Jammersreviews

Note: This review contains significant spoilers.


In brief: A TOS story channeled reasonably through modern Trek 
sensibilities.

Plot description: Archer attempts to form an alliance in order to neutralize 
a threat from a common enemy, but instead finds himself in the middle of a 
fight to the death with Shran.

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Star Trek: Enterprise - "United"

Airdate: 2/4/2005 (USA)
Teleplay by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Story by Manny Coto
Directed by David Livingston

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

"Is this your homework, Larry?" -- Walter
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There should be a tally somewhere (and come to think of it, there might be) 
of just how many societies in the Star Trek mythos have employed a fight to 
the death as a matter of honor and/or custom.

But first things first. The Romulans are busy causing mayhem with their 
remote-controlled drone, as they themselves sit in a control room on 
Romulus. Occasionally, an unhappy senator checks in on them, flanked by two 
Remans, in a nod to the movie that was the nail in the coffin of the TNG 
film franchise (snark). They destroy a Rigellian ship while masquerading as 
the Enterprise. They apparently want to do more than drive a wedge between 
the Andorians and the Tellarites. It's an attempt to "destabilize the entire 
region," says Archer -- a line that seems rooted more in news headlines than 
in Star Trek.

The Romulans are loath to man these ships, because they want to cause this 
mayhem without the possibility of it being traced back to them. The Romulans 
seem to believe -- for reasons beyond my comprehension -- that the drone can 
absolutely not be traced back to them. Obviously they have severely 
underestimated the fact that their technology is recognizable -- enough for 
T'Pol to have easily put the pieces together in last week's "Babel One."

Because of this common threat to the region, Archer's mission is to hunt 
down and stop the drone, with a search radius that will require a small 
fleet. He thus attempts to forge an alliance between all the involved 
parties -- the Andorians, Tellarites, Vulcans, and Rigellians -- with the 
Enterprise coordinating the search as the command ship since it seems the 
humans are the most neutral of everyone involved. This is a bit simplistic, 
I will admit, but it serves its purpose as a hint of the kind of obstacles 
and eventual cooperative efforts that will pave the way to the founding of 
the Federation. (Manny Coto said his idea of a fifth season, had the show 
not been canceled, would've had focus on the formation of the Federation as 
a United Nations-like case study. That could've been interesting.)

But of course it's not going to be that easy. Talas ends up dying from the 
phaser wound she suffered at the end of the previous episode. This results 
in a bereaved Shran demanding the Tellarite who killed her answer for his 
crime in a traditional Andorian Ushaan -- a fight to the death using 
traditional (and wicked-looking) Andorian ice-cutting blades. The scene 
where Shran demands the Ushaan is a nice showpiece for Jeffrey Combs, who 
walks into the room and starts off quiet before unleashing the yelling and 
histrionics. Combs does a good job here of overacting without it coming 
across as bad acting.

The fight to the death storyline has "original series" written all over 
it -- especially once it becomes clear that Archer is going to stand in for 
the Tellarite under the death match's right of substitution rule. Now we 
have a match between two people who are essentially friends -- reminiscent 
of "Amok Time" -- although this whole Andorian notion seems awfully 
Klingon-like in terms of honor, respect, etc.

What I like best about this idea is the way Archer is boxed in by the pure 
logic of the situation. If the match is prohibited, the Andorians will pull 
out of the alliance. The Tellarites refuse to participate, and even if they 
hadn't, any outcome would likely end in the withdrawal of one party. So 
Archer volunteers to fight, since he knows Starfleet will go forward with 
the alliance effort even if Archer dies. Noble, logical, and brilliantly 
foolish.

What I thought was painfully lame, however, was the script's way of getting 
out of this with both Archer and Shran still alive. The fight scene itself 
is adequately staged as action/fun, but the loophole that allows Archer to 
defeat Shran without killing him completely lacks imagination. We learn 
after the commercial break that the rules say the match ends "when one 
fighter is rendered defenseless." That's so disingenuous on the script's 
part that it's not even a loophole. How can the fight be a death match if 
the rules themselves don't specify that the fight only ends when one fighter 
is, well, *dead*?

With the fight settled, the alliance can proceed, marking the first time 
these species have worked together in a common effort. It's not the founding 
of the Federation, but it's a start.

Meanwhile, Trip and Reed are trapped aboard the Romulan drone and attempt to 
override the controls. When that doesn't work, Reed goes for a lower-tech 
solution: sabotage by overloading his phase-pistol. Apparently, the overload 
feature is actually in the phase-pistol manual, hopefully in a chapter 
called Blowed Up Real Good. The Romulans struggle to regain control of the 
damaged drone, and in one scene, they lock Trip in a room and expose him to 
deadly levels of radiation. I'm not sure if radiation exposure works like 
this; my thinking is that if you're doubling over in pain because of 
radiation poisoning, the damage to your body is already done. Removing you 
from the room isn't going to reverse the damage like giving a suffocating 
man oxygen. Call it the plot-device version of radiation poisoning.

The drone itself is agile and erratic, making the dogfights a little more 
interesting as it darts here and there and tries to make people dizzy. At 
one point, Trip and Reed go to an airlock and are ejected into space and 
somehow thrown clear of the drone. I suspect this works much like when 
someone is "thrown clear" during an auto accident -- ejected from the 
vehicle and yet somehow, miraculously still okay. The drone then escapes 
back to Romulan space.

"United" somewhat challenges conventional structure if this is to be 
considered part two of a trilogy, because the central storyline involving 
the formation of the alliance is wrapped up here. Indeed, the episode ends 
on yet another twist, as it's revealed that the pilot hooked into the drone 
is not Romulan but what resembles an albino Andorian. It's a bizarre 
revelation that does not follow from anything we would've expected from 
watching the story unfold. Think of the last five seconds of "Zero Hour," 
but in a way that's intriguing instead of merely distracting.

--
Next week: Who are the white Andorians?

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Copyright 2005, Jamahl Epsicokhan. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this article is prohibited.

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