1x14 Sleeping Dogs

[7.0/10] If Enterprise is meant to be a coming of age tale for Starfleet, then I like the idea of the series showing its main characters adapting to the demands -- both personal and professional -- of getting by in deep space. Star Trek, as a franchise full of mostly-episodic television, isn’t always consistent about developing its characters. (Or at least, it isn’t always consistent about remembering that it’s developed its characters.) So it’s nice to see an episode like “Sleeping Dogs” that explicitly shows two of the show’s major characters learning to acclimate to their new surroundings.

The chief beneficiary of that is Hoshi, who gets the spotlight for the first time since “Fight or Flight” and pretty much picks up where that one left off. We open with Hoshi practicing her phase pistol skills and explicitly volunteering to go on this away mission, bits that both seems like a direct response to her unease about both things in the series’s third episode. Even if the series didn’t execute on it beyond that, I like the fact that this episode shows Hoshi wanting and more importantly trying to change, and become a more well-rounded, less frightened Starfleet officer. “Fight of Flight” was the pits, but as a starting point for growth in a character, it’s fertile ground.

Hoshi has that change to develop when the Enterprise comes across an unknown alien ship submerged in the reaches of a gas giant. Hoshi, T’Pol, and Reed go aboard via shuttle when their ship detects life signs that might require rescue, only for the trio to not only discover that (gulp) it’s a Klingon ship, but to have their shuttle pod stolen by one of the few conscious Klingons remaining, stranding them. That creates a ticking clock, as the Klingon ship’s hull is cracking under the pressure of the gas giant’s atmosphere, leaving our heroes having to figure out a way off of this Klingon clanker before they’re crushed to death.

It’s a fairly generic problem, but it gives Hoshi a fair amount to do to prove her usefulness and her resolve. T’Pol and Reed wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails or the Klingon signage or, more importantly, the Klingon controls and readouts that can help get them out of this mess, without her there to translate. She takes charge, and is unreserved in being a confident member of the away team, in sharp contrast to her last away mission.

It also gives Archer a chance to grow as well. The Klingon who stole the away team’s shuttle doesn't get very far before the Enterprise nabs it with their grapplers and reels it in. That requires Archer to have to negotiate, or at least communicate with her in order to see if there’s any way to help his crewmen aboard her ship. Initially, he tries the usual naive Starfleet diplomacy thing, and naturally gets nowhere, until Trip tells him to “think like a Klingon.”

Is it the most nuanced or novel turn in a story? Far from it, but it still sees Archer reading up on the Klingons and modulating his approach to suit them. The delivery is fairly ham-handed, but it’s still an instance of Archer learning to adapt to the needs of the individual situation and update his priors when appropriate. When accused of raiding the Klingon raptor and poisoning them, he gets the Klingon to admit that they started getting sick after drinking some tainted ale from a ship they themselves raided. And when she still refuses to help him rescue her ship and her crewmates, he challenges her that it would be detrimental to her honor to let them all die needlessly, not in battle, but due to some bug in their beverages.

That leads to even the Klingon learning to adapt a little. She’s still culturally inclined to be suspicious and, let’s face it, hate any outsiders. But at the same time, when a human is not only making sense about how her crew got sick, but challenging her on her honor and helping to restore it, it’s worth taking him up on it. It’s not the biggest of transitions, since we barely knew this woman before, but it’s still an instance of a character starting in one place and clinging to certain preconceived notions on how to proceed, and molding them to fit her situation as necessary. It’s something even Archer manages when his response to a challenge from the revived Klingon captain goes from “but we helped you!” to “go away or we’ll blast you back to where we found you!”

Of course the biggest transition is still reserved for Hoshi, and it takes an interesting form. Hoshi’s clearly more than a little freaked out when she and T’Pol end up stalking through the Klingon galley and find animal carcasses, gacht, and live, angry torgs. While the steadicam tour of the place is a little cheesy, and the CGI Klingon hogs don’t really hold up in 2019, it’s a great bit of production design, with the Klingon eatery having a haunted house feel that justifies Hoshi’s reversion to being disturbed enough to scream when she saw the juiced corpses in “Fight or Flight.”

But in an unexpectedly caring moment, T’Pol helps her. The Vulcan takes her companion’s hand and, through some combination of (presumably) Vulcan psychic suggestion and a simple meditation technique, helps Hoshi to calm herself. T’Pol even promises to help Hoshi learn how to perform the method on herself when they return to the ship. Hoshi’s “gee, I sure wish I could control my emotions like you Vulcans” statement is a bit too on the nose for my tastes, but T’Pol’s surprising tenderness and effort to assist makes for a great moment between two characters who don’t interact that much.

From then on, Hoshi is confident and bold. She sets her fear aside, and tells Reed (who’s suffering from a cold in a forgettable z-story) to take some big risks involving the photon torpedoes to get the Klingon ship out of danger. Sure enough, it’s those risks that allow Archer and the Klingon to find them (in a shuttle that’s been conveniently reinforced to withstand the pressure), and take them to safety.

The problem of the week, and the personal conflicts in this one are all pretty simple: get off this alien ship, learn to master your fear, figure out how to communicate on a wavelength an outsider will understand. But it’s all solid, sturdy storytelling and character growth. “Sleeping Dogs” is unlikely to be anyone’s favorite episode of Enterprise, given its fairly basic approach. But sometimes not getting too fancy, just taking the time to show your character facing straightforward situations and learning from them, is enough to make your episode a good one.

Watchable
Themes: klingons, Hoshi development

In this episode our crew and with them humanity as whole learns a lot about klingons and how to deal with them, Hoshi gets her space legs and Reed catches a glimpse of something unknown to humans before - photon torpedoes.

After he was bored by the idea of checking out 3 neutron stars just a couple of episodes ago, Archer now decides random gas giant is so interesting it deserves probing. Even T'Pol notes that our system has 4 of those. But this one is bigger! Well, I guess they needed a way to get them to where they needed to be for real plot to start developing. Or they're trying to say Archer has sixth sense for finding trouble. Pretty lazy either way.

Anyway, probe discovers a ship about to be crushed by atmosphere so they decide to send T'Pol and Reed. Surprisingly, Hoshi volunteers for this mission. She wasn't coping well with challenges and dangers of space travel , as we were shown in episode Fight or Flight, and this episode ends that story arc by her taking command from volunteering to making decisions in critical moments. Go Hoshi!

When they get there, they find incapacitated Klingons laying around and one female one that boards shuttle and escapes, leaving them stranded there with rapidly descending broken ship. Enterprise deploys trusty grappling hook and reels her in. She believes they are responsible for incapacitation, but it turns out they raided Xarantine outpost and drank their ale which is poisonous to them. Archer finally shows some signs of thinking around a problem and uses his new found knowledge of Klingons to convince her to accompany them to klingon ship and save both ship and its crew.

Klingons being klingons, they feel violated after waking up and prepare to attack Enterprise, but captain is now experienced enough to not feel threatened by them and convinces them to go away while they still can.