Date: 31 July 2151
Discovering an M-class planet supporting a pre-industrial society, Archer, Trip, T'Pol and Hoshi beam down to "explore using their senses". But what they find is proof that alien life in the Alpha Quadrant is often far from benign.
Summary
Archer's morning briefing from his staff includes an unremarkable nebula remnant, three neutron stars and ... a Minshara-class planet supporting a civilisation of 500 million individuals. Upon arrival, th ecrew are enchanted by the prospect of "stepping back in time" and exploring the pre-industrial society. T'Pol warns that they will be recognised as outsiders. "Not if we look like them," Archer responds, and has Hoshi's visage altered to resemble the aliens', who the young ensign has discovered call themselves the Akaali. When T'Pol detects anomalous neutrino emissions, she, Archer and Tucker join Hoshi in heading to the surface to investigate why a primitive society has an antimatter reactor.
Hoshi and T'Pol see Akaali who seem to be suffering from some kind of malady, their faces pockmarked with lesions. Meanwhile, Archer and Tucker track down the emissions to an antiques shop. Breaking in, they find a forcefield protecting the door to the shop's basement - and are caught red-handed by a local apothecary named Riann. The Akaali says that she knows about the "nighttime deliveries" and blames the covert activities taking place in the shop for the sickness affecting her people. T'Pol arrives, stuns her and suggests that they leave, but Archer feels responsible for ensuring that Riann reaches home safely. When Riann wakes, Archer asks if he can come back to speak to her again about the sickness.
Reed informs Archer that Enterprise's sensors can't penetrate the shop's basement; some kind of dampening field is in operation. Archer and Tucker return to the shop the next morning to speak to its owner, Garos, whom they quickly discover is not Akaali at all. When confronted with the evidence of his DNA profile, Garos retorts that he realises Archer isn't Akaali either. He claims to be an explorer from the Malurian system who, after leading a survey mission to study the Akaali, was so taken with them that he decided to live as one of them. When Archer requests a look at his reactor - which Garos says is powering his replicator - the Malurian fobs the Starfleet crewmen off. Tucker notes that it must be a pretty big replicator - he's got enough power coming from his reactor to feed and clothe half the continent.
Archer and T'Pol go to meet Riann. While T'Pol gathers information on the local water supply in an attempt to discover where the illness is coming from, Archer remains with Riann to stake out Garos' shop. Archer's translator briefly malfunctions, forcing him to improvise - he kisses Riann while fixing his translator over her shoulder. One of Garos' employees wheels some crates to a clearing nearby, where Riann is awed to see a Malurian shuttle descend from the sky and tractor them into its cargo bay. A Malurian then begins to fire at the two, leading to a fistfight which Archer wins. In the course of the struggle, Archer tears away an Akaali mask that the alien is wearing - showing a reptilian face underneath. Riann sees it, and Archer confesses his origin and that of the Malurians to her.
On Enterprise, Phlox analyses the water sample and finds it to be contaminated with an industrial lubricant which could quite easily be causing the Akaali illness if it has affected the ground supply. Archer and Riann break into the basement of Garos' shop using his henchman's tricorder and discover a massive mining operation. They are excavating veridium, used in the making of explosives - and their drill bits are laced with the same lubricant found in the water supply. Archer attempts to deactivate the dampening field surrounding the shop so that Enterprise can lock on to the reactor and steal it, but he hits the wrong control. Alerted, a Malurian ship approaches Enterprise from the far side of the planet and opens fire. Retaliation is futile; the Malurians have shields. T'Pol is told that Archer is dead, but she refuses to abandon him. On the surface, Archer manages to deactivate the dampening field. Enterprise locks on to the reactor and beams it into the Malurian ship's flight path, using a torpedo to detonate it and disrupt the enemy ship's shields. The Malurians' weapons are disabled as Archer manages to overcome the ones on the surface in a firefight, convincing the aliens to cease their mining operation.
Archer informs the Vulcans of the Malurians' activities and receives an assurance that the Akaali will be looked after. After delivering the cure for the illness to Riann, he returns to his ship - after a parting kiss.
Review
"Civilisation" is nastily familiar. Its premise, plot and alien guest cast are rehashes of many elements that we have seen all too often on Trek, particuarly in The Next Generation's "Thine Own Self" and in Star Trek: Insurrection; in fact, in comparison with that film, "Civilisation" may actually come off worse. Riann is clearly supposed to be an Anij-type character, a female native with a strong will and with more to her than meets the eye, but here she is almost totally underplayed. Phlox's comment that if she had been born on Vulcan she would have made an excellent physician is almost superfluous; she is portrayed with such a lack of emotional response that she may as well have pointed ears and be telling Archer that his kiss was "Illogical, Captain". On the plus side, there are elements to this episode in terms of continuity, effects and soundtrack which are inspired. Those points lift "Civilisation" above "Unexpected" for the title of most uninspired Enterprise episode, but it's a fairly close-run thing.
The fulcrum of this episode is (or should be) the fact that this is a Prime Directive issue - or rather, a pre-Prime Directive issue. T'Pol tells us that the Vulcans have a protocol stating that they do not make contact with alien worlds until they've developed warp drive, which is pretty much in line with Federation policy as seen in the other spin-offs. Archer's retort that Starfleet wants them to explore with their senses rather than a probe's also seems to be in line with the fact that human and Vulcan approaches are combined in "Who Watches the Watchers?" and Star Trek: Insurrection via the use of duct blinds. But the Prime Directive hasn't been framed yet and, in tune with the events of "Terra Nova", Archer feels the need to pile on in in this episode and, in an echo of the ethos of the original series, set about righting wrongs with little regard for the consequences. (It's worth noting here that rather than Archer emulating Kirk, in terms of the chronology, Kirk would be emulating Archer in TOS, which should be an unsettling thought for original series fans.)
Archer's behaviour is extravagant, to say the least. In "Terra Nova" he was all for dragging the Novans back to Earth for assimilation (come on, that's what it was) until T'Pol lectured him as to the folly of his choice; here, he disregards potential "cultural contamination" by engaging in a firefight in a crowded street, exposing a native to futuristic technology and intergalactic politics, and probably smashes a few Akaali-centric belief systems along the way. (Earth's churches maintained that Earth was the centre of the universe at around the same time that industrialisation was beginning, towards the end of the Middle Ages. Why should the Akaali belief system by any different?)
This dismissal of consequences has me worried. I realise that Archer is a gung-ho sort of captain, one who isn't going to sit on his hands. But not sitting around moralising is different from having no morals at all. When confronted with new worlds and new civilisations, it's fine to want to explore but it's imperative to avoid destroying those civilisations. This is a distinction which Archer and his crew, and in the wider frame Berman and his writing staff, have yet to draw. The risk here is obvious: Enterprise becomes a meddling ship, its crew resented for their interfering and targeted for their indifference for anything other than human interests. What Archer is doing is imposing human morals on the Alpha Quadrant, slowly but surely. Although in every episode so far the situation has turned out for the best (as evidenced here by Archer's closing throwaway log - could all those Akaali present at the firefight really not infer what's transpired, if Riann could? Wouldn't they ask where Garos has gone?), at some point it would really serve the series well if Archer completely ballsed up a first contact or unwise intervention. Maybe at that point, after an honest mistake with real consequences, Archer would begin to see the logic of Vulcan policies. That would square well with the founding of the Federation many years later. Humans are fallible. Let's see it.
Leaving Prime Directive issues aside, we return once again to the subject of our good friend, Commander Tucker. This week, furthering once again the impression that the writers are unsure of how to maintain the human-Vulcan tension as T'Pol integrates more successfully into the crew, he mutinies in the middle of a crucial space battle which could have the most fatal of consequences. Is he seriously considering stranding Enterprise at the Malurians' mercy by venting the warp plasma? In countermanding T'Pol's orders, he's out of line, out of position and just plain wrong - he misunderstands his superior's intentions and is disrupting the chain of command. He looks slightly embarrassed when T'Pol explains herself, but she shouldn't have to. It's a scene which rings false and reverses some of the progress made in "Breaking the Ice" in forging an understanding between the two characters. T'Pol, by contrast, has her first shot at command since "Broken Bow", and she doesn't disappoint. She radiates a steely resolve which suggests that she's seen combat before and is used to dealing with aggressive alien species. Her tactic to disable the Malurians was predictable as far as I was concerned, but the way in which she executed it - both in terms of her body language and in terms of her tone of voice when issuing orders ("Target their weapons array!") was brilliant.
Less marks go to Lieutenant Reed this week, who comes up with the absurd suggestion of flattening the shop with a "barrage of torpedoes"! Even by Archer's standards, that sort of intervention is blatantly an insane course of action to propose - and it denegrates Reed's character that he even makes the suggestion. As for the two ensigns, Mayweather is non-existent this week, whereas Sato has a good, although limited, role. Perhaps she should have stayed on the surface to collect the water samples rather than T'Pol; she was clearly enjoying herself listening to the Akaali dialects and a nice continuity was maintained from "Fight or Flight" as she continued to be wary of the away mission. Although the "big three" are getting all of the attention, there is potential in all three characters which shouldn't be allowed to go to waste � la Harry Kim. Enterprise as a series, and Berman and Braga, should have learned that lesson by now.
Character-wise, then, there aren't many complaints about this episode; the problems occur due to the fact that any dramatic tension would arise from Prime Directive issues. Unfortunately for the episode, there is no Prime Directive and, therefore, no such issues. This problem is highlighted in one throwaway line. Archer tells Riann that he talks to his dog. How does he know that Akaali have dogs, or indeed pets of any kind? It's minor, but these are the sorts of questions that the writers need to ask of themselves. |
