Weekend Trek “Exile”

Wait…they’re actually explaining why the expanse is the way it is this early?

I’m pleasantly surprised.

The main plot here is Hoshi is contacted by a telepathic alien, one Tarquin by name, who will give the crew some needed Xindi information, but only if Hoshi stays with him while Archer and his crew investigate a mysterious sphere.

I should probably point out that Tarquin has been “talking” to Hoshi for a while now, and he seems to pop a version of himself, a human-looking one, into her quarters when  she’s hanging around in her underwear or whatever that outfit was, the one that suggests that the room might have been cold.  At one point, he talks to her using Phlox’s face and voice.  Hoshi did contact security, but Tarquin is literally just a voice in her head.  There’s not much anyone can do about it.

As it is, Tarquin offers to use his telepathic powers to tell Archer where the Xindi might be through physical contact with a piece of their tech, allowing Archer to investigate a sphere that seems to spit out gravimetric waves that, when they intersect with other waves from other spheres throughout the expanse, well, that’s where the weird stuff that happens in the expanse happens.  That leads to Archer and Trip visiting one in a shuttlepod with the special alloy coating it (I guess they figured out how to make the stuff), an accident when the pod starts to float away, and some actual explanations on how the expanse works.  Plus, since these spheres look like they’re made of metal, they must have been built by someone like, say, the Xindi.

See, I can get behind that.

But then there’s the Hoshi subplot, and it’s really about an alien stalker trying to get her to stay with him permanently.  He does this by knowing everything about her thanks to weeks of mind-reading and somehow assuming she wouldn’t find that creepy.  I mean, I would, and I’m not Hoshi.  Sure, he’s offering her companionship that (he assumes) would be something that would fit her as someone who has never really fit in anywhere before thanks to her gift for languages, but…yeah, it doesn’t work.  The episode asks if Tarquin can change her mind by using illusions of Archer telling her to stay, blocking Enterprise from coming to get her, and even explaining himself well after the fact.

Yeah, this guy really sucks.  He’s a stalker.  There are ways to make friends and gain a companion, but this isn’t one of them, and the biggest shock is it somehow worked in the past.  Three times, in fact.  Hoshi is only let go when she threatens to break some of the equipment that he needs to be as strong as he is.  I get that we can maybe feel bad for the guy.  He’s an exile.  He didn’t ask to be alone for centuries.  But stalking is never cool.

Anyway, Tarquin does help out, and there are a lot more of those spheres.  The sphere plot I can get behind.  The telepathic stalker, not so much.