“Extinction”
Written by André Bormanis
Directed by LeVar Burton
Season 3, Episode 3
Production episode 055
Original air date: September 24, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. We open on a planet where one set of aliens (each wearing some manner of EVA/Hazmat suit) tracks down another set of aliens and burns them to death with flamethrowers.
Tucker shows up for his latest Vulcan neuropressure session—which as presented is indistinguishable from a massage. He also gives T’Pol a couple of freshly picked peaches that he got on Earth and had Chef keep in stasis, by way of thanks. She bites into it and agrees that it doesn’t suck.
The sexy massage neuropressure session is interrupted by Archer having doped out a bunch of the Xindi database they scavenged, including figuring out what the last planet they visited is.
Enterprise heads there and Archer takes a shuttlepod down with T’Pol, Sato, and Reed. Within minutes of their arrival, the three humans start to mutate, their hair growing, their bone structure changing, and their personalities completely altering. Oh, and now they speak a different language and move more like primates.
T’Pol is unaffected. She calls for the other shuttle to come down with a security detail, just in time to have the crap kicked out of her by all three. They take her prisoner, tying her to a couple of logs and bringing her on a journey while speaking in an alien language. When T’Pol wakes up, she eventually convinces them to let her use Sato’s universal translator, and they are able to communicate, though they all now speak with funny accents. They say they’re looking for Urquat, which is apparently the lost city of their people. They also forage for food and fight over it.
On Enterprise, Phlox can only find one Vulcan biosign and three alien ones. There’s no sign of the rest of the landing party. They’re also on the move. Tucker takes a shuttlepod down with two MACOs. A scuffle ensues, during which Reed is stunned, but Archer and Sato run away. Tucker wants him and the MACOs to give chase, but T’Pol orders him to take Reed back to Enterprise for examination while she stays with the other two, whose trust she’s starting to finally earn.
An alien ship shows up and the captain, Tret, announces that they’re under quarantine, as there’s someone with a deadly virus on their ship—that’s Reed in the decon chamber. Tret insists that Reed be exterminated, as there’s no cure—his own people have searched for sixty years for a cure to no avail. Tucker refuses to allow a boarding party, but does permit Tret to come alone and observe that there’s not an outbreak on Enterprise, that Reed’s in isolation.
Tret comes on board and sees Reed. He explains that the virus is the last remnant of the now-extinct Loque’eque. They created the virus when they could no longer biologically procreate as a way of keeping their species alive. The virus turns other species into a Loque’eque, er, somehow and gives them the urge to go home.
Buy the Book
Dead Country
Tret’s people inform him that there are three more infected on the planet. Tucker explains that it’s their landing party plus a Vulcan who’s immune. Phlox thinks he can create an anti-virus, but he needs an active sample of T’Pol’s DNA for some reason. With T’Pol herself still on the planet, Tucker remembers the peaches, which are full of T’Pol’s saliva.
Archer dreams about Urquat, a beautiful underground city, but is awakened when he sees his own human form. Eventually they find the city, but unlike the version in the dream, it’s in ruins and abandoned.
Tret sends a party to the surface to wipe out the outbreak, but everyone fights back. One of the aliens’ suit cracks and he starts to get the virus. His companions unhesitatingly whip out their flamethrowers and crispy-fry him.
T’Pol, Archer, and Sato are surrounded by the aliens when Tucker and two MACOs transport down and stun the aliens. (Tucker allows as how this was too dire an emergency for him to abide by his prior oath to never use the transporter ever again.) T’Pol convinces Archer and Sato to come aboard the shuttlepod and return to Enterprise, now that they’re at cross-purposes, having fulfilled their function only to find Urquat abandoned and derelict.
The nanosecond the pod docks, Mayweather legs it, with Tret giving chase. They keep ahead long enough for Phlox to hit Archer with the anti-virus, which works. Tret is stunned, but breaks off his pursuit and attack. Archer shares the anti-virus with Tret, who will bring it to his people as a more humane alternative to torching people.
Phlox wants to destroy the virus, but Archer orders him not to. This is the last piece of an entire civilization that is otherwise extinct—or will be, once Tret and his people wipe out the virus. And so Phlox puts it in stasis, the last vestige of the Loque’eque.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? T’Pol is immune to the Loque’eque virus because the script says so of K-cells, whatever those are.
The gazelle speech. Normally, Mayweather would pilot the shuttlepod down, but because Something Bad Must Happen To The Away Team, Archer flies the shuttle himself and then gets to spend the entire episode as a bizarre alien.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol does her usual superb job in handling a crisis, calmly and meticulously working to gain the Loque’eques’ trust.
Florida Man. Florida Man Suffers From Neuropressurus Interruptus.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox apparently needs “active” DNA to synthesize the anti-virus. It’s not clear what makes DNA “active” in this context, but apparently a peach T’Pol slobbered on suffices, but why that works when it’s been hours, possibly days, since she bit into it while whatever DNA samples Phlox must have around doesn’t is left as an exercise for the viewer.
Better get MACO. Chang and Palmer accompany Tucker to the surface and proceed to not do anything that Reed’s security detail couldn’t do. Chang doesn’t even have any dialogue, which is pretty much the biggest waste of Daniel Dae Kim ever…
I’ve got faith…
“Your ship is in restricted space.”
“Sorry—it wasn’t very well marked.”
–Tret playing bad cop and Tucker playing ignorant tourist.
Welcome aboard. Daniel Dae Kim is back as Chang from “The Xindi”; he’ll be back again in “Hatchery.” Troy Mittleider makes his only appearance as Palmer.
And then we have our Robert Knepper moment, as Canadian actor Roger Cross—probably best known as Agent Curtis Manning, one of the few people on 24 who were allowed to be competent beyond Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer—playing Tret.
Trivial matters: This episode saw a title change to the show, as it went from being called Enterprise to being dubbed Star Trek: Enterprise, as the powers-that-be at Paramount Pictures belatedly remembered how branding and marketing works. This renaming would be retroactively applied to the entire series going forward, as reruns and home video/streaming releases of the show (and rewatches of it on web sites, ahem) have had the title be Star Trek: Enterprise starting from “Broken Bow.”
Despite Archer’s desire to preserve the Loque’eque, they’ll never be mentioned again onscreen, though the virus is used in the Romulan War novel To Brave the Storm by Michael A. Martin.
This episode was dedicated to the memory of the show’s first assistant director Jerry Fleck, who died in his sleep at the age of fifty-five shortly after working on this episode.
It’s been a long road… “You’re saying these alien biosigns could be our people?” The really hilarious part is that this episode was written by the guy who got his start as the science advisor…
One of the best places to read reviews of space opera shows is “Jammer’s Reviews,” written by Jamahl “Jammer” Epsicokhan. Jammer has reviewed every Star Trek series and movie, and also covered Star Wars, Andromeda, The Orville, and Battlestar Galactica. One of the things he refers to is Fun With DNA™, discussing the (many) times in Trek productions when DNA becomes rewritable, like a CD or a flash drive or a disk drive. It’s a bit of nonsense science that TNG and Voyager particularly liked to indulge in (e.g., TNG’s “Identity Crisis” and “Genesis,” Voyager’s “Threshold” and “Demon”), and this may be the worst example of it, because there’s no buildup to it, no slow burn, no trying to figure out what happens as our heroes slowly start to change.
Nope, it happens right away before Act 1 is done, so we’re “treated” to virtually an entire episode of Scott Bakula, Dominic Keating, and Linda Park hopping around like goons while making nonsense noises and wearing facial prosthetics.
The plot dolefully checks all the boxes without making any attempt to make what happens in any way interesting, whether it’s the transformed crew (whose antics wear thin pretty quickly) or the expected conflict between Tret and the Enterprise crew. Roger Cross, at least, presents a scary adversary, as his deep scratchy voice is always good for intimidation purposes, but overall this is a sequence of events we’ve seen a gajillion times before and André Bormanis’ script makes no effort to give us anything specific to hang onto to make this interesting. Just to cite the four previous examples of Fun With DNA™ mentioned above, “Identity Crisis” gave us La Forge’s friendship with Leijten, “Genesis” went full-out balls-to-the-wall horror-movie, “Threshold” had the whole breaking-the-warp-ten-barrier stuff happening, and “Demon”—well, that had some decent Kim-Paris banter, at least, though it was pretty leaden. And hey, look, Bormanis co-wrote that one, too!
(The existence of those previous episodes makes Phlox talking about how the laws of biochemistry are so weird here in the Delphic Expanse particularly absurd—I mean, cah-mon, we’ve seen this crap all over the entire galaxy on these shows…)
I was going to give this a 1, but for the one interesting thing in this sodden episode: the notion of the virus being the method by which the Loque’eque try to keep themselves alive as a species. But it only raises it to a 2 because that notion should have made for a good episode, as opposed to whatever this is. There was a chance to do a fun little horror-movie version of TNG’s “The Inner Light.” Instead, we got this, alas.
I will give them one other bit of credit for the ending. Given the whole macho we’re-gonna-git-them-aliens-no-matter-what attitude the show has taken on since “The Expanse,” I fully expected Archer to tell Phlox to save the virus to use later as a weapon against the Xindi. Instead, his response was a very refreshingly Trekkish one: this may be the only way to save the Loque’eque species. Fitting that they remembered that in the episode where the studio forced them to put Star Trek back in the title of the show…
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest Star Trek work includes co-authoring the Klingon-focused Star Trek Adventures gaming module Incident at Kraav III (with Fred Love) and writing the DS9 short story “You Can’t Buy Fate,” which will be appearing in issue #7 of Star Trek Explorer this spring.
I’ve been rewatching on Paramount Plus, and the opening titles were simply “Enterprise” until this episode, so at the very least, that service has managed to maintain the appearances of the original run.
Otherwise, I really have nothing to add. The one thing I found interesting was also the item you gave as a solitary highlight.
I also noticed the changed body language of Archer, Sato, and Reed. I was moderately impressed by their acting — coming across as not quite human is hard. I also noticed that the quality of the CGI seems to be up from last season. (In Anomaly, too, but not as noticeable.) Higher budget, or were they getting more bang for the buck through better tech?
Regarding Tret, he was not half unreasonable by ‘unreasonable authority figure’ standards. Almost like any number of independent star systems outside the Expanse. So why didn’t they try to talk with them some more? Relations were good enough that they handed the counter-virus over, right?
And when it comes to Fun With DNA™, consider that the manipulation of somatic cells is possible in principle. The speed and non-fatal results were a bit implausible, of course.
CriticalMyth: P+ actually has the show listed as Star Trek: Enterprise starting with “The Xindi.” But the series itself is referred to on all the labelling and such with the full title…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I don’t remember thinking this when I saw the episode, but reading your recap and review makes me wonder a couple things:
1. If the Loque’eque were advanced enough to genetically engineer such an advanced virus, why did it seem to turn the affected individuals into the equivalent of cave people?
2. Seems kind of funny that it would affect humanoid aliens but not any of the fauna native to this planet (whose DNA would presumably be much closer to that of the Loque’eque than humans’). Unless all of the fauna had been transformed and then they went extinct too. :)
–Andy
I always found Archer’s decision to keep that vial of bioweapon to be crazy-irresponsible. Imagine if the human race went extinct, and in a couple centuries a bunch of aliens came to Earth, and nearly died of accidental exposure to anthrax from an abandoned lab. Do you suspect they’d keep a vial of it on their ship afterwards since it was the “last remnant” of humanity? Of course not, because they (probably) aren’t buffoons…
I really, really liked this one – it was PURE PULP! (Assuming Benny Russell gets ENTERPRISE beamed into that beautiful brain of his, I’m sure ‘Extinction’ would find it’s perfect audience): one found the transformation of Archer et al to be quite effectively creepy, I felt that the origins of he virus (and the lingering question of what happened to it’s makers*) added an interesting undertone of pathos (not to mention a little mystery) as the show built up to a pitch-perfect STAR TREK moment.
Oh, and the antagonists for this episode struck me as surprisingly strong: despite going unnamed they make a definite impression as profoundly uncompromising, not unreasonable and more than a little dangerous nonetheless (Helped by Captain Tret having a voice fit for Judge Dredd and a personality to match). I was especially impressed by the show’s willingness to include a scene showing them burn one of their own – it’s an excellent way to raise the stakes, while arguably making them more sympathetic, not less (Given they’re shown to be neither hypocritical nor deceitful nor wilfully sadistic – they are both genuinely terrified of the Virus and incontestably willing to treat their own as they treat others … but they don;t enjoy it).
One more thing: it bears pointing out that T’Pol was visibly affected by the disease, though she retained her own intellect and was somewhat less physically altered (which makes perfect sense, given we know Vulcans to be Hell on Wheels physically AND ferociously disciplined on a mental level).
*It was, perhaps, unworthy of me to wonder if Captain Tret’s ancestors did a number on them (though given the episode starts with members of his species hunting down and burning some poor sentient being whilst the unlucky target is still alive, perhaps not unreasonable): on the other hand one suspects that the ‘Dredd’ Captain would have been entirely upfront if that were the case (and it’s more entertaining to imagine the Federation archaeologists who finally get around to investigating this mystery being astonished that the most obvious suspect is not the Guilty Party).
I found this one dumb and forgettable, though Tret’s uniform is kind of cool.
Rewriting DNA happens all the time; it’s what retroviruses do, for one thing. But altering DNA in the nuclei wouldn’t alter gross body structure, any more than redrawing a blueprint after a house has been built will magically alter the house. In one of my ENT novels, I did come up with a handwave for that aspect when addressing the Klingon Augment virus, spoiler alert. But it was still quite a stretch.
As for Phlox finding the behavior of biology weird when we’ve seen similar things so often, keep in mind that this is a prequel. Maybe this was the first time this particular weird phenomenon had been encountered by humans or Denobulans, but it would turn out to occur elsewhere in the galaxy later on, disproving Phlox’s assumption that it was a product of the Expanse in particular.
Incidentally, people are talking about how good Roger Cross is at playing scary, intimidating characters, and he’s certainly done his share of that, but I met him at the Shore Leave Convention once, and he struck me as a really nice, easygoing guy, like his character on Dark Matter, which he was in at the time.
@5. SantosLHalper: I think the key element in Captain Archer’s decision is that this … retrovirus? … clearly passes on some recorded memory of a dead civilisation, is not inherently fatal to the host and now has an existing cure. My guess is that he’s hoping some future generation will be able tap into the memories locked in that virus and get a better picture of the civilisation that created it WITHOUT turning into rather rough-and-ready specimens.
In other words a vial of Anthrax isn’t a very apt comparison: it’s more like a thimble-full of nano-machines.
@@.-@. AndyHolman: In answer to your first point, my best guess is that the creators could only get the virus to do so much and focussed on the physical transformation – possibly on the assumption that, since their own ancestors had managed to develop civilisation, these brand new members of their species would eventually be able to do the same, so long as they were physically capable of surviving the environment left behind by their own dwindling civilisation.
Either that or it was assumed that enough of the original civilisation would survive (either as living individuals or as educational material) to help finish the transformation.
One thought that occurs to me: I’ll bet cash money that the Anti-genetic engineering types in the Federation are always happy to pull this little case study into the ongoing Eugenics debate – “This civilisation clearly developed sophisticated techniques for manipulating their own genome and that other species: just LOOK at what they did to themselves and to others!”
Has anyone determined whether MACO Chang is an ancestor of Lt Chang from the TNG episode Coming of Age?
@7. ChristopherLBennett: Which just goes to show how good an actor Mr Cross must be, that he can so convincingly portray a character so little like himself! (-;
Roger Cross puts in a much better performance as Commander Samaritan Bowers, Defiant tactical officer and later XO of the Aventine. At least he does in my head.
To me, this episode’s strongest aspect is its title. When that’s the case, you know it’s not going to be any good. Even LeVar Burton was allegedly ashamed of having directed this one.
Most of the previous episodes that dealt with DNA issues also happened to be Brannon Braga ones. In one of his Threshold interviews, he pointed out that on that particular episode he was trying to pay homage to Cronenberg’s The Fly. I can see the intent, but it’s hard enough to do a coherent horror story that doesn’t clash with Trek’s attempted commitment at emulating accurate science, to say nothing of trying to do it on a grueling network TV schedule.
I’ll give Bormanis and company this much credit: the episode, misguided as it is, still fits within the Delphic Expanse setting. The story, though mediocre, is functional enough. T’Pol is given her usual competent role, saving the day yet again. And it’s nice that despite its faulty biological implications, the ending still manages to provide enough of a moral dilemma for Archer and co. to grapple with.
I’m guessing at this point they were still trying to balance just how serialized the show was going to be. And it only makes sense that Braga would want to capitalize on the ‘space is horror’ aspect of the expanse and assign these stories to the episodic one-offs.
@9/Charles Rosenberg: Since Chang is one of the most common surnames in the world (and indeed there are several different Chinese and Korean surnames that can be romanized that way, including Zhang, the third-most common surname on Earth), it’s very unlikely that any two Changs are related, any more than any two Smiths or Joneses.
@12/Eduardo: “I’m guessing at this point they were still trying to balance just how serialized the show was going to be.”
More likely they intended to start off the season with more episodic installments to ease the viewers into the setting, then build up the more serialized plotting as they went, as many serialized seasons do. You don’t want to start out in high gear; you start slow to set the stage, then build up the intensity.
Not as bad as “Genesis” or “Threshold”, not as good as “Identity Crisis.” Why there’s an entire subgenre of Star Trek episodes about crew members turning into weird monsters is anyone’s guess.
@14/jaimebabb: “Why there’s an entire subgenre of Star Trek episodes about crew members turning into weird monsters is anyone’s guess.”
I think it’s pretty obvious why, given that makeup artist Michael Westmore was a 9-time Emmy winner, 5 of them for his Trek work (plus an Oscar for Mask and three Oscar nominations, one for Star Trek: First Contact). They wrote these episodes to let him show off, and perhaps to fish for nominations. (Although the only Emmy Westmore won for a “weird monster transformation” episode was for “Threshold.” He did get nominations for two others, TNG: “Identity Crisis” and “Genesis,” though.)
Besides the various other Fun with DNA! shenanigans, this episode reminded me of the Kobali from Voyager, who also reproduce by assimilating aliens- although they at least have the good manners (?) to wait until their adoptees are dead.
@16/benjamin: I’d say the species from TNG: “Identity Crisis” and VGR: “Favorite Son” are even more similar. They both genetically altered aliens to turn into their own species and gave them a programmed imperative to return home. So the Trek writers were returning to a familiar well by this point.
@15/Christopher: Somehow, I had never thought of the development process that way. It makes sense to do it this way if you have a talented makeup artist on the crew. I imagine that was a factor in developing the Son’a on Insurrection.
Also, in Trek-related news, Annie Wersching has passed away from cancer at age 45. Way, way too young.
@19/Eduardo – RIP. Her version of the Borg Queen genuinely meant a lot to me.
“Look, we’ve only been dealing with this virus for one day, so forgive me if I don’t take your word for it that the only option is to neutralise our tactical officer.”
This has a reputation for being one of the series’ low points. Watching the first half, I was thinking “Hmm, yeah, this isn’t that bad.” The crew’s mutation, which has the potential to be silly, actually came across quite creepy, and the three actors playing the Loqueque actually do a good job changing their voices and body language to the point that you have a hard time believing it’s the same people.
And then the explanations start and we realise it makes no sense whatsoever. If the containment team want to stop the virus spreading, why not leave a ship in orbit to guard the planet or a warning beacon, rather than waiting for an infection to break out and then arriving to kill the infected? (It’s almost as if they want an excuse to incinerate someone.) And it gets worse from then on. Why bother killing people to contain an infection when the virus makes them want to stay on the planet? If the virus only transforms people on the planet, why was there an outbreak on the containment team’s homeworld? Okay, maybe some people took longer to develop symptoms and got off the planet first. But if incinerating the carriers wipes out the virus, why is it still in the atmosphere of the planet? If it’s somehow able to stay airborne without hosts, wouldn’t it still be on any planet where there’s been an outbreak? There’s a suggestion that the virus has only lasted as long as it has because the containment team keep stopping it doing its job: Are they really that myopic? Why is the ruined city described as ancient when other evidence suggests it was only destroyed a few decades ago at most?
You know, I’m going to stop before I go completely mad, because I’m obviously thinking more about the episode than the people that made it. Suffice to say that the set-up to Tucker finding a peach that T’Pol took a bite out of is laboured as well. And it ends with Archer giving a confused and contradictory moral about not wanting to help wipe out another race (even though he just did that by giving the containment team the cure) and keeping a sample of the virus just to ease his conscience. Is he planning on finding volunteers to infect one day?
Pluses? Tucker does a decent job at playing hardball with the alien captain (Who’s called Tret? Since when? What’s with all these names that no-one bothers to put in the actual episode?), Mayweather has probably his biggest role this season (which shows how little he has to do in the other episodes) and it’s nice that they remembered they had a transporter for once. And the T’Pol/Tucker scene is at least mildly amusing. And…yeah, that’s about it. (I would agree though that Phlox’s “The rules of biochemistry doesn’t apply here” schtick is almost certainly meant to be a theory that’s wrong, given that we learn later that the virus was engineered, not down to some weird natural laws.)
The Xindi database leads them to the planet but gets forgotten about very quickly. (I seem to recall the staff said they’d initially intended a combination of arc episodes and standalone, then realised no-one was interested in standalone episodes.) Enterprise learns of the Xindi-Arboreals for the first time. Amusingly, Archer says they’re descended from an “arboreal primate”, suggesting Xindi-Primate is just as imprecise a term as Xindi-Humanoid!
After a couple of ambiguous instances in the first season, Mayweather is clearly shown in charge of the ship for the first time (and in the captain’s chair for the second after ‘Cold Front’). And yes, Chang has even less reason to exist here than in his first appearance. After wearing her blue outfit from ‘The Xindi’ for her first meeting with Archer, T’Pol gets changed into a white jumpsuit for the rest of the episode: She’s really enjoying that relaxed dress code! It’s not clear why Tucker isn’t infected when his helmet cracks.
And yes, this was the first episode broadcast under the new title Star Trek: Enterprise, which is almost impossible to tell now because the previous two episodes had the new title sequence added for repeats, overseas sales and home media releases, but I’ve seen off-air recordings. (I believe it’s even been done to episodes from the first two seasons for repeats.) My home media copy of the second season has the original title sequence, but is identified as Star Trek: Enterprise on the packaging. My VHS copies of Season One (quite possibly the only home media releases that came out before Season Three was made) use the Enterprise title.
Another one butchered by Channel 4 who removed all shots of the flame throwers: The pre-credit scene was cut right down to just show the Loqueque being cornered, and the short scene of the containment agents killing one of their number after he’s infected was removed entirely, with us last seeing him when he sees his suit’s torn.
I had no idea Roger Cross was in 24 (and didn’t even realise it was him: I must have been looking the other way when the credits came up), the first credits that came to mind when he was mentioned were First Wave and Arrow. I think I vaguely remember him in Highlander and Stargate SG-1 as well. (I seem to have seen most of his least menacing roles!)
@21/cap-mjb: Cross is one of those actors who seem to be required by law to appear in every Canadian-made TV show, but I remember him especially from his regular roles in Continuum and Dark Matter. He also had a bit part in the early scenes of War for the Planet of the Apes, and I found myself thinking I would’ve rather seen him play the main villain, because I felt he could’ve done a far more potent job than Woody Harrelson did. (Also, there were way too few non-white faces in that and the previous movie.)
This may be one of the worst episodes of the season, if not the worst one. I feel good for the actors that got to get into prosthetics and act alien since that let them do something very different for once, especially Linda Park, as the series neglected her character in general.
But the next episode is one of my favorites of the season and the whole series, too.
I’ve often disagreed with your views on Enterprise.. Sorry Star Trek Enterprise from this episode onwards, but you’re as entitled to your opinion as I am and your reviews are always entertaining and excellent and full of trivia. However in this instance, I agree with everything you say about this episode. Having the first major clanger of an episode only three episodes into a make or break season for the show is not good. Its a terrible episode with a crap plot. I’m honestly surprised you gave it as high as score as two.
“Threshold” was aired January 29, 1996 and 33 years later (almost to the day) it remains infamously terrible. The comparisons seems timely and entirely appropriate.
Extinction is also a terrible episode. Much like season 1 episode 3 Strange New World, the scary event of the week failed to explore and deepen the characters in interesting ways. In season 1 that was forgivable, but by season 3 they story should explore the characters as they explore each new world. Worse still, much like so much of Enterprise it is entirely inconsequential and has no bearing on the Xindi arc or the larger Temporal Cold War story arc.
One might think that the producers had no plan at all and were totally making it up as they went along one episode at a time. (Only kidding, that was sarcasm, from reading various production notes over the years it is clear that is exactly how they worked and they never had a plan).
@21 It’s spread by 5G subspace transmitters. That’s all you need to understand about the virus.
@12 Eduardo S H Jencarelli
> “Even LeVar Burton was allegedly ashamed of having directed this one.”
That’s a third hand claim at best. I’ve long been skeptical of that claim, for starters I found it strange and unlikely that LeVar Burton would have been so undiplomatic. Furthermore, Doug Mirabello was the personal assistant to Rick Berman, and according to a Dreamwatch magazine someone purporting to be Mirabello made comments on the Something Awful forums and was quoted as saying:
No More Trek Claims Insider And PA For Rick Berman (archive.org)
People assume the comment was in reference to “[Enterprise]” (note the brackets suggest that word was inserted by Dreamwatch magazine) and then fans guessed that it referred to Burton and this episode specifically but the crew are turning into primates not lizards here, and the quote seems like it could just as easily have been a reference to the infamously terrible episode Threshold.
Maybe Burton has said something about this episode at conventions but he does not seem to have commented on publicly on this episode or his work on Enterprise much at all. If anyone does has information about his work on Enterprise or any interviews about Burton behind the camera I’d be interested to read it so do please post links if you have any.
I remember being so turned off by the whole war on terror thing the show had going on that I actually enjoyed this episode at the time. Like you say, it’s an idea we’ve seen a bunch of times before, and it’s not done in any particularly novel way, but it at least felt familiar. It was comfort food.
I hate stories where bones regrow, bodies transform, and hair grows all within the space of minutes (werewolves are cool, but…). And when, on top of that, the virus gives people new memories and compulsions, and they learn a new language? My suspension of disbelief just plain collapses when things like that happen.
I always felt this episode felt like either a script from the second season. It doesn’t fit with the whole theme of the rest of the season. It’s more on the lines of Threshold from Voyager. why did they like to make episodes like this?
@30: Filler. At 22-26 episodes a season, the showrunners are desperate for enough material to fill the season. Therefore there are bound to be some stinkers because they’ve got a quota to meet.
@22 – If you believe that, you haven’t seen as much Canadian TV as you think.
Man, when the guy that’s been your science advisor comes up with this, it’s time to put the “Star Trek has the most realistic science in science fiction” trope to bed. With a pillow over its face. By this point, I was catching Enterprise when I could, not making an effort to watch or tape it. This, unfortunately, was one that I caught when it first aired. Ye gads.
I wasn’t as enamoured by the Xindi arc as some here but it was award winning compared to this.
Quoth kkozoriz: “I wasn’t as enamoured by the Xindi arc as some here but it was award winning compared to this.”
Um, this was part of the Xindi arc………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That’s a third hand claim at best.
@27/bob: Of course it is. That’s why I said ‘allegedly ashamed’.
@33 – I was comparing this part to the rest of the Xindi arc. How about “Compared to the rest of the Xindi arc, this part made the rest look award winning”
Anybody else not able to access the Jammer’s Reviews site? I was looking forward to reading some of those, but the page doesn’t seem to load.
I clicked on the link to Jammer’s Reviews from both my laptop and my phone, and it worked fine…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I love the shoutout to Jammer’s Reviews! Mr. Epsicokhan is my favorite Trek reviewer, like, ever! Sorry Krad, I knew about Jammer years before I knew about tor.com *chuckle* But you’re a close second ;)
As for this episode, my god what a slog and it was only the third episode of the season! Did anyone in the writer’s room really think this was a good idea? Fortunately imo this is the lowest point of the season, but man was it dumb. I do like the ending, though. It was an admirable decision for Archer to save this one last piece of a dead civilization. Far better than the ludicrous choice made in TNG‘s ‘Homeward.’ “we can’t save everyone, so we’ll save noone…”
Thierafhal: No offense taken, Jammer’s reviews are excellent. I’ve been a fan of his since the 1990s…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think the rating is somewhat harshly low, though I can certainly understand the reasoning. It is something we’ve seen before, but it’s the first time Starfleet has come across something like this, and they actually do a pretty sensible job handling it. Using the EVA suits as makeshift hazmat gear may be obvious, but considering the somewhat cavalier attitude they’ve previously shown in dealing with potential biohazards, it’s a welcome bit of logic.
It’s also nice that Tucker gets to command and show he’s getting over the hot-headed combativeness he was showing in the previous episodes this season, taking a tough but fair approach in his dealings with the containment ship.
One thing does still bug me about the episode, though. As this planet was the last calling point of the Xindi ship Enterprise grabbed the database from, what the heck where they doing there? They evidently didn’t land, otherwise they’d all have been transformed, and the containment ships either didn’t notice them or allowed them to clear off out the system again for some reason. Did the Xindi just stop by for some sightseeing from orbit or something?
Late response: Since the virus is meant to allow the Loque’eque to continue to exist, and they don’t really, then it didn’t work as intended by the Loque’eque. Say it’s not supposed to turn Earth people into cavemen. Maybe it’s how they did biotechnology and it was supposed to repair their own technobabble degeneration with associated dementia and it got out of hand. So it makes a human remember that you’re Loque’eque and where you live although you aren’t and you don’t. There are real humans who have trouble with those functions.
Them again, maybe it takes a year to work properly, and until then, you get this. We’ll never know, unless someone here wrote a novel about it or wants to consider it.
And having said that, who are (were) these people, Borg without the metal parts, assimilating anyone they meet? Maybe there never was a Loque’eque species, they’re some crazy rich guy’s evil plot like the rebooted Doctor Who Cybermen where that one guy wanted to live on as an immortal brain in a steel body but he left the machine switched on and it got millions of people that way (for those who missed it, this is close enough). Bad idea, by the way.
And microscopic life in the air carries the Loque’eque plague, or it is the plague. How about that fungus which eats ants from inside. Maybe have that be the Loque’eque life cycle, except you generally can’t get people back if they’ve been eaten. So, have it not eat a human brain all at once. Just nibble around the edge.
I’m not remembering if here is where I meant to say, I guess because @12 mentioned “The Fly”, but I expect that “Tuvix” is regarded as a horror episode by Vulcans, body and mind both, though now I need to justify Vulcans appreciating horror fiction. Maybe equivalent to real human food which objectively hurts people. It’s a trial by ordeal?
I have three additional complaints on top of everything you’ve listed.
One: Why the hell where the Xindi at this planet? That’s the whole reason Enterprise goes there, but the Xindi apparently didn’t land, since they weren’t transformed nor exterminated, so what the hell where they doing there?
Two: If these Loque’eque were able to build these giant cities and create a virus so sophisticated it can transform any humanoid lifeform into one of them with surgical precision, up to and including implanting memories – then why do the transformed Loque’eque have the verbal, motor, and cognitive skills of a toddler? They hunch around like early hominids, speak in incomplete and rudimentary sentences, and can’t really be reasoned with; T’Pol deals with them more like wild animals than sentient humanoids. What’s with that disconnect between an apparent highly sophisticated technology, cities that look like Ancient Egypt, and mindless goons?
And three: …it’s basically “Macrocosm” rebadged. Dangerous virus, uncompromising aliens who contain it by mass-murder, the crew staves off destruction at the eleventh hour by presenting a cure they miraculously found within hours when the technologically-superior aliens (judging by their firepower) couldn’t find one for decades.
I would imagine that such drastic changes to the body and brain would disrupt both for a while before they settled in, reverting the subjects to a less functional state. Think of it like undergoing major surgery — you’re incapacitated afterward and it takes time to build your strength back up.
As for why Tret’s people hadn’t cured the infection, it wasn’t a matter of technology so much as defining the problem. They assumed it was a virulent plague and didn’t know it was actually a way for an extinct species to survive. So their approach to the problem was shaped by their preconceptions. And in their haste to destroy every infected subject, they didn’t give themselves the chance to learn what was really going on.