OEEG: Unexpected

Description: The episode begins with our mad leader doing something totally unexpected: taking a shower. He's obviously living this up - water from nowhere that removes the filth on his skin; how he wished he could have had that back when he was living in the dumpster trying to keep the Vulcans from sending mind control rays at him through his fillings. However, he soon learns this is a vile trap, as the gravity turns off and he floats into the air, along with all the water. He should have known; anything that washed off his temporary tattoo of Spongebob Squarepants had to be evil.

Okay, all kidding aside, this is a pretty good teaser for establishing that the ship has some problems, which is going to be seen throughout the first act. It is pretty amusing to see Archer in this position, and then when the gravity comes back on to fall right on his ass. I'll admit that this was done right - because believe me, this episode needs all the props it can get.

We come back from the commercial and what else do we have, but eating. T'Pol and Phlox discuss human foods - naturally T'Pol isn't interested in them, while Phlox is trying to push blueberry pancakes on her. He then says, "When in Phlebe, do as the Phlebians do," because he's an alien, and aliens have sayings identical to humans except for different proper nouns... assuming for a moment you have zero imagination. To finally tie this back into the theme of the first act, T'Pol tries to get some soda water and winds up with a glass full of sludge. Down in Engineering Tucker's working on all the problems coming in, so Archer decides he should come down and check up on him. He may like Tucker and all, but crack your tailbone in the shower and even good friendships can be strained, and he has to know that Tucker keeps a six-pack of Old Milwaukee in the coolant tank. He tries to get Tucker to drop them out of warp before he gets to work, but Tucker insists he try to fix it without doing that. Of course, while trying this he accidentally causes a wall panel to explode. After Archer finishes with the fire extinguisher, he gives him a look - you get the feeling they've had similar conversations about Tucker trying things half-ass. "Sure, chewing gum isn't an approved Starfleet bonding agent, but the alternative would be three hours of work plus trying to find a torch."

Anyway, on the bridge T'Pol figures out that there's something behind them in the plasma field their engines are giving off; that's what's causing the problem. Archer asks what kind of damage would happen to Enterprise if they ignite the plasma, causing Reed to give a confused reply to the question. I'm pretty confused too - it's pretty hard to get things to burn in the vacuum of space. Still, they don't let that stop them, and there's a nice bright cloud and inside is the silhouette of a ship. Archer sends out a message saying that they're disrupting his ship's functions, so back the hell off. The aliens send a message, which Hoshi is able to translate, because she can get the universal translator to completely understand their language in twenty seconds. Gee, wasn't it just two episodes that the plot revolved around Hoshi's language skills because the universal translator was unreliable... actually, isn't that the whole reason she's on board, to translate Klingon? Berman & Braga - nothing's a problem unless our script says it's a problem.

So, it turns out that the alien ship is malfunctioning and was just using the plasma exhaust to try and fix their engines. Tucker is sent over to work on getting them fixed. There's a three hour procedure that'll allow him to adapt to the other ship's environment, since it's radically different from what he's used to - of course, I'm speaking of the lighting and atmosphere, not the environment of insanity that exists on Enterprise. I guess they decide it's worth that rather than wearing a space suit, and it is refreshing to see something like this, though it raises the question of why we never saw similar things in any of the other series. Still, I'll give them credit for doing something new, because frankly, it's the last clever thought this story has.

So Tucker gets into the chamber and it sprays fog into the thing. Tucker starts freaking and contacts Archer, who brushes him off so he can talk to his dog some more. Yes, that's right - Tucker's probably his best friend on the ship, but Archer is more concerned about his dog. Incidentally, before going over Tucker asked if anyone could recommend a good book for while he was over there to pass the time, but of course, he didn't bring one, so now he's bitching every five minutes. And what's more, after he's done complaining to Archer, we see Archer reading a book. Actually, that kind of makes sense - if there was only one book on board, I can see Archer saying, "Hm, good idea, I think I'll read it while you're over there."

Well, the process finally ends and we see things through Tucker's eyes, and it's all distorted, with odd camera angles, and that sound like everything is slowed and being spoken through a pipe, all while Tucker lolls about. That's two episodes in a row where things have been like this for him... now we know why he's called "Trip." The aliens suggest food and rest, but Tucker still wants to get right to it, but it seems that he's not doing well, even by the standards of a man who ten minutes ago accidentally set the engine on fire. He calls and complains to Archer, so Archer has T'Pol put him through to the other captain. One of the times they could actually let Hoshi do something, and they put it on T'Pol. Archer expresses his concerns, but the alien says he'll be fine. "I've known Commander Tucker for years," Archer insists, "he's tough as nails." And smart as them, too, a point shown by his continued refusal to rest, which the aliens say will solve the problem. Finally Archer just flat-out orders him to take a nap; I'm sure it's not the first time he's had to tell Tucker to sleep and sober up before trying to fix a warp core. As you can probably guess, Tucker wins the annoying character of the episode award.

So, Tucker finally wakes up and everything's just fine. The lady engineer is in there, and she starts feeding him ice cubes, which as she does causes little lightning bolts to jump from her hand and into his mouth, which he apparently likes. They head back down to engineering, where the two slide under the entire affair on a back platform on rails, not unlike what you see auto mechanics use today. That would be a nice touch if it weren't for the idiocy of the scene: why is Tucker over there fixing their engines? Why would he be better capable than their own people, given that he has no experience at all, that he even has to be told what things are by T'Pol over the comm? Are we supposed to think he's a genius of some kind, when he's too dumb to listen to "take a nap and you'll be fine?" It's a plot hole you can drive a truck through, but it's needed because having Tucker go over for another reason would require a modicum of thought. Oh, and he seems to be munching on some of their alien food now while he's working on it, and frankly... he reminds me of Cooter from the Dukes of Hazard.

And what happens next is something I shouldn't have been surprised about. They go into a rainbow colored room and it's -wait for it, wait for it- a holodeck. Yes, the fourth episode of the series, and we already have a holodeck. *sigh* I know, I know, I shouldn't be surprised, but I figured there was a small chance we wouldn't resort to it that quickly in the new series. Fool me twice, shame on me. First she takes him to see an alien city, then into a boat. She does some more lightning things as she touches his facial stubble, and then creates a box full of pebbles. She says it's a game they play. So they stick their hands into it, and I guess they can read each other's thoughts. "Your favorite food is catfish," she says. What a real shock there, Cooter. And your favorite song is "Whenj'you Git Mayrd, Betty Lou?"

Well, Tucker is brought back after everything is fixed, and since he had a chance to get to really experience a new alien species in depth over a period of days, nobody really gives a damn, except Reed's interest in the weapons and Mayweather who just wants to know what they look like. While eating (you didn't expect otherwise, did you?) Tucker notices something on his wrist, which Phlox later identifies as a nipple. Turns out Tucker's pregnant - so, why is he growing nipples on his wrist when he already has nipples? A common bit in a Brannon Braga script is that the body will completely rearrange itself for the dumbest of reasons, and this is one of them. If your only experience to science was Trek, you'd wonder how it is people can go their whole lives without developing a third eye or growing flippers. And let's wonder for a moment just why Xyrillian women have breasts if the males grow nipples? Then let's top it off with this: turns out the baby isn't a human-Xyrillian hybrid, because only the female genetic material is used, thus showing that Berman and Braga know less about genetics than the average junior high student. This isn't quite as dumb as the reproduction nonsense of Ocampas, but it's not far short.

Tucker, in the meantime, gets the third degree for a while, since everyone figures that the only way for this to happen is if he decided to doink one of the aliens. Well, eventually we figure out that the way it was done was through the pebble box, which apparently is how their species reproduces (it's confirmed later by the engineer). Now, I'm going to have to diverge for a moment to make clear why I'm so pissed at what happens here. In the TNG episode The Child, Deanna Troi is impregnated by an alien, so that she can give birth to him and he can experience life as a human. Whatever good might have come from that story was overshadowed by the fact that Troi, frankly, was raped. A lot of heat was created over this, especially the insensitive way it was handled (Troi's reaction after conception is as if she just had an orgasm).

Now, with this here, what we have is in many ways worse than what happened there. The alien who impregnated Troi violated her, but it's reasons were issues related more towards discovery and exploration. That doesn't justify or diminish the horror of it, but it rather serves to show how awful this engineer acted: she did it for her own pleasure, and she lied to him while doing it, calling it a game, like an adult might tell a six-year old that doesn't know any better. This woman completely took advantage of his ignorance for her own enjoyment, and now he's stuck with this problem. That's morally repugnant; I was hoping the Klingons would slaughter the lot of them if this is how they act. And what makes the matter even worse is that Berman and Braga decide that this situation, where a member of the crew has realized he's been physically and emotionally violated, should be played for laughs! What the hell were they thinking?!

Of course, we know what they were thinking. They were thinking: pregnant male = funny = entertainment. And they were wrong, which anyone who saw Junior would attest to. Simply doing pregnancy jokes with the man being pregnant doesn't make them suddenly any less tired than they are (as we see in Braga's Voyager story, Deadlock, where the pregnancy is just your standard tired television bit, emphasized by Ens. Wildman being in intense pain during labor, yet Michael Jonas is pain-free and completely coherent when he's burned most of his face off; dulling the pain in pregnancy removes the opportunity for lame jokes). This is why I say that they're hacks, because these stories are just knocked out with little real original or entertaining material.

In keeping with this, we get a very impressive one-two punch the creators of Enterprise manage to deliver to themselves. Tucker looks at the lift, and suddenly, because he's now expecting, is concerned about the safety of children on board - both unsubtle and unfunny. And then we get the following exchange:

TUCKER: Look at this handrail. Put your hands here while this is going up or down, it'll take your fingers right off.
DILLARD: Why would someone put their hands there, sir?

Yes... why would someone put their hands on... the handrail? They'd have to be mad or something. Next thing you know, they might put their asses in the chairs. Boy, this is really pathetic - not only are they trying these stupid jokes, but they can't even tell them right (like Andy Koffman parodied: please take my wife, please take her). Instead of demonstrating that Tucker is overreacting, we learn that the people who designed the ship have no concern for safety and that Tucker's engineering crew are a bunch of morons. And even if it wasn't a handrail, just a safety bar or something, there would at the very least have to be a bunch of warning signs up. And finally, suppose I'm riding in this thing and the ship lurches (which happens every episode); odds are pretty good some part of me is going to wind up going over or under that bar and get sheared off, and all because there's neither a cage (like many similar lifts of today use) or a safety off for if there's resistance. All this scene does is tell us that the Vulcans were right: these morons aren't ready to go into space, not until they can build a ship that's OSHA compliant.

Well, some time has passed, and we have another eating scene. Because he has comments related to the plot, Phlox is permitted to join in the meal that normally has only Archer, Tucker, and T'Pol. Tucker says the crew knows and that T'Pol must have told, but this is never confirmed nor denied. I'm sure she didn't - I can't see any Vulcan, even T'Pol being so petty, but then, I can't see anyone asking why you'd put your hand on a HANDrail, so I guess I should keep my options open. Archer raises the point that Tucker needs to prepare himself to raise the child. This is where the exit button of the episode rears its ugly head. If this child was created in the normal way, with genetic material from both parents, then it would raise questions about whether or not Tucker should give the child over to the mom; after all, it's half his baby too. Since we can't have that, they came up with the dumb idea that only the mother's DNA is used. This means that he isn't the parent, he's just an incubator. The way they've structured this, so that they have all their fun with an easy reset button, the woman is a complete monster - she's raped someone and abandoned her child to an alien.

Anyway, as I already alluded to, Enterprise finds the aliens again, but this time they're trailing a Klingon battlecruiser. Archer hails the Klingons who fire a couple shots at Enterprise just for fun. Archer, seeing how angry and upset the Klingons are, decides to tell them about the ship following them that's messing up their systems. The Klingons naturally blast the hell out of the aliens, catch them in a tractor beam, and the captain declares that the leader will be brought to him while the rest are executed. Heh, can you imagine what the aliens are saying? "Nice one, Trena'l. We're all gonna die because you couldn't keep it in your pants!"

There's some discussion, and T'Pol finally steps in, cashing in the chip they earned for rescuing Klaang and listening to Tucker blather about their technology. Funny thing, you'd think the Klingons would be more interested in, you know, the stealth technology, rather than holograms, but apparently that piques their interest more than a ship that can follow them around undetected. They finally get the Klingons to bring Tucker too, but only after he shows the growing sack on his chest. He goes over and talks to the engineer, who is surprised. "I had no idea this could happen with another species. If I'd known..." Yeah, if you'd known, what? You wouldn't have called it a game? Wouldn't have used someone else's ignorance to get your jollies? I think I prefer the Klingons. Sure, they might want to enslave us, but at least they're not a bunch of f*cking date rapists.

Speaking of which, we see the Klingons in the holodeck, looking at the capital from high up on a hill. "I can see my house from here!" the Klingon captain says. That, by the way, is not me joking, he actually says that. I admit that I laughed at that, because Enterprise truly had become self-parody with that bit. I mean, even the creators don't take their show seriously any more. What next, poop jokes... oh wait. Yes, yes there will be poop jokes in Breaking The Ice. I guess there's nothing else left.

Anyway, the baby's out of Tucker and we end with -what else- more eating. Since Phlox's part in this story is done, he's gone and T'Pol is back. She says that after her research, she has confirmed that Cooter here's the first human male to become pregnant, something he doesn't show much enthusiasm about. Like myself towards this episode, I suppose... and like pregnancy, this long and arduous task is done, though with probably a lot more pain.

Rating: 2

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