"Canamar"

Written by John Shiban
Directed by Allan Kroeker


In which Archer and Trip are taken prisoner and sent to a prison called Canamar, only to struggle to stay alive when the transport is hijacked...

Synopsis - Analysis - Memorable Quotes - Observations


<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->






Synopsis

As the episode begins, Enterprise attempts to contact Archer and Trip when they encounter Shuttlepod One floating without power in space. They determine that the pod is damaged from weapons’ fire, and there are no lifesigns. They check the logs on the pod, and the captain describes leaving a planet after meeting with the Enolians. Phlox detects human blood, and it matches the missing crewmen. T’Pol orders the Enterprise to the planet.

Meanwhile, on an Enolian prison transport, Archer and Trip are confined with several other prisoners. Archer asks to speak with the ranking officer, and is given a little punishment for his trouble. He asks about where they are going, and one of the prisoners mentions a processing station on the way to Canamar. It seems they were accused of smuggling, which was enough for the Enolians.

T’Pol speaks with an Enolian official, who at first doesn’t seem to be interested in helping. At the same time, Trip has a little run-in with a Nausicaan prisoner, which gets them both punished by the guards. Trip’s claim that he and Archer are innocent don’t seem to be heeded by guards or prisoners. The Enolian official boards Enterprise with information that Archer and Trip were wrongfully detained, and he gives T’Pol the coordinates for rendezvous with the prison transport.

Archer is informed that he is to be released, but in that moment, one of the other prisoners gets loose. He releases the Nausicaan. Together, the two escaped prisoners stage hijack the transport, badly injuring the pilot in the process. Archer, seeing an opportunity, offers to serve as pilot, taking on the guise of the smuggler he was mistaken for. He tries to get Trip free as well, but the ruse doesn’t work that well.

As the Nausicaan stands guard over the rest of the prisoners, Archer is taken to the bridge, where he fiddles with the controls until he can figure them out. He gets navigation working, and the hijacker orders him to set a course to a nearby binary system. Meanwhile, in the prisoner hold, the Nausicaan toys with the subdued guards.

Archer plays up his story about being a smuggler, trying to get the hijacker to reveal his intentions. He finds out that the hijacker once served seven years on Canamar, and had no intentions of going back. Archer pretends to take the subspace transmitter offline, and manages to get a signal out before the hijacker destroys the console. Enterprise picks up the signal, and increases their speed as the Enolian official contacts their ships in the area.

While Trip suffers next to an annoying prisoner, Archer continues to aid the hijacker. He detects a couple of Enolian patrol ships on course to rendezvous with the stolen prison transport. The hijacker accuses Archer of sending out a signal, but he talks his way out of the charge. When the hijacker orders Archer to fire on the patrol ships, Archer refuses, trying to convince the hijacker that it would be better to take their chances on Canamar. But the hijacket insists on fighting their way out of the situation.

Not wanting to fire on the patrol ships, Archer proposes a less lethal solution. He convinces the hijacker to release Trip, who modifies the engines. The hijacker pretends to surrender, and when the patrol ships come into range, Trip releases plasma behind the transport. As the transport pulls away, they fire into the plasma, taking out the patrol ships. Even though the hijacker wants to follow through and destroy the patrol ships, Archer convinces him to just keep running. Trip is put back in his restraints, much to his chagrin.

After the incident with the patrol ships, T’Pol is informed by the Enolian official that orders have been given to destroy the prison transport, despite the presence of the human officers. They have identified the hijacker as a man named Kuroda, who is wanted for terrible and brutal crimes.

Meanwhile, Archer continues to pretend to be a smuggler, using his real identity as his cover story. Kuroda offers to give Archer a place among his colleagues, given his talents. Archer offers to consider it, as part of his act. He asks where they are headed, and Kuroda tells him that they are going to be meeting with another ship when they reach orbit over the fourth planet in the system.

When Archer tries to fix the transport’s thrusters, Kuroda tells him not to bother, since they won’t be needing the transport for much longer. Kuroda reveals that he was fourteen when he was first in a penal colony, supposedly after being charged for a crime he didn’t commit. He learned all of his criminal skills in prison, leading to his current status as a criminal mastermind.

The transport arrives at the planet, where Kuroda informs Archer that his ship will be docking with the transport. Kuroda intends to set the transport into a decaying orbit, while only he and his people get off. When the transport crashes, the Enolians will assume that Kuroda and his friends have been killed along with the rest of the prisoners. Archer objects, which only annoys Kuroda.

The Enterprise locates the prison transport, and T’Pol orders them into the binary system. Thanks to the shielding on the prison transport, they cannot try the transporter. Under the guise of repairing the docking hatch, Archer talks to Trip about Kuroda’s plans. Archer asks Trip to help him take control, which means that Trip has to handle his Nausicaan friend.

When Kuroda’s friends arrive in the system, Enterprise quickly takes them out. On Kuroda’s orders, Archer sets in the course for a decaying orbit. Pretending to need some help, Trip asks the Nausicaan to open an intake valve. As soon as he gets the chance, he knocks the Nausicaan senseless. Trip lets the guards go, informing the prisoners that they are going to be killed. Zoumas doesn’t believe Trip, and when Trip and the guards try to ambush Kuroda, Zoumas warns the hijacker.

With his plan foiled, Archer can only try to keep hope alive by repairing the docking hatch. When Kuroda’s allies dock with the transport, several Enterprise security people come in with weapons blazing. They engage Kuroda in a firefight, but Kuroda uses several of the other prisoners as human shields. Finally, Archer manages to shoot Kuroda in the arm, taking him down.

With the transport quickly falling towards the planet, Archer and his crew move the prisoners off the ship to safety. Archer tries to set a new course for the transport, but he fails. On the way out, he tries to grab Kuroda, but the criminal fights him instead. Kuroda insists that Archer break orbit, and doesn’t believe that it’s not possible. With only moments left, Kuroda tries to force Archer into staying, but Archer manages to get back to the hatch. Kuroda refuses to leave with Archer, so Archer is forced to escape with the others. Kuroda makes it back to the transport bridge, and realizes too late that Archer was telling the truth.

Back on the Enterprise, Archer waves off the apologies of the Enolian official. Instead, he rips into the official for being wrongly detained, and wonder just how many of the other prisoners in the Enolian penal system are equally innocent.


Analysis

Watching this episode was an exercise in frustration as a long-time “Star Trek” fan. There was a time when episodes could stand on their own, without being billed as “events” or something out of the ordinary. And the vast majority of those episodes stood on their own with a higher quality than this “event” managed to achieve.

The real pity, of course, is that this episode stands out as one of the better efforts of the season, which only proves the point that this has been one of the worst years in the history of the franchise. One could easily conclude that the years when there was nothing but inspired fanfic and sporadic professional novels had a better consistency and adherence to the ideals of the concept. This season, and this episode, fail to meet the efforts of those shining days.

As with many of the episodes this season, the plot is pleasant enough. Unfortunately, there is a “all the eggs in one basket” philosophy that is pervading the writing staff, so that every episode succeeds or fails based on the solitary plot device that is used. Here, it is the idea of Archer having to play smuggler, and while it works in some scenes, the overall effort is a disappointment.

The problem is that there is nothing to distract the audience from the massive plot holes and the transparent social commentary. There is no explanation given for the ability of so many prisoners from different races to communicate, for instance. One might argue that a universal translator might be standard issue, so that the guards can understand what the prisoners are saying and vice versa, but there’s no reason to believe that it wouldn’t be carried by the guards exclusively or applicable only to the detention area.

Kuroda’s plan to take control of the transport is far too simple and easily executed, especially when the strict regulations of the Enolian society are taken into account. If the Enolians are so hard-nosed about their internal security and laws, wouldn’t they have systems in place to thoroughly check over the prisoners at the point of detention? Sure, one could argue that this would have been done at the processing station, but that doesn’t sound particularly well organized.

It is also hard to believe that there wouldn’t be anything in place to deal with potential escape attempts. The prison transport doesn’t even have an armed escort, which ought to be mandated with the other lapses in security. It took far too long for the patrol vessels to react to the situation, and for a society that considers itself strict, Kuroda’s allies were able to move about rather easily.

For all those faults, it doesn’t make sense for them to simply toss Archer and Trip into prison, when a simple background check would have cleared up the matter. The circumstances take away from the analogy that the writer intended. This episode is definitely meant to be a statement against certain draconian law enforcement codes, especially when the final scenes are placed into context. Of course, it’s hard to be sure exactly which society is being targeted for the commentary, since the aspects of the issue more relevant to the United States were covered last season with the Suliban.

As nice as it is to see Trip provide some small comic relief, his place in this episode is almost indistinct. His involvement was minimal, and ultimately his engineering knowledge contributed little to the situation. Archer knew what to do just as well as Trip did! It is long past time that Trip was given some depth, rather than playing McCoy’s stand-in.

Archer, on the other hand, is finally given something to do. If anything, this is the saving grace of the episode. As soon as Archer gets to fall into his role as smuggler, one can see the lights come on in Scott Bakula’s eyes. It’s nothing so challenging as most of his work on “Quantum Leap”, but it is better than the overgrown boy scout depiction that Archer has fallen into.

It just goes to prove that Archer becomes interesting when he is forced to toss his self-imposed control aside. He keeps his mind on the final goal throughout this episode, but at the same time, he does whatever it takes to bide his time until he can make a move. If this setup would be taken to its logical conclusion, more episodes would force him to think outside of the box he has developed after so many “safe” missions. In other words, the series needs to return to the kind of material that it started with, where the crew deals with situations far outside of their expectations.

It wouldn’t be hard to develop such a change in direction, since the writing staff could play up the complacency that has settled into the psyche of the entire production. Now that the crew thinks that it has everything well in hand, it’s time to smack them back into reality. Of course, an inspired production and writing staff would take this opportunity to consider which characters were working and which were not, and make that smack back to reality worth the effort by shocking the crew with the deaths of a few bridge officers.

Of course, that’s not going to happen, and it’s likely that any changes in the direction of the series won’t come until the third season, if at all. Until that happens, “Enterprise” will continue to be caught in a sophomore slump, with its “event” episodes still providing little more than a reason to point out the shortcomings of the current state of the franchise.


Memorable Quotes

TRIP: “Imagine that…”

TRIP: “Excuse me…can I change seats?”

TRIP: “Shut up!”

TRIP: “Enough!”

TRIP: “I can’t even put my fingers in my ears!”

ZOUMAS: “You’re welcome!”


Observations

- Once again, the Nausicaans look very different than they did in the TNG episode “Tapestry”…

- Mark Rolston, who plays Kuroda, could almost be Clancy Brown’s twin brother!

- I don’t care how intelligent Archer is…there is no way he should have been able to simply “infer” the functions of control panels marked and designed in a completely alien context…

- Why couldn’t the guards find the subdermal implants that left clearly visible scars on Kuroda’s wrists?

- I’m surprised that the Nausicaan didn’t kill Zoumas within five minutes…

- At least the hand-to-hand combat wasn’t nearly as bad as it usually is!

- I love how Archer just blows off the Enolian official...

Overall, this “special event” isn’t all that special. If anything, it highlights the shortcomings of the second season very well. Archer finally gets some range to his behavior, but the plot is so thin that it barely has any weight at all. Add in the lapses in logic, and one can see just how badly this season has failed.

I give it a 5/10.


< -------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Next Episode

Back to Season 2

Back to Starfleet Headquarters

Email: entil2001@yahoo.com