“Bounty”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Hans Tobeason and Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong
Directed by Roxann Dawson
Season 2, Episode 25
Production episode 051
Original air date: May 14, 2003
Date: March 21, 2153
Captain’s star log. Enterprise has been exploring a world, when they’re approached by a Tellarite ship, just as Archer and Tucker return from the surface. The Tellarite captain, Skalaar, says that this world is a favorite retreat of his, and offers to show Archer the sights. Skalaar agrees to dock, and Archer and Tucker meet him at the airlock—at which point he shoots them both and kidnaps Archer.
Skalaar disengages from Enterprise without warning, and fires on the Starfleet ship’s nacelle before going to warp. Reed orders Mayweather to follow, but he can’t with the damage. Tucker wakes up and recalls the landing parties.
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Some Desperate Glory
T’Pol and Phlox need to go through decon, as they picked up a microbe. To both their consternation, the microbe has caused T’Pol to go through the pon farr prematurely. Apparently, the pon farr manifests in female Vulcans by turning them into horndogs. Phlox spends a great deal of time fending off T’Pol’s horny advances and trying to come up with a serum to tamp down the symptoms.
Tucker effects repairs to the nacelle and gives chase. However, the “trail” of the warp signature turns out to be a decoy beacon that Skalaar left to distract them.
Skalaar is truly a bounty hunter. The Klingons have put a price on Archer’s head after he escaped from Rura Penthe, and Skalaar wants to collect it. Archer tries appealing to Skalaar’s sense of decency, as Archer is pretty likely to have his sentence changed from life in prison to execution after his breakout. Skalaar isn’t interested, as the nine-thousand-darsek bounty will enable him to get Tezra, his ship, out of hock. The Klingons impounded the cargo ship when he passed through empire space. His brother, Gaavrin, has never forgiven him.
Another bounty hunter, Kago, tracks Skalaar down and tries to take Archer from him, firing on the ship. Archer convinces Skalaar to let him pilot the ship while Skalaar effects repairs. Archer does enough damage to Kago’s ship to force him to crash land, but Archer also has to land, as they’ve sustained serious engine damage.
T’Pol keeps trying to fuck Phlox (there’s no point in beating about the bush—er, so to speak—as that’s what she’s trying to do), and he keeps deflecting her. She refuses to let him try his serum, and he says he won’t treat her if she doesn’t wish it. He gives her the code to get out of decon, but the code he gives is a lie to distract her so he can inject her. This fails, and she knocks him out. Unfortunately, now she doesn’t have the code. So she pries the casing off and rips out wires, and that somehow makes this secure decontamination facility that should be created to be as airtight as possible under all circumstances open the door.
Phlox wakes up and urges Tucker to evacuate D deck. Reed and a security detail go to D deck in EVA suits and subdue T’Pol by shooting her, but not until after she comes on to Reed.
Skalaar cobbles together a repair, with no help from Archer, who has no motivation to make it easy for Skalaar to deliver him to a death sentence. Skalaar then goes to a space station to beg his brother for a part he needs. Gaavrin wants nothing to do with his brother; Skalaar reminds him that he’s to be his first mate when Skalaar gets Tezra out of hock. Gaavrin finally breaks the news to him: Tezra has been gutted by the Klingons.
Skalaar turns Archer over to the Klingons, though they only pay him six thousand darseks. However, the manacles Skalaar used have a lockpick and an explosive in them that enable Archer to free himself. He takes out every Klingon he encounters, er, somehow and gets out in an escape pod—just as Enterprise encounters the Klingon ship, having been contacted by Skalaar.
Enterprise and the Klingon ship exchange fire, and Mayweather is able to snag the pod with the grappler, at which point they bugger off.
Skalaar contacts Enterprise, not sure what he’s going to do with his six thousand darseks, and reminding Archer that there’s still a price on his head.
T’Pol wakes up back to normal and is reassured by Phlox that he keeps his patients’ privacy. T’Pol also has no memory of what happened. Would that the same could be said for the viewers…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Any engineer with a brain in their head would design the door to a decontamination chamber, where remaining sealed is of critical import, to remain sealed shut if anyone messes with the door mechanism. Obviously, the folks who designed Enterprise’s decon chamber, don’t have brains in their heads, as T’Pol messing with the door mechanism causes it to open, which is spectacularly bad and irresponsible design.
The gazelle speech. Archer is able to find a way to get Skalaar his money while still giving him a shot at not being executed. The second part of that plan depends on him being able to take on a ship full of Klingons, which of course he does because he’s the star of the show…
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol spends the entire episode in a tank top and short shorts drenched in sweat and coming on to Phlox and later Reed, in what had to have been the most embarrassing performance of Jolene Blalock’s career.
Florida Man. Florida Man Only Gets Captain Back After Getting Help From His Kidnapper.
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… So apparently women can suffer from the pon farr, too, even though there was no evidence of it in T’Pring in “Amok Time.”
Qapla’! The Klingons claim that Archer is the first person ever to have escaped Rura Penthe. This doesn’t pass the smell test, since he “escaped” by T’Pol bribing the guards, and that just can’t be the first time that happened. But they may be claiming it for political reasons…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Where men get violent and the urge to return to Vulcan when they get the pon farr, apparently women just turn into cats in heat…
More on this later. After being mentioned a couple times before, we see Tellarites on Enterprise for the first time. They were first seen in the original series’ “Journey to Babel,” and also later in “Whom Gods Destroy.” They were also seen in several of the movies as background characters, and were mentioned on both TNG and DS9. Skalaar is the first Tellarite to have a speaking part since “Journey to Babel.”
I’ve got faith…
“T’Pol says they’re not the most agreeable species. Apparently they enjoy a good argument. It’s considered a sport on their planet.”
“I’ve got an old girlfriend this guy might like to meet.”
–Archer and Tucker discussing Tellarites.
Welcome aboard. Jordan Lund plays Skalaar, having previously played a Klingon in TNG’s “Redemption II” and a Bajoran in DS9’s “The Storyteller.” Ed O’Ross plays Gaavrin, while the speaking Klingons are played by Michael Garvey and Louis Ortiz.
And old pal Robert O’Reilly’s back, lending his beady eyes and distinctive voice to the part of Kago. O’Reilly had the recurring role of Gowron on both TNG and DS9 and also played a holographic gangster in TNG’s “Manhunt” and a holographic accountant in DS9’s “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang.”
Trivial matters: This episode picks up on the events of “Judgment,” with Archer suffering the consequences of having escaped from a Klingon prison. Those consequences will be carried forward into the very next episode, as the Klingons will still be pissed at Archer being free in “The Expanse.”
The pon farr was introduced in the original series’ “Amok Time,” when Spock went through it. We also saw both Vorik and Tuvok go through it on Voyager, the former in “Blood Fever,” the latter in “Body and Soul.” Vorik also was able to transmit it telepathically to Torres, who was played by Roxann Dawson, who directed this episode.
The darsek was established as a Klingon unit of currency in TNG’s “Firstborn.” It’s also been seen in Discovery’s “Will You Take My Hand?”
This episode debuts a new design for the Tellarites, which is less aggressively porcine than the original look from the 1960s, and which has continued to be the basis of Tellarite makeup since on, not just Enterprise, but also on Discovery, Prodigy, Short Treks, and Lower Decks.
T’Pol said in “Sleeping Dogs” that Klingon ships don’t have escape pods, a statement that appears to have been false, given that Archer uses one of several escape pods on the Klingon ship.
It’s been a long road… “You’re disturbing my serum!” One of my favorite movies is Midnight Run. A formulaic comedy, it’s nonetheless a delight thanks to superlative performances by Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, Joe Pantoliano, John Ashton, and Dennis Farina. (It has one of my favorite character-illuminating bits of dialogue, when De Niro’s Jack Walsh says, “I just got two words for you: shut the fuck up.”)
The A-plot of “Bounty” serves to remind you just how much of Midnight Run’s greatness is on the back of the script and the acting, because the Archer-Skalaar half of this episode follows pretty much every single beat of Midnight Run but has precisely zero of the charm. It’s just a paint-by-numbers story that diverts from the setup only at the end, when Archer gets to be a Manly Man and fend off half a dozen Klingons on his way to the escape pod that isn’t supposed to be there.
Still, the A-plot is mostly harmless. Jordan Lund gives Skalaar a certain humanity (er, so to speak) as he’s just a guy trying to do a job so he can get his ship back, and the moment when Gaavrin tells him the Tezra’s been gutted is heartbreaking.
But then we have the B-plot. Sweet motherfucking Jesus, the B-plot.
Once again, we have a storyline that feels like it was conceived by a thirteen-year-old boy who hasn’t yet seen a boobie, but really really wants to. Once again, the decon chamber is reduced to the set for a wannabe porn film, but with the restrictions of a commercial network TV show that airs at 8pm. T’Pol’s dialogue isn’t even of the quality of a parody of a porn flick, much less the real one it clumsily aspires to.
Best of all, and I use “best” in the most sarcastic manner I can muster, this isn’t a real pon farr, it’s a false pon farr, which means they still have the option of having T’Pol go through real pon farr down the line and suffer this nonsense all over again! And really appeal to that heterosexual teenage boy demographic of the early 2000s who is frustrated by the fact that the pages of his copies of Maxim are now all stuck together…
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also in the midst of his semi-annual revival of “4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch.” He’s done a couple of looks back at Barbarella, Vampirella, and Sparks, and this coming Wednesday will do a rewatch of Thor: Love and Thunder.
