Star Trek: Company Rewatch: “Exile”

“Exile”
Written by Phyllis Strong
Directed by Roxann Dawson
Period 3, Episode 6
Generation episode 058
Original air day: Oct 15, 2003
Date: unidentified

Captain’s star log. An alien will make telepathic get hold of with Sato. At initial she thinks she’s hallucinating, the pressure of their condition setting up to get to her, in particular given that neither Phlox nor Reed can find any health care or scientific reason why she’s hearing someone whispering her name and looking at shadowy figures in her quarters.

T’Pol has been examining the sensor data on the anomalies, both from Enterprise and the Xindi database, and she theorizes that the anomalies may well be caused by gravimetric waves from the sphere crossing with the gravimetric waves from an additional sphere. She’s been capable to triangulate the rough spot of this theoretical 2nd sphere. Archer, excited, sets a training course.

On T’Pol’s orders, Sato goes to the command middle to translate extra of the Xindi database. When once more, the telepathic get in touch with is made, and this time it is far more comprehensive. She sees pictures of his planet and of herself on the command centre screens, and then she is seemingly transported to what appears to be like like a medieval castle. The alien, who seems human and phone calls himself Tarquin, provides to help them in their mission. (At one particular point, he also gave himself the visual appeal of Phlox.)

Archer decides to acquire a shot, and heads to the coordinates. Archer, Sato, and Reed just take a shuttlepod down to satisfy Tarquin, who turns out to be much more alien-searching than he let on. He was only expecting Sato, but he greets the other folks with equivalent friendliness.

His telepathy allows him to go through telepathic imprints that individuals depart powering on objects they’ve manipulated. If they have a little something of the Xindi’s, he can, with a number of days’ meditation and do the job, present info about them. Archer provides him a piece of the product that attacked Earth in “The Expanse.”

Tarquin, nonetheless, asks that Sato keep to maintain him firm over all those couple of days. Archer is reluctant, but Sato is eager to volunteer to remain guiding to dangle out with him. He’s all by yourself on the planet. Archer promises to be back in a number of days after they’ve checked out the other sphere.

Seemingly, Tarquin’s telepathy only functions immediately brain-to-brain, as it ended up, on a select couple persons, men and women who have the proper kind of intellect. Sato is just one this kind of. Telepaths are unusual on Tarquin’s earth, and these who have the capacity are exiled. He’s been living here for generations, although he has ample engineering to want for nothing—except corporation. He’s capable to re-create some Earth food employing his foods synthesizer, dependent on what he’s study in Sato’s mind. They speak a great deal about Sato’s lifestyle and feelings, and she simply cannot help but discover how very little he talks about his lifetime. He shows her a crystal that assists amplify his telepathy to allow for him to achieve out for mild-many years, which is how he found Sato. She attempts it, and will get flashes of recollections from assorted past adventures, as nicely as a see of a Xindi-Reptilian. He also gives her a book that is from whoever lived on the world in the distant past. When Tarquin is working, Sato translates and reads the reserve.

As Enterprise approaches the sphere, the anomalies pound the crap out of the ship. It quickly gets to be clear—especially when a slice of the saucer’s hull is ripped off—that Enterprise simply cannot strategy this sphere. So they consider the trellium they mined final 7 days and use it to coat the hull of a single of the shuttlepods. Archer and Tucker head into the cloaking discipline, and make it out the other facet, then land on the sphere. There’s some damage that Tucker has to go EVA to correct, and he accidentally activates the port thruster, which sends the shuttle careening into room. Archer and Tucker have to damage the thruster in question so the shuttle will crash back again to the sphere hull. It does that, skidding toward them, yet they really do not transfer, due to the fact they are Television set figures, and they know that it’ll quit skidding two ft before it hits them. Certain.

Tarquin has recommended Sato not to go outside, as the wind is nasty, but the true explanation is that he’s buried the previous quite a few men and women who’ve been his companion on this entire world. Sato is appalled, and tends to make it clear that her stop by is temporary. Tarquin attempts to enchantment to the feeling of loneliness that she feels even on a starship, though how he’s meant to influence her to get rid of loneliness by paying out all her time with just just one other man or woman on a total planet is not crystal clear.

Organization heads again to choose up Sato, now armed with a shit-ton of facts from the sphere. On the world, Archer approaches Sato and says that Tarquin will only deliver the info he’s gotten from the Xindi tech if she stays with him for a time. Sato reluctantly agrees, but when Archer won’t even permit her go back to ship to gather her matters and short the new alpha-change communications officer, she realizes that Tarquin is pulling a fast one particular by psionically posing as Archer. She confronts him, once again refusing to continue to be, and threatening to demolish the crystal. Tarquin does concur to permit her leave, but refuses to provide the facts he’s realized from the Xindi tech.

Business picks up Sato and buggers off. Archer’s pissed about Tarquin, but at minimum they bought Sato again and have a lot of awesome sphere data. Pursuant to that, T’Pol now has a map of the anomalies, and her first idea was both proper and wrong—there is additional than a person sphere, but there’s also a lot more than two. Based mostly on the map of the anomalies she’s been able to compile, there are around fifty of them.

Tarquin contacts Sato, to her annoyance. He promises that this is the very last time he’ll access out to her. He presents the coordinates for a colony on which the Xindi developed the weapon, and wherever they are most likely making their even bigger one particular. He changed his intellect about sharing the intel with them since their mission is unsafe, and he doesn’t want to see Sato damage. Sato passes these coordinates on to a suddenly pretty enthusiastic Archer…

Can not we just reverse the polarity? When T’Pol theorizes that there are fifty or so spheres, all developing a mess of anomalies, Archer realizes that the spheres may have produced the Delphic Expanse…

The gazelle speech. As a substitute of staying grim and awful Archer, this 7 days he’s closer to his aged self, primarily for the reason that they are carrying out science and obtaining things out. It’s heartening.

I’ve been skilled to tolerate offensive circumstances. T’Pol has been burning the midnight oil in the command middle researching the Xindi databases, probably because she’s even now obtaining nightmares from her trellium poisoning in “Impulse.”

Speaking of that, Archer tells her to remain absent from the launch bay even though Tucker matches a person of the shuttles with trellium, and Jolene Blalock provides a heartfelt “Indeed” worthy of Teal’c…

Florida Person. Florida Gentleman Helps make To start with Ever Anomaly-Evidence Shuttlepod!

Optimism, Captain! Tarquin poses as Phlox at a person stage, and it is creepy as hell….

Better get MACO. For some inexplicable purpose, Archer leaves Sato by itself on a earth with an alien they just met. The total motive why you have, not just a protection detail, but the MACOs on the ship is to protect the crew, so why the hell didn’t he depart a MACO or 4 with her?

I’ve got faith…

“Sometimes, I really do not know what is worse—being alone, or getting to bury the people I have appear to care about.”

–Tarquin, failing his conserving roll vs. empathy.

Welcome aboard. The only guest is Maury Sterling as Tarquin.

Trivial matters: This is Phyllis Strong’s very first solo crafting hard work for Trek—all her past writing for both Voyager and Business was in collaboration with Mike Sussman.

When she makes use of the crystal, Sato sees images from, between other sites, “Sleeping Canines,” “Judgment,” and “The Communicator.”

This was the 1st episode of any Trek series to be aired in significant-definition, a exercise that was getting much more and extra commonplace across the first decade of the millennium.

It is been a extensive road… “The following time you invite somebody for a stop by, you could want to allow them know that you’re searching for a lifelong companion.” This is almost an excellent episode, for all that it wears its influences—it’s very substantially Magnificence and the Beast and Phantom of the Opera—on, not just its sleeve, but on the whole damn shirt.

Thankfully, the tale avoids the greatest issue with B&tB in individual, which is that it’s a somewhat creepy case of Stockholm Syndrome disguised as a intimate comedy, which has constantly sat inadequately with me. (Even again in 1991 when the Disney animated version came out, I stored imagining, “But he kidnapped her! It’s not genuine appreciate, it’s a damn felony!”) But even although Sato thankfully at no place provides in to Tarquin’s motivation to retain her prisoner, there are so lots of very little things that threw me out of the story. For starters, Archer just remaining her alone on the planet with this telepathic rando without having any defense further than a phase pistol. Severely, why are the MACOs even there if they can’t supply stability for a bridge officer caught on a peculiar earth?

And then Sato is so nervous about remaining with this strange alien that she gads about the place in a tank best and shorts the whole time. Since the producers of Organization are never ever happier than when they are sexualizing their female characters.

The greatest dilemma is that Maury Sterling is fairly nowhere as Tarquin. He is not charming adequate to make Sato’s being willing to hang out with him convincing, and he isn’t menacing enough to make the expose that he’s a predator land pretty properly. (Also: he’s obtained a entire world to himself, why does he set the graves of his preceding hostages so close to the castle where the upcoming victims can uncover it like Sato does?)

The Business 50 % of the plot is both of those valuable for relocating the seasonal arc together and only occasionally exciting. Obtaining out that there are tons more spheres is really crucial to the in general plot, but finding there is not fifty percent the enjoyment. For just one point, why is not Mayweather the just one piloting the shuttlepod into the cloaking subject? This is the next episode in a row in which the ace pilot isn’t performing the job that calls for ace piloting, and when the ace pilot is the only individual of coloration in the major forged and he’s staying set apart for the white dude, it is not a great search. For a different, the whole placing off the port thruster and obtaining to shoot down the shuttle is these kinds of apparent filler, it is unfortunate.

Linda Park is great as constantly, and she does effectively with the spotlight, and hey, at least it’s not as dreadful as “Vanishing Stage.” But this should’ve been a stronger episode, and it was performed in by terrible visitor casting and several failures of scripting.

Warp issue rating: 5

Keith R.A. DeCandido is also examining the new episodes of Star Trek: Picard as they are introduced on Paramount+, and in anticipation of that, he also rewatched the movies Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis on this in this article internet site, appropriate before his critique of Picard’s “The Upcoming Generation.” His assessment of Picard’s “Disengage” went up past week, and his overview of “Seventeen Seconds” will go up on Thursday.