The Shipment

Rating: ***

Written By: Chris Black & Brent V. Friedman

Directed By: David Straiton

Almost jarringly, “The Shipment” picks up exactly where “Exile” left off. And a very nice piece of work it is.

Enterprise arrives at the coordinates Tarquin provided to Hoshi last week, finding an M-class planet with a moon conveniently present behind which to hide from Xindi detection. A sensor sweep confirms the presence of a refinery that is producing a substance that will be part of the Xindi doomsday weapon to be used against Earth.

Archer, along with Reed and Major Hayes (who, for being the MACO commander, is given nothing more to do, in the story and as a character, than any faceless redshirt could have done; definitely a waste of Stephen Culp’s screen presence) take a shuttlepod to the surface to reconnoiter further.

One thing that seems a little surprising is how lax security is at this installation. Now perhaps the Xindi don’t have the military resources to protect every installation in use for their doomsday project, and maybe the Xindi sloth aren’t exactly Jem’Haddar warriors, but one would think that there would at least be a security system of SOME sort to at least detect outside intruders. Heck, my house is more secure.

Sure enough, Archer’s team slips right inside the main building undetected and pokes around almost at will. Reed has just picked up a container of what we soon learn is kemocite when they hear three Xindi sloth approaching. Finding a rather exposed hiding place, they eavesdrop on their counterparts, who elaborate at damaging length about the special kemocite order they’ve been instructed to process by a high-ranking Xindi named Degra. Two of them leave, while the third finally notices the displaced container of kemocite, which Reed never got around to replacing. The sloth looks around briefly, then shrugs and puts the container back in its slot.

This Xindi species is either laconic to the point of unconsciousness, or oblivious to the point of autism. But in actuality, it was foreshadowing something else entirely.

Retrieving the kemocite container, Archer has it beamed up to the ship for analysis, which gives T’Pol, Trip, and Phlox something to do (No such luck for Hoshi and Travis, again).

In another seemingly heedless and careless convenience for the good guys, this same third sloth goes for a walk by himself to what turns out to be his house away off in the forest. My only regret was that Reed didn’t break off a shingle, take a bite out of it and exclaim, “Captain, this is made of gingerbread!”

With Reed and Hayes standing guard outside (I don’t recall Hayes putting his phase rifle down in the entire ep), Archer bursts into the gingerbread house and proceeds to verbally and (nearly) physically thrash the sloth – name of Gralik, and also the refinery plant manager - to the point where you almost start wondering whether the latter is more piteous for being slapped around in his own home or Archer for trying to pass his Boy Scout self off as a “bad cop” interrogator.

When the Cap’n learns from T’Pol that kemocite was one of the compounds used in the first Xindi weapon that attacked Earth, we get the turning point of the episode, and perhaps a pivotal point in the Xindi story arc.

Archer demands that Gralik tell him how the compound works and where the new Xindi weapon is being built. But Gralik, unimpressed with Archer’s indignant bluff and bluster, blandly replies that there are many applications for kemocite, and that he doesn’t know to what end this particular order is going to be used. Archer, of course, doesn’t believe Gralik’s demurral and repeats his demands even louder. Gralik simply demurs again.

John Cothran, Jr. deserves a ton of credit for his portrayal of a being dealing with a seeming madman who breaks into his home and accuses him of being a party to mass murder. Gralik displayed no fear of Archer, evidently taking his measure and deciding that he wouldn’t really carry out his threats, but at the same time conveys an authenticity in his denials of knowledge of the Xindi plot that came across as sufficiently believable that this viewer was thinking aloud, “What if he DOESN’T know, Captain?”

This impression is augmented by Gralik’s reaction to Archer’s impassioned disclosure, issued like a challenge, of the Xindi attack on Earth that killed seven million people. He displays what certainly looks like genuine horror, the sort that any scientist would who learns, in the sort of naivete typical to that breed, that his life’s work is being perverted into a weapon of mass destruction.

He proceeds to fill in more of the Xindi backstory, about how a war between the Xindi species escalated to the point where the insectoids and reptilians set off massive weapons under several of their enemies’ cities that were so devastating that their homeworld itself was destroyed (as Enterprise discovered earlier this season), completely wiping out a sixth Xindi species – the avians – that we had not heretofore known about.

For Archer, it is an at least cautious epiphany. For the first time in his avenging mission to save his people, he has come face to face with a Xindi who may not be his enemy. Of course, this is the sort of Trekkian moralism that always prompts me to roll my eyes – I mean, it stands to reason that not EVERY SINGLE XINDI is necessarily out to destroy humanity, just as it stands to reason that not every single Xindi will be made privy to the plot, since doing so would be a security nightmare. And, dope that Archer usually is, these things seem basic enough that even he should be able to grasp them.

But then again, as the man on whose shoulders his homeworld’s fate rests, it is also fair to ask whether he can take any chances. A conundrum with which you could see him wrestling when his team and Gralik were forced to retreat to some caves after two of the latter’s colleagues came looking for him upon the arrival of the aforementioned Degra and his reptilian deputy, who show up early to pick up their shipment of kemocite before it’s ready.

On the one hand, does Archer blow up the refinery complex, both drawing unwanted Xindi attention and possibly killing many innocent sloths in the process? In effect, becoming a modicum of what he is purportedly fighting against? Or does he trust Gralik and risk the betrayal of himself and his crew?

This is the sort of command decision only a starship captain has to make.

And Archer makes it in classic Trekkian fashion: he lets Gralik go. And, also in classic Trekkian fashion, Gralik keeps his word, returning to the facility to stall Degra and sabotage the kemocite shipment, including a well-written and –acted scene where he, with delicious irony, blusteringly bluffs his way past the two Xindi capos’ pressure and scrutiny. I could be cynical about this blip of neoRoddenberryism, but given that the alternative is more “hardheaded aliens of the week,” I’ll call it good instead.

Meanwhile, back on the ship, Tucker, T’Pol, and Phlox are, as previously mentioned, tasked with analyzing the kemocite and figuring out how a captured Xindi weapon works. The former is successful, while the latter is…not. They discover that there are biological components to the device, but when Trip tries to test-fire it, it triggers a self-destruct mechanism tied into its user-specific biological code, ensuring that nobody but its assigned bearer can use it. Very clever, those Xindi.

And very merciful, those writers, in not “inserting” another scantily clad “acupressure” scene to relieve the engineer’s resulting stress.

The bridge to the resumption of the Xindi mytharc is the gambit Archer employed in lieu of blowing up the kemocite plant: planting a beacon in a kemocite container and stowing it aboard Degra’s ship. Which, almost to be expected, failed to work once said ship disappeared into one of the Xindi’s “energy portals.” But that’s not a bad thing either, I suppose, since not every gambit IS going to work.

And in the mean time, as I predicted several weeks back, Earth may have now obtained an ally amongst their enemies.

Next week: Archer meets his “future imperfect”.