monkee reviews 'The Communicator'
First Impressions: A good episode that gives us, and Archer, plenty to think about. Well done.
The Road to Hell…is paved with good intentions. Archer, Reed and Sato do some exploring on a pre-warp planet, but Reed accidentally loses his communicator. He and Archer return to the surface to retrieve it so that they won't contaminate the planet's culture, but end up getting captured and exposed. By the end of the episode, even though they manage to escape and recover all of their technology, the amount of damage they've done is mind-boggling!
In Retrospect: We can see that it would have been far better for them to simply leave the communicator behind. It would probably have ended up being a minor mystery to the people who found it. But from where Archer and T'Pol stood in the beginning, they couldn't see that. The punch line to TOS's 'A Piece of the Action,' was that McCoy had left his communicator behind on the Sigma Iotia II. Kirk and Spock joked about the serious ramifications of such a thing, and because it was a humorous episode, we accepted that, but we knew that the ramifications really WOULD be serious. Archer and T'Pol see it, too. The people on the planet can take the communicator apart, and start figuring things out – things they shouldn't know about yet. There's no telling what might happen.
Whatever might have happened, however, couldn't have been worse than what eventually does happen. Archer and Reed get captured by paranoid military types, who think they are spies for the Alliance, another faction on the planet. While they're roughing them up for information, Archer's fake alien forehead peels off. This leads to a medical examination that reveals that the two captives are another species. Desperate to avoid THAT contamination, Archer and Reed convince their captors that they really are spies for the enemy who have received 'genetic enhancements.' Just before they are executed, T'Pol, Trip and Mayweather show up in a cloaked Suliban cell ship. After a huge firefight, they retrieve Archer, Reed, their technology, and any evidence they can find of their existence, including the x-rays of their alien bodies.
We can, and should, question every decision made along the way. Should Archer and Reed have made up the spy story? Probably not. Should they have simply told the truth? Maybe. Should T'Pol have authorized sending down the cloaked ship? Who knows? The Enterprise crew has to respond to the events by the seats of their pants, and before long everything has spiraled way out of control. What's fascinating is that any alternate decisions they could have made along the way would have been imperfect solutions, too.
Repercussions, please. Wow! If ever an episode cried out for a follow-up! The amount of cultural contamination here is staggering. Even without the hard evidence (and we have no reason to believe there aren't other photographs and x-rays elsewhere), there were dozens of witnesses! It's likely that these people now believe that their enemy is far more powerful than they ever could have imagined. Will they back off? Will they plan a preemptive strike? Or will they study other copies of the x-rays and decide that these were aliens after all, and what will they make of THAT? No matter what happens, we can be sure the natural progression of events on their planet has been irrevocably altered. After 'The Andorian Incident' aired last fall, I hoped fervently for a follow-up, and actually got one! 'Andorian Incident' and 'Shadows of P'Jem' were two highlights of the first season for me. So I'm hopeful that we haven't seen the last of this story, either.
Developing Directives: Enterprise's greatest potential lies in how they can show us the evolution of the Trek universe that we'll come to know in the 'later' series. Here's an opportunity for them to do that. They need to establish some standard procedures for exploring pre-warp planets. In last season's 'Civilization,' we saw that the ship's scanners are capable of showing great detail right from orbit. Maybe they should limit themselves to that, in most cases, unless there's a compelling reason not to. Starfleet is going to need to train specialists for this sort of thing, eventually. By Kirk's time ('A Private Little War') and Picard's ('Who Watches the Watchers'), they will have done that. Things will still go wrong, but maybe not quite so many things!
Gosis: Francis Guinan played Gosis, the alien military general, and his acting made the episode for me. He did an outstanding job portraying a man whose whole worldview is being turned upside-down. I was especially impressed with the look on his face as the Enterprise personnel escape in the cloaked ship. You could almost see the chills going up and down his spine. Outstanding.
Archer and Reed: Dominic Keating's performance was another highlight of the episode for me. Bakula was fine, too, but Keating was the one who made us truly feel what they were going through, as they awaited execution. Reed's emotions run the gamut from despair to stalwart courage, touching on persuasive argumentation and denial along the way. He had some real 'Tale of Two Cities' moments, here. "It is a far, far better thing that I do…" and all that. I absolutely loved the scene in the cell, with the sunlight coming through the bars, and Reed sitting in the shadow. It was unusually dramatic cinematography for Trek, and I was impressed.
Prosthetic Foreheads: Something about this just cracked me up. Trek is always criticized for the forehead-of-the-week aliens, and in this episode, it actually became a plot point. Hee.
Meanwhile, back on the ship…The B story was more appropriate and effective than usual. T'Pol and the remaining senior staff realize that something's gone terribly awry on the surface, and they must think creatively to retrieve their people. There were a few silly moments, as Trip gets dosed with cloaking radiation and loses his arm, sort of. Temporarily. But otherwise, it was a good look at T'Pol in command, and everyone got a decent moment or two. Even Mayweather! Go figure!
A Few Flaws: Something was off with the pacing of this episode. Parts of it dragged for me, and, given the plot, that shouldn't have happened. It really isn't necessary to show us every little thing. Archer and Reed sit in the booth. They look for the communicator. They can't find it. They scan for it. They realize it's in a room off the corridor. They stand up. They enter the corridor. They can't go in because there are people there. The viewers grow restless. I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes, you should tell, not show. I also had a problem with the final scene. Given the enormous consequences of the away mission, the final shot of the episode should have been the one with a troubled Archer looking out the viewport at the warp stars. Instead, it was the silly 'Trip has a hole in his hand – haha' scene. Bad call.
Archer Watch: He made one terrible mistake after another, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for the character. He's the first starship captain – he should be making mistakes. The real question is – what will the repercussions of his actions be? Will he learn anything from this? That's what we need to see, and that's why I hope we'll get a bookend to this episode. There were things I liked about him, here. I appreciated his anguish over sacrificing another crewmember other than himself, and appreciated his efforts to save Reed's life.
And he gets smacked around real good. Bakula excels at this – I suppose that's why he keeps getting these scenes!
'shipper Watch: Archer/Reed fans will have a field day with this one, if only for the cell scenes and the fact that Archer was more concerned about Reed than he was about himself. There were also some nice Archer/T'Pol moments. She really went beyond the call of duty in her rescue efforts, although I suppose you could also argue that she was just trying to avoid having to retrieve their body parts from all over the complex...<g>
Best Lines:
"How about thirty years in the brig? Or a good flogging? It was an accident, Malcolm. It could have happened to anyone." (Archer, to Reed)
"Oh, I suppose you're the captain of a pleasure boat." (Paranoid military type, to Archer)
"This would be a lot easier if there was a button marked 'cloak.'" (Mayweather, to Trip)
"I suspect your appendage will eventually re-materialize on its own." "Eventually?" (Phlox and Trip)
"Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads." (Just a little bit of wisdom from 'They Might Be Giants')
"It's ironic – giving our lives to protect people who want to kill us." (Reed, to Archer)
"I'm not afraid, sir." (Reed, to Archer)
"I've gotten plenty of lectures on cultural contamination, but T'Pol never mentioned anything about sacrificing crewmen to prevent it." (Archer, to Reed)
"You don't have to leave technology behind to contaminate a culture." (T'Pol, to Archer)
"You were willing to sacrifice your life to protect them. I would not have expected that." (T'Pol, to Archer)
Rating: 9/10. Good episode, and one I'll remember.
Next Week: Looks interesting, and check it out – T'Pol is holding Archer's hand!
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