Enterprise Flashback: Bounty

As Enterprise was drawing near the end of season two and about to kick off a new ongoing storyline, it first wanted to address an existing storyline: Archer's relationship with the Klingons. That was at the center of "Bounty."

Archer is captured by a Tellarite bounty hunter, who means to deliver him to the Klingons. Meanwhile, a virus triggers early pon farr in T'Pol, who is trapped in the decon chamber with Phlox and quickly losing her emotional control.

Archer hasn't exactly excelled at diplomacy through two seasons of Enterprise, so I do like the idea of putting him in a situation where essentially must use diplomacy -- persuading a morally-conflicted bounty hunter to release him. Guest star Jordan Lund is a good scene partner for Scott Bakula, in the role of the bounty hunter Skalaar. The character is well-drawn, with clear doubts about what he is doing, and equally clear determination to ignore those doubts to achieve his own ambitions.

All of that makes it a bit of a weird choice for the character to be a Tellarite. The pig-faced race from the original series was, like Andorians, a nearly blank slate that Enterprise could put their prequel stamp on and flesh out. But I feel that before building to a more well-rounded and realistic alien race, the writers ought to have begun with the few established touchstones: Tellarites are not just literally pig-headed; they're stubborn, belligerent, and gruff in demeanor too. Skalaar is none of those things: friendly, empathetic, and thoughtful. And I feel like it would be a lot easier to accept this atypical Tellarite if Enterprise had thus far spent any time showing us typical Tellarites.

If the writers aren't following up on any established Tellarite story, though, they are following up on their ongoing Klingon story. This is a good development in my book, as early Klingon episodes of Enterprise had left relations with them in entirely too good a place. I'm much more into this prequel paving the road to the conflict we would "later" see in the original series.

Speaking of Klingons, we get the actor behind one of the most famous Klingons (Gowron) in this episode... playing a different alien. There's no mistaking the voice and eyes of Robert O'Reilly as the character Kago. My only question is why his role is so small, particularly when Enterprise has now demonstrated itself more than willing to bring in veteran Trek actors to be on the show. He does at least make a meal of the quirky bit part.

As for the B plot? After the original Star Trek made pon farr famous, any follow-up series with a Vulcan character is eventually going to do its version. And appropriately, Roxann Dawson directs this episode, since her character B'Elanna was at the center of Voyager's bonus pon farr episode. Who better to sensitively guide Jolene Blalock through some objectively embarrassing writhing and flirting and panting and grinding and everything in between? Still, there's something lurid to her performing all this that didn't seem to be the focus when it was Leonard Nimoy or Tim Russ doing it, you know? The "stripped down inside the decon chamber" element of it all doesn't help. (Though they try to come off as "equal opportunity" by putting Phlox in that situation for the first time.)

Still, Blalock commits to the bit, so it doesn't come off as silly as it could have. And I think it helps that John Billingsley is her scene partner for most of the episode. I've often commented on his strong acting on the show. Here, he wisely avoids the expected "comedic" take on having to rebuff the advances of a chemically-altered friend, instead playing someone caring and sympathetic. (Once she escapes, the brief scene in which she comes onto Malcolm Reed is icky in all the ways the rest of the episode could have been.) I feel like the trio of Blalock and Billingsley in front of the camera, with Dawson behind it, keeps a story that could go so wrong mostly on the rails.

Other observation:

• Phlox again mentions Denobulan medical ethics when bluffing T'Pol, reminding us that his people don't believe in treating a patient against their will. While I do still love that conceit, if it keeps coming up only in situations where Phlox going to violate that rule, aren't we basically painting him as an unethical person?

"Bounty" isn't doing anything particularly novel with its main storyline, so I'll call it a decent-but-shaky B-. In a sense, it's the final episode of this version of Enterprise -- the next episode is the season two finale, which sets up the new "season-long story arc" phase of the series.