Damage

*** (3 stars out of 5)

"Damage" is (if you can believe it) an episode about damage. Everything and everyone on the ship is wrecked, shell-shocked, and out of righteous options.

Archer is sleepin' with the fishes! No, not dead, but gassed unconscious by the Aquatics and mailed back to the Enterprise postage due. Ship's casualties were high before the Xindi withdrew on Degra's whim. 14 dead, 3 missing, and also acting Captain T'Pol is going 'round the twist. The ship looks like a wheel of Swiss Cheese. And the missing aren't missing, I saw them fall out last episode. Not good news, I guess, but it's definitely 17 dead.

Asking some naive Expanse Tourists for a warp coil nicely fails. Archer puts on his Sisko hat (the one in the lovely shade of Morally Grey). They disable the neutral ship, steal the vital component, and leave the poor innocent saps stranded in hostile space three years from safety. The humans salve their consciences by leaving some extra burgers behind. As The Great Bird of The Galaxy intended. Heroism!

T'Pol dreams of eating Trip in the shower. And not in the good way. At last we learn what's wrong with her... she's actually been shooting up trellium-D for three months. Literally cooking up the little blue crack rocks that turn Vulcans into pain-maddened zombies. Yeah, it's killing her, but what's life without love? Love of drugs!

Speaking of insane women, we finally learn who the Xindi mean when they talk about HER. A trans-dimensional demon. Visually she's a Dominion Founder in a barbed Borg Queen corset. She gave the Xindi their "Kill All Humans" order. A Sphere-Builder, they call her. But that's a dumb name, so just call her a PG Cenobite.

Azati Prime

**** (4 stars out of 5)

The calumny of the humans has renewed Degra's devotion to destroying Earth. Do we really have anyone but ourselves to blame, you guys?

Travis and Trip launch a scout mission into the heavily patrolled ocean of "Azati Prime" in a stolen bug ship, with stolen bug lingo. Thankfully, Hoshi does excellent work and nobody seems to use security codes or anything.

Archer torpedos three Xindi hall monitors while Han and Luke... uh, Travis and Trip are away knocking out the shield generator on Endor... sorry, Naboo. Where are we again?

Unda Da Sea, the Xindi Eel people are merrily building the WMD.

Daniels shows Archer the year 2554- where Enterprise-J and the Federation trounce the Sphere-Builders for good at Procyon 5. The 26th Century Federation has dozens of species (Not hundreds? Uh-oh...), including Klingons, Xindi, and somebody called If/thenites. (Must be relatives of And/orians.)

Brave Earth forces under Rogers, Deering, Twikki and the gang prevailed, but the trans-dimensional sore losers plotted to trick the Xindi into wiping out humanity in the past. (Not for nothing, but one busy primate-hating jackass with a phaser and a free weekend could do THAT... in East Africa 4 million years ago. These villains aren't really using the full potential of a Time War here. Just saying.)

When Archer launches his suicide mission anyway, T'Pol weeps, further evidence that she is seriously losing her shit. Under her command, the Xindi chew Enterprise to tiny bits. Will tortured Archer somehow get the Xindi Primates to listen to his wild tales of time-travelling derring-do and Reptilian treachery? Will they take his word... over Hers? And just who is... SHE? (Oprah, probably.)

Hatchery

** (2 stars out of 5)

Having delivered 50% of T'Pol's behind, and a copious amount of Phlox Phlesh, I will spare you the sight of the slimy, grape-like globules dangling above Captain Archer's head in this shot. You may find it distasteful, sir, I could just file a report on that.

Investigation of a crashed Xindi Insectoid ship uncovers only Corpses and Eggs, and not the good kind. (It's no Denny's.) I hope Trip was using gallows humour when he suggested they might find a new insect for Reed's dad. It's a far cry from collecting butterflies on pins to having a dead sentient bug child in a shoebox.

The Insectoids live for 12 years, reproducing asexually and copiously. The reason they had kids along on a military vessel appears to be that they have kids along A LOT. -Morbo, how's the family? Belligerent and Numerous! -Good, 'cause Nixon's pro-war and pro-family.

Nobody seems to care as much as Archer about the death of Jiminy Cricket. Saving the hatchery becomes his top priority, siphoning Enteprise's own gas tank to preserve the drippy, drippy eggs he keeps standing under with his mouth open. Lieutenant Ellen Ripley might have had something to say about that.

Wacky Jon unfairly relieves T'Pol and Reed of duty, and orders Hoshi to start shouting for help in Giant Grasshopper, putting (say it with me) The Entire Earth at Risk! Mutiny time!. And luck or sheer incredulity causes the Starfleeters to best the MACO stormtroopers. Hard as that might be to believe.

"Hatchery" loses me when it turns out Captain Archer needs to be Drugged on Drippings to have compassion for enemy infants. Archer's great-grandfather served in North Africa during the Eugenics Wars (haven't heard about that in a while! Man, that takes me back to the 1990's!) in which Archer's ancestor called the enemy for a cease fire to evacuate schoolchildren. How the mighty have fallen: without trick pheromones it seems this generation would have left the baby bugs in a ditch. Heroism!

Doctor's Orders

*** (3 stars out of 5)

The humans are all tucked up asleep in their beds, with visions of The Sixth Sense dancing in their heads. Meanwhile, Phlox, T'Pol and Porthos are running the ship by themselves like three magical elves.

Dr. Phlox's pen pal Dr. Jeff Lucas lost colleagues in the Xindi attack, and was recalled to Earth. And when you have a big letter to write a big pen pal, you need a BIG iPad!

A few weeks after the trans-dimensional glob, they came across another and decided to shave some time off their life-or-death journey by diving into the toxic zone with every human in a protective four-day coma. It's up to the doctor to tend both the tiller and the talking props, while doing his best not to go mad with the responsibilities, crippling loneliness- and the gremlins lurking in the darkness out on the wings.

I must say, even though he starts hallucinating at the drop of a hat by comparison, I'd trust Phlox a hell of a lot further than I'd have trusted Seven of Nine when she did virtually the same thing. Up to and including any nocturnal nudity that earned audience ire. Frankly, if I have to put up with T'Pol's skinny butt, they can at least deliver the goods on Phlox. Or something. I forget what the fuss was about. People who live in glass houses... aren't obliged to wear pants just because YOU'VE got problems.

"Doctor's Orders" is way better than 'One'. And a clip of Danny Kaye in 'The Court Jester' for Phlox's solitary movie night reminds me why: I love a talented comedian. Way to go, John Billingsley!

Harbinger

**** (4 stars out of 5)
Trip is putting his Vulcan neuro-pressure massage to good use on MACO Corporal Amanda "Hugginkiss" Cole, a fellow Floridian, prompting T'Pol to come... to the rescue. The Vulcan? I guess? delivers (depending on your original viewing region) the ass-crack equivalent of side-boob.

Speaking of asses, Reed doesn't love the way Hayes' soldiers beat on trainees (and since Reed co-opted the bridge crew to be his fighting force, maybe he doesn't HAVE any trainees.) Or maybe he's just worried that Hayes is after his job?

Enterprise is en route to the weapon location they dirty-tricked out of Degra when they come upon a vile jelly made of anomalies. They tow a poor slob out of it... sorry, I meant to say poor SLOP. I don't know what he looked like before he went in, but this Coal Mine Canary was put there on purpose, recruited out of some terrible trans-dimensional prison. Still, I don't think it was a step UP to look like a dried up cantaloupe. Make-over!

T'Pol throws herself at Trip, Reed throws himself at Hayes, the Not-a-Suliban throws himself at the warp reactor. Only one of those looked like any fun, but to each their own.

"Harbinger" reminds us that it's only a love triangle if someone is actually, you know, in love. Trip's mad with grief. T'Pol is "experimenting". And Cole is seizing the... day.
Maybe the case could be made for Reed and Hayes- if the only way to express their love is bile-filled loathing and beating each other like uppity rent boys.

Stratagem

*** (3 stars out of 5)

With a page from the IMF manual, Captain Archer attempts to hoodwink and bamboozle the bad guy into coughing up the skinny. In a tiny ship mock-up complete with Star Tours buffeting machines and video warp-drive windows, the Captain claims to be the reluctant former cell-mate of Degra, the Xindi Primate scientist who built the WMD that incinerated a lot of choice land around and possibly including Disneyworld. Also seven million people.

In Archer's scenario, plied with booze and fanciful tales of daring do, he claims Earth was already destroyed but the Xindi were conquered from within by those dastardly Insectoids, who found it amusing to imprison Primate Archer with his greatest enemy. The pair of whom then miraculously escaped somehow! Archer does have a history of jailbreaks, actually, but this is a tissue of lies. Which works. (After the second level of tissue.) Degra reveals the location where the ultimate weapon is being assembled. His memory of having sold out the Xindi is then erased- just like his memory of being captured by Enterprise in the first place. Take that, Denobulan medical ethics!

If you find Degra sympathetic; just a father doing what he must to save his children and his race, congratulations, you have a developed sense of compassion and mercy. If you find Archer's false pretenses offensive, just keep saying "seven million people".

"Stratagem" finally deigned to make a Xindi into a person instead of a snarl and couple of cheek divots. Solid performances, all the tense, vicious shades of grey you can eat.

Proving Ground

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Plot threads begin to weave together. Hoshi and T'Pol are struggling to reassemble the computer maps from the shambles the crazed zealots left of the database. Victimized and floundering yet again, how will they ever stop the Xindi in time?

Glory be! Shran rides to the rescue. Partly to prove that the blue people can be a better friend to the pink people than those green people ever were. Meanwhile, flirting archly with Reed, Lieutenant Talas sets out to prove that blue people are hawwwt.

Fortunately for all, despite six months of our "heroes" making very little headway, the Xindi have made very little either. The Sloth Xindi secretly sabotaged the doomsday device, and, more importantly, Xindi seem to love TESTING the weapons on things more than actually using them already. 'It worked 8 out of 10 times, sir, and we're running out of moons.' 'Well, test it again! And bring me more kemacite and Tylenol!  I swear on my cheek pouches, if we don't get this right the humans will get suspicious one of these months and come after us!'

Andorians, boastful but very competent, have superior sensors to humans, and lead them to the "Proving Ground". It's the Xindi version of Bikini Atoll, which unfortunately has me imagining Xindi in bikinis. Their weapon can destroy moons, but the psychological scarring of an Insectoid in skimpies lasts forever.

Say... who knew Shran was so altruistic? Could he be after a WMD for some reason? Could he have an ulterior motive concealed in his black pleather sleeve? Or is that just another bottle of Andorian ale?