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"Extinction"
Story by: Andre Bormanis
Teleplay by: Andre Bormanis
Directed by: LeVar Burton
Synopsis followed by review:
An alien is chased by what seems to be hunters who are also alien. They
catch up with their prey and proceed to burn him alive with what appears
to be flame-throwers. Meanwhile, on Enterprise, Trip is still having
trouble sleeping but the Vulcan-neuro pressure treatments he gets from
T'Pol are working. We find him in T'Pol's quarters about to get another
one when T'Pol is called to the Command Center.
Archer has been studying the Xindi database and has found the location of
one of the places the Xindi visited before being attacked by the marauders
in the previous episode. Arriving at the planet, scans reveal no humanoid
lifeforms but locate a ship on the surface. Archer, T'Pol, Reed and Hoshi
go by shuttlepod to the planet to investigate. There they find the
charred remains of two aliens and a ship.
Reed starts feeling sick and gradually starts to transform into some sort
of alien being. T'Pol also changes slightly but is for the most part
unaffected. Hoshi and Archer also change. They all chase after T'Pol,
capture her and carry her with them. Before this, T'Pol had managed to
contact the ship to tell them that the Captain and the others had been
altered. Trip and crew scan the planet but only a Vulcan is found and
three aliens. Phlox suggests that this is what T'Pol must have meant when
she contacted the ship to tell them Archer and the others had been
changed. Meanwhile, T'Pol manages to convince Hoshi to let her have the
universal translator and is thus able to communicate with Archer who now
speaks an alien language as do the others.
Tucker and two MACO soldiers go to the planet in EVA suits and manage to
take down the alien Reed. They take him back to the ship where Dr. Phlox
determines that he has been infected by a mutagenic virus "apparently
designed to rewrite the DNA of its host to transform the humanoid it
infects into another species". T'Pol is virtually immune because of her
Vulcan K cells which neutralize the pathogen. Phlox tells Trip he needs a
sample of T'Pol's DNA if he is to develop an antivirus.
Two alien vessels intercept Enterprise and the captain tells Trip who is
in command that they are in restricted space. He also tells Tucker that
they have scanned the ship and know that there is a sick person with the
virus on board and that they want to quarantine the ship. They tell Trip
that they will board Enterprise and that the "infected organism must be
eradicated". Trip tells the alien captain that he will talk to him and
invites him to come to Enterprise but warns him that if they board the
ship, they will "have one hell of a fight on their hands". When on board
the alien captain tells Trip that the virus was engineered by a race
called the Loque-eque and that due to something that happened in the past,
the species became sterile. They created the mutagen to prevent their
extinction as the mutagen alters species into their own. The captain
tells Trip that they can't risk an epidemic.
On the planet, the altered Archer dreams of a city called Urquat. He and
Hoshi want desperately to go to it. This urge to return to the city was
built into the pathogen. Meanwhile, the alien ship launches a shuttlepod.
Their intent is clear, to destroy those infected on the planet. The alien
captain tells his men to capture the Vulcan female but kill the others.
The changed Archer and Hoshi along with T'Pol arrive at the city but find
only ruins. The aliens arrive and find them. They surround them but just
then Trip and the MACOs arrive, having beamed down and stun the alien
soldiers. T'Pol convinces the altered Archer and Hoshi to go with them to
Enterprise. Luckily, Phlox has developed a cure. The alien captain hails
Enterprise and Archer, who is now almost back to normal, tells the captain
that there is a cure and that he will share it with them. After they
leave, Archer visits sickbay and tells Phlox to preserve the virus as it
is the only remnant of the extinct species.
Review:
Firstly, I have to commend Levar Burton on his direction of this episode
considering the material he had to work with. He manages to keep a good
pace throughout and his direction of the actors is also noteworthy. I
also have to praise Scott Bakula, Linda Park and Dominic Keating for their
acting. How they were able to keep a straight face throughout all this is
a wonder. Still they don't come off as ridiculously as one would expect
from such characterization. Normally, I would have cringed at the
squeaking and alien language spoken by the altered Archer, Reed and Hoshi
but they manage to pull it off albeit it is embarrassing to watch at
times.
I have mixed feelings about how this played out. On the one hand, I can't
help but wonder how such a supposedly advanced species could be so ape-
like in their behavior and yet have achieved what looked like an advanced
civilization but at the same time I could see how it would take a while to
adjust to such an abrupt change and so they wouldn't be so civilized in
their behavior all at once.
And this brings up another problem, how easily Archer et al changed and
how quickly they reverted back to normal. This kind of writing was
acceptable in the TOS and TNG days but today is too simple and in the end
way too predictable. That kind of quick and easy storytelling isn't
believable anymore. Viewers will still suspend disbelief up to a point
but not when it's been done before too many times.
The musical score (Velton Ray Bunch) is also noteworthy as it is original
and fresh; the visual effects are good but not outstanding as we've seen
this kind of thing before for instance when Archer metamorphoses into the
alien species and the city scape looked rather fake. Still, the makeup
was excellent.
This episode suffers from the usual problems found in most Trek shows of
this type. It's been done before for one thing (TNG's "Identity Crisis"
for example ironically enough with Levar Burton as the main actor who
changes into a new species due to a parasite and must return to the planet
where he was infected and Brannon Braga as the writer) and the outcome is
more than predictable. There is some continuity in that Archer is still
studying the Xindi database and is still trying to find the Xindi
homeworld. It doesn't hurt to take a detour from the story arc as such
but it has to be more unusual and new for it to add to the storyline and
be interesting.
The basic idea of a species altering others to become like them in order
to prevent extinction is intriguing nonetheless and I wish the altered
Archer and others had been more resistant to being changed back and had
been more intelligent in their behavior and in what they were seeking.
Still, I like the idea of an alien species that cannot reproduce finding
a way or process (in this case a virus) to pass on its genetic makeup by
altering another species to make it its own. It's an intriguing idea but
it gets thrown away here by having the altered Archer and others be too,
for the lack of a better word, stupid.
A couple of things add to the ruthlessness of the containment patrols.
They kill one of their own when his suit becomes damaged and he as such
becomes infected. Also the use of flame throwers does add to the era we
are dealing with although phasers set to kill would do the job just as
well somehow. Still, would they disintegrate their target as they do in
the future?
It was fun to watch Trip and company use the transporter and I hope it
continues to be used on and off. There's another nice little touch of
continuity when T'Pol tells Trip that he said he wouldn't use transporters
again.
Lastly, I don't know what to think about the Trip/T'Pol relationship. How
he can be so reserved when she is wearing her low cut (in more ways than
one) pygammas is a little hard to believe. He is very heterosexual and
being in space for so long without any, let's say, interaction with the
opposite sex, it's hard to fathom that he would be _comfortable_ with
T'Pol in such an intimate (let's face it it is) touchy/feely situation. I
doubt I'm in the majority but I find it humorous and somewhat titillating
to watch them together. He complains about her cold hands and states that
he is ticklish. I don't know why but he is very appealing to me in his
_innocence_ however unbelievable it is. Still, this is already getting
old so I hope they drop it sooner than later.
I give this one a C+. The + for Bakula's, Park's and Keating's efforts.
Gisele La Roche
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[>>Charles<<]
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