Episode Review - Fight Or Flight
Reviewed by Andy Taylor

Synopsis
Sato begins by releasing some hidden angst through worrying about her new pet slug with Phlox – it is unfortunately dying, as it will not eat because it is now living in a strange environment that isn’t Earth.

Amongst this strange story, it is apparent that after two weeks of being far out in space, everyone is unable to contain their excitement of making first contact with a new species (other than the slug creature Sato has ‘adopted.’) Archer is convinced that he can hear some sort of squeaking in his ready room, whilst Reed is trying to align his targeting sensors before they actually do run into another species. Phlox is also interested in human behaviour – he wishes to watch two crewmembers mate, as he is curious about humans.

Finally, T’Pol detects a ship floating around in space, so the Enterprise investigates. Sato tries to open hailing frequencies, but as no contact is made, Archer and T’Pol have a battle of morals as to whether they should scan for lifeforms – T’Pol is worried that anyone onboard may register the scan as an aggressive act, whereas Archer just cannot go by without helping.

Closer scans show that the ship was attacked, so Archer takes Reed and a wary Sato on an away mission with him to investigate further.

Once a shuttle carrying the three has docked with the vessel, in environmental suits they board. Inside, they find the ship is incredibly cold with a nitrogen-methane atmosphere, with a green coloured liquid all up the walls that appears to be blood. They follow a noise that takes them to some large hydraulic machines, where Sato shines her light up a machine and screams at the discovery of several bodies hanging from the ceiling, with tubes found in the room draining their fluids.

When the away team reports back to the Enterprise, Archer agrees with T’Pol that whomever did this to the aliens will more than likely be returning to collect what they are draining, and also put his crew in jeopardy. He orders Mayweather to resume their previous course at warp three, until at dinner with Trip and T’Pol he is racked with guilt over leaving them behind. He asks T’Pol what her reaction would have been had the aliens been Vulcan; she responds that Vulcans would never have explored the ship in the first place. However, asking Trip what he would have done if the aliens had been Human leaves him bewildered after he was asking so many questions. Archer then orders Mayweather to turn back around.

A new away team has Sato and Trip working together to try and repair and translate the aliens’ communications consoles, and even send a distress code in the alien’s own tongue. At this point, Sato reveals that she wants to ask Archer to be taken back to Earth, back to the university that she was teaching at – she says that she is a linguist, and isn’t supposed to be finding dead people hanging on hooks. This is the culmination of the hints of angst that she has been expressing throughout.

Phlox discovers with Archer that the alien crew that attacked was after the victims’ triglobulin, something that could be used for medicines, vaccines or even as an aphrodisiac! However, everyone soon has to evacuate when the attackers return.

During the shuttlepod’s return, the Enterprise’s port nacelle is knocked out, leaving the ship incapable of attaining warp. Reed fires two torpedoes, but without targeting sensors they make little impact against the superior defences of the other craft. The bridge crew is bio-scanner, which according to Phlox have probably revealed the crew to have some interesting parts that the aliens could use.

Just then, another ship arrives, which is the same sort of ship used by the victims of the previous attack. They are responding to the distress call sent off by Sato, though she has problems talking to him through the computer’s translator, leading the captain to believe that they were the ones who attacked his fellow ship’s crew.

As the attacking ship locks down on the Enterprise and begins to cut through the hull, Archer encourages Sato to talk to the captain personally – he says things cannot get much worse as they stand. She manages to do this successfully, as the captain targets the attacking ship, which then breaks off the Enterprise.

At this moment, Reed finds that he has finally aligned his targeting sensors, and fires a torpedo at the ship, which is then destroyed after another couple of blasts from the alien captain.

The Enterprise crew then spends some time on their new allies, the Axanar’s, homeworld after helping them to recover their dead crewmen.

Before resuming course, Archer allows one more brief detour to allow Sato’s slug to be dropped off on a new planet – not exactly like home, but close enough to adapt and do just fine on, comparable to Sato’s own situation on the Enterprise.

Summary
I like where this series is going. I like where this series is going a lot. This episode may not have had a particularly challenging concept, but it was still entertaining, nevertheless.

Anyway, welcome to episode two of the series, generally referred to in any series as the character-building episode where the writers test all of the things thought up by the series creators for the writer’s bible, and also where they show the audience what they can expect from the show’s characters for the next seven years (well, let’s admit it, seven years is a big possibility.) Perhaps this episode succeeds in doing exactly that because it was the show’s creators who wrote it. Anyway, I digress.

Building on last week’s great introduction to the characters was this episodes main success – here we saw Dr. Phlox’s growing interest in Human culture (very funny was the part where he wanted to watch two crewmembers ‘mate,’ as he so adequately called it.) He also built up a nice little relationship with the excellent Sato, whom he counselled well alongside her pet, erm, slug (it was, well, different at least how Sato’s plight onboard was shown metaphorically through a slug’s life.)

Sato was a joy to watch in this episode, she deserved scene after scene for her emotional portrayal of what amounted to the equivalent of a little girl not wanting to be in space, wanting to be at home, and her crying scene where she doesn’t feel that she can communicate with the alien captain Her wanting to sleep on the other side of the ship to get more sleep, her claustrophobia in the space suits all made interesting viewing that made this character perhaps the most realistic in the show.

The touchy scenes between Archer and T’Pol also developed interesting viewing from last week, as well as the T’Pol/Archer/Trip dinner scene, that looks like a recurring event on the horizon.

Perhaps the only disappointment character-development-wise was the lack of anything really from Reed or Mayweather, perhaps the only relationship started last week that wasn’t really looked at.

Moving on, as I mentioned, the story was quite simple. However, that did not mean that this was bad, in fact, it was far from it. There was a real sense of the story just moving forward at random, waiting for something to happen at the start, which is what the crew were going through. The scenes aboard the alien ship were very tense – Sato’s screams, the dark lighting and the music all contributed towards perhaps the most tension I felt during an episode since Voyager’s ‘Scorpion.’ It is the sense of being out there in space for the first time, being excited/scared about the unknown that was a major point of Enterprise’s premise, and this was explored very well.

There was also no 'rub-gel-on-me-in-the-decontamination-room-to-boost-ratings' scene this week! Yay!

Any negative aspects? Possibly. As already mentioned, we didn’t see much from Mayweather and Reed. Does that matter? Probably not – there are going to be many episodes where other characters are going to be left out.

Next point – alien of the week. No, I’m not complaining about that concept, I was worried that they were a bit reminiscent of the Vidiians. They had a similar motive in wanted fluid from whomever they captured, though it was interesting that we never actually saw them.

Finally, and this is in two parts – Reed’s weapons systems. First of all, I’m convinced that last week the ship had lasers of some description as a weapon. This week, they were nowhere to be seen, and instead we had dodgy targeting sensors for torpedoes. Secondly, why oh why did Reed have to get the targeting sensors aligned right in the nick of time? It was so cliché I almost choked, it just seemed like a blip of bad storytelling. But it didn’t matter anyway in the end because it was the nice alien that ended up destroying our temporary villain. Hooray!


Final Opinion
A great character-driven story, building on last week’s good start with perhaps odd story moments.

Rating: 8/10