2x03 Minefield

[8.3/10] In many ways, “Minefield” is a spiritual successor to “Shuttlepod One”. It’s another instance of something approaching a bottle episode, where a couple of officers are trapped trying to solve a seemingly intractable problem, voice their conflicting views of Starfleet, and get to know one another and bond in the process. Hell, it even has Malcolm opening up again (albeit in a much more serious way), when he feels like his life is on the line.

But “Minefield” does better at almost all of these things. It’s a more deliberate, meditative episode, one as focused on the dialogue that more quietly reveals the differences between Archer and his head armory officer than lathering them on with comic gusto. While I wasn’t plugged into the fandom in 2002, I can imagine this episode being polarizing. It’s very talky, very character-focused, and low on incident. But it uses those tools -- the more naturalistic dialogue, the slow tension, the wryer gallows humor of the situation -- to make its main figures seem more real and likable in the process.

Despite all that, “Minefield” is actually a pretty exciting episode! The show just keeps throwing new bumps in the road for the crew, and Archer and Malcolm in particular, to have to deal with. As I’ve written before, problem-solving mode is one of my favorite settings for Star Trek, and minefield offers no shortage of opportunities for that. In addition to the bomb defusal that starts the proceedings, the crew has to navigate their way through a cloaked minefield, and that combo alone makes for a tense challenge.

But then the episode just keeps upping the ante. In an already perilous effort to defuse the bomb, Reed is impaled through the leg by the mine and is trapped on the outside of the hull. A cloaked alien ship, whose language our heroes can’t translate without the help of an injured Hoshi, starts threatening the Enterprise. And if that weren’t enough, we find out that (1.) those aliens are the Romulans and are going to start firing if the humans don’t get out of their space and (2.) that the efforts to defuse the bomb are all for naught given its “sub-detonator.”

That’s classic, nuts and bolts Star Trek stuff. The Romulan threat builds and builds, and makes for a nice ticking clock to add to the urgency of the situation. The very nature of a bomb defusal adds tension to every move that the good guys make, especially when it calls for the inexperienced armory man Archer to have to be Malcolm’s surrogate hands in the defusal process. And there’s the looming possibility that, if this whole thing doesn't work, Archer may have to jettison that hull plate and send Malcolm to his doom to save the rest of his ship.

Naturally, Archer’s refusing to do that as anything but a last resort, and in the end, comes up with a clever solution to have his cake and eat it too. In that, “Minefield” also borrows a little from last season’s “Desert Crossing” where he’s helping an injured (or at least beleaguered) crewman through a tight situation, using his survival skills, talking one of his officers through a tough mental state, and refusing to leave one of his men behind.

It’s a good look for ARcher, but what’s interesting is that it’s a strategy that Reed himself would disagree with. One of the better aspects of “Minefield” is how naturally it teases out the differences between Malcolm and his captain.

Malcolm has trouble relaxing and socializing with his superior officer because he was trained to do just the opposite. Archer believes that for a long haul mission like this one, it’s important for everyone to bond and be friendly so that they can rely on one another. Malcolm questions the utility of allowing so many opinions to flow freely on the bridge rather than everyone just taking orders from their leader. Archer believes that the team of rivals, the free flow of earnest counsel from his senior staff, is an asset, not a liability.

And most of all, Malcolm believes that sometimes the captain takes too many unnecessary risks, like putting himself, and the ship, in harm’s way just to save one lowly armory officer. It’s a neat view of Malcolm who, with some dramatic (and admittedly a bit too writerly) recounting of the life of the great uncle he looked up to, has a bit of a martyr complex here. He feels shame that he couldn’t face his fear of drowning and follow in his family’s footsteps, and he sees nothing more noble than to follow his great uncle’s lead and to go down with the ship in order to save the rest of his crew.

Unfortunately, he picked the wrong captain to serve under if that’s his fate. The most enjoyable part of “Minefield” is the contrast between the awkwardness of that initial, ill-fated breakfast between Archer and Malcolm, and the way that the captain draws Reed out of his shell when there’s a life and death situation, and the necessity for distraction. Forced into a social situation, Malcolm is not at his best, as usual. But when called to do his duty, to put his life on the line as a Starfleet officer must, he is in his element, and suddenly more willing to see his captain as just another guy trying to fix this, rather than the superior officer he owes deference to, and accordingly, speaks much more freely.

By the end of things, there is a dramatic, explosive maneuver that not only detonates the bomb with Reed and Archer at a (barely) safe distance, but a daring escape from the Romulans right before they’re about to fire on our heroes. It takes some determined risk-taking from Archer, and an attempt at a self-sacrifice by Reed, but in the end, they’re both alive, both figured a way to solve the problem, and both melted the ice between them to make them something closer to friends than colleagues.

“Two people trapped together” is a venerable trope for all of television, not just Star Trek, but it’s rare that a show, let alone one with as much baggage as Enterprise, can pull off the excitement, the introspection, and the camaraderie, that “Minefield” did.