2x06 Marauders

[6.2/10] “Mauraders” is a platonic ideal of a Star Trek episode, with basically none of the soul. What I mean by that is that it hits every basic beat from the franchise, and hits them ably, without ever being able to elevate the material into something unique or moving. It’s a replacement level episode, one that doesn't do much wrong, but which doesn't do much especially either.

The premise is a familiar one. The Enterprise crew beams down to an alien colony that mines deuterium, a recognizable flavor of spaceship juice that the ship is low on this week. But the brusque and shaken leader of the colony, will only give Archer and his team a small complement of it, saving the rest for reasons he’s cagey about. Soon, a small squad of Klingons beams down, and it becomes clear that the locals have been swindled into a small protection racket, where the Klingons demand the total share of deuterium with the threat of death and destruction if they don’t get it. Naturally, this won’t stand in the eyes of the do-gooders from Starfleet. They resolve to teach the locals how to fight back against the Klingons, in the hopes of letting these people live and work freely.

There’s nothing wrong with this premise. If you wanted to boil down 70% of all Star Trek episodes to a formula, it would be “Crew arrives at a new place, discovers that something is amiss, and then tries to fix it.” This one in particular felt like a throwback to the Original Series blueprint, where our heroes are in search of useful materials and fighting back against Klingons who are roughing up the locals. There’s just not much spark to “Marauders”, or anything that particularly distinguish this instance of the formula from any other time fans have seen it.

The one thing you can say is that the episode gives off a Western vibe, vaguely anticipating the debut of Firefly by a few months if not coming anywhere close in terms of quality. We’re in a dusty mining town, where the noble white hats stroll in to save the locals from the ruffian black hats who are terrorizing their small but decent community. (It also doesn't hurt the vibe that the leader of the locals is played by Larry Cedar, who would go on to have a small but significant role in Deadwood.) It’s not the first time Star Trek has evoked that sense -- hell, it’s part and parcel with the original “Wagon Train to the Stars” pitch -- but it at least gives an otherwise anodyne episode a bit of flavor.

“Marauders” also complicates the moral calculus ever so slightly in a commendable way. When Archer wants to just fight off the Klingons himself, T’Pol rightly points out that he has two realistic options: (1.) he can either kill the Klingons or (2.) he can accept the fact that subduing them this time will only cause them to come back and rough up the locals even more later. It’s a conversation that gives thought to the “what comes next?” question of blowing up (sometimes literally) an unpleasant but stable scenario that all too many Star Trek episodes blow off.

So instead, Archer comes up with a third way and decides that he and his crewmates will teach the locals how to defend themselves, that way they’ll be able to show the Klingons that they’re not to be trifled with, regardless of whether the Enterprise is on their side. Sure, it takes some of the usual dull speechifying from Archer, and the usual perfunctory resistance-cum-acceptance from the local leader, but it’s a honest-to-goodness solution to the ongoing threat, which is worth more than a little a show where the captain isn’t nearly this thoughtful on an every day basis.

The problem is that the show’s third act, which consists mostly of training and preparation, is boring and unimaginative. Archer’s big plan has three prongs: (1.) We’re going to teach you to shoot. (2.) We’re going to teach you how to handle yourself in a hand-to-hand fight. (3.) We’re going to move the town 50 meters over to set a trap for the Klingons.

The first two amount to nothing more than the usual “getting better at it” montages. The shooting sections accomplish little other than provide a nice grace note for Hoshi after her marksmanship woes early in the first season. The fight training section is downright comical, where T’Pol’s grand insight is to teach the villagers the ancient Vulcan art of...dodging and rolling. There’s a fig leaf given that the Klingon attacks are crude and predictable, but it’s still funny how her methods basically amount to “here’s how to avoid this very specific attack pattern from a brute twice your size.”

And the “move the town over” scheme is solid enough, but doesn't do anything in the near-term beyond give us a chance for some unsatisfying character interactions. Archer gives another lousy speech to the local leader, rambling on about being ready for the fight as a leader despite butterflies and him not liking bullies, and Trip interacts with a generic moppet with a generic “lost my parent” story and a generic dream to pilot a starship some day.

But when the Klingons actually arrive, business picks up. T’Pol’s super advanced rolling techniques prove preternaturally effective, and the Vulcan herself manages to kick some butt. The shooting and corralling sequences are reasonably exciting, and the chance to surround the bad guys with fire and let the local leader read them the riot act is a gratifying enough end to the whole caper.

There’s just not much to any of it. It’s all ably done (aside from the speeches), and tells a tight enough, albeit somewhat overly simple story. There’s just not much reason to care about anything that happens here. The locals are all standard archetypes without much in terms of personality or performance to distinguish them. The Klingons do the usual Klingon things like sneer and yell “patak.” And the Starfleet crew do their usual capable good guy routine. There’s nothing there especially objectionable to it -- it’s just a collection of beats and character types we’ve seen several times over, in Star Trek and on T.V. in general, without anything especially new, different or compelling.