“Desert Crossing”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & André Bormanis
Directed by David Straiton
Season 1, Episode 24
Production episode 024
Original air date: May 8, 2002
Date: February 12, 2152
Captain’s star log. Archer’s packing for Risa is interrupted by a distress call. They rescue the ship in distress—a one-person craft piloted by a Torothon named Zobral. Zobral is extremely grateful for the repair work Tucker and his crew do, and offers Archer and Tucker a celebratory meal on Torotha. Archer is reluctant to delay their arrival on Risa, but Zobral makes it clear that he’d be really offended if Archer refused.
For some inexplicable reason, the captain goes along with this honorary feast that only includes Archer and Tucker, even though the entire crew is exhausted and needs shore leave. I mean, seriously, at least bring a few more people along instead of making them cool their heels on the ship! Zobral’s clan lives in a desert region, and Tucker is reluctant to go—his memories of desert training at Starfleet Academy aren’t pleasant ones—but Archer bullies him into it in much the same way Zobral bullied Archer.
They arrive on the planet and eat a lovely meal, and also are inveigled into participating in a game of Geskana (which bears at least a passing resemblance to lacrosse). Zobral also offers a gift of a tapestry, and when Archer demurs due to the tapestry’s size, Zobral instead presents him with a small Suliban sculpture.
On Enterprise, they are contacted by a Torothon chancellor, who informs T’Pol that Zobral is a terrorist, and has likely taken Archer and Tucker prisoner. T’Pol contacts Archer and speaks to him privately. Archer makes up an excuse for why he and Tucker have to leave, but Zobral sees through that and begs Archer to stay. They are rebels against an oppressive government that has promised them greater status and greater rights, but failed to deliver on those promises. All attempts at diplomacy have failed, and fighting back has proven necessary—at least, according to him. And Zobral heard tales from Suliban traders about the great Captain Archer and his daring rescue of thousands of Suliban prisoners.
Before Archer can even reply to that, some Torothon ships bombard the camp. Zobral leads Archer and Tucker to an underground bunker where they’ll be safe, in theory. In practice, the bunker half-collapses, and Archer and Tucker resurface to find the house atop the bunker leveled. There’s no sign of Zobral or his people.
They can’t risk taking the shuttlepod, as the Torothons will detect it, so they take some supplies and head out into the desert to find somewhere else to hide.
The Torothons are jamming communications, so T’Pol can’t reach Archer, and the Torothon chancellor has made it clear that any attempt to rescue them by Enterprise will be viewed as a hostile act.
Tucker does not handle wandering around the desert particularly well, and Archer has to work hard to keep him from lapsing into a coma, including playing the place-name game and trying to get him to name all the parts of a warp engine. (The very hungry Tucker replies with a list of the parts of a chicken.)
Zobral comes to Enterprise, exploiting a gap in the Torothon sensor grid. Reed patiently explains to him that the stories of the rescue of the Suliban prisoners are greatly exaggerated: they freed only eighty-nine prisoners, not thousands, and they didn’t fight off an army, they fought off a dozen prison guards whose hearts weren’t entirely in it.
Zobral does reluctantly agree to help search for Archer and Tucker. He joins the pair of them in the second shuttlepod to search, staying low to the ground to avoid detection by the Torothons.
A Torothon bomb goes off in the shelter Archer and Tucker have found. They escape before the structure is destroyed, but now are out in the open. However, the shuttle detects the weapons fire and they go to the rescue.
Tucker goes to sickbay, and Zobral prepares to return home. Archer explains that, even if he was the great warrior Zobral thought he was, that isn’t why Enterprise is out there.
The gazelle speech. Archer has to keep Tucker alive and live down his apparent new reputation.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol does the best she can when she’s in charge of Enterprise, but the Torothons jump immediately to the assumption that Starfleet is aiding Zobral, and nothing T’Pol does can convince them otherwise. However, she does guilt Zobral into helping find Archer and Tucker, since he was responsible for them being in trouble in the first place…
Florida Man. Florida Man Only Survives Desert Thanks To Friend Who Is Much Better At This Sort Of Thing.
Good boy, Porthos! At the top of the episode, Archer is packing for Risa. When the distress call comes in, Archer tells the pooch that his running on the beach will be delayed. Porthos is very forlorn at this news.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. The Gesanka game is mostly just there as an excuse for Scott Bakula and Connor Trinneer to take their shirts off.
More on this later… Archer hits on the notion of using the phase pistol to heat rocks, providing a heat source. This is seen as a standard practice in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries (for example, in “The Naked Time“).
Sato and T’Pol discuss protocols for dealing with alien species, T’Pol makes a comment that Archer may need to develop some “directives” of his own. Like, maybe a prime one!
I’ve got faith…
“You’re not thinking about helping these people?”
“I was thinking about those Suliban prisoners. If we hadn’t helped them escape, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“T’Pol’s ears must be burning. Want your chief engineer’s advice?”
“What is it?”
“Walk away. They lured us down here under false pretenses, and now they’re asking us to help them fight a war? That’s a lot different than breaking a few innocent people out of prison…”
–Tucker and Archer discussing the episode’s main theme.
Welcome aboard. Charles Dennis, who previously played the snotty alien authority figure in TNG’s “Transfigurations,” plays a snotty alien authority figure here, too.
But the big guest is the great Clancy Brown as Zobral.
Trivial matters: This entire episode is the indirect result of Enterprise’s actions in “Detained“—or, more to the point, the story of their actions in that previous episode…
When asked by Zobral if he ever backed down from a fight, Archer replies with the events of “Silent Enemy.”
This is the first of ten episodes of Enterprise directed by Canadian director David Straiton.
When he’s playing the place-name game with Archer, Tucker insists that Xanadu isn’t a real place, though there is a landmass on Titan that is named Xanadu. That scene was originally written for “Fight or Flight,” but the scene was deleted, so it was recycled here.
Three sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) visited the set during the filming of this episode. Aviation Electronics Technician 1st Class Robert S. Pickering, Aviation Electrician’s Mate 2nd Class Timothy J. Whittington, and Personnelman 3rd Class Sara Elizabeth Pizzo. They all served as background extras, specifically as members of Tucker’s engineering crew.
It’s been a long road… “It’s a dry heat.” This is one of the best episodes of the season so far, not because it’s a particularly great episode, but it does what it’s trying to do perfectly.
And it’s a very strong example of sticking to Enterprise’s mission statement of showing humanity’s first tentative steps out into the galaxy and having them slip on a few banana peels as they do so.
The whole thing starts because of what Archer decided to do in “Detained.” Now, despite T’Pol’s caution to him in that episode, what Archer did in “Detained” was absolutely the right thing to do. But even the right thing can have consequences. Zobral pretty obviously set himself up to be helped by Enterprise, deliberately damaging his ship so that Archer would come a-runnin’, and they’d be able to conscript the great warrior to fight for their cause.
What I especially like is that we don’t really know the whole story. Yes, Zobral’s claims that his people are oppressed are very convincing, but rhetoric isn’t evidence. Neither is what the chancellor tells T’Pol. The truth is, they don’t know enough about what’s going on to make any kind of informed decision about the politics and whose side they should be on, if any. And Tucker in particular is right in the bit I quoted in the “I’ve got faith…” section above: Zobral lost a lot of his moral high ground when he lured them there under false pretenses.
This is the second time they’ve dealt with the consequences of a previous episode’s actions, the previous being “Shadows of P’Jem” picking up on the events of “The Andorian Incident,” though I think this one handled it much better.
Plus, it had Clancy Brown. Nobody ever went wrong casting Brown and his distinctive, brilliant voice, and he nails the bombastic-yet-heartfelt role of Zobral here. In addition, the best-friend chemistry between Scott Bakula and Connor Trinneer remains quite strong.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s reviews of both the second-season finale of Star Trek: Picard and the premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will go up on this site on Thursday.
I hope that my fondness for the character of Sub-commander T’Pol and Ms. Jolene Blalock’s performance of same has come through in my various posts prior to this, but if it hasn’t then please let me state my suspicion that both halves of T’Pol of Vulcan have a fair claim to being Enterprise‘s MVP of Season One so far.
This opinion crystallised in the very moment she gave ‘The Kurgan’ himself marching orders.
Also, I respectfully submit “Florida Man gets sand-blasted” as the ‘Alternative Florida Man’ for this week.
Ah yes, the “two charecters get stranded in inhospitable environment” episode. Maybe it’s because I happened to see The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly for the first time around the same time I saw this, but I find “struggling across the desert” montages to be rather boring and prone to being dragged on for too long.
On the one hand, it’s nice that they have to deal with some fallout from the attack on the prison. On the other hand, I would rather hear about how that incident didn’t start a full-blown war, instead of another species asking for similar help.
FLORIDA MAN THINKS ENGINE IS A CHICKEN
Having now read the review, I definitely agree that this is one of those ‘Done in one’ episodes that doesn’t reach for the stars but does hit the mark it aims for perfectly (also that it’s hard to go wrong with Clancy Brown, especially when he’s allowed to go expansive; I’m a little sorry the character doesn’t seem to have shown up in future episodes, since the character’s dynamic with this Enterprise – “I’m somebody’s villain, but not your villain … also I throw a mean party” – seems somewhat unusual).
I do wonder if Captain Archer kept that guest list because he recognised that his host (flying a pokey little ship and hailing from a fairly obscure corner of a desert world) might not have the resources to cope with more than two people? (Especially when all the other possible guests were hungry for some R & R).
I have this amusing mental image of Porthos somehow getting hold of a horga’hn and dropping it at the feet of a dozing Captain Archer, with mildly amusing consequences … (On a slightly less cliche note, I wonder how Risa would react to First Contact with Humanity’s Best Friend? Does Risa have facilities specifically for the pampering of pets? … does Risa offer jamharon for pets?).
STAR TREK having, as I’m sure we all know, a long & proud tradition of making ‘Man candy’ out of it’s lead actors (To go with it’s equally proud tradition of throwing in a little something for those partial to the fairer sex).
I remember being generally unimpressed by this episode, despite Clancy Brown’s presence. Still, I like the followup to “Detained,” and the way there’s been a loose seasonal arc developing about humanity starting to make a name for itself on the interstellar stage.
“The irony is I have a feeling his cause is worth fighting for.”
Now this is quite a good one. The road to, if not hell then certainly trouble, is paved with good intentions. Archer has a tendency to pitch in whenever he sees someone in trouble and it’s earned him a reputation, but he finds his exploits have been exaggerated and he’s being recruited to fight someone’s civil war for them. It does a much better job than “Dear Doctor” at showing why a Prime Directive is useful, with the crew ending up in the middle of an internal affair because they blundered in without a full assessment of the situation, although the episode feels the need to spell this out, complete with T’Pol looking as though she’s trying very hard not to wink at the camera when she says they’ll need to create a directive to cover it.
Archer and Tucker get to do a bit more bonding with Tucker falling apart from heat stroke. I’m not sure if this is the first time we’ve seen Reed effectively having to work as first officer to T’Pol or not but it’s an interesting dynamic, and Sato isn’t afraid to ask difficult questions, although Mayweather conspicuously only gets one line. It’s interesting to see that, even in 2002 when terrorist was first starting to become the word you used to “prove” that someone’s evil, Star Trek wasn’t afraid to play the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” card. It’s easy to sympathise with Zobral, who ends up putting himself on the line to help Enterprise (albeit after getting them into trouble in the first place) for no real reward.
Also interesting that Zobral is acquainted with Suliban who apparently aren’t members of the Cabal and see Archer as a hero, which puts a positive spin on the ambiguous ending of ‘Detained’. Phlox doesn’t appear at all (although he is mentioned), the first time one of the regular cast has been absent completely. Archer and Tucker’s shuttlepod is apparently abandoned: Unlike with Voyager, they don’t have replicators, so you’d think they wouldn’t get replacements without dropping by a Starfleet facility.
@6/cap-mjb: “even in 2002 when terrorist was first starting to become the word you used to “prove” that someone’s evil”
Oh, it was used that way far earlier than that, probably going back at least to the 1960s. What happened in 2001 re-intensified it, but it hardly originated it. (I realized this when I saw a 1988-9 War of the Worlds: The Series episodes where all the alien-hunting main characters had to do was say they were after terrorists and the local authorities fell over themselves to cooperate.)
I think the reference to using hand Phasers as a heat source is from “The Enemy Within” rather than “The Naked Time” (by order of episode aired). By production code however, it may be “The Corbomite Maneuver” where Rand uses a Hand Phaser to heat water for coffee.
And not a single screenshot of Tucker and Archer with their shirts off? It’s like a Top Gun review without showing us the volleyball!
I think Clancy Brown can lift any show to must watch status. I still want a show or movie that costars Clancy Brown, Ron Perlman and Tony Todd!
Clancy Brown is charismatic, no doubt, and it has some very nice visuals – location shooting never gets boring. And the episode’s intentions are mostly good. But this is one episode that plays more like a simplistic morality plot with gaping holes. I recall someone once saying this episode was supposed to mirror the Israeli/Palestine conflict that had resurfaced at that point (2001/2002). Zobral is likable (a lot of that thanks to Brown’s performance), which helps to make his side sympathetic. But there’s not a lot of nuance in this one. It should have been a more complex scenario.
As pointed out, we’re not being given enough information or context. Which gives Archer (and us viewers) no choice, but to sympathize with Zobral, even though we know he lured him there under false pretenses. The episode puts us alongside the desert dwellers, with less resources, and who are being pursued by official military forces. They’re the ones being bombarded. For what it’s worth, it makes a nice visual distinction of how easy it is to label Zobral and his group as mere terrorists. It’s not as if the Torothons are any better. A government can commit atrocities just like any ‘terrorist’. The only difference is they have the law, the resources, the media and the population on their side saying otherwise. Given Russia invading Ukraine, the US having invaded Iraq, or what the French did to Algiers, it’s good to be reminded that ‘terrorists’ don’t necessarily equal evil.
But I think the episode doesn’t make that clear enough, and doesn’t commit enough to the idea. Padding it out with Archer/Tucker desert crossing scenes is a nice way to dodge the issue, as long as the crossing is interesting. But it’s slowly paced (though that might be the idea Bormanis and David Straiton were going for).
It’s nice that it uses Detained as a springboard for how rumors can spread and be distorted across the stars. That’s a nice bit of detail that makes far more geographical sense than civilizations thousands of light years apart hearing upfront about how Voyager’s reputation isn’t all that good. Even though we’re still a while away from the Xindi arc, you can tell Enterprise is trying to build a framework of continuity. Not a perfect one, but still a nice attempt.
Clancy Brown is the acting equivalent of your favorite spice, there on the shelf to rescue dishes that might otherwise be a bit dull.
“Desert Crossing” is an excellently performed episode that, nevertheless, I think exposes a lot of weaknesses about ENTERPRISE. Clancy Brown is always entertaining and it was onboard with all of the “Enterprise meets with some funny aliens.” However, the episode falls flat for me because it is, in the words of Seinfeld, an episode about nothing.
This is an episode about the crew deciding to do nothing and that is seemingly a theme in episodes despite the fact an episode about not doing anything is inherently not entertaining. “Dear Doctor” already tried to get us on the side of the Prime Directive in a way that failed for a lot of audiences and while this is a very good example of why it exists, I’m not sure we needed a hour long episode saying why.
(Then again, I believe the Prime Directive is a rule that exists to be broken–the drama is in justifying why)
I agree, Archer had no business getting involved in a war on Earth’s behalf but I’m not sure the temptation to do so was ever properly established. It would be dramatically more interesting to have Archer choose to be involved and be WRONG rather than just, “yeah, this isn’t my fight. Good luck, man.”
Perhaps a better episode would have been arriving, befriending the locals, maybe one of them falling in love TOS style, and then having a conflict among the crew when they find out they’re being persecuted by the government. Archer deciding, “We’re out here as representatives of Earth. We can’t act on its behalf in a conflict no matter how much we want to.”
I must admit that Clancy Brown’s turn as rebellious desert chieftain Zobral reminded me greatly of Anthony Quinn’s as Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia.
Is this one of those ENTERPRISE episodes where some of the leading men take off their shirts and/or don’t cover their heads while walking across a scorching desert in full sunlight? I remember this bothering me in at least one or two ENTERPRISE episodes–previous Star Trek shows usually handled desert episodes more sensibly, such as TNG’s “Final Mission”, and the beginning of DS9’s last season where Sisko and family go relic hunting in the sand.
Regarding the “who is the terrorist” puzzle box: Up until midway through the episode, it seems that possession of a radio is taken as stronger evidence of government authority than possession of a starship. Imagine aliens in Earth orbit, calling down. There would be tens to thousands of people trying to reach them, 99% of them crackpots … and when there is someone on screen who claims to be a head of government, shouldn’t that get him sorted into the ‘crackpot’ bin immediately? That’s a job for traffic control, or immigration, or space defense.
What WAS he referring to in that food, as well?
:)
@13. C. T. Phipps: You think ALL Rules exist to be broken – I should know, I’ve read a great many of your books (or as I like to call them “Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral? A dilemma in many parts”.
Also, one could make a case for the core theme of this episode being either “Good deeds have consequences” or “Legends are most dangerous when somebody expects you to live up to them” (More likely the former than the latter).
@10. ra_bailey: Well now I have a mental image of all three of these magnificently gravelly, growly giants channeling the Three Musketeers in something – but what could possibly deserve such an impossibly cool central cast?
@16/o.m.: I assume that the Enterprise is able to tell that the signal is coming from a powerful transmitter in a big fancy building in a large population center, which is pretty decent evidence the senders are who they say they are.
AlanBrown: That is the perfect description of Clancy Brown.
C.T.: I see your point, but I think it worked in this case specifically as a coda to “Detained.” Without the prior episode to play off of, I’d agree with you more about the problem. I will say, though, that your alternate plot in the final paragraph mostly just made me roll my eyes. *laughs*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yeah, this wasn’t a bad one at all. It’s a shame that the mini-arc of “We’re going to vacation on Risa!” is going to end with such a thud next week.
@18
ED: I admit, I do tend to be more Mariner than Boimler. However, I think the best Prime Directive episodes are acknowledging that it’s more guidelines than rules. Its casual acceptance as holy writ is something that just doesn’t make sense with the way it was presented.
@20
KRAD: Eh, the alternate plot is admittedly just the McCoy/Spock/Kirk thing. The idea there’s a conflict that there’s an emotional side too (McCoy — help the locals), the rational side (Spock — stay out of it), and choosing between them (Kirk figuring a way to help without war perhaps). There doesn’t seem to be any real conflict over whether or not to side with the locals as everyone agrees it would be a bad idea and they were lured here under false pretenses.
As bad as my idea was, and I admit it was, there just doesn’t seem to be much conflict in the episode. YMMV.
But it occurs to me that it’s interesting this is the only follow-up to “Detained” as it seemed like there were more plans to do so with the upcoming Risa episode. I admit, I kind of wish we’d gotten more of the conflict with Earth and the Tandarans. I like the idea Earth isn’t the Space United States yet but there’s already rising powers in the setting like the Vulcans, Andorians, and so on with Earth just kind of stumbling between them.
Sadly, we never really get what the political structure of the 22nd century was unlike, say, TNG or Deep Space Nine.
@2 agree about the hackneyed desperate journey plot. With few exceptions, I get supremely bored with storylines that involve desert crossings, open longboat journeys with no water, stuck in a spaceship with limited air supply, yada yada. The one exception I can think of is the Bounty movie, the one with Anthony Hopkins, of course I could probably watch him do needlepoint and would be completely mesmerized.
And as @15: noted, if you’re going to do the desperate journey across the desert, do you have to insult your intelligence by having the characters take their shirts off and wander around in the daytime bareheaded? I mean Tucker’s a Florida boy, seriously at least he should know better.
@23 “… Tucker’s a Florida boy, seriously at least he should know better …”
Except that the Sun Belt would have been Carrier Country for about 2 centuries by this point, and Florida’s is a wet heat with lots of overgrowth. On the other hand, they both went through survival training, so yes.
Given that it seems to being misconstrued, I should point out that Archer and Tucker only go shirtless to play the Random Alien Sports Game. They’ cover themselves up for their trek through the desert (see the third image above). They are bareheaded but I guess they had to make do with the materials they had to hand after being bombed out. (Checking the images, I see Archer did have a hat at one point but must have lost it.)
@22. C.T. Phipps: There really should have been a wink and a grin in my original post, but somewhat embarrassingly I forgot to throw it in; on an unrelated note, I agree that the Prime Directive is most worthwhile when regarded as an abiding principle, rather than an excuse for casual indifference.
I do think that STAR TREK could do with more examples of why the Prime Directive was a **** good idea in the first place (Not just episodes that show Our Heroes stopping meddlers, but also episodes showing Our Heroes dealing with the long-terms consequences of outsiders using more advanced technology or a wider base of knowledge to meddle with less developed cultures*), since so often we see people invoking the Prime Directive without troubling to provide supporting examples of why this became Starfleet’s most fundamental principle.
*Given the current political climate, I’d argue that an episode revisiting Ekos & Zeon a century and more after the events of ‘Patterns of Force’ might be an especially strong illustration of the enduring damage that can be done when someone thinks they know better when they only know a little more than the locals; doubtless there are less on-the-nose possibilities (and I welcome suggestions), but showing how much damage the legacy of a Fascist regime can do even after it’s dictator is long gone makes a nice sharp hook even when we limit ourselves to historic examples of populist totalitarianism.
I remember this one being fine. Not really impressive, but nothing wrong with it. Probably would have given it a 6 because it had Clancey Brown in it.
I’m guessing this late in the season the budget for alien makeup was dried up. Did Clancy Brown have any visible “otherness” apart from his chin tattoo?
No, but Brown is well known enough that they may not have washed to hide his face.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I DNF’d this episode, it was so excruciating. True, I have a dislike for “trekking through the desert” stories, but this episode was just dull and lifeless. We already had an episode with Tucker nearly dying over the course of the runtime (here it’s heat exhaustion, in the shuttle it was hypothermia) — and that one was much better done. Better character moments and fewer clichés.
Also, this may have been the laziest alien makeup in the series if not all of Trek. They didn’t even look like they lived (hatless) in the desert. I’m also unsure why a Russian accent was used. It was very distracting and not-at-all world building.
Hey, at least there was shirtless lacrosse, which reinforces my theory that there was someone gay calling some of the shots on Enterprise. Or they were trying to make a show that straight non-Trek women would watch.
Agree that Zobral & co didn’t seem legit as desert dwelling fighters. Zobral was had a pretty boy dreamy look out of a teen fan magazine. His voice did a great service toward believability but he really seemed like a guy in a Zobral costume at a party, not an actual freedom fighter who regularly gets beaten down by the sun and hot sand.
It was a good ep, and I am enjoying Enterprise. I really like T’Pol and am furrowing brow at anyone who doesn’t.
“Or they were trying to make a show that straight non-Trek women would watch.”
That’s a Trek tradition. Why do you think Captain Kirk lost his shirt so often? Although Spock was the one who inspired an almost Beatles-level mania in female fans.
I remember liking this episode a lot less the first time I saw it. Upon my second viewing, it seems to be more even handed than I remember. Part of it may have been my biases at the time, but it’s also possible I just missed a lot due to watching it on UHF television with a sketchy antenna.
Strangely enough, just today I was telling my wife about Highlander and I tried to give her a brief rundown. I remember mentioning the Kurgan specifically.
After reading ED’s comment, my mind was blown haha!
Surf Wisely.