The Communicator

DVD, Enterprise S2 (The Communicator)

'The Original Series' was a continued source of inspiration for the latest branch of the legacy, and this episode was one of the more obvious tips of the hat since it directly follows on (retrospectively) from Dr. McCoy's comments in an episode (was it 'A Piece of The Action'?), in which, after suffering at the hands of a pre-warp civilization who had been influenced by a book left behind on a previous ship's visit, he realises he's left his communicator down on the planet. In that episode it was only meant as a lighthearted way to end the episode, no doubt with Kirk pulling a long-suffering expression and Spock raising an eyebrow. In this however, it's a serious story, which shows the difference between the two series', I suppose - 'TOS' tended to be more straightforward 'fun', where 'Enterprise' took things a little more seriously sometimes than was necessary.

It may not have been a particularly rich vein to mine as the story is fairly bland, as in we've seen it all before - the aliens are rather uninspiring to look at, we don't learn enough about their culture to care about them, and what should have been the heart of the narrative, the fact that cultural contamination should be avoided at all costs, was neither delved into in a new way, or deep enough. If Malcolm had refused to die for the sake of the race knowing he was an alien, and had confessed against Archer's orders it might have spiced things up (although he'd have had to redeem himself somehow). Even worse, there's no real B-story, only Trip and Travis pottering sedately around the Suliban ship they've been carrying since the pilot in an attempt to get the cloak working. The most exciting thing that happens is Trip's arm going invisible!

If there had never been a 'TNG', a 'DS9' or a 'Voyager', this might be okay, but we've had so many episodes that rolling out another identikit, half-hearted story doesn't cut it. It would be different if the characters were used to their full potential and we learnt about them through the story, but although it's always interesting to see Archer and Reed together, they don't move on from the 'Minefield' episode, and there's nothing new going on. So that's the bad, but I can't say there weren't good points - the lush planet views were beautiful, and show just what we're missing in space when we only get distant stars pinging by. In this, the NX-01 orbits gracefully, and the surface views are equally attractive with verdant forests and realistic cityscapes. The effects budget was well allocated, with an airborne chase, the invisibility effects and T'Pol rolling out of the pod firing! The sets were also quite nice, the cosy pub best, and the very well-lit, sunset-like glow of the prison cell showed off modern ability to create high quality visuals.

There was a break down in intelligence with the soldiers and the bar man as he clearly remembered Hoshi, but although the soldiers were in waiting for Archer and Malcolm no one ever asked them where the third member of their team had gone! This episode was the closest they ever got to having Guinan appear, but only because a guest actor's name was Francis Guinan, which shows how little they bothered about getting regular faces on the series. I felt the story could have done with a scene in which the leader of the soldiers told his men that none of it had happened and that they were to tell no one, as that might have made a better ending dramatically instead of the usual conversation where T'Pol tries to cheer up Archer by saying it didn't go as badly as it might have done. Perhaps if Archer really had left his scanner behind instead of dropping it on the floor of the Suliban pod, in 35 years a new 'Star Trek' series might have had an episode called 'The Scanner'.

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