December 13, 2002

Precious Cargo - REVIEW
By Paul Pytlik
Special thanks to Paul Pytlik for the screencaps.

 

A harmonica plays against the blackness of space as the Enterprise flies by. We find ourselves in Charles Tucker’s quarters as he jams a mean beat. Archer interrupts this musical moment with news that they’ve received a distress call. An alien vessel is having problems with one of its life support systems and requests help in repairing it. The aliens, Firek Goff and Firek Plinn, seem friendly enough when they come onboard. Archer is happy to fulfill Goff’s need of a bath, and invites them to dine with him later. Plinn shows Tucker to the equipment that’s malfunctioning, which is contained in one of the alien ship's cargo bays.

The passenger that they’re transporting is being kept in stasis, whom the crew is told is a doctor. Archer offers to let them dock their ship and take them to their destination. The journey will take the aliens five months to complete at warp 2.2, but the Enterprise can get them there in less than four days. The captain wishes is make first contact with the passenger’s people, and feels that having a member of her species would make it go more smoothly. Goff is thankful, but declines the offer.

On the alien ship, Tucker enlists Hoshi’s help in deciphering the alien language. After catching the look Tucker gives the passenger, Hoshi gently ribs him and returns to the ship. While at diner, Goff’s beeper goes off, signaling that the stasis pod has completely broken down. He rushes back to his ship to find Tucker desperately trying to open the hatch to let out the now awakened passenger, who’s banging from the inside. When he’s successful, he fails to notice that her hands are bound, nor the fact that he’s about to be hit over the head with a crowbar.

Goff contacts Plinn for him to return to the ship immediately. After Archer tries to contact Tucker and he fails to answer, he sends a security detail to escort Plinn. When Goff sees the men approaching, he opens fire on them, closes the door on his comrade, and forcibly breaks his ship free of Enterprise. The ship gives chase, but Goff releases a cloud of dilythium hydroxyls to prevent further pursuit.

Tucker tries to communicate with the passenger, Kaitaama, when Goff interrupts him and demands that the pod be fixed. Tucker finds the universal translator, and is soon able to talk to Katiaama. She’s not a doctor, as he was told, but royalty whom the aliens are holding for ransom. Tucker decides that they are safe onboard, and begins to work on breaking out of the cargo bay. At first Katiaama refuses to go along with the plan, but relents as Tucker prepares to leave without her. Disabling the internal sensors, the two make their way to the escape pods - only to find that they are built for one. Katiaama and Tucker squish tightly into it, and blast away.

Back on Enterprise, Archer interviews Plinn for information that may be useful in finding out where his ship went. But Plinn states he knows nothing, not even what their destination was, as he spent his time taking care of the cargo. Archer puts him in the docking bay, turning it into a makeshift brig. The captain then decides to try another approach with Plinn. He convinces him that T’Pol is the ship’s judge, and Plinn will have to endure a tribunal. She’s especially stern, as the ship began with 83 crewmembers, and are down to 76.

After a day of arguing in the pod, the two escapees agree to try work together. The escape pod finds a star system and roughly lands on a swamp planet. They set up camp, and Katiaama treats Trips wounds. After refusing to search for more firewood, the two fight, ending up in the swamp water, where they kiss. Later that night, they are awaken by a homing beacon that the escape pod it emitting. Tucker disables it, but it’s too late. Goff locates them, and finds the camp. Knowing he’s arrived, the campers set up a decoy of Tucker that Goff shoots, and the former uses the opportunity to catch the latter by surprise. Tucker and Katiaama quickly subdue him.

After being picked up by Enterprise, Katiaama tells Tucker that he should visit her on her home world in the future. As of now, he wouldn’t be allowed to see her, but in 246 days she’d be in the position to change that.

The Good
I really liked the acting this episode had to offer. Archer finally seems to have hit his stride, at least noticeably to me. Whereas before it struck me that he was performing in a high school play with his stilted delivery, he may have finally hit his grove here. As T’Pol leaves after getting the sizes right for Plinn’s coffin, Archer gives him a look of both helplessness and which says ‘sucks to be you, glad it ain’t me’. From how the scene played out, you’d believe that she actually had the power to execute the captain. Hey, it hasn’t been done on Star Trek yet! The other performances, like Tucker and Katiaama, are wonderful. There’s not very much romantic chemistry between the two, but the acting more than makes up for it. The jokes came off realistically for once, not planned or forced as one or two usually are. I thank the above that the overused (in this situation) 'No one talks to me that way' wasn't called upon.

I liked all the little things thrown in, like seeing how limited the Enterprise’s ‘long range’ sensors are, since only a few seconds at warp two is enough to get outside it. The escape pod size was played excellently, and the camera shots worked off its crampedness. It may have been just my hearing, but it seemed to me that Katiaama’s speech became less stilted, presumably as the UT got better at translating her language. I loved seeing T’Pol in the traditional Vulcan robes. Surprisingly, she didn’t look out of place in them. Finding out that cars are still around, and still have four wheels was interesting too.

Also good is that Trip can’t read the panels, nor know how to fly the ship after a few seconds of looking around. The landing on the planet shots were spectacular as well. During the escape, Trip keeps referring his captor as ‘they’, keeping in line with the fact that he doesn’t know that Plinn was left behind on Enterprise.

Oh, and I think we can safely label Trip as the king of underwear now.

The Bad
Where was the teaser? Another 'hey let’s look out the window and act all dramatic-like' moment for this episode.

Is everyone who shoots a phaser cross-eyed? Or do all weapons pull to the left? It seems no one ever seems to be able to hit what they’re aiming for, a fact painfully obvious in the shootout outside the docking hatch.

Unresolved
Did Plinn really know the warp signature? How did Enterprise find the two, did they detect the beacon, or had they been following Goff? If the latter, why didn’t Goff know he was being followed? Would he really have beamed down and left his ship alone? Archer didn’t know they’d escaped, he had no reason to hang back and shadow Goff. After devoting a chunk of the episode to this, a definitive answer would have been preferable.

The escape pod didn’t seem to have warp drive, and there weren’t any strong lights to signify that the pod was near a star. So it made it how far in under a day at sublight speed with what almost appeared to be chemical propulsion? When Katiaama asked him if he had a plan and he gave a sarcastic answer, well, if they’d left a few seconds or minutes later, they’d have spent the next year or so traveling to the nearest star. Tucker also seems to have had an inkling they’d be in a survival situation, so why not take the piece of dress Katiaama discards? It would have been useful as a blanket, a bandage, or for a fire.

Just what kind of memory and divining skills does Trip have? He can’t do much until Hoshi translates the language Goff and Plinn use. After she delivers it, he barely has time to look at it before Katiaama starts pounding and Goff starts beating him over the head. So now he knows how to get to the escape pods through the shafts and disable internal sensors, (which seems to have also made external sensors stupid). Not to mention exactly which panel in the shaft disabled them. Maybe it was the crowbar of knowledge he was beaten with.
As well,Goff may have had his hands full, but he seems not to know what to do once he has a prisoner. Well, unless he has a stasis pod that works.

All in all, a pretty good romp that has a moderate level of rewatchablity.

B/B+

 

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