Regeneration
Mission Date: March 1, 2153
Original Airdate: May 7, 2003
Reviewed By Paul Pytlik

Summary | Review | Screen Caps | Cast | Guest Cast | Creative Staff

Summary

A transport cuts through a snow storm high in the Arctic Circle, to deposit a team of researchers. Trudging through the white out conditions, the team makes their way into a dense debris field. After digging through the snow, they uncover two cybernetic bodies, frozen and perfectly preserved. They soon discover that the two bodies don't belong to the same species, that neither are in their database, an incredibly sophisticated arm belonging to one of the bodies, alloys in the debris not recognized by any scan, and a curvature that suggests that the ship that brought them to Earth was a perfect sphere, six hundred meters in diameter. They also uncover that the debris has been buried for almost a hundred years. Further testing of the bodies later shows that they are regenerating, rebuilding and repairing the damaged cells. Already the arm they found is as good as new. One of the team is uncomfortable with this, and recommends refreezing them until they know more. Because it‘s not known whether this will damage the bodies, the suggestion is turned down. They transmit their findings to Starfleet, and continue exploring the area. One night, as one of the researchers is working late, he is surprised to see signs of life from one of the bodies. As he gets closer, the body opens its eyes. Outside, the other team members hear gun fire. Rushing back to the camp, they find the researcher gasping on the floor. Rushing to get a med kit, they come face to face with one of the bodies, standing up and decidedly not dead.

Back at Starfleet Headquarters, Admiral Forrest is told that the Science Council hasn't heard from the A6 Expedition in three days. Concerned, Forrest orders a shuttle prepared immediately. Upon arrival, all that's found is a destroyed, snow covered camp. The admiral contacts Enterprise, and informs them of the situation. An Earth tracking station spotted the Arctic Transport leaving orbit at a heading that would put it within a half dozen light years of Enterprise. It was traveling at warp 3.9, a significant improvement over it's usual top speed of 1.4. They also send all the data the researchers uncovered, which Phlox and Reed begin looking over.

Soon, the ship receives a distress call from a Tarkalian freighter that is under attack from the run away transport. When Enterprise arrives, they are able to beat off the transport, but there are only two erratic life signs left onboard. Archer sends a shuttle pod over to retrieve them. They discover that the Tarkalian's have been infected with nanoprobes, and though Phlox cannot remove them, he begins to try to find a way to slow down their progress.

Archer returns to his ready room, and searches in the database for a file that he's reminded of. When he was a child, he was obsessed with knowing everything about Cochrane. He'd given a commencement address, eighty-nine years ago, in which he spoke of what really happened during first contact. It included the telling of a cybernetic alien force whose ultimate goal was to enslave the human race, and humans from the future who‘d come to stop them. However, he was widely regarded as a drunk, so no one took him seriously. Years later, he recanted his story.

Back in sickbay, the aliens come to. Only briefly disoriented, they attack the security guard and Phlox, whom they inject with nanoprobes. They escape into the jefferies tubes, where they make their way to the warp field regulators and begin to reconfigure them. Reed and a security team try to stop the two, but the aliens adapt to their weapons. The team is forced to retreat, and Archer opens the outer hatch, blowing the aliens out into space. They then set a course following the transport, armed with the knowledge of a weak spot in their outer hull. Reed meanwhile begins looking for a way to increase power for the phase pistols.

Phlox believes he's found a way to flush the nanoprobes from his system, but it will require a large dose of omicron particles. He gives a neurotoxin to Archer with instructions to use it against him if the procedure fails. He'd rather die than live as a mindless machine. Enterprise catches up to the transport, but before they can fire it sends an activation code that disables a number of systems, including weapons. Archer and Reed use the transporters to beam over to the transport, where after battling a number of drones, manage to plant a bomb next to an EPS manifold. It knocks out some of the transport's systems, but they are quickly repaired. Tucker uses the time to restore weapons, and Archer orders the other ship destroyed.

Phlox's treatment is a success, but he reports that during the time the nanites were inside him, he heard voices repeating the same thing over and over. After computer analysis, Archer finds that the transport was relaying Earth's coordinates deep into the Delta Quadrant, possibly to their home world. T'Pol notes that it would take two hundred years to reach it's destination, leaving Archer to wonder if they've only put off the invasion to the twenty-forth century.

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Review

I'm torn on this episode. On the one hand, it was pretty good, certainly better than the last few Borg episodes. On the other, it should have never happened, at least not until much later in the show's run. I liked quite a few points in this episode, but on numerous other occasions I was left scratching my head wondering why they couldn't have found a better way to do this or that and get across the same point. Much of it just came off as clumsy to me.

For the sake of the story, I'm willing to disregard that it should have been natural for Picard to scan for debris, or even bodies, since they still would have been giving off life signs until they froze. But the debris field seemed much too large to have been left over from the explosion in First Contact, and it was concentrated in a very small area. It looked more like a destroyed building than a crashed ship. In fact, it looked eerily similar to what was left of the World Trade Centers. The bodies, both on the surface and intact, where within a couple of meters of each other. That's either an amazing coincidence, or there are in fact more bodies tossed about the landscape. Either that, or the polar bears just got the rest of them. What happened next to the debris field, after all this? There's much still to be learned from it, like the odd alloys, not to mention a transwarp coil that's still emitting a warp signature. Though it's a loose thread, I actually hope we never find out.

The researchers also send an awful lot of data to Starfleet, as well as loads of pictures and scans of the bodies. This seems to be an odd choice to make, since the writers were trying to make this fit into the rest of Borg history. Couldn't the story have worked just as well had no data been sent before the researchers were assimilated? No useful information was gleaned from it that helped Enterprise, other than the fact that the arm isn't, in fact, a weapon. But now all of this has been gathering dust for hundreds of years because no one seems to have catalogued it, and it served no purpose to the story.

Another thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was the number of shots the Enterprise crew managed to get off. Now, the brothers and sisters of these drones only took two or three shots to adapt to phaser fire. When Reed encounters the drones, he manages to get off two shots. Good so far. He then decides that now that the ship's at a state of emergency, and Trip could really use a hand repairing sabotage to the ship, that now would be a good time to tinker with the phase pistols. Letting slide the fact that he manages to increase power considerably in a few hours, and the fact that he never thought to try this before, and the fact that it works (maybe he never read the instructions that explained the ‘power dial'), he and Archer manage to get off, not two, not three, not even four, but seven before the drones decide it would be a good time to adapt. Odder still is the fact that, though the drones that board Enterprise only take two shots to adapt (combined, that's nine shots from turning up the power on what's essentially a super-soaker to the Borg), Archer still gets off three more shots after this adaptation! Worf really should have looked up this Reed guy. The scene did offer an amusing first though: the first Borg tackle. Janeway should have tried that manoeuvre. Also featured was the first drone tube plucking since ‘Descent'.

An odd choice, though more of a nitpick, is why was the missing team reported to Admiral Forrest? One ship, one admiral? Show us some more of Command, not the same guy over and over. His reaction is puzzling as well, looking concerned and slightly panicked, sending a shuttle straight away. Couldn't the Science Council have just sent someone to check up on them themselves? Or don't they have a Metro-Pass?

But the biggest groaner was the speech Archer searched out on the database. It certainly puts to rest the question of whether Picard wiped Lily and Cochrane's minds, though not why they didn't. Why not find a more believable way of having this turn up in the database, if have it show up at all.
Lemmie get this straight, Cochrane gave a commencement address (where his level of sobriety was in question), where he actually mentioned this?

"You're about to enter the next stage of your life. There will be challenges, but you must rise to these and fulfill your full potential. Be all that you can be. Just do it. I remember the day that I rose to the challenge. I'd just finished a night of binge drinking, when the Earth was attacked by zombie robot hybrids from the future. Luckily, I had my four years at college to fall back on, not to mention a band of human astronauts, from the future as well..."

I'm sure whoever was asleep in the audience certainly perked up at that bit. If he's still known as a drunk in Archer's time, when exactly does he become a respected and idealized man Picard‘s crew expected? And if he was such a joke (I can't imagine him having much credibility after that), why play that recording of his at Enterprise's launch, as seen in "Broken Bow". It seemed an odd choice. Archer's father knew Cochrane once, right? Why not have used that to somehow get a vague awareness of the Borg into the son? It certainly would have been more believable, an fit in better had he confided in Archer's father. Plus, it cleans up that nasty database problem.

What was the point of Phlox's ‘infection'? It offered no character development or real interactions beyond Hoshi's brief scene with him. It ended up just a lot of meaningless filler, since we weren't even with him long enough to get a feel for his plight. Another odd choice was his giving Archer the neurotoxin to ‘put him down', only to have Archer not even be there when the procedure was occurring. Was the captain suppose to run down there in the middle of a heated battle to kill his doctor? This could have made an interesting episode on its own, but instead it's wasted. This also would have been the perfect time for a crew death, such as that security guard that almost got it between the eyes. Now *that* would have punched up the drama.

A few other stuff before I get on to the things I liked. They really should decide whether to use the transporter or not (I say not). They send a pod over to retrieve the Tarkalians in an emergency, but transport over to the transport. Because, hey, the time to use untested equipment that you don't rely on or trust at any other time is in a state of emergency, preferably one involving your ship being sabotaged and a timed bomb. Luckily, both are present here. Also a brain teaser is how these quasi-drones knew their way around Enterprise, and how exactly to sabotage it best.

I enjoyed the set up for the episode with the researchers. Along with being well cast, there was definitely a creepy feeling going on. When the one scientist was left alone with the bodies, there was a certain horror movie feel to it, like the last scene in that Halloween movie in the coroners office (they're all mixed in my head). When the life-monitors started beeping, there was that same urge to yell "RUN" to the clueless guy still standing over the body.

The evolution of the Borgified transport was excellent, as were the rest of the effects for the show. Though these have been standard since the beginning, they're always worth mentioning. I also liked the return of the Borg cutting beam, which I don't think we've seen since Wolf 359. Hopefully the battle damage will carry over to the next episode, such as the outer scarring on the hull.

I went into this episode knowing it had potential to be a really great hour, maybe even becoming a classic. I also knew that it had as good a chance (if not better), at becoming on of those horrible disasters that you can‘t help but gawk at, like a highway pileup or a really bad facelift. I think what we end up with is something in between. Though there's a seemingly overwhelming number of points that don't work, there are those that do. Again, this is the first good Borg we've seen in years. However, it's enjoyment level goes down a bit on repeat viewing, and ignorable things on first viewing become glaring on subsequent ones. All things considered though, it's a pretty decent hour. Just not all it could have been.

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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 "Trip" Tucker III

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Guest Cast:
Chris Wynne as Dr. Moninger
Bonita Friedericy as Rooney
John Short as Drake
Adam Harrington as Researcher
Vaughn Armstrong as Admiral Forrest
Jim Fitzpatrick as Commander Williams
Mark Chadwick as Male Tarkalean
Nicole Randal as Female Tarkalean
Paul Scott as Foster

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Creative Staff:
Director: David Livingston
Written By: Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong

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