“Harbinger”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Manny Coto
Directed by David Livingston
Season 3, Episode 15
Production episode 067
Original air date: February 11, 2004
Date: December 27, 2153
Captain’s star log. We see Tucker having a Vulcan neuropressure session, but it’s not with T’Pol, it’s with one of the MACOs, Corporal Amanda Cole. The session ends with Cole kissing Tucker to the latter’s surprise—but not to the viewer’s, as she’s been flirting pretty noticeably with him.
Enterprise is pootling along toward Azati Prime when Mayweather reports that the stars seem to be shifting position. They stop and find a convergence of multiple spatial anomalies. They also find a small pod in the anomaly with a humanoid life inside. They grapple it out, but as they do so, the anomaly moves to cover the fore section of the ship, damaging systems, and turning the atmosphere unbreathable. Mayweather has lost helm control, but Tucker—who’s unaffected in engineering—is able to pull them out.
They rescue the occupant, who, once he regains consciousness, begs to be put back. He claims to be from a transdimensional realm, and Phlox says that he’s dying—but putting him back in the anomaly won’t do him any favors.
Buy the Book
Some Desperate Glory
Phlox informs T’Pol that Cole came to him with headaches, and she also mentioned that she was doing neuropressure with Tucker. They both express concern that Tucker’s amateur neuropressure is possibly doing damage to Cole. T’Pol also shows hints of jealousy.
Hayes has suggested having his MACOs train Starfleet personnel in more advanced hand-to-hand combat techniques. (Why he’s waited until months into the mission to suggest this is left as an exercise for the viewer.) Reed has already said no, so Hayes went over his head to Archer, who has ordered Reed to agree to it, on the argument that the MACOs are way ahead of Starfleet when it comes to this stuff. Reed and Hayes argue over when to schedule the training sessions, and it’s obvious that Reed thinks Hayes wants his job and is going to be an ass about this no matter what.
T’Pol reports to Archer that this anomaly convergence is located precisely at the midpoint among five spheres. Tucker and T’Pol’s examination of the pod show that it’s made of the same material as the spheres. Archer theorizes that the pod was a canary in a coal mine, sent to test the effects of the anomaly.
Hayes’ sessions go well, to Reed’s annoyance. However, at one point, a MACO puts Mayweather on the floor, and Reed ends the session, telling Hayes to control his people. Hayes says what happened wasn’t out of line (speaking as a martial artist, I’m on Hayes’ side of this argument, what happened to Mayweather is something that sometimes happens when you spar), but Reed is pissy. Later, Reed and Tucker share a meal in the mess. Tucker teases Reed about his pissing match with Hayes, and Reed tells him to fuck off. Then Reed teases Tucker about his flirting with Cole, and Tucker tells him to fuck off.
Tucker goes to T’Pol for a neuropressure session, and they discuss his sessions with Cole. They discuss the possibility of jealousy, with T’Pol insisting that she’s above such things, and Tucker confused as to why he would feel any. T’Pol then reveals what Sim said about Tucker’s feelings for T’Pol, and then they kiss, and then she drops her robe to reveal a completely naked body, and then they have sex.
Hayes walks in on Reed working out, and they have a sparring session that quickly devolves into a grudge match and bleeds (so to speak) out into the corridor.
The alien has a pleasant conversation with Phlox, then when the doctor turns his back, the alien assaults him. He can apparently phase through matter, so he walks through the ship, disrupting systems.
When the tactical alert is called, Hayes and Reed stop fighting and gather their troops and try and fail to stop the alien. He tries to sabotage the engines by phasing through it, after rendering Tucker unconscious, but Reed and Hayes work together to cause a feedback surge and stop the alien.
Tucker and T’Pol talk in the mess hall. T’Pol insists that the previous night was an experiment in human sexuality, no more, no less. Tucker is nonplussed, and they both agree that they should probably never speak of it again—though Tucker figures they can still continue the neuropressure sessions…
Archer reads the riot act to Hayes and Reed for acting like five-year-olds, then tries to question the alien about why he’s really there. The alien starts to fade out of existence, but his last words are, “When the Xindi destroy Earth, my people will prevail.”
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Reed and Hayes stop the alien by actually reversing the polarity of the plasma coils. It’s awesome.
The gazelle speech. Archer has a truly epic rant against Reed and Hayes. It’s one of his finest moments as a captain, and his dressing-down of the two morons is right up there with Kirk’s yelling at the bar-brawlers in the original series’ “The Trouble with Tribbles” and Sisko’s yelling at Worf, O’Brien, and Bashir in DS9’s “Bar Association.”
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol insists she isn’t jealous of Tucker and Cole’s neuropressure sessions, and that her seduction of Tucker is just an experiment in human sexuality. Both these things prove that Vulcans can too lie.
Florida Man. Florida Man Has Sex With Alien Seductress!
Optimism, Captain! Phlox outs Tucker’s “adultery” to T’Pol. On the surface, he just seems to be passing on medical information, but you know he’s totally trolling all three of them…
Better get MACO. Hayes thinks the Starfleet personnel need to up their hand-to-hand game. When Archer is selling Reed on this, he mentions how well the MACOs have performed since coming on board, and he must be referring to adventures between episodes, because there’s been no evidence onscreen that the MACOs are in any way competent…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. The use of Vulcan neuropressure as a fig-leaf for sex in previous episodes becomes a transparent fig-leaf in this one, culminating in T’Pol coming on to Tucker in a manner that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1980s teen sex comedy.
I’ve got faith… “The last thing I need is to hear that two of my senior officers have been admitted to sickbay because they suddenly regressed to the level of five-year-olds!”
“Captain—”
“Don’t try to tell me who started it!”
Archer doing a verbatim reading from the riot act, and also refusing to let Reed get a word in.
Welcome aboard. Thomas Kopache plays his seventh of seven (so far) roles on Trek as the alien, having previously played a Vulcan in “Broken Bow,” a Romulan in TNG’s “The Next Phase,” a holographic train conductor in TNG’s “Emergence,” an Enterprise-B bridge officer in Generations, a Kohl in Voyager’s “The Thaw,” and had the recurring role of Kira’s Dad in two episodes of DS9.
Israeli actor, singer, author, and activist Noa Tishby plays Cole, while Steven Culp is back as Hayes; last seen in “The Shipment,” Culp’s next appearance will be two episodes hence in “Hatchery.”
Trivial matters: Enterprise learned of Azati Prime in “Stratagem.” The Tucker clone Sim told T’Pol of Tucker’s attraction to T’Pol in “Similitude.” The alien’s final line hints that he’s from the species that built the spheres, which will be more or less confirmed in “Damage.”
This is Cole’s only onscreen appearance, though she will be mentioned again in “E2.”
The U.S. airings of this episode on UPN (and later reruns on the SciFi Channel) showed a slightly different version of T’Pol dropping her robe, enlarging the image so they could crop it above her posterior. Audiences outside the U.S., and later viewers on DVD and various streaming services, get a more complete view of Jolene Blalock’s backside.
T’Pol’s uncharacteristically emotional behavior in this episode will later be revealed to be due to trellium-D exposure.
It’s been a long road… “You two really ought to declare a truce.” As part of the Xindi arc, this is a useful, important episode. We get our first look at the Sphere Builders, though we don’t know it’s them yet, and it becomes clear that they’re manipulating things based on what the alien says before he disappears in a puff of illogic.
But holy crap, is all the other stuff that happens in the episode ridiculous. Let’s start with the macho idiocy of Hayes and Reed sniping at each other over the MACOs training Starfleet. This could have worked if two things were different.
One is that this should’ve happened much earlier in the season. It’s ridiculous that, after months of faffing about in the Delphic Expanse (not to mention the several weeks it took to get there), it only just now occurred to Hayes to suggest extra hand-to-hand combat training for the Starfleet crew.
And the other is the nature of Reed’s disagreement with Hayes. Look, different branches of the military tend to have rivalries with each other that border on hatred. That’s totally fine. But the issue is Reed being worried that Hayes is after his job, and that makes nothing like sense. Hayes is part of a totally different branch of the military that does totally different things. There is no Earthly reason why he would even be interested in becoming the security chief on a starship, and even if he was, it wouldn’t be so simple as applying for a job, he’d have to transfer to a completely different service. It’s ridiculous.
And that’s not the worst of what happens in this episode, because, of course we have the T’Pol’s Bare Butt scene.
I mean yeah, sexual tension, jealousy, Tucker flirting with someone else, gobby gobby gobby, but ultimately, all of it was in service of the producers’ continued efforts to make sure that their show primarily appealed to heterosexual teenage boys who used their allowance to buy copies of Maxim.
It’s also ridiculously out of character, though we’ll eventually find out that that’s for another reason. Though one has to wonder if they were more concerned with finding an excuse to get Jolene Blalock out of her clothes and flashing Connor Trinneer (and the audience) and retroactively came up with the trellium-D addiction to explain it.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at Indiana Comic Con this coming weekend at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. He’ll be at Table G5 in the exhibit hall selling and signing books all weekend, and also doing a panel on Friday from 4-5pm on writing in other people’s universes in Room 104.
