“Chosen Realm”
Written by Manny Coto
Directed by Roxann Dawson
Season 3, Episode 12
Production episode 064
Original air date: January 14, 2004
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Enterprise has found a third sphere. Tucker and Mayweather check it out in a shuttlecraft, and it appears to be exactly the same as the other two.
As they return to Enterprise, they are observed by a ship full of aliens.
Later, T’Pol reports to Archer that she now is pretty sure she has a full map of the spheres, and there are fifty-nine of them. They receive a distress call from the same ship that was spying on them earlier. They’ve been badly damaged by an anomaly. Mayweather manages to pilot them safely through the anomaly to the ship, which is from a world called Triannon.
The Triannons refuse any invasive medical scans on religious grounds, but Phlox is able to work with that limitation and treat the injured. D’Jamat, the pri’nam, or leader, explains that they’re on a pilgrimage to all the spheres in the Chosen Realm—their name for the Delphic Expanse. The Triannons revere the Makers who created the spheres, which they believe number in the thousands (T’Pol’s explanation that there are fifty-nine is met with disbelief), and are working their way to all of them. But their ship is much slower than Enterprise. They also refer to the anomalies as “Maker’s Breath,” and wear the scars from the anomalies as badges of honor.
Archer offers hospitality, with D’Jamat dining with Archer and T’Pol. In addition, a Triannon woman named Indava visits Phlox.
D’Jamat meets with two of his people in the mess hall, where it becomes clear that they plan to hijack the ship. D’Jamat implements this plan in short order, explaining that all his people have explosives in their bloodstreams. (That’s the real reason why they avoided invasive medical scans.) To prove himself, D’Jamat orders one of his people to go all suicide bomber, taking out a piece of the hull and a member of Archer’s crew (who is never named).
The Triannons lock most of the crew in their quarters, leaving only a few essential personnel to run things: T’Pol and Mayweather on the bridge, Tucker in engineering. D’Jamat orders T’Pol to scuttle his ship and Mayweather to fly to Triannon. Then, in the command center, D’Jamat is disgusted by Archer collecting data on the spheres, which he finds offensive. He deletes all the data in the computer.
The plan is to take Enterprise to Triannon and use its superior firepower to wipe out all the heretics. Two different sects have been at war for a century, and D’Jamat now has the means to end it once and for all. When Archer expresses disgust, D’Jamat reminds him of how he himself threatened to toss someone out an airlock in order to fulfill his mission. Archer’s retort that he didn’t actually hurt anyone falls on deaf ears.
D’Jamat also says that Enterprise’s actions in examining the sphere are heretical—but the crew also did risk their lives to save D’Jamat’s people. Therefore, D’Jamat is very magnanimously only going to kill one of Archer’s crew and spare the rest—and Archer gets to choose who dies! What a sweetheart!
Archer’s answer is himself—he won’t ask any of his crew to sacrifice themselves, and he himself is ultimately responsible for what happens. He requests only that they kill him using the device they use to dispose of hazardous waste. (It’s the transporter, of course.) T’Pol “disintegrates” Archer, after telling her to leave Porthos in Phlox’s care.
Yarrick expresses concern about what they’re doing, but D’Jamat shuts him down with an if-you’re-not-for-us-you’re-against-us-and-also-a-heretic speech. Yarrick’s wife is Indava, and she went to Phlox because she’s pregnant. They’re both worried about what kind of a world they’re bringing a child into.
Archer contacts Phlox via text message. Phlox has no idea how to neutralize the bio-explosives because he has no internal scans of any Triannons, and he can’t perform one now while he’s under guard. So Archer ambushes a Triannon, renders him unconscious, and performs a medical scan, passing the data on to Phlox, which enables him to create an agent that will render the explosives inert.
Archer convinces Yarrick to help him out. (It doesn’t take that much convincing.) Yarrick has to authorize sickbay to pump something into the environmental systems, which can only be done from the bridge. Yarrick does so sneakily. Yarrick also tells Archer the source of the conflict between them and the heretical sect: the others “falsely” believe that the Chosen Realm was created in ten days rather than the proper nine.
Enterprise has come across several ships operated by the heretic sect. But the Starfleet vessel is way more powerful. T’Pol refuses to fire on them, so a Triannon operates the weapons systems.
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Using his Pyrithian bat to distract his guard long enough for Phlox to sedate him, the doctor then pumps the substance into the environmental systems while Archer starts to sabotage the ship, rerouting command functions away from the bridge. Archer also frees Reed and a bunch of MACOs, and they start to take back the ship. The job is made easier by the Triannons no longer able to use their last-ditch option of blowing themselves up.
Archer manages to convince the heretics that he’s taken his ship back, at which point they stop firing. They continue to Triannon, and Archer lands the two shuttles with the prisoners on a planet that is ravaged. Apparently eight months ago the conflict go so bad that both sides pretty much wiped each other out.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently all the spheres are exactly the same. That will probably be important later.
The gazelle speech. Archer is able to trick D’Jamat into “killing” him with the transporter. Luckily, D’Jamat’s extensive reading of Archer’s logs managed not to include any mention of the transporter…
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol shows absolutely no tolerance for irrational religious beliefs that contradict science. She also does a good job of pretending to be unhappy about Archer’s “death.”
Florida Man. Florida Man Draws Ire of Religious Extremists For Violating Their Sacred Space.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox refuses to report to his quarters until he treats the people wounded during the Triannon takeover.
Good boy, Porthos! Porthos seems very happy to be living in sickbay now—maybe because there are so many other animals around. Also Archer signals who he is in his text messages to Phlox by telling the doctor not to feed the dog any cheese.
Better Get MACO. For the first time all season, the MACOs are actually useful in repelling an incursion onto the ship.
I’ve got faith…
“These people you’re fighting—what makes them heretics?”
“We believe the Makers created the Chosen Realm in nine days. They believe it took ten.”
“For that you’ve been at war for over a century?”
–Archer asking an honest question, Yarrick answering, and Archer wondering what the big deal is about breaking eggs on the big end instead of the little end.
Welcome aboard. We get a couple of past guests in Conor O’Farrell as D’Jamat (he was in “Rogue Planet” as Burzaan and DS9’s “Little Green Men” as Jeff) and Gregory Wagrowski as Ceris (he was Captain Solok in DS9’s “Take Me Out to the Holosuite”). In addition, Vince Grant and Lindsey Stoddart play Yarrick and Indava, respectively, while the other Triannons are played by Tayler Sheridan, David Youse, and Matt Huhn.
Trivial matters: Archer threatened to blow someone out an airlock in “Anomaly.” D’Jamat throws that in his face.
Phlox told Archer not to feed cheese to Porthos in “A Night in Sickbay.”
It’s been a long road… “When you begin to sympathize with the enemy, you risk becoming the enemy.” On the one hand, I can see why they might have thought, just two years after 9/11, that doing a show about a hijacking by religious extremists might have seemed very topical and relevant.
On the other hand, this is Star Trek, where ship du jour is hijacked with alarming regularity: “By Any Other Name,” “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield” (an episode that “Chosen Realm” shares a lot of DNA with), “Rascals,” “One Little Ship,” “Basics, Part II,” “Counterpoint,” “There is a Tide…,” “The Serene Squall,” “Surrender,” etc. etc.
So it’s hard to get too worked up over this story, especially since it’s so by-the-numbers. We don’t get any kind of examination of the Triannon culture, we’re just presented with it. Yes, D’Jamat is an evil motherfucker—that’s made clear from his speech to Yarrick about how he shouldn’t question the Makers who speak through him, not to mention his telling Archer to pick a member of his crew to kill. To Conor O’Farrell’s credit, he plays D’Jamat with a bland, friendly affect, which is perfect for this kind of role. He sounds so reasonable and polite when he’s talking about massacreing tons of people—after all, it’s in the name of peace and harmony!
Worse, the reason for the fight—disagreement over a point of mythological specificity—is the sort of thing that should’ve been examined. Even the gold standard for metaphor-for-how-stupid-these-things-are, the original series’ “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield,” spent some time with the absurdity and showed how important it was to Bele and Lokai in contrast to how irrelevant it was to the Enterprise crew. But here, it’s just mentioned in passing, and Vince Grant can’t bring himself to bring any passion to it when he describes it as Yarrick. He sounds like he thinks it’s just as stupid as Archer does. So why is he with these people? Yarrick and Indava obviously don’t feel that strongly about what they’re doing, yet they’re in with a bunch of seriously fanatical fanatics. How’d they wind up here? Did they become less fanatic over time? We don’t know, because Manny Coto’s dreary script can’t be arsed to actually dig into this culture. It’s just presented as religious-extremism-is-bad-mkay? and that’s it.
Also, after going to the all the trouble of making sure that there’d be no redshirts in seasons one or two, that’s officially been abandoned, as the suicide bomber takes out an unnamed crewmember whom nobody seems to give a crap about except as a vague, quickly forgotten abstraction. Sigh.
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s first Trek fiction in thirteen years will be a DS9 story called “You Can’t Buy Fate” in Star Trek Explorer #7, which will be on sale on his fifty-fourth birthday, 18 April 2023. It’s available for preorder from Titan. He is also scheduled to have stories in issues #8 and 9.
