Enterprise 0111 – Cold Front

Originally posted to ScoopMe! on November 28, 2001

LEAD-IN

Cold Front : SITTING ON THE FENCE

When you’re the new kid on the block, it’s hard to know the good guys from the bad.

SYNOPSIS

In the temporal lab last seen in “Broken Bow”, the Suliban soldier Silik is being punished for his failure to destroy the Klingon Empire.

On the Enterprise, Sato and Mayweather (and later Lt. Reed) moan about the awful movie choice the previous night. Archer is served breakfast by a chatty steward named Daniels. Archer tells him that they are going to a stellar nursery where other ships have been spotted.

The Enterprise crosses paths with a transport whose gruff Captain, Fraddock, says he’s transporting spiritual pilgrims to see the once-in-eleven-year proto-star neutron burst they call “The Great Plume of Agosoria”. Archer takes the opportunity to offer the hospitality of the Enterprise. The celebrants arrive bearing gifts, and are overall quite accommodating (like Dr. Phlox, but mellower). While in the Mess, which is serving as an observation and meeting room, the crew and the guests exchange views about religions.

In Engineering, Trip is unwittingly patronizing as he vastly over-simplifies his discussion of the warp engine. The guests, once again are nice about it, although one of the visitors opens up the warp manifold and tampers with it. A plasma storm hits, starting an antimatter cascade in engineering that threatens to vaporize the ship — but then fizzles out. It turns out that had the previous tampering not occurred, the cascade would not have stopped. Some unknown hero is responsible for saving Enterprise.

Daniels finds Archer and tells the Captain about Suliban possibly being on the ship, as well as some details Daniels shouldn’t know. Intrigued, Archer goes to Daniels’ quarters where he’s told that Daniels is from nine-hundred years in the future and is trying to stop Silik and his benefactor from winning a Temporal Cold War. He shows Archer a device, a sort of Temporal Observatory, that displays a map only a time traveler could love. Daniels can find Silik, but he needs access to the sensor net and command codes.

Archer discusses the situation with Trip and T’Pol. Apparently Vulcans have found no evidence that time travel exists or can exist. She advises caution. While Trip is intrigued, he’s also not fully behind trusting Daniels. But there’s no time left for debate, Archer tells them to help.

When the guests return to the Enterprise, Archer suffers through Phlox’s exuberance about visiting the aliens’ transport. After Archer leaves, Phlox is invited to participate in the Invocation of Renewal as The Great Plume of Agosoria starts.

In engineering, Trip questions Daniels as the finishing touches are made on the sensor modifications. There’s a hardware problem behind a few meters of ship, so Daniels dons a techie gadget on his hand and simply walks through the wall to fix it.

Archer arrives in his quarters to find an agitated Porthos. He thinks the beagle is hungry, but his turns out it’s Silik, who materializes. Silik admits to saving the ship, and tells a story opposite that one told by Daniels. A comm message tells Silik what he wants to know, and he stuns Archer.

Silik is soon detected. Engineering is cleared out, which makes it easier for Silik to kill Daniels. After a comment made by Silik, even T’Pol seems willing to believe in time travel.

Archer is revived and orders a lock-down. He and T’Pol go to Daniels’ quarters and find the Temporal Observatory is gone. Sato informs them that an encrypted message has been sent.

Trip tries to use Daniels’ sensor modification to find Silik. Instead, it’s an alert that Silik is trying to bypass lock-out codes that locates him. Archer, using Daniels’ tech device, walks through a bulkhead to reach Silik. After some banter, they fight. Eventually, Archer gets a got shot at the Temporal Observatory, frying it out of Silik’s hand. Silik opens a hatch to space. In the decompression, Archer loses the tech gadget. As Archer struggles to get to a part of the ship not exposed to space, Silik jumps out, and floats to a waiting Suliban shuttle pod. Archer makes it to a pressurized room, and tells T’Pol to let Silik go.

Later, T’Pol offers to help the Captain write up the report on the incident. He agrees, but it would be better to wait until they are rested. In the meantime, Daniels’ roommate is reassigned quarters and the room is sealed — just in case there’s something in there that Daniels might have left behind.

ANALYSIS

When I was a little kid, my family used to move around a lot. Every time we moved, it meant a new school for me. It was always a little tough. No one knew who I was, and I was trying to find my niche with the various cliques that had been together for quite a while. When you’re an adult, it’s easier. You have a lot of experience behind you that allows you to get a reasonable lay-of-the-land often within the first day or so.

Archer and Company are more like the little kids who have just transferred to a new elementary school three for four months into the school year. Their very demeanor shouts it. When Archer first hails transport Captain Fraddock, our good Captain falls just short of giggling “Yeah, we’re from Earth and we get to play with you guys now. Isn’t it neat? Don’t you just want to be my friend?”

And Tucker, on his engine-room tour gushing about how the matter/antimatter reaction makes pretty lights would have been completely insulting had the celebrants not been forgiving about it. You’d think that after having been in space for four months, three weeks, and six days that the crew would start to realize that this is old-hat to just about every space-faring species they’re going to run across. The Suliban shuttle pod that Silik escaped on was warp-capable fer crying out loud.

Like little kids, the Enterprise crew thinks that they should be welcomed with open arms because they’re special. And that works sometimes if you’re nine or ten, and everyone else is also nine or ten or younger. It’s when the other “kids” are fifteen or sixteen that problems ensue. The youngsters simply don’t understand the older world, and the teens aren’t really interested in the younger one.

Still, as a couple of hundred years of future history will show, the new kids really were something special. Maybe it was tactical acumen. Maybe it was their dandy uniforms. More likely, though, it was/is their ability to choose the right friends while not ticking off too many other would-be enemies.

This is the dilemma that Silik and Daniels force on Archer. With both sides saying essentially the same thing: “We’re on your side, the other side’s the enemy, help us kill them,” and little else to go on, it’s hard to know which way to turn.

We viewers get extra snippets of info — Silik’s punishment for not destroying the Klingon Empire gives us some clues. It’s clear that whoever is pulling the Suliban’s strings is ruthless. But ruthless in a good way or a bad way? Intelligence agencies are often ruthless, and how they are perceived is rather dependent on which side you’re on. An argument can be made that the destruction of the Klingon Empire would bring an era of peace to the Alpha quadrant… at least until the Borg show up, but that’s a problem for another show.

While Daniels doesn’t quite manage a “Warning, Warning Will Robinson”, the red alert claxons are still screeching. He was much too free with temporal information to Archer, and too willing to let Archer tell the tale to others. Temporal Cold War or no, it doesn’t seem reasonable for the “good guys” to be so open with this information. There are numerous examples that a strong temporal policy is in place that eventually becomes a temporal prime directive centuries before Daniels shows up. Of course, if he’s not of the Federation, then all bets are off.

Silik, having tried to kill Archer in “Broken Bow” and perhaps also with the decompression of the bay this time, makes a good case for being on the side of the bad guys. On the other hand, Daniels didn’t come out like a paragon of virtue, either. I wouldn’t be surprised if, from Starfleet’s perspective, that neither side is particularly savory. Until they get more information I think Archer and Co. will suggest that they take a middle ground until they know more.

While the time travel story was captivating, the group of spiritual pilgrims visiting the Enterprise was a nice diversion. What was surprising was how ill-match Phlox was in their company. In comparison to the humans on the ship, Phlox comes across as intelligently wondrous and inquisitive with a folksy mellowness. But with the celebrants he was loud and just didn’t quite fit in. His heart (he has a heart, doesn’t he?) is in the right place, but the pilgrims were so apollonian that his puppy-like enthusiasm was a little out of place.

In their conversation about various religious and spiritual beliefs, Archer admits that he has an open mind about it all. As with having to choose sides between the Suliban and Daniels, he’s still straddling the fence. For many, this would be debilitating. They would be wishy-washy and unable to make decisions. But Archer is decisive. He simply defers unnecessarily choosing sides until it’s necessary to do so. He’s still an optimist that hopes that maybe we can all get along. As the new kid in the interstellar playground, this might make him the best choice as Starfleet’s first Starship captain. No need to PO the bullies you don’t know yet — they’ll come to you soon enough.

TIDBITS, IRKS and QUIRKS

I hope Archer remembered to exhale when he was almost spaced. Burst lungs make for a pretty unpleasant day. I also hope that there was a second set of doors that we couldn’t see. One good weapons hit, or pressing the wrong button, would be more than enough to ruin somebody’s day.

Why resort to fancy thirty-first century sensor modifications? Porthos smelled out Silik without too much problem.

“Night of the Killer Androids”. That’s got to be a classic by Roger Corman.

Since when was a breakfast delivered as ordered a sign that you are on the up-and-up?

Poor Reed. He’s becoming Tuvok, but without the depth (not the actors fault).

Nobody, but nobody can beat Worf’s summation of what it’s like to sit on the command seat: “Comfortable chair.”

So, what did you think? This episode certainly raised some interesting story issues for down the road. Where do you think they’re headed?