“The Council”
Written by Manny Coto
Directed by David Livingston
Season 3, Episode 22
Production episode 074
Original air date: May 12, 2004
Date: February 12, 2154
Captain’s star log. We open in a massive expanse (ahem) of white-space. Various Sphere-Builders (including the emissary who talks to the Xindi Council) discussing timelines. Apparently some of them can see potential futures, and the number of ones in which Earth is destroyed are lessening.
Degra’s ship and Enterprise are proceeding toward the council chambers. There’s also a sphere nearby, and T’Pol believes she can access data from its memory core to help their case. She takes a team on a shuttlepod, including Mayweather to pilot, and Reed and Hawkins for backup, to infiltrate the sphere.
The female Sphere-Builder appears to Degra in holographic form on his ship, begging him to reconsider his actions. She tries to appeal to his legacy, but he says he’ll be judged by history, not by her.
When Degra returns to Enterprise, he explains the difficulty to Archer: the Sphere-Builders—the Xindi call them “the Guardians”—are practically worshipped. Degra himself raised his children to respect and admire them. So this is going to be a very hard sell. Archer, who has faced a Klingon tribunal, says he’s willing to face a tough room. (He neglects to tell Degra that said tribunal found him guilty and condemned him to life in prison…)
Degra also provides some information on the other councilors, expecting the Primate and Arboreal councilors to be sympathetic, with the Reptilians and Insectoids likely not to be. The swing vote is almost definitely going to be the Aquatics, who are deliberate and mercurial.
Archer and Sato join Degra in the council chambers, with Sato translating the Insectoid and Aquatic languages for Archer’s benefit. The Insectoids and Reptilians are completely unwilling to hear anything Archer has to say, assuming his evidence is manufactured so he can save his planet. The Guardians have never lied to them, they believe.
After the session ends, Degra has a suggestion for how to help convince the Aquatics. He needs the help of both Phlox and Tucker. Working with Tucker is complicated, but he and Degra come to something vaguely resembling the possibility of an understanding.
T’Pol, Reed, and Hawkins don EVA suits and head into the sphere while Mayweather keeps watch from the shuttlepod. Even as T’Pol downloads the data, some automated security arrives in the form of snakey probes. Reed and Hawkins fight off the security while T’Pol works, and then they all retreat to the shuttlepod. Hawkins is killed in the retreat, to Reed’s annoyance.
Buy the Book
The Archive Undying
Archer presents new evidence, this of the Sphere-Builder who tried to sabotage the Enterprise. While the Sphere-Builder himself was disintegrated, Degra is able to fabricate a holographic re-creation of him based on Phlox’s medical data. This is technology beyond what Earth has, so it can’t possibly be falsified by the humans. At this evidence, Kiaphet Amman’sor, the Aquatic councilor, and Dolim (to everyone’s surprise) are both willing to hear more (though the Insectoids still want Archer kicked out).
The council votes 4-1 to postpone the launch, with only the Insectoids voting against. Archer and Degra are encouraged by the support from Dolim. Tucker then swallows his anger and asks for Degra’s help installing the power cells that Degra gave them.
Dolim visits Degra in private and reveals that he knows that Degra destroyed a Reptilian ship. He stabs Degra, promising that—when the council is dissolved and the Reptilians rule all Xindi, he will track down Degra’s entire family and kill them, too.
Dolim freely admits in open council that he killed Degra. He and the Insectoid councilor announce that they have taken possession of the weapon. However, the weapon requires three codes to launch it, and each Xindi race has one of those codes—which means that the Reptilians and Insectoids only have two. Dolim says he knows that right before he and the Insectoids transport out of the chambers.
A firefight ensues in space with the weapon-transporting Insectoids and Reptilians on one side, the Primates, Arboreals, and Enterprise on the other. The former go through a subspace vortex with the weapon, but right before they do, they transport Sato off the bridge of Enterprise.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? T’Pol determines that the spheres have holographically camouflaged exhaust ports. She doesn’t bother to tell anyone this, just ordering Mayweather to fly toward what looks like a solid bulkhead. Why the exhaust ports are camouflaged on a sphere that’s already inside a cloaking field is left as an exercise for the viewer.
The gazelle speech. When Archer and Sato are first going to the council chambers, Archer says it reminds him of being sent to the principal’s office. Sato says that never happened to her, but Archer says it did happen to him once. Later, he finally confides the reason: he was passing notes to a girl, hoping to take her to a dance. She originally said no, but said yes after he got in trouble for passing her a note. Sato comments that some women like bad boys. Much like the speech for which this section is named, what promises to be an interesting bit of dialogue from Archer winds up being massively disappointing, and its relevance to the story at hand is questionable at best.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol is pleased to learn that the trellium-D is completely out of her system.
Florida Man. Florida Man Comes To Rapprochement With Bitter Enemy Right Before Bitter Enemy Dies.
Good boy, Porthos! Archer is snuggling with Porthos when he’s informed that Degra’s dead.
I’ve got faith…
“Ever since the attack on Earth, all I’ve thought about is getting back at whoever was responsible.”
“And now we are making peace with them.”
“I’ve gotten used to the anger. It’s going to be like, I don’t know, losing an old friend.”
“You have other friends.”
–Tucker trying to figure out how to process his anger, and Phlox giving sage advice.
More on this later… T’Pol quotes an old Vulcan proverb that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, establishing that Spock wasn’t just saying that in The Wrath of Khan, he was quoting an aphorism of his father’s people.
Welcome aboard. It’s the final appearance of two recurring regulars, Randy Oglesby as Degra (back from “E2”) and Sean McGowan as Hawkins (back from “Hatchery”), both of whom are killed. It’s the first appearance of four new recurring regulars: Andrew Borba and Bruce Thomas as two of Dolim’s subordinates, and Mary Mara and Ruth Williamson as two of the Sphere-Builders.
Other recurring folk include Rick Worthy as Jannar, Tucker Smallwood as the Primate councilor (both back from “E2”), Scott MacDonald as Dolim, and Josette Di Carlo as the Sphere-Builder emissary (both back from “Damage”).
With the obvious exceptions of Oglesby and McGowan, all of the above will be back next time in “Countdown.”
Trivial matters: Jannar, Dolim, and Kiaphet Amman’sor are first named in this episode. The Primate and Insectoid councilors still remain unnamed.
The medical data on the Sphere-Builder who sabotaged Enterprise in “Harbinger” is part of Archer’s evidence.
Archer references his being put on trial by Klingons in “Judgment” as a comp for confronting the Xindi Council. He’s more right than he realizes, as both occasions ended very badly for Archer…
When the Insectoid says something nasty to Archer in council chambers, he turns to Sato for a translation and she just says, “You don’t want to know.” That’s the same thing Sato said to Archer when the Klingon chancellor said something nasty to him in the empire’s council chambers in “Broken Bow.”
It’s been a long road… “Your traitorous bloodline will end at the tip of my blade.” One of the truisms of television is that you have to write in a proscribed time frame. Even now, when streaming services mean your episode doesn’t need to fix an exact timeslot, there’s still the specific proscription of how many episodes you have in a season. So even if you’re doing serialized storytelling, as is more common in 2023 than it was when Enterprise tried a full-season arc two decades ago, you’re still constrained by how many episodes you have in a season.
As we’ve seen in so many shows that have adopted serialized storytelling, that constraint can sometimes bite you on the ass. To give a Trekkish example, the second half of season four of Discovery dragged horribly because the story they had left to tell wasn’t suited to the number of episodes they had, so those episodes dragged somewhat.
Enterprise struggled mightily with this, as the Xindi arc did not have enough story meat for twenty-four episodes. This resulted in several filler episodes. In and of itself, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, far too many of those filler episodes were mediocre-to-bad—“Extinction,” “Exile,” “North Star,” “Similitude”—not aided by several of the plot-specific episodes not exactly lighting the world on fire.
The second half of the season, however, has been far better than the first. And while the digressions are sometimes annoying (“Hatchery,” “E2”), and sometimes enjoyable (“Doctor’s Orders”), the actual storyline has been much more compelling.
None more so than “The Council,” which is a thrill-ride of an episode that also moves the story along nicely. We start with our first real look at the Sphere-Builders, who apparently can see potential futures, and are working to make the future that favors them happen. We continue with Archer, aided by the Primates and Arboreals, trying to convince the other three members of the council that destroying Earth may not be the best idea.
The episode is fast-paced and enjoyable and intense and works nicely. I especially like Reed’s anger at Hawkins’ death, especially since, by his calculations, they have now passed the “acceptable” threshold of twenty percent casualties. Which Reed, to his credit, doesn’t view as acceptable at all.
Scripter Manny Coto falls back on a couple too many clichés, though. One is not entirely his fault: the general notion that the analogues of reptiles and bugs are the bad guys and the analogues of humans and cute furry animals are the sympathetic ones is a little too on the nose (and reductive). The other is Tucker coming to at least understand and sympathize with Degra just in time for the latter to be killed. Tucker’s struggle with his anger is a little too pat.
Still, this is a strong continuation of the climax of a story that has had a rough road, but is coming together nicely.
Warp factor rating: 8
Keith R.A. DeCandido is a contributor to the upcoming anniversary anthology Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, edited by Jonathan Maberry, celebrating the hundredth birthday of the long-running magazine. Keith’s story is called “Prezzo,” and features Italian immigrants, racial prejudice, and scary monsters. More info about the anthology can be found here.
Rewatching this one gave me a major case of the Mandela Effect. I could have sworn that it was Major Hayes who ate it on the sphere, not the relatively unknown Hawkins.
For me, the episode was slightly spoiled by the end. So the villains of the piece got two out of five valid codes to launch their superweapon, and they need three. I could think of ways to program a system that works with that kind of safeguards, but only if nobody has access to the operating system and the source code. There were Insectoid Xindi working on the weapon, so why couldn’t they remove this complicated safety feature and replace it with a single big, red button?
And are the Xindi Avians going to remain a mystery? They went extinct close to living memory, how long are the Xindi a space-going species? Or was there something about them which tied them to their homeworld?
I agree this was a good one, but I too was disappointed that the Reptilians and Insectoids were made into such one-dimensional villains. It’s not fair that only the mammals were allowed to have nuance and ambiguity. I wasn’t crazy about Degra being killed either.
Any reservations I may have about Bug/Reptile profiling are severely undermined by the General being a magnificent heavy: Even before he sets to work he’s profoundly intimidating and when he gets to work, the job is done (It also helps that the episode never undercuts the fact that he has every right to want Degra’s blood and no particular reason to trust the crew of Enterprise, especially given their association with an actual d*** traitor).
When executed this well typical screen villainy deserves to be called ‘classic’ and not ‘cliche’.
I’m honestly more disappointed by the Insectoids, who don’t really get any real dimension to their characterisation beyond “We trust in the Sphere Builders” (If nothing else, getting an insight into why they show such Trust would have been helpful).
Presumably because the various members of the Xindi Council were being very, very careful to build into their planet-smashing super-weapon the sort of safeguards that make it very, very difficult for this weapon to be turned on one of them (and the project would obviously be under the very closest level of scrutiny, not least because the Xindi can’t afford to have yet another planet smashed out from under them).
@2. o.m. I cannot answer your last question, but given the Council’s meeting-place is mentioned as having been built thousands of years ago (2 millennia before Christ, I believe) and that the planet they meet on is NOT the Xindi homeworld, I suspect the proper answer to your second question is “A very long time indeed”.
As for the first question, I suspect the answer is “Yes”: even in the STAR TREK Galaxy, some mysteries are fated to linger on.
@3. ChristopherLBennett: I’d argue that the General’s rage against Degra being perfectly justified adds a good deal of interest to the character, even if the situation isn’t exactly ambiguous – I’d also argue that Degra’s death is integral to establishing a genuine sense of threat, since if a character so obviously-important to the ongoing plot can suffer the consequences of his actions, it’s quite possible that nobody is entirely safe.
His allies on the council continuing to offer their support to Archer after their comrade’s death also helps to show his importance (as the person who brought these two parties together) while putting it in the proper perspective – he was outstandingly important, but not a Point Failure Source.
@3 – Hey, at least they weren’t different forehead aliens! So we have that going for us.
Obviously, the Sphere Builders watched the original Star Wars while researching humanity, and decided not to repeat the Empire’s mistakes.
@7/rickarddavid: I’d say it was the Sphere Builders who made the mistake. The shuttlepod was able to fly through the exhaust port with no resistance once they knew where it was, which makes for a pretty crummy security system. The Rebel fleet had to brave hundreds of gun emplacements and enemy fighters and lost nearly all of their pilots in order to take the shot, and the shot only worked because of the Force.
I’m so tired of people buying into the idea that the Death Star exhaust port was some kind of obvious design flaw that was easy to exploit, which profoundly contradicts the entire climax of the film. That started out as a joke, but like too many recurring jokes, people started believing it was meant seriously. Even Rogue One took it as a “mystery” that needed explanation, when it really didn’t.
One thought that occurred to me: the Sphere Builders could have added that holographic cover to their exhaust(s) as a belt-and-braces design element (Making life harder for those interested parties who managed to pierce the cloak by accident or design, but lacked the sophisticated sensors that allowed NX-01 to see through this disguise): it’s also possible that this illusion was meant to facilitate an image of the spheres as inscrutable, otherworldly and alien – not like something crafted by hand, but something pulled together by vast and alien intellects – especially when observed with the Mark 1 eyeball.
Remember that the design requirements of any structure are never purely technical: builders always have to deal with cultural mores and other ulterior motives to boot (and I think there’s some evidence for the Sphere Builders being very much wheels-within-wheels types).
@9/ED: “(and I think there’s some evidence for the Sphere Builders being very much wheels-within-wheels types).”
So was Degra, literally, given the design of the planet-killer weapons. ;)
Regarding the quote in the “I’ve Got Faith” section: It reminded me of Picard saying something like, “I think that when one has been angry for a very long time, the anger becomes comfortable, like old leather.” But I can’t for the life of me remember which episode/movie it’s from? Anyone know?
@11/Nina: The “old leather” line is from “The Wounded,” when Picard speaks to O’Brien about Captain Maxwell’s motivations.
@12 – A Google search turned up quotes from “The Wounded” (s4e12)
Mistyped – that was meant for @11, and timestamped the same as CLB lol.
a story that has had a rough road
well! okay
“This is no fluctuation. This is a trajectory away from our desired outcome.”
The final run begins here, and despite some contemporary reviews complaining that the show was dragging, I felt that the pace didn’t let up. Character relationships move forward and then the rug gets pulled out from under us. I’m not sure if either of them has fully realised it, but Archer and Degra have finally achieved the friendship that Archer pretended they had in ‘Stratagem’. And Tucker makes some huge steps forward here: He starts the episode making his dislike of Degra plain, but he’s also accepted that they need to work together…and then finally realises that Degra isn’t the black-hearted villain he thought he was (or wanted him to be), just in time to end up regretting his death.
And Degra’s only one of two recurring characters we lose here, as Hawkins make the fatal error of running towards the killer robot. After the punch-the-air moment of Mayweather coming to T’Pol and Reed’s rescue, I was surprised that the mood then drops as Reed reflects on the fact they’ve got too used to losing people, and this is another one that will carry through into next episode.
T’Pol really enjoyed freaking the humans out by telling Mayweather to fly straight at a wall, didn’t she? A bit more screentime for the lesser-used characters, with Mayweather going on an away mission and Hoshi acting as Archer’s aide…and then Dolim’s hostage.
We finally learn what the Xindi call the Sphere Builders and I think that’s the first mention of the name of their original home planet (Xindus, not particularly originally). Archer tells Degra of the future he saw in ‘Azati Prime’ with humans and Xindi serving together in the Federation. Over twenty episodes after they debuted, Degra gives the names of three of the other Xindi councillors. He describes the Insectoid councillor’s name as “difficult to pronounce” and doesn’t mention the second Humanoid councillor at all. The Xindi having transporters to abduct Hoshi with comes out of nowhere somewhat: They had to send boarding parties through the airlock in ‘Rajiin’, as well as trying to use Enterprise’s transporter to retrieve their spy rather than their own.
Reed says they’ve lost twenty-three crew on the mission, which he says is over 20% of the crew. (It’s not entirely clear whether Hawkins’ death pushed them over that point or if they passed it a while back.) That’s eighteen in the battle in ‘Azati Prime’, Hawkins here, Fuller in ‘Anomaly’, an unnamed crewmember in ‘Chosen Realm’, and I see I estimated three guards were killed in ‘Rajiin’, but no-one commented on it so it’s possible one (or more?) survived. Have I forgotten anyone?
Channel 4 cut the whole sequence of Dolim stabbing Degra to death, so UK terrestial viewers didn’t know he was dead until “Depac” contacts Archer and tells him. They may have ended the scene with Dolim’s “you’ve left me no choice”, although I’ve an odd feeling it ended with “it was destroyed…by you.”
Phlox announces T’Pol has no trellium in her system, something he already did in ‘The Forgotten’. Is this the equivalent of giving a recovering drug addict regular urine tests?
Don’t think it was actually said that the Aquatics had voted to delay the launch?
I didn’t like that Degra died here, and I liked it less as they went on as they didn’t invest as much into building his replacement. It made sense for Dolim to do it however. It didn’t make sense for Degra not to have a guard.
The Insectoids and Reptilians being the most aggressive and territorial did lean too much on their Terrestrial animal equivalents though I think if they had a Xindi Felinoid species like lions then they could’ve swapped that territoriality with them as generally mammals are way more territorial if memory serves.
I agree that their faith in the Guardians seems while perhaps earned, a little too ironclad, “They’ve never lied to us before”, I’m like how would you know if you always believe them? You’d think they’d want to be absolutely sure before murdering billions.
I’m also wondering why they never wondered why a Xindi from the future never came back to validate the Guardian’s claims.
@17. mr_d: Isn’t it quite reasonable to assume that Debra’s guards would be just as stone-dead as Degra himself? The General does not strike me as likely to leave a job half-done.
@1 – Nope, though Hayes isn’t exactly out of the woods.
@2 – I don’t think any specifics are given as to what happened to the Xindi-Avians. That said, I recall it being heavily implied in one of the upcoming episodes that they were deliberately genocided by the Reptilians at the behest of the Sphere Builders to bring the other five together back during the original Xindi Civil War.
@12 and 13: Thanks, Christopher and lerrie!
It wouldn’t be Star Trek without a council meeting. The inevitable verbal face-off of loaded words and arguments, as all these different sides try to come to an understanding. A necessary part of the Xindi arc that lays the cards and sets up the characters to the inevitable action-packed conclusion to the season. Star Trek has always been good at trial courtroom-esque set pieces like these before, much like ENT’s own “Judgement” last season. As expected, it’s a well-deserved credit to David Livingston who makes the proceedings come alive naturally (and he doesn’t need to do what Conway did on that episode – he doesn’t try to ape Meyer’s Undiscovered Country staging).
I pointed out at the beginning of the season that painting the Reptilians and Insectoids as the war-monger faction of the Xindi was always going to be seen as a blatant stereotype. As pointed out, that’s not a problem on Manny Coto’s side, since he wasn’t even a part of the show when the writers set up the Xindi’s various species.
But even with that cliché, the episode really improves on Dolim as a character. The way he deceives Archer and Degra, playing along in allowing the evidence to be presented before the inevitable twist. And as pointed out by @@.-@, he makes a damn convincing argument as to why he does what he does. Degra did destroy Xindi vessels and hide the truth from him. Which makes that stabbing all the more expected. Dolim feels rightfully betrayed from his point of view. A villain with clear, understandable motivation always works better than the cackling evil type. Dolim may not be on the level of a Gul Dukat (or even the Female Shapeshifter), but he makes a good case for ranking as one of Trek’s better villains.
@21/Eduardo: “I pointed out at the beginning of the season that painting the Reptilians and Insectoids as the war-monger faction of the Xindi was always going to be seen as a blatant stereotype. As pointed out, that’s not a problem on Manny Coto’s side, since he wasn’t even a part of the show when the writers set up the Xindi’s various species.”
I don’t accept that logic. In the first half of the season, the writers set up all five species as antagonistic, only gradually hinting that the Arboreals and Primates had a more sympathetic side. Coto could’ve easily added more nuance to the Reptilians and Insectoids in the same way. It wouldn’t even have required changing them. For instance, the Reptilians are an aggressive, proud people — instead of just having them line up with the Sphere Builders because of obligatory villain solidarity, it would’ve been, if anything, more in character for them if they had turned against the Sphere Builders out of anger at being used and manipulated. And perhaps the more timid Arboreals, who we thought were favorable to humanity, could’ve felt such a strong sense of obligation to the “Guardians” that they caved to pressure and authorized launching the weapon after all. It would’ve been a neat surprise that fit with the species’ respective characters.
I’d assumed that the Avians were wiped out way before Xindus was destroyed (and this was fairly confidently stated to be the case, back in ‘The Shipment’). If that’s so, why are there Avian buildings on other Xindi worlds? Were these worlds already in use back before Xindus was destroyed? Or did the other Xindi races build Avian structures out of some sort of sense of memorial, or just in case they turned out to be less extinct than previously thought?
@23/Colin H: It seems self-evident that the Xindi must have already been a starfaring civilization with a presence on other worlds before Xindus was destroyed, otherwise, how would the species have survived its destruction?
@22/Christopher: That’s…. an interesting alternative take. The Arboreals being the ones to flip and cause trouble would have made for a clever twist. That’s for sure. I didn’t see Dolim’s inevitable betrayal as a case of ‘villain solidarity’ though. The way I see it, he was a classic case of an extreme personality so used to the comfort of his own anger and paranoia that he chose the easy path – not unlike religious extremists (or anti-vaxxers in recent years) who double down on their worst instincts when faced down with a difficult choice.
@25/Eduardo: The problem with that analogy is that real-life extremists are pretty one-note, predictable people, while one wants fictional villains to have more interesting layers and be capable of surprising the audience. And it’s fun when characters have journeys and end up in different places than they started, like Degra did. As I recall, Dolim ended up pretty much the same as he began, without a lot of growth.
The weapon looks like what would happen if the Borg discovered steampunk.
Am I the only one who was a little annoyed that Dolim referred to Hoshi at the end as “the female”? It seems unlikely to me that he’d be able to distinguish genders within humanity. Since he knows she’s the linguist aboard Enterprise (and I assume, not having seen the next episode yet, that that’s why he’s kidnapping her), you’d think that would be how he referred to her.
It’s this kind of offhand misogyny the series (and much of Trek before Discovery) exhibits that really puts me off at times when I could otherwise really enjoy the franchise.
@27 you are not alone. Made Dolim sound like a 30s villain for a moment ‘get the female’. Also, has T’Pol ceased to be female?
Speaking of T’Pol
T’Pol’s nonsense with the hidden exhaust port was out of character. She doesn’t pull those sort of stunts.
This episode was good, but if it was 20-30 minutes longer, it could have really easily be the final episode of the season and have a decent diplomatic close to the conflict.