What should be said is that it doesn’t work at all, that it’s actually counterproductive if your goal is information rather than just bullying people.
DS9Continuing: You raise a good point, but Christopher is also correct. My main issue here is the portrayal of torture as a useful interrogation tool, a dangerous myth that keeps getting propagated, and was especially prevalent in TV and movies that were contemporary with Enterprise. And that’s a major sin independent of whether or not Archer comes to realize that he shouldn’t compromise his principles this way.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@16/Krad: I don’t question that torture is a poor method at gaining information, or that a lot of TV back then used it to an obnoxious degree. But you’re overlooking one detail: you raised Chain of Command as an example. But Jonathan Archer isn’t even close to being a professional interrogator like a trained Cardassian. He wouldn’t even know to do his homework like that – investigating all leads before questioning, that is.
He obviously has yet to separate his anger from his professional conduct. And he has a lot of ground to cover before he becomes a more diplomatic, tolerant human being like Kirk or Picard. After all, ENT is covering early humanity. It makes sense they’d make very, very wrong decisions at this point in history.
I don’t think the show itself is condoning Archer’s actions at all. Again, we’re going to see all of this early war hawk bluster attitude blow up in their faces.
@17/Eduardo: Again, Keith isn’t talking about whether Archer’s actions were morally justified — he’s objecting to the depiction of Archer’s methods as successful. Your argument about Archer’s inexperience would make more sense if his attempt at torture had failed, the way it probably would in reality — if, say, the Osaarian had given him a false lead and it all turned out to be for nothing.
Eduardo: Christopher is correct. My issue isn’t with Archer’s actions, it’s that Archer’s actions were successful, and they shouldn’t have been. It perpetuates an overwhelmingly horrible myth that needs to be called out every single fucking time it’s used.
Like I said, “Chain of Command” understood this. The most important scene in that TNG episode is the first one, when it’s clear that Picard — drugged out of his eyeballs — is singing like the proverbial canary, answering every question Madred asks him. Once that’s done, the torture happens, not because the Cardassians need intelligence, but because Madred is a sadistic piece of shit who wants to break Picard. Because that’s the only thing torture is good for: aiding you in your crusade to be a sadistic piece of shit.
What it’s not good for — what it’s never been good for — is a means of gaining intelligence. As Christopher said, Archer’s lack of experience should have resulted in failure. But it didn’t — torture worked for him. And that’s despicable.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Better get MACO
*groan* :)
I thought the commercial (which I haven’t thought about or seen since I left NYC 30 years ago) as local to the city.
Was it a national chain?
@20/RamonTJR: Not only was, but is to this day. According to Wikipedia, MAACO was founded in 1972 in Delaware and is now based in Charlotte, NC. We’ve had MAACO stores here in Cincinnati for as long as I can remember.
What also makes torture inexcusable in the Trek universe is that we’ve seen no shortage of holographic, makeup, and surgical trickery. I don’t remember what level that technology is in the Enterprise era, but it seems like they could have some “Beware of the Dog” scenario prepared to get information.
Not to mention all the temporal scenarios one could use to confuse the detainee. “It’s been ninety years. The war is long over. But we’d like you to fill in some gaps for the historical record.” You know, that old trick.
@22/Dog’sDinner: Scaring or tricking people into giving up information is no more reliable than torture. The psychology is similar — if they see you as a threat or an adversary, they have every incentive to be adversarial in turn and give you false information. Clever tricks and con games may be entertaining in fiction, but in real life, what works best is establishing trust with the subject, offering them a positive incentive to cooperate.
I was just having a discussion with people online about what was the most stereotypical thing for each cultural decade that Star Trek was on the air; so, for example, it was Space Hippies for the 60s, Dr. McCoy’s leisure suit in TMP for the 70s, etc.
We concluded that the most stereotypical thing for the 2000s was Archer torturing a guy for information to Defend the Homeland in this episode. Thing is, it actually kind of works in terms of Archer’s character arc when you watch Enterprise in isolation; what made it truly vile was, as you state Krad, that torture doesn’t actually work as a means of reliably extracting information, that this episode came out at a time when torturing people was official US policy, and that it came out at a time when every damned series on television was accordingly doing episodes about lantern-jawed, determined white heroes torturing information out of Terrorist Bad Guys Who Deserve It.
(I would point out, though, that Janeway did something similar in “Equinox, Part 2”, not that it was any better there)
#23
Well, I guess, but Enterprise was already as boring as a cold bowl of oatmeal. No need to Deanna Troi the poor show. If the goal was to inject some life into the proceedings without being immoral, then clever tricks would’ve been the way to go. Mission: Impossible that sucker.
#25 They have some clever tricks later in the season
“I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to find your ship, and if that ends up causing me remorse, then it’s something I’m willing to live with.”
This falls a bit flat, although at least it picks up towards the end with the clash between Enterprise and the Ossarians and a link to the Xindi arc, with Archer getting another piece of the puzzle. I think the show’s makers admitted they’d written themselves into a corner with the whole “The laws of physics don’t apply” thing: They do an okay job of it here but it’s going to be hard to stick to going forward. The idea that the clouds around the Expanse let you in but not out is an interesting one but I’m not sure if it’ll ever come up again. (And has arguably already been contradicted with Soval’s stories about a Vulcan ship and a Klingon one that came out of the Expanse, albeit with dead crews.) On the other hand, we get our first look at the spheres and the reveal that they may be causing the anomalies, which will be important going forward. There’s a vague similarity to Voyager’s ‘The Void’ with trapped ships resorting to piracy.
The set-piece it’s building up to is Archer torturing a prisoner for information. Maybe the intervening decades have made it less shocking because it seemed fairly tame. It’s curious though that, even though he ultimately releases Orgoth mostly unharmed, there’s no real sense of remorse from him. (I struggled to come up with an alternative to this in my rewrite, awkwardly settling on a Vulcan mind meld and having to do a lot of fudging since it had been established T’Pol can’t initiate them.) Orgoth is, incidentally, yet another character who’s never named in the episode so we have to go browsing through Memory Alpha to find out what to call him.
There’s a nice character scene between Tucker and Reed that manages to be both grim and humorous, while Phlox also provides some rare laughs now Archer is dourer than ever. Archer grabs his frozen coffee mug but just leaves the coffee floating in the air. (I changed that in my rewrite…as well as changing it to tea, because I wouldn’t be drinking the alternative!) After her multiple costume changes last episode, T’Pol manages to stay in the same outfit throughout this one. (The third one from the previous episode for those keeping track.) There’s a few inventive touches as the crew repel the Ossarian boarding parties.
It’s a bit odd this is the last we see of Sergeant Kemper since his rank implies he’s Major Hayes’ second-in-command. (I believe The Evil Than Men Do had him losing Hayes’ favour around this time to explain it.) I can’t even really remember him getting mentioned much later, although I do remember Corporal McKenzie is despite this being her only appearance. (I had her ending up absorbed into Starfleet and serving as Archer’s chief of security on his post-Enterprise command.) Sean McGowan as Hawkins, despite being hard to pick out from the crowd here, will actually get a decent amount of screen time later on: He’s next seen in ‘Impulse’.
That’s a really weird last scene, with Archer downloading the Xindi database and then just staring at it for a number of seconds waiting for the credits to role. It’s like they had no idea how to end it.
One thing that continued to consistently bug me was the show’s continuing insistence that Trip was some kind of superhuman prodigy who could come up with entirely new theories regarding warp mechanics on short notice. First off, coming up with a model to describe entirely new sets of physical phenomena would be T’Pol’s job (you know, their SCIENCE officer). Second, this would also mean that Tucker, a guy who once admitted that he sucked at basic algebra and started his career as a boat mechanic, was a Hawking-level genius in the field of the most cutting-edge physics of the time, as well as a mechanical genius on par with Heron or James Watt. I’m sorry, but these are not traits that sync up with each other…
@28/Santos: Unfortunately, series TV routinely falls into the habit of portraying its main characters as the greatest talents ever in their respective fields, especially tech fields. In a show with teenage heroes, the main character’s nerdy friend who’s into computers will always turn out to be the most brilliant hacker in the world, able to make mincemeat of military-grade cybersecurity in a matter of minutes.
I almost forgot to mention – Porthos remains a Good Boy and what more can we ask of that old Star Dog?
@11. ChristopherLBennett: It’s strange and rather wonderful to imagine NX-01 flying even farther out from Earth than NCC-1701 or Enterprise-D ever did, though Heaven knows Space is very, Very BIG (I wonder if the Olympia made a courtesy call on the Xindi during her very long exploratory voyage or if it would be the Luna-class which reestablished face-to-face relations?*).
*This does rather assume that the Federation kept up some form of communication with the Xindi – at the very least an occasional video conference – but it seems at least possible that both sides would have had a stake in avoiding future ‘misunderstandings’ even if they didn’t want to maintain full Diplomatic Relations.
@13. Mr D: I’m a little leery about the Orions being the villains of this episode, since it would just be a case of “Orions being Orions” (even if they did not start out as pirates) rather than a good ship turned bad – making the villains in this episode members of a traditionally friendly species would, however, have undoubtedly added some extra oomph to the “As you are, so were we; as we are so you will become” dynamic.
@30/ED: “It’s strange and rather wonderful to imagine NX-01 flying even farther out from Earth than NCC-1701 or Enterprise-D ever did”
Not really, if you look at the history of exploration on Earth. It doesn’t expand outward in a perfect circle. Europeans spent centuries sailing the long way around Africa to reach China, India, and the East Indies before they ever started making regular journeys to the Americas, which are closer. Spain explored or colonized the south and west of North America generations before England started colonizing the northeast.
And it’s not necessarily true that NX-01 went farther than the others did. Since we’re dealing with a vast volume of 3-dimensional space, it’s possible they went as far, just not in that particular direction. The point is just that it was far enough to explain why it wasn’t part of Federation territory in later centuries. After all, explorers, by their very nature, travel far beyond their home nation’s territorial borders (something the writers of Strange New Worlds: “The Serene Squall” unfortunately forgot).
Catching up: The Xindi may have just not joined the Federation in the time of later shows, and remained separate and out of bounds to Starfleet. Though, a whole lot of “Enterprise” happens due to time travellers interfering with events before and during “Enterprise” and changing later history from what we’d seen earlier. Or they may be not called “Xindi”, as they’re a coalition of many species from the now destroyed planet Xindus. In “Enterprise”, they share other worlds, but their war council is organised on species division – and then they ended up in civil war again. Conceivably, some of their polities are Federation members later, and some aren’t.
James White’s “Sector General” space-hospital-for-aliens series started in 1957 and human Dr Conway seems to become interested in female nurses, one in particular, in “Countercharm” (1960) and “Resident Physician” (1961), where he is seen outside the female dormitory by a robot chaperone and sent packing. So men and women are separated. But in the changing rooms, not always. (Getting around the hospital fast may entail a short cut through the water and chlorine atmosphere sections, and dressing appropriately.) I don’t remember when any male nurses are described until a lot later, or the more complicated reproductive arrangements of other species (humans don’t run this universe although their Starfleet is essentially human… though the starships are Tralthan, I think; Tralthans build their ships tough; they have to, look at them). A retcon or later rule change is that the “nurses” are fully qualified same-species doctors of all the many sexes starting again in multispecies treatment, and also that apparently, female minds aren’t compatible with the memory transfer “tapes” that doctors use when treating an other-species patient – that’s mentioned shortly after “Resident Physician”. Although some species are female only some of the time… and very actively male at others. And that carries over in the memory tapes.
In a 1956 episode of BBC radio series “Journey Into Space”, the good guys use the airlock torture to get cooperation from a prisoner, but they only reduce the air pressure minimally… the prisoner doesn’t realise that. (Also, he deserves it.) As far as I remember, the crew are expressively unhappy that their commander is doing this, which probably helps sell it to the prisoner.