2x09 Singularity

[6.6/10] Did some memo go around the Enterprise writer’s room to start nicking from the franchise’s past more liberally? This is the third episode in a row where the series feels like it’s doing cover versions of episodes that Star Trek has done better elsewhere. And while the franchise is known for deploying certain formulas and conventions, stringing too many together with too little new or different in the outings quickly becomes tiresome.

That said, “Singularity” isn’t a bad episode. It gives us a very standard Star Trek set up. The ship is approaching some distinctive interstellar phenomenon (in this case, a black hole in a trinary star system), and as our heroes move closer to study it, everyone starts acting in an increasingly peculiar fashion. There’s oblique nods toward “The Naked Time” (showering in clothes) and other famed episodes in the franchise’s history when everyone starts acting weird when proximate to some space-bound curiosity, but that doesn't prevent the episode from feeling like a capably-done retread.

The twist this time is that radiation from the black hole makes everyone fixate on specific, minute tasks, at the expense of everything else and to the annoyance of everybody else trying to pursue their own paranoid or overinvested project. Archer is writing the preface to a biography of his father. Trip is refashioning the captain’s chair. Reed is figuring out a new security protocol. Hoshi is making her old family recipe to feed in lieu of the out-sick chef. Phlox is obsessed with the idea that Mayweather is carrying some malady after his run-in with the alien carwash a few episodes ago. And Mayweather himself fears the worst possible consequences if he doesn't get back to duty on time.

The only person spared these indignities is T’Pol. Vulcan physiology apparently makes her immune from the radiation’s effects. The episode makes an odd choice with her though. It tries to suggest that she too might be affected, since she seems very focused on a new sensor array to examine the black hole, and bristles with Trip on a couple of occasions. And yet, the episode opens with her as the lone individual after the radiation has left everyone else unconscious, suggesting, if not confirming, the twist that whatever the radiation is or does, it’s not likely to be affecting her. (She’s already focused and prone to be annoyed by her fellow crewmen!)

That whole cold open is a bit of a strange choice beyond just T’Pol. Any Star Trek fan worth his or her salt could probably guess that the trinary star singularity is responsible for the crew’s odd behavior, but the opening two minutes essentially give that away. Maybe the writers are going for the dramatic irony of the audience realizing that the crewmembers are being affected while the characters themselves are oblivious to it, but there’s not even the whiff of mystery, and instead the drudge of inevitablity, as our heroes get steadily testier and more paranoid.

There’s supposed to be something alternatingly comic and tense about the entire crew falling into minutiae obsession like this. It’s supposed to be a little goofy when Hoshi screams for carrots or Trip becomes convinced that adding a cupholder to the captain’s chair is the key. But it’s supposed to be scary when Phlox is about to perform unnecessary surgery on Mayweather’s brain or crewmembers start getting physically violent with one another, and “Singularity” never quite threads the needle between the two.

At the same time, none of these fixations is especially interesting. “Singularity” is laudable for trying to give everyone in the cast something to do, but it means that each sub-story feels pretty undercooked (sorry Hoshi), and few are interesting enough in a vacuum to sustain audience interest apart from the overall plot, even with everyone going overboard on minor tasks. The whole point is that people are making mountains out of molehills, but none of those molehills are compelling enough to keep you entertained while the characters are magnifying them.

The closest the episode comes on that front is Malcolm creating the primogenitor of the “Red Alert.” To the extent there’s a point to all of this (beyond an attempt to tell an entertaining yarn), that’s it. There’s a subtle theme that crazy stuff happens to ships trawling the galaxy as Enterprise is, and so it’s good to have rapid response protocols that let captains and crew be at the ready when it does. Obviously Malcolm goes overboard, but there’s a nice setup and payoff with the weapons being charged when Archer and T’Pol need them in the final act. The humor of the alarm sound being annoying fell flat to me, but I got a solid chuckle out of Malcolm liking the ring of calling it a “Reed Alert.”

That final act is pretty dull though, despite being nominally action-packed. T’Pol does good work in the “last sane man on the ship” role, rousing and rousting Archer, neutralizing Phlox, and figuring out what the hell’s wrong. But the solution to the problem being “we just have to fly away” is a pretty weak. The show tries to goose that by making the flight path dangerous, but apparently all it takes is a cold shower and coffee to mitigate the effects of the radiation, making the inevitable escape seem even more like a fait accompli over a remediable problem.

The best the episode can offer is the metaphor of its situation. It’s hard to tell, in 2002, whether the effects of the radiation are meant to be a commentary on ADD medication, or siloing, or even just the vanilla way in which we can all develop a single-minded focus on a small task that inexplicably grows in importance in our mines. Much of “Singularity” is pretty cartoony, weakening the impact of that metaphor, but it’s a solid enough pull.

That’s been my overall takeaway for this trio of episodes that seem to borrowing heavily from past Treks. None of them are bad. Each dutifully runs through the standard beats and setups. There’s just not a great deal of variation or imagination at play. An “everyone acts crazy because of some external force” is classic Star Trek setup; Enterprise just doesn't do much to make it its own.