Weekend Trek “Carpenter Street”

I actually got a bit of a thrill when I saw Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s name flash during the credits as a guest star.  That guy has been a reliable character actor in genre television for ages, and here he was on Star Trek.  When I didn’t see him, I checked and found out he was playing a nameless Reptilian Xindi that made zero impression, and he almost quit acting because of the make-up requirements of the episode.

Oh well.

I was actually surprised to find out this episode wasn’t particularly well-liked.  I thought it was fine.  Does it explain how or when the Xindi got into time travel or their connection to the Temporal Cold War?  Not at all.  Agent Daniels even says there’s no record of a Xindi attack in his era, so either Archer stops him, the Xindi are ultimately not that noteworthy, or they aren’t really part of the Temporal Cold War.  I’m fine with that, truly fine.  I don’t really care about the Temporal Cold War, but since the Xindi are reacting mostly to the idea of stopping humanity from wiping them out 400 years in the future, so they must have some connection to time travel.  That’s all I really need to worry about here.

Besides, the Detroit sets were rather impressive.  There’s some good shorthand here as the episode’s human antagonist Loomis, a scumbag who collects blood donors for money and taking them to some “doctors” that he never really sees for money.  How do I know he’s scum?  Well, he comes home to a fake two-story building (like I said, it’s an impressive set) and grabs a beer from the fridge and a slice of cold pizza from the bathroom.  Yes, the bathroom.  I mean, it wasn’t on the toilet or anything, but it was there.

Anyway, Archer gets some help from Daniels that he can go back in time with one other person–T’Pol, obviously–and stop the Xindi there.  Much of that seems to be the Xindi collecting one person with each of the various blood types to make a bio-weapon that will wipe out the human race well before they can do much to threaten the Xindi.  There’s some nice time travel stuff, but there’s also the way Archer steals a car with T’Pol, but when T’Pol asks if he knows how to drive it, he says he can fly a starship, but that’s not really a good answer.  Then again, he does figure it out pretty quick.

Anyway, the episode is fun, Archer and T’Pol return about a second after they left to the confusion of Trip, and there’s a nice shoot-out.  Loomis proves treacherous, but T’Pol manages to knock him out, once with the Vulcan nerve pinch, which I think is the first time she’s used it on the show.  Loomis also gets arrested in the end, raving about ray guns and aliens, so he’ll be going to a mental hospital too.

Now, did Archer and T’Pol bring the Xindi back alive?  I am not sure, but I think not.  Reptilians can shrug off stun blasts, so they used their phase pistols set to “kill.”  And the Xindi to justify their attack by pointing out that they deserve to live.  They do, but that doesn’t solve the problems here.  I’ve been actually more engaged in this season than the two previous.  The Xindi make for a good enemy, the mystery works, and the action has improved.  Maybe this episode doesn’t hold up as well for people who really focus on it, but I was entertained.  That’s enough for me.