2x11 Precious Cargo

[5.6/10] Alright, now I’m starting to get downright suspicious. This is yet another episode this season that feels directly pulled from Star Trek’s back catalog. Unfortunately for me, it’s my least favorite episode in the franchise’s history: “Elaan of Troyius.” Apart from the silly name (which is no sin coming from The Original Series), the episode is an abysmal outing where, among other sins, Captain Kirk basically slaps an uptight and officious princess around until she behaves and, naturally, falls in love with him. It is the absolute nadir of the 1960s show, and maybe of all of Star Trek.

Thankfully, Trip doesn't beat up Kaitaama, another ascending, alien monarch with an attitude and sense of superiority, played by a person of color. The closest they come is a minor tussle on an unknown planet that, with D-grade slapstick that ends with them in yet another compromising position, culminating in, you know, “love.”

That whole (thankfully figurative) slap-slap-kiss romance brings this one down considerably. Maybe if I were a fan of Top Chef, there would be a greater novelty to seeing Padma Lakshmi prissing it up on Enterprise, but for the uninitiated like me, she’s just another guest star, one who has little acting ability or chemistry with Connor Trinneer. The latter is an especially glaring omission, as only the sparkiest of sparks could make up for the hackneyed romantic setup “Precious Cargo” tries to establish between the two.

Oddly enough, the Archer-focused B-story is the stronger element of this one. “Precious Cargo” basically splits into two parts early on. After a pair of freighter pilots come asking for help with their passenger in stasis, the usual mischief reveals that they’re keeping her hostage. The ensuing skirmish sees one of the freighter pilots bolt with Kaitaama and Trip in tow, while the rest of the Enterprise crew tries to get information out of the remaining freighter pilot who’s now stranded with them.

Naturally, the freighter pilot who’s surrounded by angry military people who’ve been lied to and want to find their crewmen isn’t necessarily super forthcoming about his involvement in the whole kidnapping and ransom routine, and feigns ignorance. That ends up being the perfect setup for what may be Archer’s best ruse ever.

He convinces the freighter pilot that T’Pol is a judicial administrator from the Vulcan High Command who dishes out justice with an iron fist. They do a little good cop bad cop, with T’Pol amusingly taking to the exacting jurist role, and convincing their guest that he’d better cut a deal for “leniency” and help Enterprise find its missing engineer if he can, lest this harsh sentencer order his death. Archer pulls off the trick well, and while the freighter pilot seems like a bit of a dupe, the sequence is cute and clever enough to pass muster.

Were that the same could be said for the part of the episode focused on Trip and Kaitaama. The episode is so utterly, embarrassingly transparent about trying to jerry rig some sexual chemistry between the two of them. From Trip staring at her when she’s in stasis, to a close face-to-face moment when he helps her through a crawl space, to the two being forced to make physical contact in a tiny escape pod, to the aforementioned tumble and fall into a pond, “Precious Cargo” seems to think it can just put two attractive people in enclosed spaces together for extended periods of time, and that that alone will justify them falling in love, or at least harboring some affection for one another.

That’s the most frustrating thing about this one. There’s never really an attempt to justify or account for Trip and Kaitaama liking each other after repeatedly getting on one another’s nerves for most of the episode. You can read between the lines, and say there’s a physical attraction there that they deny because of their interpersonal differences. You can even extrapolate and say that Kaitaama likes Trip because he doesn't defer to her as a monarch like others do (or, less charitably, that she’s so starved for contact with peers that she eventually latches onto the first conceivably match she finds), and that Trip likes Kaitaama because...I don’t know....she’s pretty? That’s it. I got nothing. And neither does Enterprise.

In the meantime, we have to endure generic combative banter between the two of them. Say what you will about The Dohlan in “Elaan of Troyius”, but there was too much other bad crap going on for the actress’s performance to be a notable weak point. The same can’t be said for Lakshmi here, whose stilted, hammy efforts to come off as bratty and entitled just make her seem like an annoying character in an eighth grade play. Granted, it’s not like “Precious Cargo” gives her much to work with given the sort of backwards cruddy update of The Dohlan character she has to play. But you could at least expect some humanity in demeanor or something of note between her and Trip to at least recommend the pairing as well-intentioned.

Instead, we get this, a dull, overly familiar story about two people who seem to hate each other and get on one another’s last nerves for 90% of the episode’s runtime, and then arbitrarily fall in love at the very end for reasons that are some blend of unknown and retrograde. The episode ends with Kaitamma essentially telling Trip, “come visit my planet after I’m in charge, and we can keep canoodling” in a faux-sexy manner, just adding to the cheap cringeworthiness that this one is built on.

Truth be told, “Precious Cargo” is tolerable, which is more than can be said for its Original Series predecessor. The interactions between Trip and Kaitaama are more hackneyed than offensive, which is at least an improvement. The pair’s shtick is worth more of an eyeroll than the change of the channel. Still, it’s dispiriting to see Enterprise not only recapitulating episodes from the franchise’s past yet again, but picking the worst episodes to do it with, and coming up with results that are as tired now as they were distasteful fifty years ago.