“Cold Station 12”
Written by Michael Bryant
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 4, Episode 5
Production episode 081
Original air date: November 5, 2004
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. We flash back a decade to Soong teaching the young Augments on Trialas IV. Then to the present, as the stolen Bird-of-Prey heads toward Cold Station 12. Malik suggests taking out the life-support system and waiting for everyone on board to die, but Soong rejects that notion, unwilling to kill anyone in cold blood. Malik looks less than happy with this condition…
Enterprise arrives at Trialas IV to an abandoned station—except for one young Augment, whom Archer defeats rather easily. This is Udar, nicknamed Smike after the disabled character in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Archer brings him back to the ship, where Smike reveals that he was left behind because his genetic engineering was imperfect. Meanwhile, Tucker determines that the Augments took a whole mess of incubators with them.
Soong demands to know from Malik what happened to Raakin. Malik lies through his teeth and says that Raakin attacked him and Malik had to kill him in self-defense. He also pretends to be sad about it, which convinces Soong.
Archer informs Phlox that the new head of Cold Station 12 is Phlox’s old friend Dr. Jeremy Lucas. Phlox is now worried about his friend, and also asks to be included on the boarding party, as he also was assigned to CS12 and knows his way around the security protocols.
The Augments hijack a Denobulan medical ship and use it to get onto the station, which they then take over in very short order. Soong demands the access code for the embryos, but Lucas says he doesn’t have it. Soong said he had the code when he was head of CS12, but Lucas retorts that after Soong’s arrest, they locked the code down. Soong believes him; Malik doesn’t. They torture Lucas, because apparently their superior intellect somehow missed the fact that torture rarely works as an interrogation tool.
Enterprise arrives, but backs off when Soong threatens Lucas’ life. However, Tucker finds a way to adjust the transporter so they can beam in undetected.
Lokesh is having trouble breaking the code’s encryption, so Malik puts the deputy director into a chamber and releases one of the nasty viruses CS12 has in storage. Lucas refuses to give up the code, and watches as his deputy director dies. Soong tries to release the anti-pathogen, but Malik won’t let him.
The Augments get the drop on Archer’s boarding party, which includes Phlox, Smike, Reed, and several MACOs. Soong is shocked to see Smike alive—he was told by the Augments that he was dead—while Phlox moves to treat Lucas. Malik then throws Phlox into the chamber to release another virus, and this time Lucas gives in. Torture and killing one’s second-in-command is one thing, but to kill someone who’s an opening-credits regular in this TV series? We can’t have that!!!!!
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System Collapse
Soong takes the embryos onto the Bird-of-Prey, inviting Smike to come with. Smike refuses, and Soong wishes him well. Malik snags some of the nasty pathogens for possible future use. When Archer resists being put in a room with the other prisoners, it gives Malik the excuse he needs to beat Archer up. Then, rather than kill him directly, he sets the station to release all the remaining pathogens at once, because apparently their superior intellect somehow missed the fact that you shouldn’t behave like a Bond villain when you want to kill your enemies.
Not wanting his brother to die so horrible a death, Malik shoots Smike.
Lucas tells Archer that there is a way to stop the pathogens from being released, but it involves climbing into a shaft and he only has four minutes…
To be continued…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently Tucker can now mask the transporter by changing its frequency to match the containment field around CS12, which is impressive for a piece of technology that didn’t even work this well a hundred years in the future…
The gazelle speech. Archer resists being pushed around and gets the shit kicked out of him by Malik for his trouble.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. Left in charge of Enterprise, T’Pol is ordered by Archer after he’s captured to destroy the station. Alas, their attempt to do so is stopped by the Augments.
Florida Man. Florida Man Makes Transporter Stealthy!
Optimism, Captain! We finally get to meet Phlox’s good buddy and pen pal, and because they’re friends, Phlox almost dies and the embryos are released to a sociopath.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Malik and Persis are now officially lovers, and they have pillow talk on the subject of whether or not to keep following Soong, given that he’s a normal human.
I’ve got faith…
“How can you let this happen?”
“How can you?”
–Soong trying to shift blame to Lucas and Lucas refusing to let him.
Welcome aboard. Back from “Borderland” are Alec Newman as Malik, Abby Brammell as Persis, and Brent Spiner as Soong.
Richard Riehle plays his third role on Trek, having played Batai in TNG’s “The Inner Light” and a holographic Irish stereotype in Voyager’s “Fair Haven” and “Spirit Folk.” He plays the already-established-but-never-before-seen Dr. Jeremy Lucas, Phlox’s old friend and pen pal.
Kaj-Erik Eriksen plays Smike, Kris Iyer plays the never-named deputy director whom Lucas lets die, and Adam Grimes plays Lokesh.
Spiner, Newman, Brammell, Riehle, and Grimes will return next time in “The Augments.”
Trivial matters: This episode continues from “Borderland,” and will conclude in “The Augments.”
Michael Bryant is a pseudonym for veteran TV, prose, and comics writer Alan Brennert, who also served as a consulting producer for about half of this season.
Lucas was introduced in “Dear Doctor,” where Phlox and he were established as pen pals, and a letter to Lucas was a major part of “Doctor’s Orders.” Lucas will subsequently appear in two of regular rewatch commenter Christopher L. Bennett’s Rise of the Federation novels Tower of Babel and Live by the Code.
It’s been a long road… “That language is unbecoming a man of science.” This episode completely lost me when Lucas gave Soong the code to keep Phlox from being killed. Previously, Malik threatened Lucas’ deputy director, his second-in-command, and someone whose welfare Lucas is directly responsible for as head of the station. Lucas let him die rather than give up the code. Which is fine, that’s probably what he should have done. But then when Phlox is in the chamber, he gives in, and that’s ridiculous. Lucas is enough of a creature of duty that he won’t give in to save his deputy, but not enough that he won’t save a guy he writes letters to every once in a while?
It’s nonsense, where character actions are dictated by who’s in the opening credits versus who’s a guest star, factors that the characters themselves can’t possibly be considering.
I might have been able to forgive that if there was anything else worthwhile in the episode, but aside from one moment, there isn’t. After being a magnificent smartass for all of “Borderland,” Brent Spiner spends all of the second installment of this trilogy whining and complaining and being spectacularly naïve and short-sighted and stupid. Soong’s desire not to take a life is admirable, at least. But his buying Malik’s weepy act when he lies about how Raakin died, his allowing the deputy director to die, his lack of reaction to his children lying to him about Smike’s fate all paint the picture of an idiot.
The one good moment is the one I quoted in the “I’ve got faith…” section above: Soong tries desperately to get Lucas to accept responsibility for his deputy dying, but Lucas—for all that his actions are ridiculous later on—knows exactly who’s responsible, and it’s the guy played by the actor who previously played an android.
But the rest of this is a tired, paint-by-numbers action hour full of predictable plot turns, sudden-but-inevitable betrayals, and our heroes not actually accomplishing anything.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido is part of the Picking Up Steam! Kickstarter from eSpec Books, which includes the anthology A Cry of Hounds, their second anthology done in conjunction with the Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival, with stories inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Keith will be writing a Professor Challenger story for the anthology, assuming it’s funded. Check it out, and please consider supporting it!
This is maybe not a great episode, but it stands out in my memory just because, upon reaching the cliffhanger, it suddenly occurred to me that, for pretty much the first time since Deep Space Nine ended, I actually cared what happened next on Star Trek. I’d been watching it out of a sort of fannish inertia for so long that I had forgotten how it actually felt to be invested in the plot and characters. And, in retrospect, yes, it is pretty much just a generic action plot, but it felt somehow engaging in a way that previous seasons simply hadn’t for me. I’m not precisely sure why; maybe I had just become so familiar with the beats of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga’s storytelling that any departure stood out to me.
I think judgement on this episode has to wait for the final part of the trilogy.
I found the Smike subplot interesting. On the one hand, Archer and company talk about rehabilitating him, sending him to school on Earth. On the other hand, they stick to the degrading nickname. Is that not to confuse the audience, or is it a telling sign?
How would Earth deal with one of the rank-and-file augments, if he or she had ‘pulled a Smike’ and decided to go with Enterprise? Lock him in a cell like the one Soong got?
And on that matter, it is clear that Soong left a couple of children for what he thought was a brief time, and now he has a bunch of vicious teenagers. How much is he in denial, and how much is he playing along to postpone a leadership struggle which he cannot win? Whose plans are they executing, right now?
“Whenever a group of people start believing they’re better than everyone else, the results are always the same.”
We seem to be moving firmly into the set-up of previous multi-part stories like “The Killing Game” and “Equinox” where the relatively reasonable leader of the bad guys gets slowly pushed aside by his more psychotic second-in-command. There’s very little noble about Soong here though and he actually comes across as quite contemptible, with his actions motivated by cowardice rather than conscience: He can talk a good game but he doesn’t have the stomach to actually follow through. There’s a few attempts to humanise him, such as when Archer comes across the recording of a birthday party, but the episode opens with him filling the heads of his children with his propaganda about them being the master race, and then he wonders why they care nothing for the lives of their “inferiors”.
In fact, despite clearly being a psychopath, Malik shows a lot better grasp of psychology and character than Soong does. He’s smart enough to grasp the situation and present Raakin’s death as a self-defence kill he regrets rather than the cold-blooded killing it was. And he’s suspicious enough to do digging and work out Lucas is lying and then to know exactly what pressure to apply to make him co-operative.
There are two appalling applications of plot armour here that are probably meant to raise the stakes but just make it seems like some lives are more important than others. As krad says, Soong and Malik torture another scientist to death in order to get the codes from Lucas and Lucas stays silent, knowing one life isn’t enough to risk letting over a thousand genetically engineered supermen loose. Then Malik puts Phlox in the tube and threatens to kill him as well, and Lucas basically goes “Oh, I can’t let them kill someone on the main titles, here’s everything you want.”
And then there’s Smike. We see Archer befriend him and teach him that humans aren’t the monsters Soong painted them as and try to reintegrate him into their society. We see him choose his new friends over the augments who rejected him. And then the whole thing gets rendered pointless when Malik casually murders him, as if they didn’t want to have to pay the actor for another episode. And this time the frustrating excuse is “I don’t want him to suffer a painful death like the rest of you so I’ll mercy kill him.” It’s not much of a spoiler to say Archer, Reed and Phlox don’t all die an agonising death at the start of the next episode, meaning Smike ends up being the only one killed. (It doesn’t help that this is partly down to Archer stupidly picking a fist fight with someone with superhuman strength. He’s not even smart enough to just hit Malik over the head with a metal bar…)
As someone noted last episode, Archer’s less-than-entirely-absolute attitude towards things is interesting. Soong’s a criminal and needs to be caught and stopped, but Archer says Smike isn’t going to be punished just for existing. And he ponders how Denobulans used genetic engineering without creating genocidal madman and wonders if it’s the people using the science that are the problem rather than the science itself. (More on this next episode.)
It’s probably not going to help the diversity meter that, although there continues to be a number of non-white extras among the augments, we get two more speaking ones here (Smike and Lokesh) and they’re both white as well. (Next episode, yeah?) There’s some truly bad green screen for the scene of Soong visiting the embryo chamber, proving bad CSO is not solely the province of 70s Doctor Who!
Admiral Forrest gets another mention.
@2/o.m.: Re, Enterprise sticking with Smike’s nickname, Archer calls him Udar and he corrects him. So they’re just calling him what he chooses to be called, however unfortunate its origin.
I should’ve recognized “Michael Bryant” as Alan Brennert’s pseudonym. I remember rewatching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, where Brennert was the story editor for most of the first season, and thinking how obvious it was that Brennert wished he were writing Star Trek. I guess he finally got his chance.
Weirdly, Memory Alpha treats Bryant as his real name and just says he’s “also known as Alan Brennert.”
I’m not so bothered by Lucas giving in to save Phlox after letting his deputy die. I figure that he felt guilty and grief-stricken about letting the deputy die and just didn’t have the heart to let it happen again to anyone else. I mean, it’s not a mathematical equation. Letting someone die when you had the chance to save them has got to be incredibly traumatic. Not many people can withstand being repeatedly subjected to the same trauma without reaching the point where they break and say “I’ll do anything, just make it stop.” Besides, if he’d let Phlox die, Malik would’ve just done the same to a third person and a fourth and so on. So Lucas breaking wasn’t just about Phlox, it was about being unable to bear the thought of seeing all those other people die too.
“Apparently Tucker can now mask the transporter by changing its frequency to match the containment field around CS12, which is impressive for a piece of technology that didn’t even work this well a hundred years in the future…”
It stands to reason there would be an arms race between shields and transporters — first transporters are improved to penetrate shields, then shields are improved to block the improved transporters, and so on back and forth. So the trick that worked against a 22nd-century shield wouldn’t necessarily work against the more advanced shields of the 23rd century, which would’ve been redesigned over time to block that trick and others.
People often call it a mistake that the Enterprise-D was able to beam through the Jenolan‘s shields in TNG: “Relics,” but to me it’s always seemed obvious that 23rd-century shields wouldn’t be advanced enough to block a 24th-century transporter.
I think Doctor Lynch’s breaking after a threat to Doctor Phlox is more a lazy choice on the part of the writers than an unforgivable decision on the part of Lynch himself: having being seized and tortured by a seriously dangerous lot, then forced to watch his second in command subjected to much, much worse and STILL refuse to spare him the torment, Doctor Lynch has reached his limit.
Everyone has a breaking point, after all.
I would also argue that Soong’s behaviour also makes perfect sense in-character: he’s been consistently characterised as a purblind idealist and a man who absolutely refuses to see himself as a villain, so OF COURSE he’s going to fold like paper when he has to actually BE the Bad Guy (And it makes perfect sense that he would be blinded by his own ego and affection for his children when failing to see through the much, much more dangerous Malik’s lie).
Credit where it’s due, Malik is no Khan Noonien Singh, but he continues to be a reasonably lucid villain – albeit one handicapped by his arrogance (I’d argue that his decision to let the viruses kill Archer rather than do the job himself is a sign of his complete contempt for the latter – given that he’s just thrown Archer about like a ragdoll and spent the better part of two episodes putting him in second place, his arrogance isn’t even unfounded).
Actually, it occurs to me that this decision – and the resort to torture – might well flow from the Augment’s inexperience (They’re gifted, but seem to have received little formal training; they’ve lived far from sheltered lives, but are almost completely inexperienced when it comes to dealing with other intelligent species; the fact that their experience of dealing with the Outer Universe mostly consists of setting it on it’s ear is also likely to cloud their ability to judge the situation objectively – Victory Fever is a frequently fatal illness, after all).
Anyway, I thought this episode a solid continuation of the Augment arc (I especially loved the moment where Malik fools his father and realises that NOTHING is beyond him), was charmed by Doctor Soong being a lovely father and a horrible mentor, as well as intrigued by poor Smike’s dealings with Archer (It really is a pity they killed the character off, because there’s some potentially interesting drama in a non-superhuman Augmnet potentially becoming a protege of Captain Archer).
Also, credit to Captain Archer for having the cojones to tell T’Pol to press the Big Red Button (I suspect the serious possibility that this might become necessary was a key reason Archer led this mission himself) AND being tough enough to survive being beaten very, very badly by an Augment.
Is it just me or does Captain J soak more damage in a given story arc than most Starfleet captains do in an entire series?
I’ve never been bothered by Lucas cracking when Phlox is the one to be next put in the chamber; to me, the way they interact here seems like they’ve been excellent friends for a while, not merely pen pals. I will add on @5 ChristopherLBennett’s point about the arms race between transporters and shields by noting that Earth only developed a practical force field some two years prior; these containment fields are nowhere near as sophisticated as those or actual deflector shields that Earth hasn’t developed.
@6 E.D. makes fantastic points about the behavior of Soong and the Augments that I have nothing to add to.
Not a fantastic episode by any means, but a solid continuation of the three-parter.
I admit that this episode isn’t as good as the previous one, but I thought it was fine, even though it felt like it took a bit too long. Honestly you could edit this arc down to a two-parter without missing much. I will say I wasn’t at all bothered by Lucas breaking when Phlox was on the line, and for the same reason others have mentioned. How many people would you be willing to watch die while believing you had the power to save them? I’m sure for most people it’s a finite number.
Maybe I’m just easily manipulated, but I started to feel a bit sorry for Soong in this one. He’s obviously in a cleft stick of his own cutting as they say, but I still feel a little bit bad for the guy, because he seems only now to be beginning to realize what an idiot he’s been.
Might be worth noting that Richard Riehle also appeared in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series as Merrick, Buffy’s first Watcher, the character Donald Sutherland played in the original film. He also voiced Tenzin’s brother Bumi in The Legend of Korra. And he reunited with John Billingsley in The Man from Earth.
@8/David Pirtle – I definitely agree that this probably would have worked as a two-parter (the stuff with the Orions and Raakin in the previous episode and with Smike here could be cut without changing the overall plot), but I don’t mind it. I think it fleshes the characters out a bit. We get to see Soong as a cunning adversary and just how destructive the Augments’ ambition is in practice
Maybe it’s just me, but when I first watched this back in 2004, and wondered why Lucas caved when Phlox’s life was on the line, I personally believed it was something more. Given that Denobulans are not nearly as rigid as humans when it comes to relationships & the like, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there was a more intimate undertone between Phlox and Lucas. While it may have been taboo to suggest it in 2004, it would be in the norm in 2023. Between a co worker and someone whom we had deep feelings for, would we do the same? And we see it later in the Andorian 3-parter where Tucker’s put himself in a similar spot.
Personally, I question if there was enough story in there for a three-parter to begin with. “Cold Station 12” is basically a game of plot running in place, with twists that lead nowhere. They’re clearly buying time for part 3. Spiner’s Soong is given a lot less interesting material in this segment, and Malik remains a supremely boring villain. Any tension that comes from this is mostly thanks to Vejar’s camera and pacing.
I can mostly understand Lucas’s decision to not doom another person, even if it happens to be Phlox of all people. It feels contrived to an extent, but as pointed out, it comes from a genuine place of not wanting another death in his hands. It’s just a matter of poor timing.
Various folks’ points about how there’s a cumulative effect on Lucas leading to his giving in when Phlox is put in the chamber are worthy ones, but neither the script nor Richard Riehle’s performance support this. There’s no indication that Lucas has been worn down by the constant violence. Quite the opposite, he’s completely defiant — including his refusing to accept Soong’s attempt to blame him with his “How can you?” retort — up until Phlox is put in the chamber, and only then is it an issue. It just feels so — so constructed….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@13. krad: A fair counter-point, though one feels it suggests a failure of performance more than of basic construction.
@9. ChristopherLBennett: I have to admit that my first thought on seeing Doctor Lynch was more or less “TV Merrick!” (And my second thought was the well-worn notion that, for some animated adaptation of the Pure Whedon script for BUFFY ’92, it would be both appropriate and deeply amusing to see a Merrick designed to look like Mr Riehle but voiced by Mr Kiefer Sutherland*).
*With an American accent, though Mr Sutherland the Younger having actually been born in Old London town – in Paddington, of all places! – makes him all the more suited to voice a character whom the original script pokes a little fun at for being far more covertly British than the likes of Rupert Giles.
@14/ED: It confuses me that you keep referring to Doctor Lucas as Doctor Lynch.
I feel I have to concur with Keith @13. I agree that the cumulative effect could play a part in it. You can steal yourself to hold out and watch one person die rather than give in, but then realise you can’t go through it again when another person’s head gets put in the noose. But it feels like the strings show a bit too much by using Phlox as the life that must be preserved at all costs. There’s no tension for the audience because we know exactly what’s going to happen according to the rules of the genre. And it’s not down to performances or whatever, it’s outright stated that Malik chooses Phlox because he realises he and Lucas are friends and he won’t let him die. (And I agree that they are friends who worked together for some years prior to the series, not “pen pals”.) If they wanted to go with the cumulative approach, they could have had Malik choose one of the other station staff for his do-over. Instead, the whole thing reeks of Phlox being more important both to the show and to Lucas than the first hostage.
I’ve watched this episode several times when I’ve done an Enterprise rewatch and it always leaves me a bit…well, bored. Last time I watched it was several months ago and when the cliffhanger appeared it hit me why it left me bored. It’s the third part of a four part Doctor Who story..during the Peter Davison era. A character is usually killed, one of the villains starts to regret their choices while an underling gets ideas about global domination. Nothing really happens and it’s all just padding waiting for the final part. Very meh.
@15. ChristopherLBennett: As you should be – I’d like to pretend that this was the set-up for a joke about being mortally terrified of evoking the name ‘Lucas’ in connection with the OTHER Ultimate Space Opera (Insert ‘lawyers can be summoned like demons joke -HERE-) but must confess that this was purely a goof on my part.
Please accept my apologies.
@18/ED: Honestly, I’d think associating the name “Lynch” with space opera might be even scarier… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(1984_film)
@19. ChristopherLBennett: my dear Mr Bennett, my gateway to a more than casual interest in Science Fiction, Fantasy and allied lunacy was WARHAMMER 40,000 – iso you’ll understand why I find Mr Lynch’s DUNE more homelike than alarming. (-;
Also, dear me but Ms. Virginia Madsen makes a most attractive Imperial Princess: show me a puddle and I’d lay down my cloak for her any day!
I think the biggest indictment of this episode, by far, is the lack of opinions that anyone seem to have of it. It’s at best paint by numbers, and frequently contrived at that. It also, though the specific Augments in this, does little to resolve the problem of Augments in general being “hated and feared”TM by the Federation for hundreds of years. Yeah, the people explicitly modeled after Khan were hostile. Shocking.
As someone with a genetic disorder, I find this entire trilogy, and every episode of Star Trek dealing with genetic modification except “Ad Astra Per Aspera” rather offensive. I wouldn’t die from my disorder, but would the Federation leave me as I am because it doesn’t technically completely debilitated me? So much for utopia.
I’m in agreement with many of the other commenters notion that Lucas broke out of guilt for letting his second die. However, I also agree with Krad that it still felt “constructed.” It wasn’t the believability at fault, just the execution. And speaking of execution, I must say that the killing of that poor Doctor has gotta be one of, if not the most brutal death in Star Trek history and was sold masterfully. It was not fun to watch, as it shouldn’t have been.