1x12 Silent Enemy

[6.4/10] This is basically a redo of “The Corbomite Maneuver” from The Original Series. You have the same sort of advanced, unknown, alien species is popping in to probe, attack, and threaten the Enterprise. Only that felt like a mortal threat and this never really seems to rise above minor inconvenience. Nobody ever seems that worried about the mysterious aliens until the final act when our heroes are besting them.

Some of that comes down to the B-story of the episode, where Captain Archer orders Hoshi to figure out what Reed’s favorite food is so that the oft-mentioned never-seen “Chef” can make it for his birthday. There’s a deliberate parallel there, with Hoshi’s earnest efforts to query Reed’s friends and family to find the answer coming up short at the same time the Enterprise’s efforts to understand or communicate with these attacking aliens keep coming up empty. It’s just that neither adventure is especially interesting.

It’s a shame, because I love the idea of the Hoshi/Reed bit. It’s a great way to try to let us know more about who Reed is as a person, and to get to know Hoshi better in the attempt. Taking time to have non-galaxy-shaping stakes stories that just encourage us to commune with the characters is great. But Hoshi’s interludes just hit the same beats over and over again, and it’s not like we learn much about Reed beyond the fact that he’s a pretty private person. The whole pineapple reveal is a clever little solution to the problem, but in the end the whole thing comes off like a trifle.

That’s not a huge problem! I like trifles, and they can be fun diversions in otherwise serious shows. But there’s two main issues. 1. This show engenders a certain stage-y delivery for most of its performances, which means most of its comic moments don’t really land amid the sort of unnatural/stilted presentation. And 2. We’re supposed to be the midst of some unknowable, unstoppable enemy with superior weaponry and technology being able to blow the Enterprise out of the sky, so a silly side adventure about finding the right filling for Malcolm’s cake seems tonally odd and detracts from the urgency of the main conflict.

That main conflict itself is fine. Again, you could do worse than repurposing familiar plots. There is a sense of menace from a ship that doesn't return your hails, that responds to your message of peace and friendship with violence, and which scans and boards your ship without permission. The best sequence in the whole episode is the sense of foreboding and suspense when the aliens have disabled the ship’s power and come aboard. Sure, some of the early 00s CGI is less than convincing, but there’s still a certain scariness from a dark hallway with some weird-looking, weird-moving creatures who are probing your crewmen and immune to your weapons.

That leads to arguably the most interesting element of the episode -- Archer’s self-questioning over whether he really was too hasty in leaving port before Enterprise was completely ready, and whether humanity is really ready to be out in the final frontier like this. It’s the most self-examination that Archer’s done in the whole series up to this point. The idea that there’s this unknown, seemingly unbeatable threat that they’re not equipped for, and that they might have been equipped for had they not rushed out to Qo’Nos, and that Archer is full of uncertainty and maybe even a little guilt over that is a humble, self-doubting, flaw-accepting version of the character we don’t get to see very often.

Of course, that quickly goes away after his crew proves themselves capable of rising to the challenge and they manage to beat back their attackers after all, even after Archer breaks down and makes a failed attempt to contact the Vulcans for help. Trip gives him a version of the “risk is our business” speech, and suddenly everyone’s emboldened to keep going. That’s low-key the theme of this one, that space travel involves certain “acceptable risks” if you’re going to achieve anything worth achieving, but it’s not really introduced until halfway through the episode, and even then, it’s only dramatized a little here and there.

That mostly comes down to Reed’s “phase cannon” plan. Trip’s and Reed’s teams not only find a way to construct the phase cannons that the ship would otherwise have to return to space dock on Jupiter to have installed, but also figure out a way to overload the power of those cannons, allowing them to blast the alien ship’s shields into smithereens, while rerouting the excess power to Enterprise’s structural integrity, helping it withstand the blowback. Let’s be real, that’s pretty much all just a bunch of standard treknobabble, but it fits the situation well enough. And it ties into that risk-based theme, with Reed jerry-rigging the power systems to support that plan and convincing Trip that it’s worth it.

So they do! And the aliens are sent packing! And Hoshi even discovers the food that Reed likes! Our heroes are all set and everything’s happily after! Again, I don’t have a big problem with that. It’s just that this episode has three main components 1. Hoshi’s grand cake adventure 2. The mysterious attacking ship and 3. The “should we even be out here at all?” question, and only the last one is particularly interesting. Even there, the self-examination is pretty fleeting before everyone is gung ho and ready to prove their mettle in the wild west of space once more.

The exciting thing about “The Corbomite Maneuver” is that there was tension throughout. Here was a challenge that Starfleet’s flagship wasn’t necessarily up to handling, with a superior foe that could toy with them, and force them to use their grit and wits to defeat. On Enterprise, the same sort of challenges comes off like just another day at the office, with a fine enough but disposable sidestory, and a barely there emotional component about whether Archer’s ship and his team are actually up to this. "Silent Enemy" is fine, but no more than that. It’s no sin to fall short of one of The Original Series’s episodes, but even amid the perpetual rough-edges and hit-or-miss trajectory of the original Star Trek, the episode-to-episode comparison does Enterprise no favors.

Worth watching
Themes: first contact, Reed development, Enterprise development

Enterprise is making way for future human space exploration by deploying subspace amplifiers, which apparently draws attention from a ship that even T'Pol doesn't recognize. They don't respond at all and just go away after taking a look. They return later, causing ship wide power failure, docking their shuttle, getting all old school alien with probing incapacitated crewmen and escaping before the crew can do anything. This makes Archer realise they are ill equipped for dealing with something as alien as this and turns them around to Jupiter station so they can get their phase cannons mounted. Reed and Tucker are certain they can do it themselves but Archer is too shaken to approve their request. That doesn't stop them from giving their all to do it themselves, which is the decision that ultimately saves them as they encounter aliens one more time, where it's finally clear their intention is to capture Enterprise. Aliens themselves have a part in their own defeat as their monitoring device causes power surge that boosts power of the cannons at the expense of other systems, which is something they use to defeat aliens and once more reverse course and go further into space.

Now this is really good. We get character development with having a character in question barely in that storyline at all, which is actually brilliant way to show just how much of a private person Reed is. We get truly alien looking aliens, not just humans with a little prosthetic detail to make them different (and also some slick looking ships). This goes a long way to show us there are other warp capable species in the universe whose motives and intentions can't be understood by usual human logic. Mystery surrounding them really brings a dose of scariness that isn't that usual in ST universe, as they genuinely seem as a threat, which really brings home the point of Enterprise and its crew not really being prepared for anything galaxy throws at them. Moreover, it also gives an opportunity to show us what the crew is made of, as they work relentlessly to mount those cannons themselves. It's everything one would hope for out of a Star Trek episode.

Fun fact: we get to learn there are 81 humans, 1 denobulan and 1 vulcan onboard.