Jammersreviews

Note: This review contains significant spoilers.


In brief: Plenty of illogical turns of the plot, but a pretty entertaining 
hour nonetheless.

Plot description: While Archer and T'Pol are taken prisoner by the 
Syrrannites, the crew of the Enterprise seeks answers to why the Vulcan High 
Command has blamed the Syrrannites for the embassy bombing.

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Star Trek: Enterprise - "Awakening"

Airdate: 11/26/2004 (USA)
Written by Andre Bormanis
Directed by Roxann Dawson

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
Rating out of 4: ***

"You have a lot to learn about humans. We don't sit back and do nothing 
while our people are attacked."
"No, you traverse vast wastelands based on false information."
   -- Archer and T'Pau
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There's less to discover in "Awakening" than in "The Forge," but then how 
couldn't there be? "The Forge" gave us a truckload of pieces, and now 
"Awakening" puts them into play. The results are entertaining, although not 
great, and certainly not logical.

For having performed a prohibited mind-meld to uncover the truth of Stel's 
involvement in the Earth embassy bombing, Soval is promptly cashiered from 
the High Command by Administrator V'Las. As for Soval's allegation of Stel's 
involvement in the bombing -- which was a frame-up falsely implicating the 
Syrrannites -- V'Las has a convenient answer: Stel was also a Syrrannite; 
"numerous documents" were found in his home. The only remaining question: 
Did Stel agree to the role of fall guy? I suppose it hardly matters, because 
no one is hearing any of this evidence anyway. V'Las practically runs the 
High Command unilaterally, and he won't have it.

Meanwhile, Archer and T'Pol are captured and held prisoner by the 
Syrrannites at their camp in the Forge. This gives them the opportunity to 
finally meet T'Pau (Kara Zediker), whom Archer quickly accuses of having 
bombed the embassy and murdered his friend. It's an emotionally charged 
reaction -- perhaps foolishly so -- to which T'Pau tells him,  "You traverse 
vast wastelands based on false information." Funny -- that's something I 
might've expected to hear at the beginning of last season's arc into the 
Delphic Expanse (only I suppose that information didn't turn out to be false 
after all).

It turns out that Arev was actually Syrran, the Syrrannite leader, traveling 
under an assumed name. And, yes, Syrran was in fact carrying the Katra of 
Surak, the father of Vulcan logic. T'Pau laments that the death of Syrran 
and the loss of the Katra represents the loss of everything the Syrrannites 
have worked for. Of course, as a person who must bring too much logic to 
this situation, I have to ask why Syrran, knowing he carried the crucial 
Katra, would be out in the Forge at the height of the deadly Sandfire 
season. Wouldn't it have been more logical for him to be tucked away in a 
bunker somewhere?

Never mind, because then we wouldn't have a story. As we know, the Katra has 
actually been passed to Archer, who now begins having visions of Surak 
(Bruce Gray), 1,800 years in the past, when a war devastated Vulcan but 
paved the way to the Awakening, where logic would prevail and society would 
move forward into a new era. "My people have strayed," Surak says to Archer. 
Surak asks that Archer do what he can to help the Vulcans back onto the 
right path. Archer doesn't really want the job, but Surak is adamant: "We're 
stuck with each other. Don't fight what's been given to you." Later, Surak 
tells Archer that he must find the Kir'Shara, which is an ancient artifact 
that holds the original teachings of Surak and may be able to bring Vulcan 
back to the proper path (or is that Path?).

To recap: Now that the Prophets have given the Emissary his mission to help 
a Bajor that's in danger from its own government-induced turmoil, the 
Emissary must reluctantly embark on this mission by finding and using the 
Orb and its vast wisdom. (Okay, it's not a synopsis for "Emissary" exactly, 
but it plays like a distillation of several Bajoran episodes. I for one 
would be interested to know how many people involved with this storyline 
were -- or weren't -- familiar with DS9's Bajor stories.)

I digress. Interestingly, like with mind-melds, the notion of the Katra is 
not embraced by much of Vulcan society. The High Command dismisses it as 
myth, and so does T'Pol. But Archer is quick to point out how the Vulcan 
Science Directorate deemed time-travel impossible. Besides, he can't argue 
with what's in his head, which is giving him visions, insights, and 
knowledge about Vulcan facts he would otherwise not know.

Among the Syrrannites is T'Pol's mother, T'Les (Joanna Cassidy), who 
explains to a not-exactly-understanding T'Pol that she has joined the 
Syrrannites because she understands their motives and intentions to return 
to the true teachings of Surak. T'Les has become disillusioned about Vulcan 
society, mostly because of the increasingly questionable actions of the High 
Command, which has been involved in suppressing dissent among the people and 
made the unseemly decision to put a listening post inside the P'Jem 
sanctuary. T'Les hoped that T'Pol might join their cause.

T'Pol makes an interesting point when she accuses the Syrrannites of simply 
seeking to replace one aberration of Vulcan thinking with another. The 
argument is relevant in that it highlights the tendency of some sects or 
extremists to blindly believe they are right, and that everyone else is 
wrong. (Of course, in Trek fiction it's a little different, because the 
writers can say there is a provable truth, and invent the evidence for it in 
terms of Katras or Kir'Sharas.)

Besides, in this story, the Syrrannites are the innocents targeted for 
destruction. V'Las wants nothing less than a complete carpet bombing of the 
vicinity of the Syrrannite sanctuary. But before V'Las can do that, he must 
remove the Enterprise from orbit as witnesses. This leads to a series of 
terse viewscreen showdowns between Tucker and V'Las, as V'Las orders the 
Enterprise out of orbit and eventually threatens to open fire, and 
ultimately carries out that threat.

Notable is how V'Las (Robert Foxworth) is performed pretty much like a 
human, with a human range of outward emotions. I'm not sure what to make of 
this. Perhaps it's to make the scenes more dynamic and theatrically engaging 
(which they are, and I for one won't complain if the alternative is the kind 
of Vulcan monotone that made "Carbon Creek" so unwatchable). But at the same 
time, I can't help but wonder what the rest of the High Command officers 
think of it. Do they notice? They don't seem to care. And I found it a 
little hard to explain how V'Las goes so unchallenged in trying to eliminate 
an entire group of people with little more than one officer's weak protest 
that "You are presiding over a massacre." Where V'Las goes, the High Command 
apparently follows. I guess the Vulcans *have* strayed.

Once the Enterprise is forced from orbit, V'Las' forces begin bombing the 
vicinity of the sanctuary, and the Syrrannites begin their evacuation. 
Before leaving, however, Archer is certain that his memories as interpreted 
from Surak's Katra will lead him through the caves to the location of the 
Kir'Shara. "I can find it," he says. The way he says it, we believe him, but 
the whole notion strains credulity: You're telling me that Archer can find 
the Kir'Shara in a few minutes, and yet the Syrrannites in scouring these 
caves for two years couldn't find it? Nor did it turn up in the last 1,800 
years of Vulcan history? Even though it sits in a chamber behind a door that 
practically announces, "IMPORTANT RELIC INSIDE"? This was one plot detail I 
found hard to believe. (Perhaps other Vulcans were simply afraid of taking 
the Kir'Shara. I would be, for fear that if I were running through caves 
with a pointed obelisk while the area was being shaken by explosions, I 
might trip, fall, and impale myself.)

Archer, T'Pol, and T'Pau escape with the Kir'Shara, and find T'Les lying 
outside the tunnels, seriously injured. She dies right there in T'Pol's arms 
after some heartfelt dialog, which makes for a sincere, nicely acted scene, 
despite the fact that it's admittedly contrived and manipulative.

I was both interested and amused by the last-minute revelations that shed so 
much more light on what's going on. Soval tells Trip that the Syrrannites 
are pacifists, and that the framing of them for the embassy bombing must be 
so that V'Las could use that as an excuse to neutralize (i.e. destroy) them, 
so that he could advance the High Command's plan to attack Andoria. Why is 
the High Command planning to attack Andoria? Because they believe the 
Andorians have developed weapons based on Xindi technology ("Proving 
Ground") and want to launch a preemptive strike before the Andorians do.

Okay, but:

(1) Bombing Earth's embassy for a frame-up seems like an awfully elaborate 
and roundabout way of creating an excuse to wipe out a small faction of your 
own people -- who, by the way, pose no actual threat to those making the 
unilateral decisions to attack Andoria. (Wouldn't that be roughly as 
necessary as the Bush Administration destroying an antiwar lobby group prior 
to the Iraq invasion?)

(2) If Soval knew all this, why didn't he say something to Trip hours or 
days ago, when this information would've been equally or more useful? Why 
does Soval wait until a moment that provides the maximum dramatic effect as 
a revelation to the audience? The answer, no doubt, is because that's when 
it provides the maximum dramatic effect as a revelation to the audience.

Only now, after picking apart all the pieces, do the flaws in this episode 
seem so obvious. It must be said that, despite the logical gaffes, I enjoyed 
this episode, and found that it worked on an emotional and entertainment 
level. I liked all the twists and turns, including the eventual reveal about 
the Andorians. That V'Las' plan has so many holes in its logic is almost 
beside the point. Oh, well -- forget about logic. How ironic to say that, in 
a review for an episode about Vulcans and their logic.

--
Next week: Can the Enterprise stop a conflict from breaking out between the 
Vulcans and Andorians?

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Copyright 2004 Jamahl Epsicokhan. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this article is prohibited.

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