“Damage”
Written by Phyllis Strong
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 3, Episode 19
Production episode 071
Original air date: April 21, 2004
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Enterprise is picking up where they left off last time, getting the shit kicked out of them by Reptilian ships, but suddenly the attack ceases. This is only a minor reprieve, as they have no propulsion or weapons, systems failures all over the ship, tons of hull breaches, and many casualties.
We find out that the Xindi Council ordered the Reptilian ships to back off, to Dolim’s annoyance. The Aquatics will transport Archer to the council chambers so he can be interrogated by the council. Dolim is even more pissed about that.
The Aquatics then release Archer to Enterprise via one of their escape pods for reasons the script never bothers to explain. The damage to the NX-01 is extensive: the hull plating is gone, they can’t get at the launch bay, there are fourteen confirmed dead (but nobody in the opening credits, so they don’t bother to say who they are), and only one phase cannon and one torpedo launcher working. Archer orders them to hide in a cometary cloud. He thinks he may have gotten through to Degra, but they still need to hide.
T’Pol’s hands are shaking, which she fobs off as the result of not having time to meditate. Tucker reports that their warp coil is shot and they don’t have the means to repair or replace it. Without it, they’re stuck at impulse.
Buy the Book
The Archive Undying
Mayweather and Sato are examining the Aquatic pod, with Mayweather remaining optimistic that they’ll get home, Sato not so much.
Archer decides to answer a distress call from an Illyrian ship—not that they’re in a position to be much help, but it can’t hurt. He takes a shot and asks the Illyrian captain if he can spare a warp coil. But he can’t, as they need theirs.
T’Pol risks her life to get to the cargo hold in an EV suit, as that’s where the trellium-D is kept. She injects some into herself.
Sato has translated data from the pod, including a schedule that shows where Degra is supposed to be in three days. But they can’t there in time on impulse. Archer then makes the awful decision to steal the Illyrians’ warp coil.
The mysterious “she” referred to in the previous episode is a member of the same species as the alien who tried to sabotage the ship in “Harbinger.” She meets with Degra, Jannar, and the Primate councilor, who have questions, particularly with regard to the accusations of the Reptilians building a bio-weapon in Earth’s past. The alien woman admits that they did facilitate that, mostly to keep the Insectoids and Reptilians from leaving the council. When they mention Archer’s accusation that her species built the spheres, the alien woman deflects the question and demands that she not be summoned again unless it’s to the full council.
The trio are concerned, as she didn’t deny that her species built the spheres, and Archer has actually provided proof in the form of the Xindi doodad Archer brought back from the twenty-sixth century.
Archer makes a plan with the senior staff to board the Illyrian ship and steal their warp coil. Archer also plans to leave them with extra supplies that will help them in their now-much-longer trip home. T’Pol objects to the plan, both publicly and privately, reminding Archer of the Osaarian pirates who attacked them when they entered the Expanse, and also of his words to her on the Seleya that they can’t lose sight of what makes them human.
T’Pol then angrily smashes a padd on Archer’s desk, leading the captain to tell his first mate to get some downtime.
Instead, she goes to Phlox, where she admits that she has been experimenting with injections of trellium-D to allow her to access certain emotions, but she’s become addicted.
Archer leads a raid on the Illyrian ship, using the transporter to beam a boarding party over and also beam over the extra supplies they’re leaving in exchange for the warp coil. It takes Tucker a bit longer to extract the coil, as the warp engine is protected by a force field, but he does it. Archer tells the Illyrian captain that they have no choice.
Tucker installs the coil which will give them warp 3.2, which will get them to Degra’s next location on time. Tucker insists that Archer did the right thing, and Archer laments how often he’s had to tell himself that lately…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Enterprise takes sufficient damage that Reed has no idea how the ship is still intact.
The gazelle speech. Archer continues to sacrifice pieces of his soul to save Earth.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. We finally find out why T’Pol has been overly emotional the last few episodes: she’s an emotion junkie! And has been using trellium-D to experience them, and is now addicted.
Florida Man. Florida Man Assures CO That His Immoral Unethical Behavior Is The Right Thing, Is Unconvincing.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox is stunned to learn that T’Pol is a junkie, and promises to keep her addiction a secret and to help her through it.
Good boy, Porthos! Phlox returns Porthos to Archer’s care. He was a good boy…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. While suffering withdrawal symptoms, T’Pol has an erotic dream involving her and Tucker in the shower. Wah-HEY!
I’ve got faith…
“‘We can’t save humanity without holding onto what makes us human.’ Those were your words to me.”
“I’m no happier doing this than you are—but we’re not going to make a habit of it.”
“Once you rationalize the first misstep, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of behavior.”
–T’Pol throwing Archer’s words back in his face, Archer insisting he can quit any time, and T’Pol speaking the wisdom of the junkie.
Welcome aboard. Old pal Casey Biggs is back, with the erstwhile Damar from DS9 lending his great voice and intense acting style to the Illyrian captain. Meanwhile, we’ve got five recurring regulars, one of whom makes her debut: Josette Di Carlo as the alien woman. We’ve also got Randy Oglesby as Degra, Scott MacDonald as Dolim, Rick Worthy as Jannar, and Tucker Smallwood as the Primate councilor, all back from “Azati Prime.” Oglesby and Worthy will be back in “The Forgotten.” Smallwood will be back in “E2.” Di Carlo and MacDonald will be back in “The Council.”
Trivial matters: This episode obviously picks up directly from the end of “Azati Prime.”
Enterprise dealt with marauders who wanted to steal from them the way Enterprise is now stealing from the Illyrians in “Anomaly.” The crew saw the effects of trellium poisoning first-hand in “Impulse.” The Reptilians were revealed to be constructing a bio-weapon in twenty-first-century Detroit in “Carpenter Street.” The alien woman’s species was revealed to be the people who constructed the spheres in “Harbinger.” Daniels brought Archer to the twenty-sixth century and gave him a contemporary Xindi doodad to show to the council in the twenty-second century to show that Xindi and humans will cooperate in the future in “Azati Prime.”
The aliens our heroes encounter have the same name as the genetically engineered culture that Number One was established as belonging to in SNW’s “Ghosts of Illyria.” However, the Illyrians are never identified by that name onscreen (the name comes from the script) and it’s unlikely that they’re the same.
It’s been a long road… “I’m about to step over a line.” One of the great frustrations of both TNG and especially Voyager was an unwillingness to regularly show consequences. They would occasionally dabble in it—Worf’s discommendation, e.g.—but far more common was it to not explore long-term effects, whether it’s Picard living somebody else’s life or La Forge being brainwashed or Tuvok and Neelix being merged or Voyager sustaining catastrophic damage.
The latter was particularly frustrating because Voyager didn’t have access to starbases or any other kind of Federation repair facility. The ship should’ve become more and more scarred and unrecognizable as the show went on.
So to see Enterprise heavily damaged, and knowing that it will retain that damage for the rest of the season, is extremely gratifying.
But it’s not just the damage to the ship, it’s the damage to the people on board it. T’Pol has become a trellium junkie and Archer is starting to realize that being a square-jawed action hero means doing some really really horrible things.
The latter is particularly well played. The macho posturing that Archer and Tucker were doing in “The Expanse” sounded good—well, truly, it sounded horrible, but it was also the kind of language you expect your action heroes to utter, especially in the time immediately after 9/11.
But now Archer is learning the price of that machismo, and it’s awful. This is the perfect bookend to “Anomaly,” as Archer has become the Osaarians: coming to the Expanse with the best of intentions, and now reduced to piracy.
The episode is denied a perfect 10 score by two factors. One is that Archer’s return to Enterprise makes no sense, either in-story (we were explicitly told he was being brought to the council, not being returned to his ship) or out-of-story (it makes no sense that the council would just let Enterprise go). The other is that it would have been nice if there had been some acknowledgment of who died, but alas, they were all apparently wearing red shirts. This was a perfect opportunity to make it more of a tragedy. For example, Tucker could have reported that two of his engineers were warp-drive mechanical engineer prodigies, and they could’ve whipped up a warp-coil substitute that would’ve done the trick—but, alas, they were among the fourteen casualties. But that would’ve required acknowledging that anybody not listed in the opening credits is important, and Enterprise can’t quite do that.
Hell, they can barely do it with all the ones in the opening credits, though I will give writer Phyllis Strong credit for the excellent Mayweather-Sato scene, the pilot’s determined optimism contrasted with the linguist’s depressed pessimism.
The episode also scores points for casting Casey Biggs and his distinctive voice, last seen in Trek as a thug-turned-folk-hero, making Archer’s treatment of him sting even harder.
After a lot of stumbling, the Xindi arc is finally kicking into high gear. It should’ve happened way sooner, but I’ll take it…
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido has a story in the digital supplement for issue #7 of Star Trek Explorer (a DS9 story focusing on Nog and Ezri Dax, entitled “You Can’t Buy Fate”), and will have a story in the magazine itself for issue #8 (a Voyager story focusing on Tuvok, Janeway, and Neelix, entitled “The Kellidian Kidnapping”).
