Star Trek Enterprise: Exile
01/11/2003 . Source: Evan Braun 

This is the first episode of the season that is utterly devoid of any Trip/T'Pol scenes, at least in the romantic sense. Maybe that's one of the reasons our Evan loved it so much. What, no sensual T'Pol scenes? Forgetaboutit.

Buy Star Trek Enterprise in the USA - or Buy Star Trek Enterprise in the UK

If you've been reading my reviews on a regular basis you may have noticed that I'm what you might call an "optimistic" reviewer. Sometimes I have a hard time giving an episode a really bad grade, and I'm occasionally told that a given episode isn't nearly as good as I made it sound.

But it can't just be me - if I had been reviewing this show regularly last year, I would have routinely been failing episodes week after week. That said, "Exile" blew me away.

This is the first episode of the season that is utterly devoid of any Trip/T'Pol scenes, at least in the romantic sense. Maybe that's one of the reasons I loved it so much.

The show has two plots. The A-story involves Hoshi, and I just have to take the opportunity to sing Linda Park's praises.

Hoshi Sato is certainly one of the show's more under-used characters. True, she isn't nearly as under-used as Ensign Mayweather (By the way, this definitely isn't a fact, but I bet you could count the number of lines of dialogue he's had so far this season on four hands), but truth be told I feel Linda Park is an exceptional actress, while I see Anthony Montgomery as being mediocre at best.

After watching this episode, Hoshi is at least twice as "realized" as she was before, if not more so. I guess we have to give buckets of credit to the writers, particularly Phyllis Strong, for making episodes like this happen.

The second plot delves further into the Xindi storyline and ends up providing the crew with a new immediate objective, to be explored as early as next week, while also asking some startling questions about the nature of the Expanse. As far as the arc goes, this is very strong material.

But let's backtrack.

The episode opens in Hoshi's quarters. She's in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, when she hears a quiet, male voice. She looks around, but can't see anyone in the room with her. Hoshi. Do you understand me? I think you do. Can you see me? At last she sees a man, human, in her quarters.

Was I the only person half-expecting Brad Pitt to step out of the shadows? Or maybe I've just seen Meet Joe Black too many times. Yeah, that's probably it.

T'Pol and Archer have a meeting in the Command Center. T'Pol has been conducting an analysis of the anomalies throughout the Expanse. She has determined that there must be a second Sphere, like the one they encountered in "Anomaly," affecting the region. Where the gravimetric waves from the two Sphere intersect, presumably, anomalies would occur. T'Pol concludes that the second Sphere is less than four light years away. Archer orders the ship to alter course to investigate.

At Hoshi's behest, Reed tries to find an explanation for the mysterious visitor in the ensign's quarters. Nothing turns up, however. Even Phlox can find nothing physiologically amiss with her, aside from a few normal headaches. When Hoshi admits it might have been a hallucination, Phlox informs her that among Denobulans, stress-induced hallucination is considered healthy. That, however, proves small comfort to the disturbed Hoshi.

Hoshi is visited by the telepathic presence again while she's trying to translate a portion of the Xindi database. This time, more than merely seeing the man, she is momentarily transported to an alien world, presumably the man's home. He lives in a large, ancient mansion, built into the wall of a cliff. She snaps out of it when Reed finally arrives, responding to her earlier call for help.

Back in sickbay, Phlox puts her under examination. But even in the apparent safety of sickbay, she is not immune from the visitations. The presence appears to her yet again, but this time in the form of Phlox, catching her offguard. He tells her that she is extremely special, that his telepathy requires a unique mind to make contact, and that she has just such a mind. He tells her that his home is on a world only three light years away, and that he wants her to visit him there. He tells her that he wants to use his abilities to help them stop the Xindi. Hoshi tells the captain about the arrangement, and Archer agrees to make the detour.

Upon arrival at the planet, Archer, Hoshi, and Reed take a shuttlepod to the man's cliff home. From both the outside and inside, it is precisely how Hoshi saw it in her "hallucination." They walk into the enormous front hall, and into a private study where they confronted by the "man," who turns out to be an alien named Tarquin.

At first appearing hideous, with a dozen antenna-like protrusions coming out of his skull, Hoshi senses he's not as fearsome as he appears. He has lived on this deserted world, alone, for centuries, with no contact with outsiders except through telepathy. Tarquin offers to help the crew to locate the weapon the Xindi are building to attack Earth, but he needs a Xindi artifact to help focus his abilities.

Archer provides Tarquin with a piece of the probe used to attack Earth in last season's "The Expanse," but soon learns the alien's unusual condition for aid: Hoshi must be left with him while he conducts his search. Archer is reluctant, but Hoshi insists on staying, citing the importance of receiving Tarquin's help as well as her perception that Tarquin won't do anything to harm her. Archer and the Enterprise then leave the system, continuing on their way toward the second Sphere.

Tarquin uses the knowledge he has gathered from his time in Hoshi's mind to make her feel at home. He creates for her a dinner consisting of pizza, a hamburger, as well as other recognizable human dishes. His knowledge of her, however, goes far deeper than her favourite foods, into intimate and highly personal memories and feelings, including her volatile early experiences when her parents learned of her gift for understanding language.

In exchange, however, Tarquin tells his own story. His people's homeworld is located 30 light years away, and it's a wonderful place. Unless you happen to be one of the one in fifty million who is born telepathic. Telepaths like Tarquin are considered to be terrible threats, and are therefore sent away to live in solitude and exile for the rest of their lives.

Uncomfortable with his knowledge of her, Hoshi goes to bed. Before she retires for the night, he gives her the gift of a book written in the language of a long-dead culture (which she later says reminds her of medieval Klingon) and then issues her a warning. "Feel free to wander," he tells her. "There are lots of interesting things here."

But he tells her to keep indoors, due to the violent weather of the planet. Now, I don't suppose there's anything terribly wrong with this except that it's almost word-for-word the warning that the Beast gives Belle when she comes to his castle in Beauty and the Beast. Just substitute "the West Wing" for "the outdoors." Tarquin also tells her that she doesn't need to feel alone, since he knows that she often does, even on her ship, when she's among groups of people.

Meanwhile, Enterprise is chasing after the second Sphere. They start passing through a series of devastating anomalies that begin as innocuously as causing Archer's basketball to adhere to a wall, and ending as horrendously as causing a massive breach in the saucer's hull.

The damage is extensive, causing breaches on Decks B, C, and E as well as three decompressed subsections. T'Pol observes that this Sphere is emitting much more gravimetric energy than the first one they encountered. With the Sphere still 75,000 kilometers away, the ship cannot get any closer. Archer's solution is to insulate Shuttlepod One with the trellium ore they extracted in last week's episode.

Back on Tarquin's world, Hoshi finds him using a large blue object that helps to extend the range of his telepathy. It is what helped him to contact her over such long distances. He is also using the device to procure information about the Xindi. Tarquin then allows Hoshi to try the device for herself. When she tries using it, she is bombarded by a variety of powerful images, some of which include the Xindi, what might be the Klingon Homeworld, the planet Jupiter, a number of explosions, a weapon, an alien ship, among others. It's unclear whether these are images from other people's minds, a look into the past, or - more intriguing - a glance into the future.

In her wanderings, Hoshi disregards Tarquin's warning and goes outside. Like I didn't see that coming a mile away. Outdoors, she stumbles onto a number of graves, which Tarquin reveals belong to his former "companions." Since he has been alive for over 400 years, four such companions have come and gone. He hopes for Hoshi to be his fifth.

Finally seeing his real intentions, Hoshi tells him in no uncertain terms that she has no intention of staying, but his attempts to persuade her continue. He changes form again, appearing to her as the man she saw while on Enterprise, but Hoshi becomes more and more disturbed by his advances. He tells her, "Think about what I said. You're going to have a great deal of time."

On that fairly creepy note, we return to Enterprise, where Trip and Archer launch in a shuttlepod toward the second Sphere. Protected now by trellium D, the shuttle is able to move forward relatively unmolested by the anomalies. Eventually they find the cloaking barrier (just like last time), and find the Sphere hiding behind it. Just as breathtaking as the first, Archer decides to break out the EV suits and land on the Sphere's surface.

This is followed by a brief, and somehow implausible special-effects laden incident involving the near escape of the shuttlepod, phasering out the port thrusters, and causing the vessel to plummet back down to the Sphere surface. Anyway. They get back with lots of scans, and the ship heads back to pick up Hoshi.

Tarquin attempts to deceive Hoshi by appearing to her as Archer, recently returned, who tells her to remain on the planet until after the mission is over and Tarquin has finished helping them. It doesn't take long for Hoshi to figure out the ruse (though, admittedly, it shouldn't have taken her half as long as it did, given that I knew what was going on a good twenty seconds before she did).

As Enterprise approaches, Tarquin uses a dampening field of some kind to drain it of all power, including life support. He explains to Hoshi that unless she stays with him, he will kill the entire crew. Thinking fast, Hoshi grabs the device he uses to accentuate his telepathic abilities, and threatens to destroy it. Ultimately, Tarquin realizes that his need for the device is greater than his need for Hoshi, and he allows her and the Enterprise to leave unmolested. Tarquin does not, however, provide the ship with the valuable information on the Xindi he managed to gather.

Which leads to my single complaint of the episode. Assuming that some, if not all, of his previous companions stayed against their will, I find it hard to believe that none of them thought to use this device as leverage against Tarquin. I suppose that it's a minor complaint, though.

The ending, however, like many episodes this season, brings with it a bit of a cliffhanger, and a startling idea that changes the face of the arc so far. T'Pol informs Archer that her analysis indicates that there are as many as fifty Spheres in the Expanse, rather than two, and that all of them together are creating the anomalies in concert. T'Pol surmises that whoever built these astonishingly large and complex Spheres may very well be responsible for creating the Expanse itself. The question burning on our minds then is, so who built it? I'm hoping this is a question that we are provided an answer to sometime in the near future. It's far too tantalizing a possibility to pass up.

At the very end, Tarquin reappears to Hoshi, apologetic for his behaviour, and offers the crew information about the Xindi after all. Hoshi brings it to Archer right away: Tarquin has given them the coordinates for a Xindi colony, where a piece of the weapon, to be used to wipe out Earth, is being constructed.

I suppose if that synopsis is far longer than others I've written it's because this plot was overall more complicated and compelling than usual, particularly on a personal level. And again, I can hardly say enough about Linda Park. Hoshi has had a few major episodes in the past (including "Fight or Flight," a wonderful subplot in "Two Days and Two Nights," and the less-than-stellar "Vanishing Point"), but I can safely identify this episode as the one in which she finally becomes actualized as a fully-developed character. I'm looking forward to where the writers will take her in the future.

Before I finish, I'll leave you with my favourite exchange of dialogue in the episode. It takes places just as Archer agrees to let Hoshi stay behind before the ship heads off toward the Sphere: Archer (to Hoshi): "Do I need to tell you to stay on your toes?" Which is followed by Hoshi: "I think that falls under the 'goes-without-saying' category." Kind of cute.

9.5. Not quite perfect, but very, very close. Good work. And a good job setting up a big story next week. At least, here's hoping.

Evan Braun