"The Augments"

Written by Mike Sussman
Directed by LeVar Burton


In which Malik and the augments turn on Arik Soong and plan to begin a war between Earth and the Klingon Empire, forcing Archer to send his ship into enemy space to stop them...

Captain's Log - Final Analysis







Captain's Log

It’s always easier to set up a dramatic conflict than to resolve it, especially when the outcome is effectively set in stone. When it’s clear that the main characters are going to survive, any threat to their survival can become an exercise. It falls to the supporting players, the truly expendable ones, to make the drama interesting. This final episode of the “Augment Arc” fell within those constraints. On the whole, the resolution worked to preserve the integrity of the franchise continuity while providing a fairly suitable end to the story arc.

The writers dispense with the ill-advised cliffhanger rather quickly, and the relative structure of the episode proves out what was already evident: the cliffhanger was designed to give the augments enough time to play out their intrigues before the next confrontation. Much of the episode is designed in this way. The two sides confront each other, the two sides deal with internal conflict, and then another confrontation. It’s all very predictable, which makes the depth of the internal conflict all the more important.

As with the previous episode, most of the compelling material is given to the augments. Since Archer is obviously going to survive the situation at Cold Station 12, things don’t get interesting until the focus turns to Soong and Malik. Rather early on, the episode tosses out enough continuity references to satisfy any Trek fan. Soong wants to hide out in the Briar Patch, the region of space used in the lamentable “Star Trek: Insurrection”, but Malik wants to deal with the threat presented by Starfleet sooner rather than later.

This leads Malik to use the legendary example of Khan and the Botany Bay, something that he must have discovered on his own during Soong’s incarceration. Soong seems surprised that Malik knows about the Botany Bay at all, but one has to imagine that the augments would be able to piece together the truth from the existing 20th century records of the Eugenics Wars. In a nice twist, Malik actually finds fault with Khan’s decision to leave Earth and fight another day; he concludes that Khan’s failure to take command of humanity’s future was a mistake.

Soong isn’t entirely foolish; he’s simply a bit blind when it comes to his own “children”. Soong believes that his involvement in their upbringing should have overridden the inherent “superior ambition and aggression” programmed into the augment genetic code. Soong apparently never managed to remove those traits, which goes a long way towards explaining the similarities between Khan and Malik.

It gives the entire arc, however, an interesting philosophical basis, rooted in the nature/nurture argument. Soong wants to believe that his overall compassion, and his attempts to teach it to his “children”, would override the more violent impulses of their nature. In Malik, those lessons never took hold; in Persis, those lessons apparently did to some extent. Still, in the end, Soong is left wondering if his presence during the previous ten years might have tempered the fire that drives Malik in the present.

Malik, on the other hand, adds to the complexity of the concept by questioning Soong’s plan to alter the genetic code of the remaining augment embryos. It’s an interesting debate that doesn’t get the time it really deserves. Humanity objects to the idea of augments themselves, but Malik objects to the idea of the augments being further modified. In Malik’s mind, it’s a matter of messing with superior genes, but it all boils down to the same argument. The augments don’t want to see their basic genetic code “improved”, and had Soong succeeded before Malik and the others discovered the changes, the current augments would have wanted to destroy the new breed as much as humanity wanted the augments gone.

The Briar Patch is apparently in Klingon space at this point (the borders apparently change significantly over time) and that means that Enterprise must find a way to enter that territory without encountering resistance. This would have been a good time to refer back to Archer’s previous problems with the Klingon Empire, but if this arc is any indication, the writers are trying to forget that those second season episodes even took place. (And considering how many continuity errors were strewn throughout those episodes, it’s not hard to figure out why!)

This plot point does give Trip and T’Pol a chance to discuss a few things. Keeping the whole Trip/T’Pol romance on the back burner is a good idea, since there’s already more than enough going on. Since the next arc involves unrest on Vulcan, one can assume that T’Pol’s personal situation will play a role in the ongoing drama; as such, the writers gently remind the audience that there are matters between Trip and T’Pol that remain unresolved.

Far more interesting, however, is the intrigue among the augments. Malik pushes his case with Soong, and comes up with a plan that sounds rather inevitable once he brings it up. Malik sees Earth as the real threat to the augments’ survival, so he wants to use the strained relationship between Earth and the Empire to their advantage. As disturbing as it is, Malik’s plan follows a certain amoral logic, and it’s hard not to see how it would work.

Soong’s objection to that plan, of course, flies in the face of his actions in “Borderland”. In that episode, Soong was more than happy to use the prospect of war between Earth and the Klingon Empire as a means of escape. It worked a bit too well, suggesting that Soong was working with his augments to escape for some time. Of course, Soong could have been counting on Archer and Earth to smooth things over and prevent war, thus preventing substantial loss of life. Whatever the case, Soong’s moral authority is already questionable by the time he objects to Malik’s sinister plan, especially when he almost immediately places the life of the Denobulan pilot in jeopardy.

One misstep of the episode comes when Enterprise is challenged by a Klingon vessel, and Archer needs to convince the Klingons to leave them alone. This scene has no urgency to it, and Scott Bakula is forced to keep the audience amused over a long stretch of halting dialogue as he mugs at the camera. He tries his best, but the scene falls flat after the first viewing. Directing this scene had to be a nightmare.

Thankfully, the augments deliver real drama once again, as Malik turns Persis and then the rest of the crew against Soong. Of course, this outcome was inevitable, as was the scene in which Persis helps Soong escape. Persis has always been the one to honor Soong and his place as their leader; Malik’s struggle to gain her loyalty wouldn’t have been so thematically similar to Khan’s struggle to control McGivers in “Space Seed” otherwise.

The subsequent scene between Archer and Soong is really just an excuse to underscore the tragedy of Soong’s work and the whole nature/nurture theme. Archer has to be there, it seems, to tell the audience what they should be concluding from the story arc. It’s interesting to note that this episode is so focused on the augments and their intrigues that the Enterprise crew could have been replaced without any impact on the story. There’s little reason to think Archer is the only one who could point out the errors in Soong’s logic.

The rest of the episode plays out as it inevitably must. Malik kills Persis, and it seems as though the act merely feeds the fire of his own superior instability. Enterprise has a run-in with the Klingons, just long enough to allow the augments to get to the Klingon planet before they can be stopped. Malik fires off the pathogen-laced torpedo, but Enterprise arrives just in time to fire its own torpedoes and intercept, saving the day. This plot point in particular is not very well thought out; how the Enterprise torpedoes overtake the Klingon torpedoes when they are both supposed to be traveling at a similar relativistic speed is hard to grasp.

The battle between the augments and Enterprise is remarkably short, but that was covered by Soong’s earlier comment that Enterprise outguns the augments “three to one” (in a nice nod to “Star Trek III”). Malik’s final moments on the Klingon ship are more than a little familiar, taken almost directly from the end of “Wrath of Khan”. Still, that scene is infinitely better than Malik’s sudden re-appearance on Enterprise, which was handled rather badly and felt like something out of a schlock horror movie.

The end of the episode is really no better, leaving Soong to ruminate over the thought of advancing artificial life in a multi-generational project. The question of his natural progeny is still not addressed, and his activities seem so self-important that having children seems rather unlikely. Not enough is made of the fact that Arik Soong is the ancestor of Noonien Soong, and given the fact that Noonien could be linked to Khan’s name so easily, it’s a wasted opportunity.

This episode manages to pull together the pieces of the story arc, but one can tell that much had to be edited out for time. Some scenes seem cut short before they should be. At the same time, some scenes linger on far too long, like Archer’s gambit with the Klingons. For an episode with so many casual continuity references, it seems odd for Archer’s past with the Klingons to be completely overlooked; of course, this could be a case where there wasn’t enough material to stretch over a fourth episode, forcing the writers and editors to resolve the arc quickly if not thoroughly.

As with the first two episodes of the arc, Brent Spiner and Alec Newman did an excellent job as the guest stars, perhaps even more so in this final installment. After all, they were the driving force throughout the episode, with Archer and Enterprise really existing solely to execute Soong’s will when the time came. Another strong aspect of the episode was the musical score, which touched on the James Horner score for “Wrath of Khan” without blatantly copying it.

With this being the end of the “Augment Arc”, the strength of the entire plot comes into focus. Certainly it was a step up for the series as a whole, matching the level of storytelling that closed out the Xindi arc in the third season and making it more universally relevant. At the same time, there’s a feeling that it could have been something even better. Much of that has to do with this episode, where the uneven pacing makes the end feel rushed. If the next story arc can avoid the same mistakes, then this season should be the strongest of the series.


Final Analysis

Overall, this episode was a capable conclusion to the “Augment Arc”. The pacing is a bit off and the ending doesn’t quite work as intended, but the story comes to a satisfying conclusion. There were moments that begged for more continuity references, but the exploration of philosophical ideas more than made up for it.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 1/2
Style: 2/4

Final Rating: 7/10




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