Star Trek: Enterprise Episode Review
Season 1, Episode 16
Tucker and Reed are marooned together in a shuttlepod. Believing that Enterprise has been destroyed, they struggle to face the reality that their own odds of survival are slim to none.
A much-lauded episode, "Shuttlepod One" managed to emerge from the ignominious status of a cost-saving bottle episode to become a bona fide fan-favorite. That's not without reason: it's a lovely episode that uses a simple plot as a backdrop against which to set a human drama full of sparkling dialogue. But while it is certainly Enterprise's best episode yet, it's not without its flaws.
At the heart of the episode is the simple notion that a traumatic experience can bond two people together and help them see past their differences. The charismatic, heart-on-sleeve Tucker and the stiff-upper-lipped Reed are the most dissimilar human characters on the show, so the connection that they make here is rather sweet. Helping matters a ton is the great chemistry between actors Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating, the former being effortlessly funny and the latter shining in the moments when Reed's armor cracks and he opens up about his disconnection and loneliness. The showrunners clearly took note of the chemistry between the actors, since the friendship here continues throughout the series and the two are frequently given scenes together.
"Shuttlepod One" focuses heavily on the pair's contrasting reactions to death. Their roles are perhaps too broadly drawn -- often little more than The Optimist and The Pessimist. Because of this, the central theme of the episode is lacking nuance and scenes quickly become repetitive, driving home over and over that Trip doesn't want to give up and Malcolm wants to face reality. There's just slightly too much runtime in the episode for a story this simple to work smoothly. Still, there is a very vulnerable human element at play here that Star Trek, with its enlightened human paragons, rarely manages to evoke.
This drama unfolds as a one-set stage play. In addition to the dialogue and acting, David Livingston's direction keeps it lively enough to hold the audience's attention through the repetition. The actors and production team also deserve a heap of credit for actually freezing their butts off in real life to make the shuttlepod set look convincingly cold.
The largest flaw with "Shuttlepod One" is its treatment of T'Pol as an object of fantasy. Though it tries to be funny, the scene where Reed (or should I say Stinky?) dreams that T'Pol adores him is pure cringe and hard to sit through. And the less that is said about the poor woman's coworkers going on about her "bum" like frat boys, the better. Enterprise's humans are a little more down-to-earth and modern than other Trek shows -- they can bicker, get wasted, and reminisce about exes -- but I wish that modernness didn't have to include chauvinism.
