3x23 Countdown

[6.8/10] I assume there must be a number of people out there who want Star Trek to be one big action movie. It’s not as though the show hasn’t had an action component (more typically fistfights) from the very beginning. But when Trek wants to go epic, it tends to set aside the thoughtful, philosophical bent that first drew me to the franchise, and lean hard into the action hero schtick that you can find in any bargain basement sci-fi flick. It’s not that I’m incapable of appreciating Star Trek’s more bombastic side (I think Wrath of Khan is a classic), but I just get bored with these standard-issue action beats in lieu of the meatier, more characteristically Trek material that the franchise is known for.

Maybe Enterprise will deliver that in its season finale, but in Countdown, we get what amounts to the first half of an action movie. The Reptilians have struck out on their own with the superweapons. The coalition of the willing left behind is trying to round up support and go after them. And all the while, T’Pol, Trip, and others are working on a plan to combat the spheres and hopefully stop the Sphere-Builders in the process. All the while, there’s physical struggles, firefights in ship corridors, and the usual swarm of different vessels going toe-to-toe with one another in outer space.

Most of that is setup for the raging climax that will presumably come in the last episode of the season. But the major objectives at play in “Countdown” are two-fold: (1.) Rescue Hoshi and (2.) convince the Aquatics to join the cause.

The first objective isn’t bad actually. When the Reptilians kidnapped Hoshi at the end of the last episode, I assumed it was just to create a standard damsel in distress situation. (And in fairness, a lot of the proceedings here devolve into that at times.) But the bad guy Xindi actually end up having a good reason for enveigling the Enterprise’s communications officer. They need to be able to decrypt the Aquatics’ launch codes for the superweapon to be able to use it, and they were impressed with her ability to translate their whale songs at the council meeting. That’s a level of practicality I wasn’t expecting from what seemed like a fairly contrived rescue situation.

As I’ve said before, it’s nice to see Hoshi get a little more to do. Granted, much of that is just being tortured and rescued, which isn’t exactly the sort of rich character work you hope for. But we do get scenes of her resisting the Reptilians’ efforts to cajole her into doing their dirty work, standing defiant against the scariest of them, surreptitiously throwing up roadblocks for their efforts, and even trying to sacrifice herself rather than help them. “Countdown” never quite earns the sense of urgency and fear it’s going for given the cheesiness of the execution, but there are, at least, a few solid beats for Hoshi there.

The rescue is also used as a means to wrap up the long-simmering, but never especially well-sketched rivalry between Lt. Reed and Maj. Hayes. After the redshirt MACO died in the last episode, Hayes is suspicious of Reed, thinking that perhaps the Starfleet officer didn’t take the life of one of the MACOs as seriously or did as much as he could to protect it as he would have for one of the officers under his own command. But when Reed presses the issue, and Hayes raises his concerns, Reed’s visible distress at having lost someone under his command shows Hayes that his concerns are unfounded. (It also explains why we spent time on Reed’s reaction to the redshirt’s death in the prior episode.)

It’s not a subtly-acted scene (few on Enterprise) are, but it’s a subtly written one. Hayes never says anything like, “I see that you *did value my subordinate’s life!” or anything; he just observes Reed’s reaction and gets it, the same way Reed doesn't voice his newfound respect for Hayes after the latter loses his life in the line of duty when trying to rescue Hoshi, it just comes through when he’s addressing the surviving MACOs.

That’s right, Hayes is dead now. It’s a little predictable, but it at least puts the shoe on the other foot, with Hayes being responsible for one of Reed’s men and proving himself capable and noble about it, to where the two firmly and finally earn on another’s respect. The death scene lays it on a little thick, and the situations arrive somewhat conveniently, but it’s a story I like in principle even if the way the show tries to pull it off was cheesy in places.

The other part of the episode elongates the “Archer has to convince the Aquatics” nonsense from the last episode. Why? Well because for whatever reason the other good guy Xindi species don’t have the kind of ships that could intercept the superweapon, so they need the Aquatics’ advanced vessels to be able to pull it off. The problem, however, is that the Acquatics are still characteristically indecisive. What ever will our heroes do?

The answer is -- destroy the spheres apparently? Archer promises that the Enterprise has figured out a way to destroy the spheres, and that if the Aquatics help them, Starfleet will do it. (It’s what T’Pol and Trip, who get a brief but touching moment of Hepburn/Tracy reconciliation, are working on in the episode.) Why do the Aquatics want the spheres destroyed? How can they trust that Archer and company are capable of it? How does it convince them that siding with the humans is the right idea?

Who knows! But apparently it’s a big enough deal that the Aquatics will side with the good guys and ferry them off to take on the bad guy Xindi and the superweapon. What follows is a pretty uninspired dogfight, where the Reptilians’ ability to use the weapon, despite having cracked the third launch code, is hindered by a hastily-setup dose of porpoise ex machina.

Plus, it provides opportunities for the Reptilians to be even more evil than usual! Even they have their doubts about what the Sphere-Builders’ agenda is, especially when they can’t help the Reptilians crack the code, but soldier on anyway with the promise that they’ll be able to dominate Xindi society after this civil war. When the Insectoids, who have been personality-free evil-doers thus far, even question whether what Archer’s saying might be true, the Reptilians prove their double-evil bona fides by destroying the Insectoid ships after the entomology-based launch codes are obtained. Mwahahahahah!

By the end of the episode, the Sphere-Builders are intervening directly, by letting out an uber-anomaly when it looks like the Reptilians might be losing the battle. Why didn’t they use this early? Why haven’t they intervened before? I have no idea. Maybe they didn’t want to reveal that they were in charge of the spheres or that they had this power, I guess? It’s all pretty opaque, but I guess it sets up that the spheres are dangerous and must be destroyed. My guess is [spoiler]eventually, even the Reptilians realize that, and the combination of the Xindi superweapon and the Enterprise’s sphere-destroying strategy allows the humans and the Xindi to team up and eliminate the spheres that preserve the expanse.

The episode closes with an obvious setup for the finale. Archer, Reed, and Hoshi break off in a shuttle to go infiltrate and stop the Xindi superweapon, and T’Pol, Trip, and the rest of the crew will stay on Enterprise to try to disrupt the spheres given that the Aquatics have demanded it. Now, why Archer can’t just say “Hey, we’ll be happy to destroy those spheres for you, as soon as we can stop the weapon of mass destruction that’s headed for our home planet! I don’t know, but I guess it’s just more of an overstuffed thrill to have those things happening at once.

That’s my overall problem with Trek’s more action-y mode. It focuses set pieces and reasons for multiple fireworks-worthy things to be happening at once, while tossing out the clearer logic, subtlety, and depth that make us care about who and what is being blown up, and also, you know, let it all make sense. But season finales require over the top stakes and over the top dramatics, so here we go, into the breach, for a raging climax that hopefully has sharper writing and not just the blockbuster shtick turned up to eleven on a network T.V. budget.