Minefield

DVD, Enterprise S2 (Minefield)

In an episode in which they got around the problem of featuring the Romulans, who were not seen until Kirk's time about 100 years later, and in which a tense mine defusing sequence was set to provide excitement, it might be surprising that it is the teaser that has the best moments - Reed, summoned to attend the Captain's table for breakfast, is on edge, honoured about being invited, but aware of keeping a professional distance while not making any faux pas in front of someone he's learnt to respect, even if he doesn't agree with his command style. Archer meanwhile, just wants to get to know his armoury officer better. We get mention that England made it to the 'Soccer' Finals (which isn't quite as impressive as if they'd made it to the Final itself - they generally get into the Finals stage, or at least, they do in our time!), and Reed's discomfort is enjoyable. Then there's a mysterious explosion and it's all very exciting. I can't say the same for the majority of the episode.

The big USP this week are the Romulans, showing up in their sleek Birds of Prey and cloaking devices (there may be debate over whether they had them at that time) to up the danger level and provide an ultimatum. That we don't see them shouldn't disappoint, as anyone that knows their lore won't expect to see them in the series at all (although...). I wouldn't say it was a gimmick to use them, but expectations at the time were set sky high thanks to comments from the makers that Romulans would be featuring in both 'Star Trek Nemesis' and Season 2 of 'Enterprise' leading us to believe it would be a substantial inclusion. In the event it's a couple of ships decloaking and warning the crew off, not living up to the film's level of involvement with the race (although the amount they had to do in that was also something of a letdown, but that's another story). Strange T'Pol doesn't recognise their language, which presumably would have similarities to Vulcan. On a personal note, I wanted the ships to feature the image of the bird as they did underneath similar ships on 'TOS'.

The Romulans involvement neither added nor took away from the story, it suffered from getting too bogged down in a 'getting to know you' scenario between Archer and Malcolm, much as had happened with Malcolm and Trip in the last season's 'Shuttlepod One'. That worked because of the claustrophobia and the gradual decline of their circumstances, showing how each man handled it, whereas this was Malcolm being dispirited again while his Captain solved the problem. Reed's story of how his aquaphobic Uncle sealed himself in the submarine's engine room to save the vessel should have made us sympathetic, but the scene didn't build up to such a moment and it came out as just a story Reed was telling. It could have been better structured. Whether the two got to know each other better is debatable, and if anything Malcolm would probably be even more in awe of Archer, but I could see what they were trying to do, and applaud the attempt on what is a more action-focused series.

What they did do were things that couldn't be done without a lot of difficulty on the earlier series' - showing people walking about on the hull, the weightlessness, the deck plate drifting off into space and the explosion as Archer and Reed made their escape - the production looked good. One minor quibble would be that through the wonders of modern DVD you can see even the tiny specks of dust that float around in the beam of their headlamps. Except there wouldn't be any dust wafting around them in space. We'll call it space dust... It was interesting to hear about the Royal Navy line Malcolm comes from, a path he eschewed because of a fear of drowning, but he remained a bit of an enigma by the end of the story.

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