Enterprise Flashback: Dead Stop

Enterprise was already dabbling in serialized storytelling with its Temporal Cold War storyline. But following an encounter with the Romulans that gutted the ship, the series explored another way of continuing story in "Dead Stop."

Hopelessly damaged after the impact of a Romulan mine, Enterprise is forced to seek help -- and finds it in a mysterious, uncrewed space station that will carry out extensive, automated repairs at a bargain price. But Archer suspects there's some hidden danger they can't see. And soon, one crew member in particular pays a very steep price indeed.

With this episode, I feel like Enterprise is playing with the model of serialized storytelling that Strange New Worlds would swoop in and perfect two decades later: stand-alone stories that nevertheless have connective tissue throughout a season. The "special sauce" that's missing here is that Strange New Worlds episodes always center one of the main characters in the drama. "Dead Stop" is built on an intriguing enough science fiction version of a devil's bargain. Yet there really isn't much growth for any of the characters.

Look hard, and maybe you'd find that growth for Archer? He's the one who first gets suspicious of this unusually benevolent space station. For once, T'Pol is not the "voice of reason" being ignored by the other characters. She's the one arguing that some species are just magnanimous, and there's no need to ascribe sinister purpose to the situation.

What's funny about that, though, is that it's basically an inversion of a Star Trek plot. Very often, our starship heroes are just out there exploring for its own sake. They encounter some alien species that can't imagine the Federation is just there out of the goodness of its heart. They want to know "the angle," and we the audience shake our heads at how backward these aliens are to not immediately sign on to this utopian future. Here, our Starfleet heroes are the "backward aliens" (as this prequel series often paints them), unwilling to believe that an unknown alien race could be benevolent.

Though of course, they're not, or this wouldn't be much of an episode. We learn (decades old spoiler!) that the station's computer core is a network of captured people, and Travis Mayweather is taken to join that "mainframe." And this isn't a "misunderstanding" where unknown builders of a 2001: A Space Odyssey style station simply don't understand how "lesser life forms" might value one person. They totally try to hide Mayweather's abduction by swapping him out for a faked dead body that Phlox cleverly identifies.

This leads to the one scene that comes closest to the character-driven drama I want more of from Enterprise. Hoshi Sato comes by during "Mayweather's" autopsy, and talks about a personal memory of him as she struggles to accept that he's gone. If there had ever been even the slightest inkling before this moment that the two characters had any friendship at all, I feel like this would have played beautifully. As it is, it's just a stark example of the thing Enterprise as a series ought to have been doing more of all along.

But the episode is really only interested in the sci-fi mystery of it all. Reed and Trip sneak around to try and find the truth. Later, they team with Archer and T'Pol to trick the station. A heist-like plan comes together, allowing them to free Mayweather and destroy the station. Action! Adventure! And a Twilight Zone-like ending that shows the debris of the station beginning to repair itself. It's all fun enough, in a sugary dessert kind of way that lacks narrative nourishment.

Other observations:

• I will never become numb to a cute Porthos bit. The scene of him seeking out the squeak in the ship is totally adorable.

• Its a fun callback to mention the scratch Trip put in the Enterprise back in the series premiere.

• Trip and Reed have a short exchange that's essentially about the potential of AI taking their jobs. It hits a lot differently today than it did when the episode was new.

• It used to be in season one that the decon chamber was the excuse to have the actors show some skin. Now in season two, no excuse is needed to just have Mayweather sitting around Sickbay in his underwear. But hey, if you've got an actor as ripped as Anthony Montgomery is here, I guess you'd better use that. Don't give him anything to really do, but have him sit there and look pretty.

• They make a point of saying that the other miscellaneous aliens captured by this station have been there for years. We're meant to understand that they're past saving, thus forgiving the fact that our heroes don't save them.

"Dead Stop" has some spooky moments. But with it having ultimately nothing to say beyond its premise, I feel it only deserves a B-.