Enterprise encounters a race of non-corporeal "wisps" that seek to inhabit the bodies of Enterprise crewmembers and experience physical reality. But when it appears these aliens might be looking for more than a temporary exchange, the crew finds themselves fighting an invasion.
I find this to be a bit of an awkward episode for Star Trek. Our crew is exploring space to seek out new life and new civilizations... yet when the encounter a truly different one here, Archer immediately doesn't trust it and doesn't want to explore. And while his caution and skepticism is arguably more realistic than most Star Trek, the fact he turns out to be right -- and that these aliens turn out to be hostile -- kind of undermines the core values of a best Star Trek stories.
The logic governing these aliens feels very conveniently particular. They once had corporeal bodies, which is meant to explain why they have a physical spaceship. But they've been "wisps" for so long that they've forgotten most of what physical existence feels like. So how is it that their spaceship is only now critically breaking down? It seems to take no effort for them to displace a human consciousness (only Phlox is immune)... and yet they don't simply take what they want; no reason is ever given for their initial ruse. Or for them only ever taking control of part of the crew. Or for them not possessing Archer when he poses the biggest threat to their plans.
In particular, one "rule" we're given about the alien possessions is hard to overlook when its broken later. Travis learns by accident that the wisps can't go into the engine nacelle (allowing the production to reuse that expensive catwalk set). Except then Trip becomes possessed without ever leaving the catwalk, and remains possessed while inside it.
Whenever a human is possessed by one of the aliens, they act wildly out of character. On the good side, that allows most of the cast a chance to give a distinctly different performance. On the bad side, it makes you wonder why our heroes ever bother building an "alien possession detector" when it's immediately obvious who isn't acting normal. And on the worse side, a plot element involving a possessed Reed threatening sexual violence against T'Pol is utterly unnecessary. (The alien's big "pickup" line, that he wonders what it's like to be female, is patently stupid; it could just go possess a woman.)
There are moments that play better -- most of them (as usual) involving John Billingsley as Phlox. He's the first to realize that the aliens might commander a host against their will, and is clever enough not to be fooled by a possessed Hoshi. He even gets an action sequence in the end, where he has to don a spacesuit, be talked through an engineering modification, and physically wrestle with an alien to save Enterprise. The horror movie vibes of the episode generally work too, from the distant and haunted cadence the aliens use when speaking of their non-corporeal realm to the "body snatcher" vibes of Possessed Trip stalking Phlox.
Other observations:
- Non-corporeal entities in scifi stories always want to eat food. This episode honors this tradition by putting a veritable buffet in front of Trip.
- When Travis Mayweather is running from a wisp, he darts up a classic, vertical Jefferies tube just as the original series presented.
- Possessed humans have to die for the aliens to be driven from them, which forms the basis of the plan to free them all. But Phlox sure doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get around the ship and revive everyone.
Not every Star Trek episode has to have a moral. But if you're going to just do a "cool scifi ghost story" like this, I think you have to respect the "rules" you set out for your story. The rules of "The Crossing" are rickety to begin with, and then not respected at all. With only fun performances to balance that out, I give the episode a C+.
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