Star Trek: Enterprise Episode Review
Season 2, Episode 26
Enterprise is recalled to Earth after a mysterious alien race launches a devastating attack that kills millions, including Trip's sister.
"The Expanse" addresses a very real problem with Star Trek: Enterprise. The show was coasting on a formula that had been airing on TV mostly unchanged for 15 years. Meanwhile, the TV landscape had shifted underneath Star Trek. Audiences increasingly favored gritty thrillers with serialized stories and complex, dynamic characters. With Star Trek's ratings lower than ever -- Season 2's "Horizon" was the least-watched episode and the concurrent Star Trek: Nemesis was the least-watched movie -- change finally, inevitably came.
More than a season finale, "The Expanse" a second pilot. The episode goes as far as to re-use the sequence of the ship leaving spacedock from "Broken Bow," making it crystal clear that this is a true relaunch both in-universe and out.
There is a sense of motion and urgency behind "The Expanse" that this show has lacked since that first episode. Everything is taken up a notch; the tone is more serious, the actors are playing more intense, the lighting is more dramatic, and the stakes are higher. Enterprise, especially in this second season, felt like a somewhat tepid and low-energy show, so seeing it get a shot of adrenaline is exciting.
That said, the jury is still out on the show's new direction as a whole. One reason for this is that the Xindi, the big villains at the center of the inciting incident, are kept offscreen and left for the next season to develop. All that we have to go off are some corny ominous warnings from the Vulcans. Solid villains are important to military stories like this, so kicking the can down the road is disappointing.
With the Xindi out of focus, the episode needed a villain to drive the space battles required for a season finale. Enter the Klingons. Here, the Duras arc is cut short when Archer blows him up in a classic ship-to-ship showdown. Archer gets a level-up in badass, and the writers wipe the villain slate clean to make way for the incoming Xindi. The space battles here are easily Enterprise's best so far in terms of spectacle and tension, but unfortunately they are so disconnected from the plot of the Xindi weapon that they almost feel like a distraction. These stories both demand A-plot importance and just don't fit together. The episode spans months and months, but the Duras scenes in isolation play almost like a single cat-and-mouse chase sequence.
That brings us to the basic problem with "The Expanse": it's overstuffed. This should have been a two-parter, and the Duras plot could have stood on its own. There is not enough time in one episode to depict a devastating attack, tease new bad guys, deliver the heaps of requisite exposition about the Delphic Expanse, defeat Archer's Klingon nemesis, check in with the Suliban and their shadowy leader, give the ship a refit, bring aboard a unit of space marines, establish the NX-02, delve into Trip's grief and anger, and allow the rest of the crew to process to the tragedy. When the episode ran long, it was the character work that bore the brunt of the cuts, with important moments for Archer and Hoshi relegated to deleted scene compilations.
The biggest swing taken by "The Expanse" is the heavy-handed 9/11 allegory at the heart of this new storyline. I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, Star Trek has always had a tradition of cultural critique via sci-fi allegory. On the other hand, Enterprise has often come across as a bit more conservative in its politics than the other Trek shows of its era. Archer and Trip echo a conservative warhawk mindset when they vow to tear into the Expanse with a "do whatever it takes, damn the diplomats" attitude. At a time when America was rife with war fever and islamophobia, do we want to see a mission of revenge after a terrorist attack? Or will this storyline ultimately rebuke their mindset? We will just have to watch Season 3 to find out. It is certainly an intriguing plot hook, but it also feels like Star Trek's very moral compass is at stake.
"The Expanse" is an important episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, but not a perfect one. There is a weight and energy to this episode even as it serves the thankless task of retooling the series mid-stream to take a more dynamic course. However, it also proves to have just too much ground to cover in 45 minutes and winds up awkwardly tripping its way to that important destination.
