Oasis
Date: Unknown
Original Airdate: April 03, 2002
By Q
The Story
The beginning of this story finds T'Pol, Trip and Archer
having dinner aboard the Enterprise with a trader who mentions
a crashed ship on a deserted planet that could be used to gather
supplies. While discussing the ship, the trader hints that it
might be haunted.
Enterprise goes on to find the seemingly deserted ship and upon
investigation, Tucker finds the equipment in surprisingly good
shape, and he and T'Pol find a thriving hydroponics bay.
Soon, the Enterprise crew stumbles upon the crew of the desolate
ship, and they all appear to be happy and healthy despite the
fact that their ship crash landed and has been stranded for the
past three years. Archer volunteers to help the crew get their
ship running so they can finally go home.
As the work on the alien vessel begins, Trip becomes friends
with a young woman by the name of Liana, and soon, he's
inviting her to visit the Enterprise. After assuring her father
that she won't reveal their secrets, he allows her to go.
While Trip is showing Liana around the ship, Reed is making
some disturbing discoveries. He learns that the ship has actually
been on the planet for 20 years, and after retrieving one of
their escape pods, he discovers the decaying body of one of the
crew members who was just seen as alive and well.
Tucker confronts Liana about the discrepancies in her story,
but she continues to lie to him. He then returns her to her ship
and is taken hostage, along with T'Pol and is forced to
finish the repairs. Archer and Co. lead a rescue mission, as
Trip, with Liana's help, discovers that with the exception
of her and her father, the crew is made up of holograms that
were created by Liana's father because he felt responsible
for the crash that killed everyone else on board. With a little
persuasion from Archer and Trip, her father finally agrees that
he needs to fix his ship so they can go home.
Review
Contrary to what I usually do in my reviews, I'm going
to start with the bad in hopes of ending what is sure to be a
bad review on a somewhat good note.
The Bad
Archer couldn't have been more stiff if he tried. He used
to be one of my favorite characters, but he's sliding down
my ladder of favorites very quickly. He seemed to have a hard
time showing any kind of emotion toward these people, or even
toward his crew. I hated the fact that he ignored Mayweather's
concerns about intruding on an alien grave site. It's not
like Mayweather has had a lot to say in previous episodes so
I would hope his captain of all people would listen when he finally
does say something important.
T'Pol's blatant show of jealousy toward Trip's
relationship with Liana was ridiculous and completely out of
character for a Vulcan. If the writers thought it would be cute
to have T'Pol act jealous, they were wrong.
The most important bad thing about this episode was the story
itself. Not only was it an obvious rip off of DS9's "Shadowplay",
but we're already starting to see holograms being overused.
I'm having horrific flashbacks of really bad Voyager episodes
where things like holograms and the Borg were grossly overused.
Please B&B, don't turn Enterprise into another Voyager!
One more bad thing that deserves mentioning...no Porthos.
Now that that's over, let's try to pull something
good out of "Oasis"…
The Good
Rene Auberjonois played his part beautifully just as I knew
he would. He put Bakula to shame. While it was great to see him
in Trek again, I'm very sad that his talents were wasted
on what might be called an episode he's already done once
before on DS9. I hope he's invited to return and is given
a better story very soon.
Finally, Mayweather got a little bit of screen time and dialogue!
It's nice to see that he actually does something on the
ship besides sitting in his chair looking good for the cameras.
I'm through holding my breath for a Mayweather story, but
you never know. I may still be surprised by the end of the season.
Hey, it's Trek. Anything's possible, right? Unfortunately,
I get the feeling we'll see Porthos save the Enterprise
before we get a good Mayweather episode.
Conclusion
I went into this episode with very high hopes and they were
quickly dashed by a boring and incredibly predictable episode
that had the promise of being so much more. It's episodes
like this that make me remember just how much I miss DS9.
Grade: 6.5/10
Cast:
Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer
John Billingsley as Dr. Phlox
Jolene Blalock as T'Pol
Dominic Keating as Malcolm Reed
Anthony Montgomery as Travis Mayweather
Linda Park as Hoshi Sato
Connor Trinneer as Charles Tucker
Guest Cast:
Rene Auberjonois as Ezral
Tom Bergeron as D'Marr
Claudette Sutherland as Maya
Annie Wersching as Liana
Rudolph Willrich as Kuulan
Creative Staff:
Director: Jim Charleston
Teleplay By: Stephen Beck
Story By: Rick Berman & Brannon
Braga & Stephen Beck
