Zero Hour

DVD, Enterprise S3 (Zero Hour)

The horror of it is that this could have been the way 'Enterprise' ended! Not that I don't like this episode or its way of bringing the season-long Xindi mission to a close, but what about that cliffhanger ending throwing us for a loop? Even now, when I know for sure that the alien Nazi isn't actually the Reman he resembles (thanks to Larry Nemecek personally answering my question about it in 'Star Trek Magazine' - they're called the Na'kuhl), I can still acknowledge it as one of those totally surprising twists they sometimes include at the end of a Trek season. I don't understand how the NX-01 went back in time and the Xindi-Aquatic vessel that dropped them off, didn't, but perhaps it's explained at the start of Season 4? Wow, Season 4, we've almost come to it at last. But first, a word on Season 3, let's look back at this groundbreaking season in context as 'the season that saved Star Trek'. Because it did, if only for one more season - the dramatic choices and decision to stretch the format into new territory, as much as it can be accused of trying to follow the fashion of the time in season-spanning serialised TV, it succeeded in breathing vitality into a series that had threatened to be cancelled out of disinterest.

If you got interested in the race to save Earth you'd probably have watched to the end, but on the other hand it worked against the viewer if you wanted to dip in. What did happen was the ratings stabilised, and while not spectacular, history records that Archer and his crew continued into arguably their finest season after this one. I liked the Xindi arc, there were more exciting episodes, more thumping action and the series' backstory wasn't completely forgotten, but at the same time there were a number of weak stories, and the characters, particularly the three most minor roles of Phlox, Hoshi and Travis, were almost forgotten week to week. So it's a balance between a happier ship and slightly better-drawn crew, or episodes that entertained, and I will say that it beat Season 2. The middle episodes sometimes were weakest, the beginning of the season revitalised my interest, and the last few episodes achieved a reasonably satisfying wrap-up of what we all knew was going to happen: Earth being saved.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the writers had stuck to their original plan (if they had one), and continued with straight exploration. It's possible lesser-used characters would have had some episodes to themselves, it's possible that more Trek history might have been addressed, or famous guest characters reappeared. But it's also possible that they would have kept moving down the path to cancellation without a clear vision of their goal beyond creating a planet-of-the-week show. So, on the whole, I would have to say the Xindi were good for 'Enterprise.' There was no standout episode for me as there had been with the previous season's 'Regeneration,' (or several from Season 1), but it reached a higher level of drama and action, on average. This concluding part in the serial is difficult to criticise because it's what it was all leading up to and we'd already had any surprise twists or shock deaths out of the way. At the same time it does present itself as pulp sci-fi when you look at it objectively: you have the square-jawed Captain having a fistfight with a Gorn-like alien on a planet-destroying weapon about to attack our Earth. You have a destruction sequence that has to be input to stop it. You have the good guy ship doing their bit to destroy the enemy technology of the Spheres, and other aliens causing chaos there. And you have old faces showing up to help in the battle.

One of the major things is that, after a recent big battle, this one is very small. For an unknown reason, Dolim's is the only Reptilian ship to accompany the weapon. Starfleet and Earth has absolutely no defences whatsoever, even the Vulcans apparently don't have a single ship in orbit, and there are no smaller craft buzzing around Earth's atmosphere. It's almost like humans are sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly - even the Yosemite Research Station with its massive dishes, doesn't appear to notice the gigantic (and expected!), Xindi weapon or enemy ship, pulverised without any escape craft being launched! Surely Starfleet must have some kind of protection for the planet and would be on the alert after the Xindi prototype attacked only a few months previous! It's all to make us see that the odds are stacked against Archer, I understand that, but as I said, it makes the action smaller: if Shran can show up aboard his Andorian ship, why can't other allies of Earth?

What happens is fairly simple and doesn't much deviate from what you'd have expected once you'd seen the beginning of the season. It's often been a fundamental problem with the series that it doesn't boldly go in different or unexpected directions very much, but tends to join the dots. The dots in this case were the ensemble cast, possibly for the first time this season, acting as an ensemble - the characters, especially the minor ones, being challenged and having to overcome those challenges to make the mission work: Travis has to fly the Enterprise into the biggest anomaly field ever, Phlox has to keep the crew in one piece as they do that, and Hoshi is essential in deactivating the weapon, stamping on doubts and her own sickness to do it. Archer continues to ruthlessly manipulate his crew in an unsympathetic way: if Picard had been Hoshi's Captain, he would have comforted her and built her up with an inspirational story, and failing that would have shouted sense into her, but Archer doesn't have that kind of personality, he tends to get irritated and strut around, pushing people into their task. It isn't fair to compare Captains, but it's always going to happen, and apart from being a typical hero-mould Captain, fighting bare-handed, sacrificing himself, he doesn't get to be more than an action man.

It's something that runs through the episode (not to mention the series), but often, when you think there's going to be a moment for a character to build them up or learn about them, the scene ends. Jimmy Stewart used to say that his theory was that all acting was about creating moments. Things that stay in the memory, for whatever reason. Those moments are partially there, but not quite: there's the scene where Hoshi's in her quarters trying to live up to the Captain's wishes and tells him about their first meeting, how she wanted to impress him, and that's as far as we get. There are also Phlox and T'Pol where he's making his will and saying how his people enjoy bequeathing their possessions (it struck me how Hobbit-like the Denobulans are, as a race!), and again, it's over too quickly. Nice to have another mention of his old pen pal friend, Dr. Lucas (soon to be seen in Season 4). Aside from the characters not fully getting to express themselves (or too much in T'Pol's case), the whole storyline feels too quickly resolved, perhaps a result of two episodes being stripped away from the season's episode count, though they had plenty of time to plan for that.

Whatever the reason, this isn't the fantastic end we needed, but a pretty good end to a pretty good season. It still did the business and resolved the story and it also has time to give us what we want: Shran and Daniels. If it hadn't been for the credits at the start I wouldn't have remembered they were in this one, so a little of the surprise was spoiled. It meant I was waiting for the inevitable moment Shran was going to rush in and save the day, which he did. It was good to see him, as always, and the old transaction of favours between him and Archer is part of it again when he claims Archer now owes him! It's a thread that's run through the series, so I like it whenever they touch on it. The same for Daniels and his future-jumping appearances, reiterating how essential Archer is to the future of Earth. This time we get to see a vision of that future, just a little way ahead: no, not the forming of the Federation, I'm talking about the real end of the series where Archer makes his speech. It looks like it could be the same place and maybe even the same day that he'll do that at the end of Season 4, so a strong link there. The Federation and the coming together of various races that it signifies, is the best thing to hear about, though a bitter pill when we realise we don't get to see it played out over the course of a full series because of the cruel cancellation to come.

'Zero Hour' remains to this day the only title to begin with a 'Z,' just as the season opener, 'The Xindi' is the only one to begin with an 'X,' a small, but fitting bookend of trivia. What it's really about is Archer knocking seven bells out of the villain of the piece, Dolim. Actually he gets the bells knocked out of him in a suitably brutal fight in which we see the true physical prowess of the Xindi-Reptilian. The impressive action is the more exciting because it shows such a heavily prosthetic-laden and bulkily garbed actor doing such moves. It must have been triple claustrophobic being inside a full head piece, the enveloping skirts and that cramped set, so it's a testament to the Director and actors that they could carry off the fight so well. I didn't see why that MACO got so much screen time in his fight with another Reptilian, and felt it should have been Reed, but perhaps it was a tribute to the force that had joined this season, and to Major Hayes, who was no longer with us. Plus, Reed got to boot one in the face, so he had his screen time.

I can see why the Spheres and the Delphic Expanse they held together, had to be disbanded, but even though the people complaining about its existence because 'it wasn't mentioned in the future' are missing the point that space is so big that we might not have heard them talk of it even if it had still existed into the 24th Century. It didn't have to be disbanded in my opinion, and as it was, I didn't see why shooting some beam at that one Sphere could affect the whole Expanse! It was more like a loose end that they wanted to tie up, even though one on a massively galactic loose end - a veritable expanse of loose ends! I was much more irritated with T'Pol, and her tactile and emotional ways, which, as I forever bang on about, were bad for the portrayal of Vulcans, and must take the brunt of the blame that Vulcans in modern Trek have to be much more willing to show emotion than they used to. We do get to find out her age is almost sixty-six years old, but that doesn't make up for the weaknesses she shows.

Realistically, if Trek were to return in TV form, Season 3 of 'Enterprise' is likely the model it would follow. There would probably be less episodes, and certainly none that stood alone, and it would follow the high-threat and much action template that this series went for. That's my theory, anyway. Trek needs to be more than super-weapons and explosions, evil villains to be fought and starships to be battered, and they did attempt the greater punch of the best of Trek with episodes like 'Similitude,' but it was too little. Not too late, and the shock ending of this one proves they weren't above turning things on their heads, but there's a reason 'Enterprise' didn't catch the lightning in the bottle that the others, even up to 'Voyager,' did, and that's that they became too much about surface, and not enough about what was underneath. 'Zero Hour' showed what they could do on a TV budget in the action stakes, but little else, and while it's watchable, there's a lot less to say about its themes and story than there should be.

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