When Trip is critically injured, the only means of saving his life is for Phlox to implant his DNA in a mimetic creature, creating a rapidly-aging clone from which he'll be able to harvest tissue. But the plan takes a number of unexpected turns. Thanks to the alien component of the clone "Sim," he possesses all of the real Trip's memories. Though he has only a short life span, he quickly bonds with members of the crew. And it turns out that the painless procedure Phlox had anticipated for harvesting tissue from Sim will actually be fatal if carried out.
"Similitude" marks the first Enterprise script by writer-producer Manny Coto, who joined the show in season three. Right out of the gate, he has delivered a solid episode -- and would make such a splash that he would become showrunner for season four (at which time, he'd initiate a much more real and effective creative reboot of the series).
I think this episode does a number of things very well. It presents an authentic moral quandary without it being a direct one-for-one analogy for any particular real-world issue. This gives many characters space to offer their perspective. (I find it interesting that T'Pol has the most outspoken ethical concerns, for example.) And it all brushes up against one of Star Trek's core tenets -- "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" -- without feeling at all like a retread of the story that first presented it.
The episode also honors the format of Star Trek: Enterprise as it has been, not swooping in like some episode of a new show. It uses the narrative structure the series seems to have grown fond of -- flashing back after a big opening teaser. (But here, it doesn't feel like a stunt to build tension; what we see in the teaser is completely recontextualized after we've watched the whole story unfold.) It also leverages its position amid the Xindi arc in a minor but believable way. (Archer says that in other circumstances, he might not have blessed Phlox's Frankensteinian plan, and I feel that's true.)
It also marks a big milestone in the show's ongoing Trip/T'Pol story. I've found the whole "Vulcan neuropressure" conceit to be juvenile -- as it is again in this very episode, with the two groping and rubbing each other's feet before she hangs her chest fully in his face. But this episode finally puts real emotion behind the titillating visuals. And even though it's T'Pol and Sim who connect on a deeper level in this episode, it happens in a way that feels impossible to undo later. There's only so much "will they, won't they" that the show will be able to play between T'Pol and Trip after this -- and if the show is angling to put them together, I'd rather they just do that and seize the resulting story opportunities, rather than keep focused only on the physical attractiveness of Jolene Blalock and Connor Trinneer.
As always, the series has big production values, even though this is more of a so-called "bottle show" that takes place all on existing sets. They have to cast multiple actors to play Sim at different ages, and they do feel like credible younger versions of the same person. Elaborate visual effects show the accumulation of debris on the Enterprise hull. And a rather expensive prop is created for a single scene: a fetus in an incubation tank.
The episode has its shortcomings, though -- beyond the "neuropressure" scenes it feels like Rick Berman and Brannon Braga forced into the script. Phlox feels quite out of character here. It's of necessity, so that the story can happen at all... and yet it's strange to me that he's so zealously driving off questions of medical ethics until we're too deep into the quagmire to turn back.
The story stops short of the really hard ethical consideration here, by having Sim ultimately agree to give his life for Trip. On the one hand, this feels like an easy cheat. But on the other, since Sim effectively is Trip, it would be doing Trip dirty to have Sim make any other choice. Plus, Star Trek has already done this story the other way, with Janeway's decision regarding Tuvix.
Other observations:
- This is yet another example of how poorly the show's theme song ends up playing in context. Here, we smash cut from what appears to be Trip dead in a coffin to "it's been a long roooooad....."
- This episode hits a lot differently in retrospect, when the events of the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise are known.
All told, "Similitude" is a strong debut for Manny Coto -- and in my eyes, the best episode of Enterprise so far. I give it a B+.
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