Enterprise Flashback: The Catwalk

Usually, when a Star Trek episode takes place almost entirely aboard the ship, it's a "bottle episode" designed to save money by using existing sets. That's decidedly not the case with Enterprise's episode 'The Catwalk."

Aliens bring news of an approaching interstellar storm with deadly radiation. They and the Enterprise crew take shelter inside the ship's shielded engine nacelle. But sharing the cramped space is the least of their problems; soon, aliens who are immune to the radiation board Enterprise and seek to commandeer it.

This episode starts with a novel premise, a clever sci-fi take on huddling together to ride out a storm. And the production team spends the money to really do the concept justice. There are great CG shots of the ship drifting through the chaotic storm. There are dozens of background actors brought in to really sell the idea that the entire crew is cooped up in a tight space. (Including one person who plays the oft-talked-about "Chef" -- though we only see them from the neck down.) And then there's the brand new set where most of the action takes place, the titular catwalk inside the nacelle. It's a large and quite thorough space. (It even has a ceiling!)

There are several nice little character moments, from poker games to crossword puzzles, claustrophobia to motion sickness, stories of camping and similar space hazards. But the show doesn't have the courage to tell a story just about struggling to live for a week in a cramped space -- perhaps because that might be a bit to close to the first season's survival tale, "Shuttlepod One." So we get the invasion twist late in the episode, and from there things start to feel a little bit like "Die Hard on a spaceship." To differentiate it from The Next Generation's version of that very thing, people take turns as the John McClane character (since humans can only survive a few minutes of the radiation).

My issue with the episode isn't so much the late shift to a new story, though -- it's the many, many plot holes along the way. Any one of them taken alone could probably be overlooked, but taken in totality, they really bring the episode down:

• At the beginning of the episode, they're about to explore a planet. Can they not hide there for shelter from the storm? Even the aliens who board Enterprise make that assumption, that the crew abandoned ship for some other refuge.

• We're told that Sickbay would be shielded from radiation; the problem is that it isn't big enough for the whole crew. So why is Phlox relocating his entire menagerie to the nacelle? Couldn't he stay in Sickbay and tend to his critters?

• The interstellar storm looks decidedly flat when we see it approaching. Could the Enterprise not fly over it?

• T'Pol specifically estimates they'll be inside the storm for eight days, then Archer turns around and tells his crew they might be inside it for a week, maybe more. Why withhold details telling them exactly what to prepare for?

• When the alien boarding party reaches the bridge, they can tell that navigation has been rerouted somewhere else... yet apparently have no interest in investigating to where.

• Archer deliberately lets the aliens know he's on board, for seemingly no other reason that to tell them he's putting the ship on auto-destruct. Surely automated announcements from the ship's computer could have delivered that information.

And after that bonus helping of bullet points, let me proceed with my usual "other observations":

• Talk about setting up a latrine in the nacelle gives us one of the rare references to a bathroom on Star Trek.

• This episode is littered with actors who have appeared before on one Star Trek or another. But to me, the biggest "that guy" in the cast is Zach Grenier, who later went on to play a parade of weaselly characters on all sorts of TV shows (including Devs and The Good Fight).

• The abundance of cute shots of Porthos in this episode confirms it for me -- he's my favorite character on this series.

• I know that wireless headphones and ear buds and the like are an invention more modern than this episode of Star Trek. Still, headphones as a concept did exist at the time, obviously. Which makes Archer's decision to watch his water polo matches with the sound turned up, bothering T'Pol and anyone else in earshot, especially rude.

• It's like a rule that any poker game depicted in TV and film will feature illegal string raising. I'm just saying, if you're ever at a table in a casino, you'll try "I see your bet... and raise you..." exactly one time before you learn: that shit don't fly.

• One of the non-speaking security officers in this episode looks like he's maybe 17 years old.

It might be that the demands of this story -- a new set and tons of background actors -- meant that the script somehow needed to be locked down faster than usual? That's the only explanation I've got for how such an interesting story was so riddled with plot holes. I give "The Catwalk" a B-.