Singularity

** (2 stars out of 5)

Wow! Is it August 2152 already? How time flies in the little season that couldn't.

Monomania infects the crew as they approach a black hole in a trinary system. Three stars... and I don't want to give that many to the story. It's the old sci-fi trope 'space madness' back again for (among other things) a repeat performance of Deep Space Nine's 'Dramatis Personae'.

Reed's gone full Arnold Rimmer, polishing his jackboots and painting the corridors military grey instead of ocean grey. Trip rebuilds the Captain's chair from the ground-up, dismissing dampener seatbelts in favour of making it one centimeter shorter. Archer tries to write a single page forward for a biography of his father without actually managing to tell us anything about his father. Phlox is stropping his knives to dissect Travis before Travis does anything to give us any insight into Travis. Hoshi's making soup!

For today, the only way out is through. For reasons I can't fathom, turning around and going back the way they came will take two days, but going in closer to the centre will get them out in 17 minutes. I'm not sure that's how globes work! Science!

"Singularity" gets two stars because I like these people, but it's all been done before. I don't know why you'd want to creep up next to a black hole anyway. Didn't you see Disney's The Black Hole on movie night? Space madness could be the least of your problems if you get sucked down to hell while you're arguing about cup holders.

The Communicator

** (2 stars out of 5)

"The Communicator", you'll be astonished to discover, is an episode about a communicator!

Remember how, long ago in the future, Dr. McCoy accidentally left a communicator behind on a planet of highly imitative jerks dressed as Chicago Mobsters? Well, what if Lt. Reed did that exact thing on a planet covered in G.I. Joes? Well, this. This happens. You watch it. You yawn, then you move on. Or if you're a saner person than me, you just don't watch it twice.

Archer and Reed are caught and questioned and agonize over what to say. Will they be mistaken for almighty golden gods or simple slobs who misplaced their iPhone? Somehow, they decide that rather than risk telling the truth, they will let the nervous Allies believe they are evil Germans. Since there is no Prime Directive to lay down their lives for, and the arrival of aliens had a POSITIVE effect on humanity, one wonders WHY they'd choose this!? It seems the one course of action most likely to get them starring roles on Alien Autopsy.

 Although it never gets much more creative than the title, I have to give it props for not simply beaming the prisoners out of Colonel Grat's, uh... I mean Colonel Gosis' clutches. There's a whole subplot where Trip learns to use the stolen Suliban cloaking ship and accidentally turns his hand invisible. It's worth a chuckle and a fart.

For myself, I can't watch the scene where Archer and Reed are discovered to be the only ones on the planet who'd need an eyebrow plucking, not because the beating is too violent, but because the unmasking is just silly. Who looks at a stick-on forehead that comes off like an old band-aid and draws the conclusion "Surgically Altered"? WHAT surgery? If you knocked off someone's hat, would you assume you'd just beheaded them?

The Seventh

** (2 stars out of 5)
No, not the Seventh of Ninth,  "The Seventh"! That's what they called this season's seventh episode. And you thought they were out of ideas!

From the opening deadpan: "We've located Menos.", I'm wondering if they mean Manos, The Hands of Fate. And kind of wishing I'd tried to review every episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 instead of every episode of Star Trek, because even when MST3K is terrible, it's funny.

Thirty years ago, hundreds of surgically altered Vulcan spies hid within the corrupt society on planet Agaron to root out evil and avoid talking to their loved ones. Some of them liked living with the English and never came back to Amish country. Menos, for example, got a job smuggling the toxic components of transgenic weapons. Which are probably like metagenic weapons but less meta.

Menos claims total innocence, just minding his own beeswax hauling poisonous spent warp injector casings to feed his family, do-de-do!. T'Pol, logically, runs out to his ship and opens, handles, and licks all the rusty casings to prove he's lying.


It turns out TPol had the 'Fullara' ritual performed to repress her past as a government hit ma'am.

So THAT'S why T'Pol always looks like she's about to bite you or cry or both. She's a killer with traumatically induced amnesia! That old chestnut! "Science Officer" is just a cover like "dealer in spices" or "Sir Hilary Bray" or "Steven Harper". Thankfully, they didn't take T'Pol into their bosom and trust her word on everything science-y. Oh. Wait.

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".

A Night in Sickbay

**** (4 stars out of 5)

"Starfleet didn't send us out here to humiliate ourselves," grumbles Jon Archer, all evidence to the contrary as he and his comely crew slather each other with 'medicine' in their bathing suit areas. For more on this subject, see The Trek Nation.

Trained diplomat or not, Captain Archer has spent over 5 days apologizing to the Kreetassans for the months-old public eating incident in hopes of getting a plasma injector from them. Whereupon, beagle Porthos peed on on of their sacred trees and offended them again. But more importantly from the Captain's point of view, Porthos caught something deadly. In Kreetassa, trees bite YOU!

Phlox has an insane number of medical degrees and some frankly appalling grooming habits. I don't mean he's badly groomed, I mean I'll never be able to un-see the man brushing his tongue. And neither will you!

And Reed's not the only one with sex dreams about the Ice Queen T'Pol. The Captain's having them, too... and out come the butterfly nets. Possibly to take the Captain's mind off his dying dog, the doctor takes him on a bat-catching journey into madness.

"A Night in Sickbay" is not well regarded, but I love it so. Which is the same as saying I love Phlox The Polygamist with Nutritious Toenails and Archer who abandons all duty if his pet is ill. From my perspective, Archer's character is not diminished or undermined by this story. He loves his dog! What's so wrong with that? And he learns a lesson Canadians famously already know. In one of the deleted scenes, Trip gives his Captain the advice he got from his mother, and it's strange to me that this got cut, because it's one of the best lines in the series. "It's o.k. to apologize when you shouldn't have to... just as long as you don't mean it."
You can even wear pigtails and curtsy: as long as you don't mean it.

Dead Stop

*** (3 stars out of 5)
Did you want an episode where the Enterprise pulls into a gas station for a tune-up? Well, you're welcome. Also, uh... it's a haunted gas station! Trust your car to the service with the star-ghosts. We jump to the pump for you...r brain. Braaaaiiins!

Regulan blood worms aid in the healing of Reed's leg from last episode, but once inside a patient they can wander off. (Hopefully this does not require sifting stool that no man has sifted before.)

HAL, uh, The Computer in the station sounds a lot like B'Elanna Torres. If this were 200 years later I'd be looking around for a re-wired missile talking to itself. But instead, we learn where the A.I. from 'Think Tank' worked before he temped for Jason Alexander.

The SP (Suspiciously Perfect) Repair Station's got food replicators which humans sure don't. They'd better start Keeping Up With The Tarkaleans! (You thought I was going to say Cardassians, didn't you?) Plus, the gleaming mecha-oasis has Exocomps. (Dr. Exocomp, if you please, it didn't spend seven years in Robot Medical School to be called MR. Exocomp.)

What's a Captain to do when the full service payment costs them one buff, overly inquisitive black guy? (And you thought 120 cents a litre was steep!)

"Dead Stop" is not as bad as I thought. I groaned- "oh, not this one", but I liked the characters as always. It's spooky with a curious twist. Also, I liked the model of Nomad on Archer's desk. That was a cool element of continuity, something this season isn't exactly known for.

Minefield

*** (3 stars out of 5)

What's more awkward than dinner with the boss? Breakfast!... followed by talking him through your job, with your lives on the line, while peeing your pants.

That was how Malcolm Reed experienced the Romulan first contact- cowering before their blood-green ships, clinging to the outside of the hull like bug, skewered through the leg by a malfunctioning invisible bomb.

In the words of the seagulls from Finding Nemo: "MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!" It seems the Romulans already love hiding things: like a "Minefield" that blasts a big bite out of the Enterprise cookie. They love hiding their identities, too, enough that no human or human ally is destined to see one and live to tell about it until Captain Kirk in 'Balance of Terror' a century from now. They even hide their language: you'd think someone with as clever a tongue as Hoshi would notice the similarity to Vulcan if they hadn't made intentional alterations. (Like Romulans say 'soccer' instead of 'football' and 'Freedom Fritters' instead of 'Vulcan Fritters'.)

I was initially so excited to see a de-cloaking Romulan ship as a prelude to the inevitable interstellar war, that I didn't notice what some reviewers called the classic hurt/comfort fanfic. I hadn't realized... Reed's awkwardness might have been caused by strong romantic feelings for his captain! Here I was thinking the only stick Archer was shaking was that weird salt-and-pepper wand or whatever he always wiggles over his food!

But now I see! It's all space surfing and pee play for these stalwart men of the future! Romulans aren't the ONLY "passionate people"!