“Hatchery”
Written by André Bormanis & Michael Sussman
Directed by Michael Grossman
Season 3, Episode 17
Production episode 069
Original air date: February 25, 2004
Date: January 8, 2154
Captain’s star log. Despite the fact that they’re supposed to be booking it to Azati Prime, Enterprise is in orbit around a planet where they’ve discovered the wreckage of a ship that matches the hull composition of a Xindi ship, but not the configuration. Archer puts a team together to investigate.
The only part of the ship that’s functioning is a sealed, heavily shielded compartment. The rest has no life support and is littered with Xindi-Insectoid corpses. Opening the heavily sealed compartment reveals a breathable atmosphere and a bunch of eggs. One of the eggs squirts gunk onto Archer. He immediately goes back to Enterprise (at T’Pol’s urging; he initially insists he’s fine, because he’s a macho asshole, but T’Pol’s wiser head thankfully prevails) to be examined by Phlox. The doctor determines that it’s a mild neurotoxin, and treats the rash it caused and hypothesizes that it was a defense mechanism designed to protect the eggs. He’s both right and wrong…
The sealed room was a hatchery. Based on his autopsy of the dead Insectoids, Phlox determines that they’re asexual and reproduce pretty constantly. They’re also short-lived, and Phlox theorizes that every Insectoid ship has such a hatchery.
T’Pol and Tucker report that the Insectoids died because they took damage coming out of their subspace corridor and crash-landed. Most of the crew died of asphyxiation because they transferred what power they had left to the hatchery—and its power is failing as well.
Archer orders them to power the hatchery up. Tucker objects to aiding the enemy like this, but Archer points out that the Xindi want to destroy Earth because they’ve been convinced that humans are monsters. Archer would rather not give them more ammunition to support that theory by letting a room full of children die.
They spend two days on the ship trying to get the power started, and Archer finally orders Tucker to use Enterprise’s antimatter reserves to power the ship. Both Tucker and T’Pol object to it, as they really shouldn’t dip into their reserves, but Archer insists. He’s also working himself to the bone, not eating or sleeping, and focused entirely on saving the Insectoid eggs and nothing else. When T’Pol refuses to provide Archer with the antimatter, as it will endanger their mission, he relieves her of duty and confines her to quarters.
Hayes has been running simulations based on the data they’ve downloaded. While Reed is initially skeptical of the intelligence the major has gleaned, he eventually realizes that Hayes has found a good tactical suggestion for fighting the Insectoids.
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Some Desperate Glory
Tucker visits T’Pol—who’s not supposed to have visitors, but Tucker tells the MACO on guard duty that it’s not social, it’s medical, he needs to have a neuro-pressure session—and she says that he’s acting completely irrationally and they have to do something about it before the damage he does to the mission is irreparable.
A Xindi-Insectoid scout ship arrives and fires on Enterprise while Reed is the watch commander on the bridge. He summons Archer to the bridge, but by the time the captain gets there, Reed has destroyed the enemy vessel using the tactics suggested by Hayes. Archer is livid, as they could’ve given the eggs to them, but Reed insists he had no choice. Archer relieves Reed, too, and has him confined to quarters, and puts Hayes in charge of the bridge while he works on getting power to the hatchery.
Sato’s been working on translating the Insectoid’s database. Archer tells her to send a distress call to the Xindi once she’s finished with that.
Now Tucker, who was initially reluctant to go along with T’Pol’s notion of disobeying Archer, is totally on Team T’Pol. He brings Phlox to Archer, who’s loading their antimatter reserves into a shuttlepod, and insists that the captain is behaving irrationally and he should be examined. Archer thinks the whole notion is a silly goose, but agrees to be examined once they get the hatchery powered up. Tucker says that’s not good enough, and then Archer threatens to confine them both to quarters also, and they back down.
Thus beginneth the mutiny. Tucker incapacitates T’Pol’s guard, and then the two of them, Reed, and some of Reed’s security people work to take over the ship, stunning some MACOs guarding the armory. T’Pol—aided by Reed and his security people, and also by Mayweather—take over the bridge from Hayes.
By this time, Archer has taken a shuttle down with the antimatter, so Tucker and a security guard beam down to the planet. Tucker confronts Archer, who is now literally crawling with Insectoid babies. Archer tries to explain why he’s doing what he’s doing to Tucker, who just shoots him.
Phlox examines Archer and determines that there was a lot more to the neurotoxin Archer was sprayed with: it has a kind of reverse-imprinting effect, causing Archer to unconsciously believe that he’s the caretaker of the gestating offspring. They show the medical evidence to Hayes, who agrees that they did the right thing. He also asks Reed why he didn’t tell Hayes this, and Reed says they couldn’t risk him taking the captain’s side.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Xindi-Insectoids are short-lived and reproduce quite a bit, which is necessary to survive as a species, something that the writers of Voyager’s “Elogium” totally did not understand.
The gazelle speech. Archer’s initial argument to save the Insectoid eggs is actually very much the right one, spoiled by the neurotoxin-induced obsession with doing so at all costs.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol wears a Starfleet uniform and an NX-01 ballcap in order to enter the armory undetected, since—as the Marvel movies have demonstrated—all you need to do to disguise yourself is wear a ballcap…
Florida Man. Florida Man Commits Mutiny, Later Apologizes.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox threatens to relieve Archer of duty, but then doesn’t follow through, which seems like a mistake…
Good boy, Porthos! When Tucker visits a recovering Archer at the end of the episode, we see the captain recovering on his bunk, being snuggled by his puppy.
I’ve got faith…
“The Xindi are trying to destroy Earth because they heard that humans are ruthless—this this is the chance to prove them wrong!”
–Archer, making a good point that was lost in obsession.
Welcome aboard. The only guests this week are three recurring regulars as MACOs: Steven Culp as Hayes, last seen two episodes ago in “Harbinger,” who’ll be back in “Countdown”; Sean McGowan as Hawkins, last seen in “Impulse,” who’ll be back in “The Council”; and Daniel Dae Kim in his final appearance as Chang, having last been seen in “Extinction.”
Trivial matters: Enterprise has been booking it to Azati Prime since discovering that that planet is the likely construction site for the Xindi weapon in “Stratagem.”
Reed’s fear that Hayes will take his job in “Harbinger” is sorta-kinda realized in this episode.
Hayes mentions that he was trained at West Point, which means that that military academy still exists in the twenty-second century and at least some MACO officers have attended that institution.
It’s been a long road… “Humans don’t throw morality out the window when things start getting a little rough.” The basic plot here is one that has promise, but pretty much every aspect of the execution is botched.
It starts with Yet Another Non-Teasing Teaser, where Archer gives the order to assemble a landing party, and then we’re reminded that it’s a long road gettin’ from there to here after absolutely nothing interesting has happened, and I just sigh.
What’s maddening about this episode is that there was a real chance for a legitimate debate here. Where is the line between fighting a war and trying to show compassion? Yes, the Xindi want to blow up Earth. However, as Archer very importantly reminds T’Pol, Tucker, and the audience, they’ve been told that humans are savages that want to destroy them. Leaving a room full of eggs to die will just reinforce that.
Unfortunately, the episode sidesteps the debate by having Archer suffer Space Madness and become the obsessive caretaker of the eggs.
The means by which to relieve Archer of duty are presented in the episode itself, with Tucker and Phlox confronting the captain in the shuttle bay, but then they back off for no compellingly good reason. At this point, Archer hasn’t slept in three days. That alone is enough cause to relieve him of duty. There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is considered a torture technique.
On top of that, we have the ridiculous conflict with the MACOs, who are portrayed as automatons who will just blindly follow whatever stupid order the captain gives. At the end, after being told by Phlox that Archer was under the influence of an alien neurotoxin, Hayes says, “Not the sort of thing they trained us for at West Point,”and I have to call bullshit on that. They absolutely do train you to notice signs that your commanding officer might be compromised or acting in a way that jeopardizes the mission. Depleting the ship’s antimatter reserves, hanging out on a planet when they’re supposed to be booking it to Azati Prime, reprimanding the acting captain for doing his fucking job when the ship is fired upon, giving an order to betray their position to the Xindi, and, again, not sleeping for three days are all things that should’ve been red flags to Hayes if he was actually any good at being a military commander.
Then again, the MACOs have generally sucked at doing their jobs this season, so maybe that’s part of it. Which is me being generous, as it’s instead a couple of Hollywood writers who have no clue how the military actually functions and just assuming that their Space Marines would be a bunch of dumb jarheads who blithely follow all orders given them by commanders, even ones who are obviously suffering from sleep deprivation. Hell, Hayes should’ve been suspicious from the moment Archer told him that Reed made a mistake in returning fire on the Xindi-Insectoid ship that ambushed them.
It’s too bad, because there was a good story buried under the nonsense. But, alas, it stayed buried.
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be an author guest at the first-ever Trek Long Island convention this weekend at the Hyatt Regency Long Island in Hauppage, New York. He will be joined by fellow Trek scribes Robb Pearlman, Michael Jan Friedman, John Peel, Aaron Rosenberg, Glenn Hauman, Allan Asherman, and Sean Von Gorman, as well as actors Doug Jones, Oded Fehr, David Ajala, Sam Vartholomeos, Raven Dauda, and Phumzile Sitole from Discovery, Robin Curtis, BarBara Luna, France Nuyen, Sandy Gimpel, Tanya Lemani, David Frankham, and Vadia Potenza from the original series, J.G. Hertzler from DS9 (as well as Voyager and Lower Decks), Bruce Horak from SNW, and Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, and Toni Belafonte from Picard, and lots of other cool folks. Keith will primarily be in the vendor room selling and signing books, but will also be doing some programming—his full schedule can be found here.
