Date: Unknown
Investigating a seventy-year-old mystery, Reed is taken captive by a subterranean society, while Archer attempts to win the aliens' trust - necessary if he is to save them from extinction.
Summary
For the first time in seventy years, Earth will finally be able to get some hard facts as to the fate of "the Great Experiment" - Terra Nova, the first human colonisation attempt to take place outside man's solar system, until now nine years' travel from Earth. After the creation of the colony, relations between Terra Nova and Earth became strained, with the first colonists opposed to a second wave. Angry words were exchanged and then, one day, the transmissions just stopped. Nothing has been heard since, the trip to the planet being too long to be worth expending the effort.
Enterprise swings into orbit and opens hailing frequencies, but there is no response to Archer's hail. Sensors show no biosigns and low levels of surface radiation which seventy years ago would have been lethal, and the colony remains standing, perfectly intact. A team heads for the surface, where Reed spots a humanoid figure in the woords. It takes off apace, and he gives chase until led to an entrance to a network of subterranean tunnels. He and Archer plunge onwards into the caverns, where they are warily watched by several humanoids - until one of them opens fire. Retreating, Reed is shot in the leg and taken prisoner. Archer almost goes the same way, but escapes, while T'Pol and Mayweather stun another humanoid. A quick scan reveals that, far from being aliens, these people are human - the descendents of the Terra Nova colonists. Continued fire forces the remainder of the landing party to run for the shuttlepod and return to the Enterprise.
Furious that he has lost a man on the surface, Archer returns planetside with Phlox to bargain for Malcolm's release. The two are taken to Reed, whose leg is broken. The "Novans" react with great hostility to Archer, claiming that humans were responsible for an attack on the people of the planet and that they created a "poison rain" which "gutted" their "go-befores". Phlox notes that one of the Novan women, Nadete, is suffering from lung cancer and that he could cure it fairly easily. Nadete and her son agree to go to Enterprise for the treatment, but only if Reed remains as a hostage. Aboard ship, T'Pol's analysis of the planet suggests that an asteroid hit seventy years ago, causing a toxic cloud to cover the continent on which the colonists built their homes for more than a year, causing the "poison rain" to fall. Meanwhile, Hoshi and Travis find a transmission lodged in the colony's communications array which, because of the interference, never made its way to Earth. In it, the colony leader blames humans for the assault on Terra Nova, saying that a second wave of colonists were unwelcome but that negotiation was possible. The Novans' earliest memories are of their forefathers blaming humans for the destruction of their way of life, and the idea that humans are the enemy has been ingrained in them for more than two generations.
Phlox manages to cure Nadete's lung cancer, but he finds a cellular degradation which has arisen from contaminated water supplies. A new home is available on the unaffected southern continent, but Nadete's son will not be swayed. He maintains that Archer continues to deceive them so that he can claim the tunnels for himself. Trying not to be dissuaded, Archer presents a photograph of some of the original colonists, which includes a women named Vera Fuller and her daughter Bernadette, who would be 75 at this time. Nadete seems to be coming around, but old habits die hard and her son is able to convince her that it would be best to return to the surface. Upon landing in the shuttlepod, some of the tunnels beneath the landing site give way and the pod crashes down underground. The collapse traps a young Novan under a large tree, but Archer is able to free him. That is enough for Nadete: she convinces everyone to listen to Archer's advice, and the crew relocates the Novans to the southern hemisphere, safely away from the toxic water - saving their lives and preserving the Novan culture.
Review
"Terra Nova" trades on plot ideas which are, once again, just too familiar for the seasoned Trek fan's liking. Elements of, above all, Voyager's "Friendship One" - an episode made just a year previously! - pervade the episode, from the idea of humans being blamed for a colony's predicament to a malevolent and distrusting alien leader to the notion of an individual in the colony who will eventually come around to the humans' way of thinking after medical treatment. It would be insulting if it wasn't so obvious; as it is, we're just left wondering if the writers have simply run out of fresh ideas, especially after "Unexpected" dabbled with Klingons and holography last week.
Terra Nova (the colony) is the 2151 equivalent of the Flying Dutchman - a voyage wherein the crew have ended up as ghosts, who became fabled. To boomers (human cargo ship crews), the colony has assumed a mythical status; the great unsolved mystery of the times. Mayweather's interest in the colony is supposed to help convey this idea and the sense of discovery, but when he's relegated to the sidelines again to make room for Archer, confirming his status as a "second tier" cast member, there's no chance of our sharing his enthusiasm. Why not have Mayweather as the one who frees the trapped Novan? Then there'd be something interesting for him to write in his report for the news back home, instead of merely saying, "Well, I stood by and guarded the shuttlepod". Poor lamb, not getting a very good press in this series, is he? The fate of the nameless ensign. Or, Harry Kim Syndrome. Mr Mayweather appears to be showing the early signs of being a terminal case.
These quibbles aside, "Terra Nova" isn't actually all that bad. There are some very effective visual moments: Reed spinning the abandoned bicycle's wheel is a clich�d shot, but it's well framed from below against the glaring sky, and the kicking of the "Welcome" mat is also a potent image. Fittingly, there isn't much dialogue in the opening scenes, conveying the tension and the unspoken ominous atmosphere all the crew must feel.
Sticking with the design point of view, the tunnels are fairly typical Trek, and the scenes in them could have been shot a little tighter - the sequences there are often at odds with the score - but the Novans themselves are well-realised and thought through, in terms of appearance and lifestyle. Although I'm not clear why they would have started to paint themselves. Were all the colonists Native Americans? Is it possible to revert this much in seventy years? I guess it must be, but it took a fair bit of suspension of disbelief for me to get there. What didn't require much getting used to was their language, which was excellent. Different without seeming forced, it reminded me of that used in Voyager's "Nemesis", and was just as useful a tool for establishing that these people are "other" than the Enterprise crew, even if their appearance implied otherwise.
This is, effectively, Enterprise's first Prime Directive episode (aside from some lines in the pilot), emphasised by T'Pol and Archer's discussions on "polluting" and "destroying" indiginous cultures. It's pretty clear that the Vulcans are going to be responsible for the framing of the Prime Directive, because it seems to be identical to their procedures for observing newfound species. Their way may be viewed by the Enterprise crew as too rigid, but it would have saved them a lot of trouble in both this episode and "Strange New World" (after a fashion). Archer's need - not want - to help the Novans is palpable, particularly in his line where he asks if he can't even make first contact with humans, why is he out in space? I actually liked Archer in this episode, and felt that he had grown a little by the end of it. Whether that's reflected in upcoming episodes will be interesting to see. The best scene was that involving Nadete and the photograph, where the captain's desperation to convince her of his honesty peaked.
That scene was also notable in that it marked the best use of musical score in Trek for years. A rolling piano sequence of chords reached a crescendo and then broke in a heartrending change, underscoring Nadete's feeling of having her worldview completely reversed, as she realised that what she thought she knew was a falsehood (or "shale", to follow the episode). That was one of two instances of musical noteworthiness. The other was the panpipe-like chorus in the underground tunnels, where Reed was lucky enough to hear an orchestra of sorts perform an earthy lament, reverberating around the caverns in eerie splendour. What a job it must be to compose for this series, and what a great one is being done.
The ending to the episode is entirely predictable, but I suppose there was no other way for it to go; the Novans couldn't all die, and T'Pol wouldn't let Archer transport them all back to Earth. The only option once this story began was for everything to turn out all right, and that's exactly what happened - with numbing inevitability. It's in the details that this episode prospers: in Archer explaining that Utopia Planitia on Mars and New Berlin on the Moon (mentioned in First Contact) have already been built; that Reed's devotion to duty is very British; that "the Space Agency" is referred to, which nitpickers will pounce on as a reference to the United Earth Space Probe Agency (UESPA) of the original series. It's here that the episode is at its most effective. When coupled with the design of the Novans and their home, it's difficult to moan wholesale about the fact that the episode could have been written by any Trek fan worth his salt, rather than by producers who really, by now, should know better. |
