A rather sparky little episode that nonetheless harks back to the rather hackneyed method of character development pioneered in the first season of isolating two characters in a stressful situation so that they can bond.
With time-travel antics mercifully sidelined for the time being, the Enterprise gets back to exploring the universe. However, planned R & R on a volcano world has to be cancelled when the ship blunders into an alien minefield and Malcolm becomes trapped while attempting to defuse a magnetic limpet mine.
This allows Archer to get to know his uptight British armoury officer (who finds the captain’s informal methods hard to stomach) while helping with the defusal. Of course it is hardly unusual for a British character to be sketched as “uptight” in an American series, but this seems a trifle unusual for one where the character in question has already been tagged as somewhat ‘by the book’ but also a bit Hugh Grant awkward. For him to come across now as a hard-nosed uncompromising stiff assed Brit, near suicidal in his devotion to duty and to berate Archer with lines like, “I was trained not to fraternise with superior officers” and that “frankly this sort of socialising has no place in a starship” seems a bit odd, especially after the Risan ladyboy incident of (last season’s) ‘Two Days and Two Nights’.
On the other hand, this attitude does come across as rather whiny and pathetic from a British reviewer, especially as Malcolm is, frankly, the second coolest character in the series (after SpaceDog- aka Porthos). In the episode’s favour are some cracking sequences, excellent special effects, the maddest attempt at bomb defusal since Jeff Bridges yanked a random fistful of wires out of a car-bomb at the end of ‘Blown Away’ and the encouraging news that England only have another 150 years to go before reaching another World Cup Final.
‘Enterprise’ scores better with tight plots like this than with any number of ludicrous, incomprehensible long running arcs and if this review seems uncharacteristically positive, maybe I’m just a little light-headed (and profoundly grateful) for not hearing the words ‘temporal cold war” at any point…
