The Xindi weapon is on the way to Earth -- but is not yet ready to be armed, as Dolim lacks the third access code necessary. Through torture and coercion, he seeks to make Hoshi Sato hack it for him. Can she hold out long enough for the MACOs to stage a rescue with help from their Xindi allies? And will bad blood continue between MACO leader Hayes and Malcolm Reed, after a MACO was recently killed under Reed's watch?
It's been a long while since Hoshi Sato played a notable role in an episode, but she's dragged into the spotlight here under the pretense that her language skills make her ideal to hack an aquatic Xindi computer code. I'm suspicious of that, but willing to go along with it to see an underused character get a hero moment or two. I do wish the bulk of her heroism was more than basically "holding up under torture," but that she does -- and at one point even increases the security measures she's been tasked to undermine. She even demonstrates a willingness to kill herself rather than continue to be used by the Xindi.
Most of this episode is positioning things for the finale. We get a "Death Star thermal exhaust port" style contrivance: hit this particular Sphere in the Expanse, and you'll bring the whole network down. A villain moot in the Sphere Builders' "white space" tells us they'll be getting more proactive in trying to stop Enterprise. We get some wistful talk about what our heroes will do when the Xindi crisis is finally over. And in the end, we outline the separate teams who will chase the Xindi weapon to Earth and head out to destroy the Expanse Sphere network.
But the bulk of the episode is devoted to Hoshi's rescue -- its planning and execution. In particular, we get one more potential clash between Hayes and Reed. That's not surprising, since they've buried the hatchet before, only to start bickering again. What is surprising, though, is that Hayes lets Reed off the hook this time. It's not clear to me, on this occasion when a MACO life was actually lost, why now is the moment Hayes lets bygones be bygones -- but here it is. And not a moment too soon, as their childish bickering had grown pretty stale.
But then, I do know the real reason Hayes is forgiving -- we're doing the classic trope where an adversarial character is finally accepted... when they're about to be killed. Trope aside, though, it's a "good death" for the character to have him go down saving one of the mains. Also, after Star Trek has given us so many moments of someone being saved from a laser blast by a timely transporter, it's novel to see that not work this time.
Other observations:
- Way back at the beginning of the season, we learned that future people told the Xindi that humans would destroy their homeworld -- kicking off this whole crisis. This seemed utterly baffling when Enterprise soon discovered that the Xindi homeworld had already been destroyed. Finally this episode gives us clarity on this point, explaining that the Xindi are going to settle a new homeworld, and that humans will supposedly destroy that one. Better 23 episodes late than never, I guess?
- The "bridge" (is it a bridge?) of the Xindi weapon is a fun set. The big gyro in the center is useless and goofy, but also pretty cool looking, and different from other alien environments we've seen on Star Trek.
- When an aquatic Xindi ship is damaged, we see water leak out into space.
- Reed asks for three MACO volunteers for an assault on the Xindi weapon, and gets that and more. I don't feel like it's made explicit why he needs to stop at just three? The more, the merrier?
"Countdown" doesn't really stand well on its own -- nor could it, at this point in a serialized story. Still, I could wish for a bit less "because the story's almost over, that's why." I give it a B-.
No comments:
Post a Comment