Enterprise Flashback: Stratagem

Terry Matalas was show runner for the final season of Star Trek: Picard, and served up the grand Next Generation reunion fans had wanted all along. But that wasn't his first work on Star Trek. He was a production assistant for the entire run of Star Trek: Enterprise, and twice was given "story by" credit for contributions to the show. I didn't clock his previous episode when reviewing it, but I'll note the second now as I review "Stratagem."

Archer and the Xindi scientist Degra are aboard a shuttle, having escaped from a prison they've shared for three years. Or so it seems. In truth, the Enterprise crew has staged an elaborate ruse to persuade Degra to reveal where the Xindi weapon is soon to be launched. Can they maintain their elaborate scenario long enough to stay ahead of Degra's suspicions?

I've often flagged the "X days earlier" trope as a weak attempt to manufacture suspense in a story that's otherwise lacking it. I don't think that's an issue in this episode. Here, the flashback makes for a fun bait-and-switch, where the situation we're presented is upended and recontextualized by flashing back in time. It's fun use of the trope, not for its own sake, but in service of toying with the audience.

Except that there's a lot working against the clever idea here. This episode is coming not long after "Twilight," in which Jonathan Archer found himself in an unfamiliar future and suffering from memory loss. To go so quickly back to that story conceit here feels suspicious. Plus there's the episode title itself, priming the audience to question what "stratagem" might be at work here.

But then... it might be that this episode doesn't aim so much to deceive the audience as to put it in Degra's place. Despite very convincing details -- the creepy "blood worm" removal scene, Archer persuading Degra he's set aside their differences -- Degra remains slightly suspicious of his situation, just as we the audience are trying to figure out what's really going on here.

What's going on, we learn, is that Phlox is able to erase the short term memory of Xindi primates, presenting this opportunity to put Degra in a holodeck-style simulation, pre-holodeck. (Instead, we get fun visuals of a "ride simulator"-style contraption assembled in the shuttlebay.) Also, after the audience has perhaps let its guard down, the episode serves up one more twist. When the crew can't be sure of the intel they've collected, they enact one more ruse to trick Degra into verifying it.

I do wish there had been a little more room for character in here somehow. Sometimes Phlox digs in about medical ethics, and other times he's an eager mad scientist -- as he is here with the plan to erase Degra's memory. It would be nice if we had a little more context explaining his shifting attitudes (besides "what the episode needs"). And I wish we got a little more of Archer's mind, since he's in the difficult position. If you had to pretend to be friends with the inventor of a weapon of mass destruction, could you do it? It would have been nice to see "behind the scenes" moments showing his emotional struggle in befriending a monster (or at least, illuminating how he -- a non-actor -- is so effective in deceiving Degra).

Other observation:

• A rare "Reed can be good at his job" moment here, when he successfully focuses weapons fire to knock out the engines of Degra's ship. 

This episode is arguably too centered on plot, and misses moments to build character. But at least the "spycraft" is fun and well-conceived. I give "Stratagem" a B+.