[7.8/10] You know what almost always works in Star Trek? Stack a problem on a problem, where solving one means having to deal with another. And if those problems mean you have to deal with personal issues on the crew, or face a moral dilemma? All the better. I’ve written before that problem-solving mode is usually my favorite flavor of Star Trek, and “The Catwalk” delivers that with aplomb.
The first problem is fairly simple. There’s some kind of “class 5 neutronic storm” coming through. I’m not sure we’ve ever heard of one of those before, but the episode makes clear what the import of it is. It destroyed a Vulcan vessel and all hands, and is threatening to do the same to Enterprise. The upshot is that the crew will have to hunker down in close quarters in the titular catwalk for a week, and that the main reactor will have to be shut down so that they don’t all cook alive once inside. That’s complicated by the fact that the warning about the storm came from a trio of aliens looking for shelter, whose polite but peculiar ways agitate the rest of the crew a bit.
Honestly, that would have been enough for a perfectly solid episode. The first half of this one -- which basically consists of the preparations for “camping” in these crawl spaces and then the friction and cabin fever that erupts when people are kept from their creature comforts and forced to be in close quarters all the time -- is compelling all on its own.
There’s a lot of little human moments as the preparations are made. Dr. Phlox asking T’Pol not to make him choose which of his animals get to come with and survive the storm is a nice one. The same goes for little bits like Reed getting a hypospray of pepto bismol while getting indigestion in the catwalk. And even Archer’s little pep talk before they reroute command functions and dive into the storm has a certain “we’re all in this together” feel that’s genuinely heartening.
The same goes once the crew is in the thick of the temporary isolation. The passage of time is a little vague here, and it seems like people get antsy and irritated rather quickly, but it’s easy to give it a pass. We get to see the senior staff gambling with rations (and witness the torso, if not the face, of the infamous “Chef”.) We see arguments over the lack of showers and the choice of movies and the other vaguely summer camp disputes that happen when everyone has to share a cabin.
Honestly, it’s just kind of fun seeing everyone hang out and have to spark off on another. I don’t know if a full episode of Enterprise as a hangout show would have made me jump for joy, but seeing the predictable complications to the necessary measures taken in the face of the storm was a fun way to get to know the characters, and their up and down connections with one another, a little better.
But just when things seem like they’re reaching a fever pitch in terms of people being too close to comfort for one another, a new problem shows up. A group of aliens who are from the same species as their trio of visitors has docked with Enterprise, is poking around the ship, and most startlingly, is powering the main reactor back up once more. It’s the sort of problem-on-a-problem that adds another layer to what our heroes have to overcome to get through this, and makes the episode more exciting and interesting.
It also creates a nice moral and tactical dilemma for Archer. The trio of aliens who claimed that they were stellar cartographers admits that they are, in fact, fugitives and these interlopers are after them. But they plea with Archer that they’re being hunted for deserting a corrupt and murderous militia, that steals ships and kills anyone in their way. It’s the sort of “who do you believe?” problem that Enterprise confronted in the first Daniels/Silik episode, but I like how Archer handles it here better.
He pretends to be the lone survivor of the storm, and essentially feels out the captain of the boarding party via intercom. With that, he keeps his catwalk-confined crew safe (or at least secret), while he’s able to gauge whether his guests’s tale of this militia as evil marauders is true. The dastardly captain’s response seems to prove the deserters right, which means that reasoning with him, or just turning the fugitives over to save the ship, won’t work.
Instead, the problem requires some wiliness, and a solid game of chicken, on Archer’s part. He essentially threatens to destroy the ship rather than turn it over to the militia, and has to make good on the threat by having Mayweather steer Enterprise toward an eddy. While victory feels, as usual, a little inevitable, that’s tempered by the fact that the militia captain seems fairly sharp. He read the ship’s logs, and is skeptical that Archer would be willing to sacrifice the culmination of his father’s work.
That leads to some nice tension when they’re trying to scare the militia off the ship, and hoping they can convince them that Archer isn’t simply bluffing before the warp coils turn the rest of the crew into hot pudding. Of course it works, but it’s a good, tense moment that includes a great performance from the actor who plays Ensign Mayweather. Between his lightly haunting reflection on being in this type of storm once with his parents, to his white knuckle steering of the ship during the standoff, he sells the perilousness of the moment extraordinarily well.
In the end, the day is saved, the invaders are repelled, and both problems are solved. The solutions make sense, but have challenges that make success feel earned and meaningful. There’s no grand statement made about anything through this, like there are in the best Star Trek episodes. But it’s a story that works and that, by the time of the cowboy movie the crew watches after all the excitement, really did bring everyone together as Archer hoped. That’s more than enough for a good nuts and bolts episode of Trek.
It's dumb, it takes place entirely on the ship, has cringey dialog, and entirely forgettable guest stars. But somehow it's not particularly offensive. Easily skippable.
Review by dgwVIP 10BlockedParent2018-02-13T03:06:30Z
If the neutronic storm front is "traveling at high warp", how can Archer see it out his window? It should have already engulfed the ship by the time its reflected light reaches their position. (I accept that we, the viewers, can see it, for dramatic reasons…reluctantly.)
With the main power grid shut down, how can they polarize the hull plating? Sure, they have backup power systems that can keep stuff like life support running, but wouldn't polarizing the entire hull take an awful lot of power?
The galley has an awful lot of stuff sitting around that would have fallen to the deck by then, most likely, from all the turbulence. And if the radiation is lethal to a human after three minutes of exposure, are the foodstuffs they left behind even going to be edible after spending over a week bathed in it? I guess it depends on whether the radiation is absorbed and held by organic matter. (At any rate, the real reason food was left in the galley was probably so they could explode lettuce with weapons fire in a later scene. And things hadn't fallen to the deck yet because they needed stuff to fall due to turbulence during the firefight. Dramatic necessity, blah blah.)
My technical nitpicking aside, this was a fairly solid episode from a story standpoint. It was certainly much better than "Precious Cargo". About the only thing I really have to call out is Archer's slightly hokey handling of aliens appearing out of the blue, demanding to come aboard for shelter from a storm Enterprise hadn't even detected yet. (I suppose I should also call out Enterprise's failure to detect the storm on its own sooner. For a ship with supposedly decent long-range scanning capability, that was a fair flub.)