“The Catwalk”
Written by Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 2, Episode 12
Production episode 038
Original air date: December 18, 2002
Date: September 18, 2152
Captain’s star log. Enterprise is preparing for a detailed survey of a new world when a Takret ship shows up warning them that a neutronic storm is approaching, and it’s coming faster than Enterprise can travel. The three aliens ask for sanctuary as their vessel won’t be able to withstand the storm.
Unfortunately, Enterprise isn’t likely to fare much better. The hull can take the damage, but the people can’t: the radiation will penetrate the hull and kill everyone. Phlox suggests sickbay as the best-shielded part of the ship, but Tucker has a better suggestion, one that all eighty-plus people on board can fit in: the catwalks in the nacelles. The nacelles themselves have stronger shielding than the rest of the ship, so they can survive there. But since the temperature in there is three hundred degrees normally, they have to shut down the warp engines completely.
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Tucker and Mayweather scope out the nacelles once the power goes down. Mayweather rather smartly reminds Tucker that there needs to be a latrine of some sort. They also set up a command post, to which bridge functions will be routed.
The three Takret, who value their privacy, and who claim to be stellar cartographers, get a curtained-off area for themselves, while Phlox has to convince T’Pol to let him bring all his animals along.
Once the entire crew and the Takret, as well as Porthos and Phlox’s menagerie, are safely ensconced in the catwalks, Enterprise turns into the wavefront to ride it out. Mayweather is able to keep the ship stable.
As the days pass, T’Pol spends almost all her time in the command center, though Archer urges her to try to mingle with the crew and maybe get to know them better. Archer himself checks on everyone (Sato comments that this gig will cure anyone of claustrophobia; Archer also helps another crewmember with her crossword puzzle). Phlox says these cramped quarters remind him of home, as Denobula is a fairly crowded planet. Reed at one point approaches Phlox for treatment for motion sickness. Mayweather also reports that there are plasma eddies that are incredibly dangerous, but he can avoid them with his mad piloting skillz.
At one point, a card game turns contentious, as Reed is going stir crazy, and also objects to the lack of bathing facilities. Tucker counters that he’s lucky there’s a toilet. The Takret cook their food on a plasma manifold, which is incredibly dangerous. Tucker gets them to stop and promises to have Chef prepare something they can eat.
Tucker is then summoned to the command post. The antimatter injectors have come online, which is not good. It might be a glitch, but Tucker puts on an EVA suit to check it out. Phlox reminds him that he only can be out there for twenty-two minutes before he’s in danger from radiation poisoning.
To Tucker’s surprise, he finds several uniformed Takret, who are wandering around the ship without any kind of protective gear. He manages to stay hidden, and quickly learns that they’re also on the bridge. There’s a ship docked with Enterprise. They don’t seem to know that the crew is in the catwalk, and Tucker high-tails it back there to report to Archer.
The Takret captain is listening to Archer’s logs while waiting for his crew to get the engines up and running. He’s concerned that Archer’s crew will return once the storm passes, assuming they abandoned ship temporarily.
Phlox examines the three Takret, who reluctantly admit that their species is immune to the radiation from the storm—however, their ship was in no shape to weather the storm, so they did need to board Enterprise. However, they aren’t stellar cartographers, they’re conscientious objectors (or deserters, depending on how one looks at it). They ran away to avoid serving in their corrupt military, which makes a habit of commandeering ships and murdering their crews.
The Takret are trying to start up the warp engines, which they would only do if they wanted to take possession. And if they’re successful, the nacelles are gonna be too hot to survive in.
They’ve got about twenty minutes before the warp coils charge up, and they also have the advantage in that the helm controls are still in the catwalk. They only have three EV suits, so Archer, Reed, and T’Pol suit up (Tucker is benched due to already having too much radiation exposure).
Reed and T’Pol work to shut off the warp injectors. Meanwhile, Archer talks to the Takret captain, who informs Archer that they’re harboring fugitives and the Enterprise is being impounded. Archer counters that he doesn’t recognize Takret authority, and he’ll blow up the ship before letting it fall into their hands. The Takret captain snidely counters right back that he doesn’t believe that Archer will destroy the ship that was built with his father’s engine design. Archer then proves he’s not bluffing by ordering Mayweather to turn into a plasma eddy.
Unable to regain helm control, and with T’Pol having shut the warp engines down again, the Takret captain reluctantly orders his people to abandon ship. Once the Takret ship has disengaged from Enterprise, Archer orders Mayweather to steer away from the eddy.
T’Pol joins the crew in watching an old episode of Kung Fu, where she figures out the twist in the episode before everyone else does. Then Archer announces that Mayweather’s mad piloting skillz have gotten them out of the storm sooner than expected, and they can all leave the catwalk to shower, change clothes, and sleep in their own beds, finally…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The nacelles are, understandably, the best-protected part of the ship. Of course, it’s also three hundred degrees when it’s in use, which is why we don’t usually see people wandering around there…
The gazelle speech. Archer watches water polo on his padd, which is way too noisy for T’Pol. So he shuts it off and goes to sleep.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. But Archer can’t sleep, because T’Pol is working on her padd, and its beeping is way too noisy for Archer. So she shuts it off and goes to sleep.
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Optimism, Captain! Phlox’s first suggestion is for everyone to crowd into sickbay, which is the best protected part of the ship (best-protected habitable part, anyhow), and it’s a good thing they didn’t do that, as a rerun of “A Night in Sickbay” isn’t something anybody wants….
Good boy, Porthos! Phlox pretty much guilts T’Pol into giving him enough room on the catwalk to house all of his animals in separate crates. (Guilting a Vulcan is no mean feat…)
More on this later… This is humanity’s first encounter with a neutronic storm, though T’Pol says that Vulcans have encountered them, and Phlox’s dialogue indicates that he’s had some experience with them as well (or at least has read up on them). Two centuries hence, Voyager will encounter a neutronic storm in the Delta Quadrant in “Fair Haven,” though ships will be tougher in two hundred years and Voyager will weather it far better.
I’ve got faith…
“You knew we’d be stuck in here for over a week. You might have given a little thought to making it tolerable.”
“I only had four hours, Malcolm—you’re lucky we’ve got a toilet.”
–Reed pissing and moaning and Tucker refusing delivery of same.
Welcome aboard. The three fugitives are played by Scott Burkholder (last seen as a Starfleet commander in DS9’s “When it Rains…”), Aaron Lustig (last seen as a Banean doctor in Voyager’s “Ex Post Facto”), and Zach Grenier. Two of the alien officers are played by Brian Cousins (last seen as a Romulan in TNG’s “The Next Phase” and a Borg in TNG’s “Descent” two-parter) and Sean Smith, while the alien captain is the last of five Trek roles for Danny Goldring, who has played a Cardassian legate (DS9’s “Civil Defense”), a human Starfleet soldier (DS9’s “Nor the Battle to the Strong”), a Hirogen hunter (Voyager’s “The Killing Game” two-parter), and a Nausicaan captain (“Fortunate Son”).
Trivial matters: This is the only real appearance of Chef, though we only see him from the waist down, thus keeping his true identity secret. (He was played by Richard Sarstedt, one of the regular background actors/stand-ins.
T’Pol mentions once doing the kahs-wan ritual, a desert survival challenge on Vulcan first seen in the animated episode “Yesteryear.”
The Takret captain listens to a couple of Archer’s logs. The first that we hear is from “Fallen Hero,” referencing the Mazarites and Ambassador V’Lar. We don’t hear enough of the second to nail down when and what it was.
Based on dialogue, the episode of Kung Fu the crew was watching was “The Tide,” which is the episode that Sheriff Boggs (played by Andrew Duggan) appeared in. However, the bit we saw on the screen was not from that episode…
It’s been a long road… “You’re proposing we take refuge in a crawlspace?” It’s funny, I was watching this episode and really grooving on it, but when I wrote it up, I was having a hard time remembering why I liked it so much. I think part of it is how dreadful “Precious Cargo” was than anything, but also the script and direction were brisk and top-notch. I also have to admit that the episode sold me when Mayweather mentioned the need for a latrine in the catwalk. Trek’s aversion to even acknowledging that bathrooms exist is often fodder for humor (justifiably so), so this was a welcome reminder of one of the many difficulties of cramming everyone into an access walkway for a week.
The plot is pretty straightforward, but the conversations among the crew, the Takret captain listening to Archer’s logs and using the information therein against him (though wouldn’t those things be password-protected or something?), and a rare opportunity for Mayweather to show off his piloting chops all combine to make it enjoyable. I’m less convinced by Archer’s driving the ship into an eddy. Of all the Trek captains to date, Scott Bakula is the second least likely to go completely batshit. That’s a scene that Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, or William Shatner would’ve nailed. (In fact, Mulgrew did nail it in “Scientific Method.”)
It’s popular among certain Trek fan circles to slag Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, and it’s mainly because Enterprise was a) their creation and b) the only Trek spinoff to fail in the marketplace. Indeed, the show was regularly ripped apart in online forums through the first five years of the millennium. (Which is why I’m less than impressed with the people slagging the current crop of Trek shows, who talk about how they miss when Trek was good from 1987-2005. Suddenly, Enterprise is part of the “good” Trek, when two decades ago, it was the shitty new show that wasn’t as good as the old stuff. Nothing changes…)
I always thought that the vitriol directed against those two was overdone, but I never really focused on how much writing the two of them did for the show. They wrote or co-wrote 18 of the 26 first-season episodes, and this is only the fourth episode of this season so far that they don’t have a writing credit on. Given that they wrote at least the story for just under 70% of the episodes so far is, if nothing else, an indication that these two are responsible for most of what the show has given us thus far.
It’s certainly telling that this episode—which is pretty standard stuff, all told—feels like an even stronger tale than it really is, mostly because a lot of what came immediately before (not just “Precious Cargo,” but also “Vanishing Point,” “The Communicator,” and “Marauders”) was so very meh.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido is a guest at Dragon Con 2022 this weekend in Atlanta, where he’ll be doing panels, workshops, readings, autographings, and more. His incredibly crowded and insane full schedule can be found here.
I liked this episode a great deal, but am a little sad that what was shaping up as an interesting little character study (and a chance to get a better look at the NX-01 crew outside the charmed circle of the opening credits) had to dive back into adventure so very quickly: both halves of the episode are comfortably above average (boosted not a little by the Alien Captain having one heck of a Villain Voice and real presence*), but it strikes me that both major plot elements would have benefited from having more room to breathe (If nothing else it would have been interesting to see more made of the fact that the Takret Militia are mostly defined by a description from the very deserters they’re trying to track down).
Also, I’m more than a little amused that Captain Archer is just too sane to act crazy (and even more amused by the fact that the Takret aren’t quite comfortable enough with their ability to read this new alien species to test their assessment of Captain Archer to destruction).
*I’m don’t know if this is villain to sustain three seasons and movie, but one would have genuinely loved to see him become a recurring, low-key headache for NX-01 (Most likely as an uncomfortable example of how fine the line between ‘state sanctioned privateer’ and ‘naval officer’ can be when the Government is a nice long cruise away).
This is a disappointing episode in a number of ways. First off, storms traveling faster than light make no damn sense. Second, TOS made a big deal once or twice about how no previously known natural phenomenon could travel FTL, so this was a continuity error. Third, it was internally contradictory: If the storm was approaching faster than light, how the hell could they see it approaching out the window??? It would’ve already been there before they saw it. Fourth, it was totally unnecessary, since it was never even mentioned after the teaser and was just a lame excuse for the ship to be unable to outrun it.
And it could’ve been fixed so easily with a minor tweak to the script. Just establish in the teaser that the engines are under maintenance and it won’t be possible to get them up and running again before the storm (approaching at a more reasonable sublight velocity) hits. That would also justify the nacelles being cool enough for the catwalks to be habitable; they’d probably have to be offline for several hours at least, maybe days, before they were cool enough, since — contrary to popular belief about space — vacuum is a damn good insulator. And really, 300 degrees is ridiculously low for the internal temperature of a nacelle filled with matter-antimatter plasma. It should’ve been more like 3000 degrees at the very least.
This is one of those episodes that inclines me to interpret Trek the way Gene Roddenberry apparently did, as a sometimes-inaccurate dramatization of the captains’ logs rather than a literal depiction. I’d prefer to believe that it “actually” was a sublight storm and the dramatic recreation just got it wrong.
I also agree with ED that it’s disappointing the way it abandons the character study for action. It showcases one of the key differences between seasons 1 and 2. In the first season, this would’ve been embraced as an opportunity for a character-driven, slice-of-shipboard-life episode, the kind of M*A*S*H-style character study that ENT occasionally undertook that year — and attempted earlier in this season with “A Night in Sickbay.” But by this point I figure they must’ve been under more network pressure to play up the action, so instead of a claustrophobic character study we get yet another “Die Hard on a spaceship” episode.
This is why I revisited the trapped-in-a-catwalk dynamic in Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures. I felt this episode squandered the potential of the premise as a way of creating stress and conflict among the crew, and I wanted to try to do it right.
Keith, this episode actually has two “Yesteryear” allusions, the other being a mention of Lunaport. It also, of course, references both The Search for Spock and First Contact by establishing Sarek’s grandfather Solkar as the same person as the unnamed Vulcan ambassador from the end of FC.
Ah, so that’s what we should be calling the gentleman who looks as though he’d quite like to drop diplomacy and run all the way back to Vulcan when he gets his first unfiltered taste of Earthly culture? (-;
This episode always reminded me of TNG’s “Starship Mine” with aliens skulking around the ship while it’s apparently abandoned due to dangerous external conditions. I remember liking this episode quite a bit!
“You’re the captain. Can’t you order the storm to calm down a little?”
I was already bemused last rewatch to see comments saying this episode was a step up from the previous one, even if I seemed to be the only one who enjoyed ‘Precious Cargo’, because I remembered this one as pretty forgettable. Well, I think ‘Precious Cargo’ had the more memorable guest cast: The two groups of Takrits here are so lacking in distinguishing features that I didn’t even catch any of their names. But maybe it was going in with low expectations again, because I rather enjoyed it. Like Archer says, it gives the crew a chance to bond and it has a half-decent action sequence at the end, although it’s a shame it’s against a bunch of generic aliens of the week who we never hear from again.
It featured lots of little moments that I like: The ready room scene between Archer and T’Pol, where the explorer in him takes time to admire a rare phenomenon even as it’s about to kill him and a typical sassy moment after he notes she severely downplayed the story of the Vulcans’ encounter with one (“I must have remember correctly”). The fact they actually have Porthos up on the makeshift bridge and Archer’s “captain’s chair” being a barrel. Archer and T’Pol managing to get on each other’s nerves sharing quarters. Archer doing a walk round of his crew. It’s a shame though that they don’t make more of Archer suggesting T’Pol learn to fraternise with the crew than a brief moment of her attending movie night.
But, yeah, my final conclusion is that your opinion of this episode is probably greatly affected by your opinion of the previous ones!
Ensign Tanner is mentioned as being due to relieve Mayweather at the makeshift helm: Presumably he’s the officer seen manning it later in the episode, who’s been one of the regular relief helmsmen since ‘Strange New World’. There’s another reference to 83 crewmembers: Given that they’ve been consistent, I’ll stop mentioning it until there’s a change.
While it’s a definite improvement over Precious Cargo, it’s still not nearly as effective as similar ‘slice of life’ ENT episodes from season 1 such as Breaking the Ice. It still has some nice character moments, but as pointed out, the episode doesn’t spend nearly enough time on those, choosing the easier action subplot instead. I do like Archer and T’Pol getting on each other’s nerves, though. And I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of the Takret on other episodes. They made more of an impression than most Delta Quadrant stock societies.
Overall, a bland, but safe and inoffensive episode. At this point, they were running on fumes, so any half decent episode was a win.
@krad: Most of Berman and Braga’s writing credits on ENT were story credits, which is actually not an unusual approach for EPs/showrunners (David Simon shared story credit on almost 90% of The Wire‘s episodes). It’s reflective of how much a show is a byproduct of its creators/EPs. But in terms of actual teleplays, they’re only credited on 6 out of 26 in season 1 (and that’s counting the pilot as 2). Plus, that doesn’t mean the other writers (Sussman, Black, Bormanis and company) didn’t also have as much work to do.
@6/Eduardo: Normally, showrunners do the final rewrite of every script to ensure a consistent voice and continuity to the series, but it’s considered proper for a showrunner to eschew screen credit on collaborative scripts with other writers, since showrunners get paid a regular salary anyway and splitting the credit is depriving the other writer of full payment.
Somebody commented about this on Facebook, and I wanted to clarify: I meant that Archer wasn’t convincing in going deliberately batshit, and also that yes, the least likely Trek captain to go deliberately batshit is Picard. (Not deliberately is a whole ‘nother thing, as First Contact and “I, Borg” showed.)
Bringing the more recent captains in, I can totally see Georgiou, Lorca, Pike, Rios, Freeman, and Burnham convincingly going batshit. Saru would be as bad at it as Archer, I think.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@2 I agree with your reasons for disliking this. I did some quick math and concluded that the storm was at least 4.7 light years across ( assuming the conventional TOS wisdom that warp factor is a cubic function of c, the storm was travelling at least warp 6, and it took 8 days to pass ).
My first trigger was “Why don’t they just adjust their orbit to hide behind the planet” until they followed up with being stuck in it for eight days.
Might have been a good story, but the junk science killed it for me.
While there were some things I liked (and continue to like) about this episode (especially seeing a part of the ship (or, really, ANY ship) we hadn’t yet encountered, there’s one thing that bugs me every time I watch:
The script and staging of the episode make it appear that they’ve put the ENTIRE crew into ONE catwalk (two nacelles implies that there should be TWO catwalks, no?) All of the senior officers are in the same catwalk. If there were two being used, that wouldn’t be the case. And rigging two catwalks for the duration would have made both far less crowded.
Maybe it was just too much trouble to configure a second latrine?