Marauders

** (2 stars out of 5)

How quickly brave new worlds get to be old hat. Old, OLD hat. It's all very well for cosmopolitan Picard to stroll up to yet another prosthetic forehead alien without batting an eye, but Archer? Last year, contacting new species was a once-in-a-lifetime treat, yet now they don't even bother asking the latest spoon-heads what they call themselves or where they come from! Just nod along when you see a new foreign guy, as long as they keep pumping your gas!

That's what the Klingons do. "I can get deuterium anywhere," the Klingon bully says, and he's right. Everybody wants this precious, precious slush from the poor, defenceless miners, eking out a living from moisture vaporators or whatever. In reality, deuterium is a common hydrogen isotope, but you'd be more likely to find it in a sea than in a desert. I really wish they'd stick with "dilithium" when they need a McGuffin that means 'rare and valuable'.

And speaking of borrowing, I like "Blazing Saddles" as much as the next guy, but the "building a new town next to the old town" gambit is a little dubious if you're not trying to make a comedy.

Worse by far is the "adorable" urchin Trip "befriends". I'd rather watch T'Pol running drill instruction, but not by much. Do a couple of Vulcan tactics and a handful of old Bajoran handguns seem like enough to defend these wimps against a boatload of Klingon warriors? Well, fine. But I'm pretty sure the moment Enterprise is over the warp horizon, the Romulan cavalry will ride up firing their muskets and shouting 'Fill 'Er Up!"

"Marauders" is a bottom-of-the-barrel western with the minor benefit of being filmed outside. But with all the muttering pioneers in tents, it might as well be a below-average episode of "Earth 2".