Date: 6 weeks after "Broken Bow"
Exploring an Earth-like planet with typical impulsive enthusiasm, an Enterprise away team is affected by indiginous pollen which causes them to hallucinate and become paranoid. Even T'Pol is affected as Commander Tucker becomes dangerously belligerent.
Summary
Enterprise slips into orbit around an M-class planet and, with boyish enthusiasm, the crew head for the surface, despite T'Pol's words of caution that a Vulcan ship would conduct extensive surveys from orbit first. Archer leads a landing party (including his dog, Porthos) in exploring this not-so-strange new world, with the crew cataloguing the indiginous life and literally smelling the roses (or whatever the plants are). Upon completion of the mission, T'Pol suggests that she and Crewmen Cutler and Novokavich remain overnight to study the nightlife. Tucker and Mayweather also request permission to camp out under the stars, and Archer, agreeing, heads back to Enterprise, Porthos in tow.
The night is initially dominated by Mayweather's ghost stories, until a weather front moves in, brining with it winds in excess of 80kph. The tents are no match for the storm, and Tucker suggests relocating to a cave T'Pol discovered earlier. They realise that they've left their food packs behind, so Mayweather heads back to find them - and catches a glimpse of three humanoids stalking around in the storm. Returning to the cave, he tells the others, and although T'Pol can detect no life signs with her scanner, Novokavich claims that he can hear voices from the back of the cave. Panicked, he flees. Tucker and Mayweather go after him, but not only can they not find him, they come across creatures looming out of rocks. In the cave, T'Pol heads into the dark, intending to locate anyone who is lurking around. Cutler follows her, and spies the Vulcan talking to two humanoids. When Tucker and Mayweather return, she accuses T'Pol of lying to them about what is happening. Tucker notes that the subcommander doesn't exactly have a spotless record when it comes to holding back information.
Archer is disturbed by the notion that aliens are stalking his people, so he attempts to land a shuttlepod to bring his crew home. Unfortunately, the wind shear is so great that he cannot put down. "Try and hold out," he tells the landing party. Returning to the cave, despondent, Tucker snaps that it's about time T'Pol told them all what was happening. T'Pol denies all knowledge. Mayweather notes that they're running out of water, and when T'Pol volunteers to go find some, Tucker pulls his phase pistol on her and orders her to sit down. Becoming increasingly agitated, he rants that a conspiracy is in operation: the Vulcans, in league with the rock aliens, have set up an attack on the Enterprise crew in an attempt to kill the humans and convince Starfleet to remain in its own solar system.
Aboard the Enterprise, Reed attempts to use the transporter to retrieve Novokavich, but during transport leaves and wood are fused into him when the computer is unable to tell the difference. Examining him, Phlox finds an hallucinogen in the crewman's bloodstream. The crew are imagining the "rock people". Phlox's initial diagnosis is that Novokavich will be fine, but he later discovers that while breaking down in his system the hallucinogen has released a deadly toxin. He is able to cure the crewman, but Phlox notes that the landing party must be inoculated or risk death. Tucker is still irrational, and threatens to split T'Pol in two. His delirium means that Archer cannot order him to inoculate himself; rather, he concosts an elaborate story in which the Enterprise was sent to make first contact with a silicon-based life-form, with T'Pol the only one authorised to speak to them. He convinces Trip to lower his guard long enough for T'Pol to stun him, retrieve some transported medicine and inoculate the team. As dawn breaks, the storm has passed, and a shuttlepod lands to take the crew back to the Enterprise.
Review
A good, solid episode which addresses exactly some of the issues which I'd expect Enterprise to address - that's the upshot of "Strange New World", which balances some fine character observations with an (un)healthy dose of paranoia.
As with "Broken Bow", we realise that T'Pol's seemingly party-pooper advice is sound, and that, hey, maybe we should be listening to the Vulcans after all, as they've had space travel for two thousand years and we really should be paying attention. But no, we are human and young and enthusiastic in a Boy Scout-type way, so we plunge on down to a planet which looks like Earth, talks like Earth but most definitely is not Earth. In fact, it's home to a Triffid-like pollen which enjoys interacting with our brain chemistry to turn us loopy.
The storm which descends upon the Enterprise crewmen could have been executed very poorly, but for the most part it convinces, not least due to the efforts of Henri Lubatti as Crewman Novokavich. He screams, yells, gibbers and tells Captain Archer to go to hell, and then is put through the worst transporter accident since Reg Barclay was bitten on the arm by a slug-thing in "Realm of Fear". His experience is also the basis for Phlox's first big mistake of the series, as his misdiagnosis (or perhaps overconfidence) results in a near-casualty. Seeing Phlox as something other than a freak with an impossibly chirpy demeanour (perhaps the impression given by "Fight or Flight") is important, and the fact that it has happened so early in the series means that when people are placed under his care, there is always the real chance that they won't pull through, instead of just the usual Trek will-they-won't-they false tension.
The character elements are the engine which drives this show, as it moves from a dilemma for the viewer to outright paranoia. The dilemma is this: we're on the fourth episode here, and our loyalties are unquestionably with our human friends. The pilot went to great lengths to disabuse us of the motion that Vulcans are going to be uninhibited in the help they give to Earth, thus setting up the idea that here we are presented with a division in the crew which tears at us. Trek fans have a special attachment to Vulcans, and to find the human crew at odds with the Vulcan crewmember is a pickle: who do we root for? The episode spares us the choice when it moves into the threat to T'Pol's life and the obvious fact that the crew are not themselves; then it becomes an issue of whether or not she will survive (which, of course, she will). But getting there is fun.
This is T'Pol's episode in many ways. She begins to lose control of her emotions as the pollen affects her, and the look on her face as she struggles for mastery is exactly what one would expect - effort tinged with panic. Noticeably, when the episode ends, she inoculates everyone else first, before injecting herself - a nice, subtle piece of characterisation. Oh, and and she uses a nerve pinch on Mayweather, which is worth mentioning.
If there are faults here, they lie in two places: as the shuttlepod descends to the planet for the first time, the cabin floods with light and Tucker mutters, "Wow." But we don't see what he's "wowing" at (the budget obviously doesn't stretch that far). But the episode does spend three or four scenes showing us the crew exploring the new environment, and sets up Novokavich's illness when he takes a deep whiff of a plant's scent, inhaling the pollen. The other fault? The crew's baseball caps. Yuck.
The fireside scene which personalises Mayweather; the eerie, haunting incidental music populated with wobbly strings; the sly reference to Y-500-class ships which recalls the original series' DY-100 (from "Space Seed") - this is a competent 45 minutes which helps us to really begin to see these characters. Sure, I could predict the ending - who couldn't? - but with Trek these days, it's the journey that counts, and this one is more interesting than many others. |
