“Countdown”
Written by André Bormanis & Chris Black
Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill
Season 3, Episode 23
Production episode 075
Original air date: May 19, 2004
Date: February 13, 2154
Captain’s star log. Dolim orders the kidnapped Sato to decode the Aquatic launch code for the super-weapon. Sato tries to protest that she’s not a cryptologist, but Dolim doesn’t care. She’s injected with neural parasites to make her more docile, which doesn’t work at first—Sato actually manages to deepen the encryption and attempt escape, before she’s caught and injected with more parasites that finally render her docile.
T’Pol’s shuttlepod returns to Enterprise. Reed glumly informs Hayes of Hawkins’ death. T’Pol and Tucker study the data they downloaded, and discover that there are four spheres that coordinate most of the spheres’ activity. They might be able to damage one of them enough to affect the whole network.
Jannar and the still-inexplicably-unnamed Primate Councilor inform Archer about the three codes needed to activate the weapon, and now Archer gets why Sato was kidnapped. He goes before the Aquatics to plead their case, telling them both about Sato’s being kidnapped and the sphere data they’ve acquired—including a method of wiping out the sphere network.
The latter is stretching the truth—Tucker and T’Pol’s hypothesis is not proven, and they’re not entirely sure how to damage the sphere—but it’s enough to convince the Aquatics to join them.
The Sphere-Builder emissary congratulates Dolim on doing what needs to be done. Dolim asks for some help from her—maybe looking back in time to get the Aquatics’ code? She says it doesn’t work like that—they can only see big-picture events, not details—but they do agree to help in other ways. A nearby sphere provides a super-duper anomaly that takes out several Aquatic and Arboreal ships.
Sato decrypts the Aquatics’ code.
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Hayes prepares a rescue mission to get Sato back. He and his team beam over while the fight in space continues. The MACOs beam in and pull off the rescue, but battle damage means Enterprise can only beam over two at a time. By the time everyone’s extracted, both Money and Hayes have been shot, the latter fatally.
The Insectoid Councilor angrily contacts Dolim. The anomaly that suddenly appeared seems to have completely benefitted them, and he’s wondering now if Archer’s accusation that the Guardians built the spheres is accurate. Dolim fires on the Insectoid ship and it’s destroyed.
Dolim and the weapon go through a subspace vortex. The only ships powerful enough to fight Dolim are the Aquatics, but their ships are slow. Degra’s ship is fast enough, but it doesn’t have the weaponry. Archer, along with the ailing Sato, Reed, and a team of MACOs, take Degra’s ship to try a smaller commando raid on Dolim, while T’Pol will take Enterprise to fulfill their end of the bargain with the Aquatics and wipe out the sphere network.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? T’Pol and Tucker think that destroying one of four central spheres will damage the entire network, which is incredibly convenient (and incredibly bad design)…
The gazelle speech. Archer totally lies to the Aquatics’ faces, telling them they totally have a way of destroying the sphere network when, at best, they have a hypothesis.
He also says during a rare quiet moment of dinner with T’Pol and Tucker that he’s looking forward to Enterprise going back to being explorers.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol announces during dinner that she’s considering formally joining Starfleet after this mission is over.
Florida Man. Florida Man Fixes Transporter In The Nick Of Time!
Optimism, Captain! Phlox is not very happy with Archer taking Sato on a mission so soon after she’s been tortured, and insists on going with Archer on Degra’s ship. Archer refuses, as he’s needed on Enterprise.
Ambassador Pointy. Tucker’s first comment upon T’Pol saying she’s thinking about formally joining Starfleet is to want to see the look on Soval’s face when he finds out.
Better get MACO. For once, the MACOs comport themselves well, as this sort of rescue mission is exactly what you have Space Marines for. Though Hayes is killed, unfortunately. When Reed asks for volunteers for the team to go on Degra’s ship, every single MACO in the room steps forward.
I’ve got faith…
“Thank you—for bringing her home.”
“All in a day’s work.”
–Reed and Hayes’ last conversation before the latter dies.
Welcome aboard. It’s recurring character theatre! Back from “Hatchery” is Steven Culp making his final appearance as Hayes. And back from “The Council” are Tucker Smallwood, Scott MacDonald, and Rick Worthy as the Primate, Reptilian, and Arboreal councilors, Josette di Carlo, Mary Mara, and Ruth Williamson as Sphere-Builders, and Bruce Thomas and Andrew Borba as Reptilian soldiers. All save Culp will be back next time in “Zero Hour.”
Trivial matters: This episode picks up directly from the events of “The Council,” which is when Hawkins was killed. It will continue directly into “Zero Hour.”
This is the last of eight Trek episodes directed by Robert Duncan McNeill. At least so far—the erstwhile Tom Paris is still a hard-working director (and some time producer; currently an executive producer on Resident Alien), and could theoretically direct one of the new shows…
This episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Visual Effects for a Series, beating out the previous episode, as well as episodes of Stargate SG-1, Dead Like Me, and Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital.
Soval will indeed get to see T’Pol in a Starfleet uniform, as Tucker hopes in this episode, in the fourth-season episode “The Forge.”
It’s been a long road… “She’s surprisingly strong-willed for a Primate.” On the one hand, this is an exciting episode of Enterprise. On the other hand, it’s the same exciting episode of Enterprise we got last time.
No, seriously, it’s an episode where Archer pleads his case to the Xindi Council, the Sphere-Builders angst about how the timelines aren’t favoring them anymore, one of the Sphere-Builders visits a member of the council to try to remind them that the Guardians are their friends no really truly honest, a team from Enterprise goes off-ship for a dangerous mission from which one of the MACOs doesn’t make it back alive, Dolim kills a member of the council, and we end on a cliffhanger.
That paragraph describes both “The Council” and “Countdown.” The only difference is that the MACO who dies is a character we’re more invested in and the Xindi councilor who’s killed isn’t a character we’re particularly invested in.
Writers André Bormanis and Chris Black try to wring as much pathos as they can out of Hayes’ death, but it falls flat because the entire notion of MACOs on Enterprise has been botched from Day 1. Hayes says that they’re as much part of the crew as the Starfleet personnel now, and there has been absolutely nothing shown in the prior 22 episodes to support this. The MACOs have been a non-factor, with only half-hearted stabs at showing their integration into the ship’s culture done in “Harbinger” and “Hatchery” by manufacturing a cheap rivalry between Reed and Hayes (and also using one of the MACOs to further the Tucker-T’Pol relationship in the former episode). Oh, and sometimes giving us folks in fatigues instead of folks in red-trimmed Starfleet uniforms for the shoot-‘em-up scenes. Yawn.
We double down on Dolim’s being eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil by having him (a) understand that the Guardians are actually the Sphere-Builders and (b) not really giving a damn, and also killing one of his allies and torturing Sato. The latter, at least, serves a plot function, as they need Sato’s linguistic mojo, but killing the Insectoid councilor is just a “look, he’s a bad guy!” moment that really isn’t needed at this point, and just adds to the carnage.
This episode feels for all the world like the producers realized they had too little plot for the number of episodes left, so they just did “The Council” all over again.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido is a contributor to The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny: Tales of the Weird West, edited by Jonathan Maberry, and currently in its final days of crowdfunding on Kickstarter. Keith’s story is “The Legend of Long-Ears,” and it teams up two legends of the historical West, Bass Reeves and Calamity Jane. Please consider supporting the anthology!
