“The Xindi”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 3, Episode 1
Production episode 053
Original air date: September 10, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. We open on the Xindi Council, who are concerned about the Earth ship that has entered the Expanse. They’re concerned that it’s a prelude to an invasion. One councilor, Degra, says he needs time to run more tests on the weapon, while another councilor, Dolim, is tasked with finding out more about Enterprise.
Six weeks into the Expanse, and Enterprise has learned very little about the Xindi. They finally have a lead, albeit a slim one, that there’s a Xindi on a mining planet. This lead came from a freighter captain whom Reed describes as being of questionable character. Archer, however, is determined to follow up on it, as they have suffered six weeks of bupkis up until now.
In the mess hall, Sato joins a bunch of the Military Assault Command Operations (MACO) personnel who’ve been assigned to the ship, including Major Hayes, the CO of the team, Sergeant Kemper, and Corporals Chang and Romero. She introduces herself, because somehow, despite the fact that they left Earth more than three months ago, Sato has never managed, on this incredibly small ship with a complement of around a hundred people, to encounter these new personnel until now. Sure.
T’Pol goes to sickbay, where Phlox tells her two things: One, Tucker is having trouble sleeping and Phlox recommends Vulcan neuro-pressure to help him, as pharmaceuticals aren’t cutting it. Tucker has refused it when Phlox has suggested it, so the doctor asks T’Pol to try suggesting it. Two, Phlox’s study of the Xindi pilot corpse they recovered on Earth has revealed that the pilot was apparently reptilian. Why it took this long for him to come to this rather basic anatomical conclusion (remember, the pilot’s corpse was brought on board when Enterprise was on Earth being refit, which took several weeks, if not months, followed by the seven-week journey from Earth to the Expanse and the six weeks since they entered the Expanse) is left as an exercise for the viewer.
Buy the Book
Wild Massive
They arrive at the mining planet, which has a horrid atmosphere. Most of the overseers of the mine are wearing masks and inhalers. The foreperson (who speaks in a raspy voice and whose face is covered in boils, just in case it wasn’t clear that we weren’t supposed to like him) says he’ll give Archer and Reed a Xindi named Kessick in exchange for some liquid platinum. Tucker is able to scrape platinum off some of the housings and liquefy it. Archer, however, demands to see Kessick. The foreperson produces a finger (claiming it was removed due to an unfortunate accident), which he gives to Archer. Phlox examines the finger, and is surprised to learn that it shares some DNA with the pilot, it’s definitely not a reptilian being. He analogizes the relationship between this finger and the pilot to the similarities between a human and a chimpanzee.
Archer and Tucker go down and give the foreperson the platinum and they’re introduced to Kessick. After Archer has to pull Tucker off of Kessick, who assaults him solely on the basis of his species, Kessick says he’ll help them if Archer and Tucker will help him escape. The miners here are all prisoners. T’Pol then contacts Archer to inform him that there are some warships en route. Archer decides to cut and run, but he discovers that he and Tucker are now locked away in the mine with the other slaves. Attempts to re-contact Enterprise are met with static.
T’Pol doesn’t buy the foreperson’s assurance that Archer and Tucker are indisposed and unable to come to the phone right now, nor that the heavily armed ships that are on approach are just carrying cargo, oh, and the landing strips are being deionized for the cargo ships’ arrival, so Enterprise shouldn’t send their other shuttlepod down. Reed wants to take a security detail on a rescue operation, but Hayes points out that this is what the MACOs are there for, and so Reed reluctantly agrees to let the MACOs handle the rescue, though Reed himself is in charge.
Kessick offers a way out to their shuttlepod. Suspicious, Archer wants to know why Kessick hasn’t made use of this escape plan before, and Kessick responds that there was never a spacefaring vessel on the other end. Kessick also informs Archer that there are five Xindi species, all from the same homeworld. The three of them crawl through ductwork, and climb ladders, and almost get burned alive by unexpected fire, and have to wade through sewage, and all the other prison-break clichés before finally breaking through. However, several overseers are lying in wait for them. Kessick tries to make like Archer forced him to go along with the escape plan.
Then Reed and the MACOs (totally the name of my next band) show up and a firefight ensues. In the end, Kemper shoots the foreperson with his mad sharpshooter skillz, and Kessick is mortally wounded, though he lives just long enough to provide coordinates to the Xindi homeworld.
Phlox pretends to give Tucker a sedative (it’s really a placebo) and sends him to T’Pol’s quarters on a fake errand. T’Pol mentions that she can’t sleep, and the neural nodes she needs to stimulate are on her back, which she can’t reach. She removes her robe and shirt (wah-HEY!) and asks Tucker to stimulate the nodes (ahem), which Tucker does reluctantly and awkwardly. When he’s done—which somehow isn’t accompanied by heavy bass and brass on the soundtrack—T’Pol offers to return the favor, ordering him to disrobe, and dammit, I’ve seen this movie in the 18+ sections of the Internet…
Eventually, T’Pol comes clean about what Phlox prescribed (how her getting topless was part of that is left unclear). Tucker angrily asks why Phlox didn’t just suggest it himself, and T’Pol reminds him that the doctor did, and he refused, and she expected him to refuse this offer too, because he’s a stubborn ass. His manhood thus tiresomely attacked, Tucker defiantly removes his shirt and allows himself to be massaged by a hot chick.
Enterprise arrives at the provided coordinates, but all they find is a massive asteroid field. T’Pol estimates that this used to be a planet, which exploded more than a century previous. Obviously, there’s more to the Xindi than they thought. Archer orders them deeper into the Expanse.
The Xindi Council is informed of Enterprise’s arrival and departure at their former homeworld. They’re now headed to Orassin distortion field, which sounds suitably scary. Dolim, one of the reptilian councilors, says that the weapon better be finished soon, or he’ll destroy Enterprise with or without the council’s approval.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? By way of reminding us that things are weird in the Delphic Expanse, the equipment in one of the cargo bays keeps flying back and forth across it for no obvious reason.
The gazelle speech. Archer is very strident and macho and goes on at great length about how it doesn’t matter if the info comes from a questionable source, we need answers, and by gum, we’ll get them by any means necessary, whatever it takes, and every other dumbshit action cliché!
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. Reflecting her resignation from Vulcan High Command, T’Pol is now wearing civilian clothes.
Florida Man. Florida Man Stars In Impromptu Porn Movie With Science Officer.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox encourages T’Pol and Tucker to do the opening of a porn scene in order to get the engineer to relax.
Better get MACO. We’re introduced to Hayes and three of his soldiers. Reed doesn’t like them, but they successfully pull off rescuing Archer and Tucker without sustaining any casualties beyond the guest star alien.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Apparently “Vulcan neuro-pressure” is a euphemism for nookie. Or, at the very least, an excuse for people to take their shirts off…
I’ve got faith…
“The doctor knows how intransigent you can be.”
“Intransigent?”
“Unwilling to compromise.”
“I know what it means, but it just so happens, it’s not true. I’m as willing to compromise as everyone else!”
“Then take off your shirt.”
–T’Pol makes fun of Tucker, then modulates into a porn scene.
Welcome aboard. We’re introduced to several recurring characters in this episode, starting with the Xindi Council. The ones who speak include Tucker Smallwood and Randy Oglesby as Xindi-Primate councilors, Rick Worthy as a Xindi-Arboreal, and Scott MacDonald as a Xindi-Reptilian. (The Xindi-Insectoid and Xindi-Aquatic councilors are CGI creations that speak in a subtitled alien language that is provided by uncredited voice actors.) The council will next be seen in “Rajiin.” All four of the above-listed actors have appeared on Trek before: Smallwood in Voyager’s “In the Flesh”; Oglesby in “Unexpected” as well as TNG’s “Loud as a Whisper,” DS9’s “Vortex” and “The Darkness and the Light,” and Voyager’s “Counterpoint”; Worthy in Voyager’s “Prototype” and “Equinox” two-parter, DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire,” and Insurrection; and MacDonald in TNG’s “Face of the Enemy,” DS9’s “Captive Pursuit” and “Hippocratic Oath,” and Voyager’s “Caretaker.”
In addition, this episode adds the MACOs to the storyline, including recurring regulars Steven Culp as Hayes, Nathan Anderson as Kemper, and Daniel Dae Kim as Chang, as well as Marco Sanchez as Romero, who only appears in this episode. Anderson (who previously appeared in Voyager’s “Nemesis”) will show up again in the very next episode, “Anomaly,” while Kim (who previously appeared in Voyager’s “Blink of an Eye”) will next appear in “Extinction,” and Culp is next seen in “The Shipment.”
Finally, Adam Taylor Gordon makes the first of two appearances as a younger version of Tucker, a role he will return to in “Similitude.”
Other guests include Stephen McHattie (last seen in DS9’s “In the Pale Moonlight”) as the foreperson, and Richard Lineback (previously seen in TNG’s “Symbiosis” and DS9’s “Dax”) as Kessick.
Trivial matters: This episode establishes that the Xindi includes five different species: Xindi-Primates, who are pretty much humans with funny foreheads; Xindi-Insectoids, who are giant sentient bugs; Xindi-Arboreals, who are humans but with more facial prosthetics and more hair; Xindi-Reptilians, who are, well, reptilian; and Xindi-Aquatics, who look like giant sealions. The Xindi Council is made up of ten members, two from each of the species.
The military personnel Forest and Archer discussed in “The Expanse” are established as the MACOs, because, I guess, they thought “Space Marines” would sound silly.
This episode debuts a new remix of “Where My Heart Will Take Me” over the opening credits that is a bit faster-paced and more rock-and-rollish. It doesn’t really help.
We see the new command center on Enterprise, which used to be a storage bay.
Sato pegs Kemper as being from Duluth due to his accent. Actor Nathan Anderson is from Duluth—the line was changed once Anderson was cast, as it was originally written that Kemper was from Canton, Ohio.
Culp was previously cast as Commander Martin Madden in Star Trek Nemesis, but the scene with him—which was a particularly idiotic scene on multiple levels—was cut, for which the universe should be grateful. (Hayes is a much better role for him anyhow…)
It’s been a long road… “The son of a bitch lied to us!” Watching this episode was a milestone for me. Prior to commencing this rewatch in November 2021, I’d watched most of the first season, bits of the second, and almost all of the fourth. But until I sat down to watch “The Xindi,” I’d never seen a single, solitary episode from Enterprise’s third season.
So I dove into this, curious to experience this bold new direction in an attempt to garner viewer interest that the lackluster first two seasons failed to do.
Gotta say, I’m not impressed yet.
The episode does look good—director Allan Kroeker is always reliable for a visually impressive piece of television—and there are some nice bits here, particularly the Xindi Council. The notion of a five-species planet is a good one, and a refreshing change for a franchise that tends toward the Planet of Hats model of alien worldbuilding.
But overall, this script is sloppy and uninteresting and ridiculous, and that’s before we get to the start of Trip And T’Pol’s Porn Adventures.
I was thrown out of the story very early on when Sato sits down to introduce herself to the MACOs, and again when Phlox announces that the kamikaze pilot corpse was reptilian. The notion that Sato never came across the MACOs in thirteen weeks and that it took Phlox this long to figure out that a corpse is reptilian leaves my disbelief choking for air on the side of the road.
And after the promise of a weird region of space so full of random craziness that the Vulcans went to great lengths to urge Starfleet to give it a miss, what do we get as our introduction to it? A bog-standard prison break storyline that listlessly ticks all the boxes (promise, betrayal, secret passage, near-death while escaping, re-capture, violence-drenched rescue). All of Kroeker’s directorial skills can’t make an exciting silk purse out of this cliché-ridden sow’s ear.
Then we have the first of what promises to be a simply endless number of Vulcan neuro-pressure sequences, which make Bruce Wayne’s mention of “milk and cookies” in the Batman ’66 episode “Batman’s Waterloo” look positively subtle by comparison. This is a spectacularly inept method of building on the chemistry between Jolene Blalock and Connor Trinneer, particularly since it’s based, not so much on their chemistry, but on how good they each look with their shirts off.
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest Trek work is the Klingon-focused role-playing game mission for Star Trek Adventures entitled Incident at Kraav III, which he wrote with Fred Love. It’s available from the fine folks at Modphius Games.
