Teleplay by Andre Bormanis
Story by Manny Coto
Directed by Mike Vejar
In brief: An aimless, unsatisfying wrap-up to this inconclusive three-episode arc.
Earlier this season, we had the Augments trilogy and the Vulcan trilogy. Now comes the conclusion to ... uh, this trilogy, whatever you want to call it. "The Aenar" is a messy epilogue in a three-parter whose most significant story arc was wrapped up in last week's "United." Watching the rather aimless "Aenar," I wasn't sure what this episode was supposed to be about, and by extension, the trilogy itself lacks a concrete through-line.
I think the main problem is that the show focuses fairly heavily on the Romulans and their meddling in the affairs of others, but we never really get the sense that this show is actually about the Romulans. The Romulans are more like arbitrary placeholders to drive the plot. We learn very little about them; they're sketchy people doing bad things for half-baked reasons. And if you stop and think about their genius plot, you're left amazed by the sheer stupidity of it all.
Most disappointing is the fact there's not much to suggest that this episode contributes to the prequel agenda that has been the selling point of this season. Unlike the Vulcan trilogy, which told a mostly coherent prequel story, we're left in a vacuum here wondering if we're going to see the Romulans again. If so, I'd hope for something more substantial. If not, then that's the way it goes and I guess the notion of Romulans sneaking around is all Enterprise intends to give us. Either way, "Aenar" has mostly wasted our time.
Not that "The Aenar" is all bad. It's never unwatchable and it has its moments. There is a scene, for example, where the Romulan admiral, a former senator, explains how he was cashiered from the senate for questioning the Romulan "precept of unlimited expansion." It would seem that reasonable people who question authority are quashed. Too bad this scene is never followed up.
It turns out the pilot of the Romulan drone is actually an Aenar, one of an Andorian subspecies who are blind and have strong telepathic abilities. The Romulans' remote-controlled drone is designed to respond directly to the telepathic signals sent by this Aenar, a man named Gareb (Scott Rinker), whom the Romulans abducted from Andoria about a year ago.
Shran explains that the Aenar were considered mythical for centuries until they were officially discovered "50 years ago." Even so, very few Andorians have ever met an Aenar, who are staunch pacifists, very secretive, and live only among themselves. Oh, and they can also read minds.
Frankly, much of this strikes me as quickly concocted Civilization Lite. These two species have lived on the same planet forever and only a few decades ago realized that the other even exists. But the story gives us little reason to believe these are real cultures that live on a real world. The Enterprise travels to Andoria to recruit their own Aenar to tap into the signal and stop the drone. But once there, we don't even see Andorian society.
Andoria is represented by empty ice-tunnels which, according to Shran, "branch off for thousands of kilometers." (The cities are all underground, with access from these tunnels.) You'd think there'd be a better way than walking to traverse thousands of kilometers of treacherous ice tunnels. I for one hope they brought a map. In any case, it strikes me as great fortune that Archer and Shran happen upon the Aenar as quickly as they do. Even greater fortune that it happens so quickly after Shran has accidentally impaled himself through the leg.
I suppose the notion of expanding this series' canvas of societies with the Aenar is commendable. Still, I wasn't all that riveted by them. The main selling point here is the decent characterization between the always-suspicious Shran and the innocent and well-intended Aenar named Jhamel (Alexandra Lydon), who, as it happens, is the sister of Gareb, the Aenar who was abducted by the Romulans. This gives her and her alone the motivation to break from her people's pacifist ideals to attempt to stop the Romulan drone.
Not that I understood how this was physically supposed to happen. You see, Trip has rigged up a remote-control chair/device on the Enterprise -- similar to the one the Romulans have -- which I guess has all the right frequencies and encryption codes needed to break in and interfere with the Romulans' remote-control system. One would think a remote-controlled war drone wouldn't be so easy to tap into, but then one would be wrong.
Whatever; that's one of the overall problems with this episode -- too much meaningless tech and mechanical plot and not nearly enough emotion or relevance. I should care about Jhamel's plight to help her brother, but I don't. It's a perfunctory "human" tack-on to a remote-controlled plot filled with technobabble and explosions. The climax, where Jhamel is able to contact Gareb by telepathy and get him to turn the drones against each other, is overly simplistic -- underwhelming at best, hokey at worst. Gareb expresses guilt over the people the Romulans forced him to kill, which made me wonder why he didn't just make the drones return to Romulus and start strafing the city. Oh, never mind; he's a pacifist. (Truthfully, he's just a weak pawn of the plot.)
Meanwhile, I'm asking myself: Why would the Romulans even design remote-controlled war drones that require a telepathic pilot, of all things? Couldn't they just design remote ships that, you know, used keys or a mouse or a joystick or something, anything, but telepathy? Even more silly: (1) These drones require an Aenar to pilot; (2) The Romulans were apparently so shortsighted as to kidnap only one Aenar to fly them; (3) the Romulan admiral forces the Romulan scientist to push the pilot to the limits of brain damage, saying his health is "of no consequence"; so (4) I guess when he dies, their brilliant plan is to mothball the drones.
Really, this whole thing is more often than not a Swiss-cheese plot. Just what are the Romulans actually trying to do, anyway? Cause general chaos as a prelude to an invasion? The story never says. It's just a vague pseudo-threat -- the Romulans out here stirring up trouble for trouble's sake. Not exactly enlightening, particularly in prequel terms, and it's to the detriment of the first two episodes in this trilogy, which were sold mostly on their setup and mystery, which now has not been lived up to.
The show's best scene comes at the end, when Trip asks to be transferred to the Columbia, and Archer reluctantly grants that transfer. It's a payoff that was set up in several scenes earlier in the episode, centering on the simple fact that Trip realizes he's in (unrequited) love with T'Pol, and finds that it's affecting his work. This Archer/Trip scene is a quiet one that explores actual characters and the relationships and personnel realities of a starship. I like that Trip can't confess the reason for his request to Archer, and that Archer doesn't force him to.
As for much of the rest of this episode, I'll quote Archer: "Looks like we went all the way to Andoria for nothing."
Next week: Klingons, medical mysteries, and shadowy intelligence agencies.
Previous episode: United
Next episode: Affliction
Section Index
I've really been enjoying reading you. Your analyzes are very often compelling, done with humor, and above all, very clever.
I've seen many times each epidode of all Star Trek series, and I have enjoyed all of them, each series having its own strenghts and weaknesses. Which series is the best is clearly a personal matter. Although I personally prefer Next Generation for its originality, Enterprise is second on my list, primarily for the quality of acting (Bakula, Billingsley, Blalock , Trinneer...) which cleary beats all other series by a mile... and despite the fact that the plots are too war oriented and with too many hostile species (clearly not the same Zeitgess than TNG)...
I write because I feel that you have been somehow unfair with Enterprise, being far more demanding in comparison to DS9, which appears to be your favorite. Fine, I too like the soap-like DS9 (except most, if not all, the Ferengi's epidoses), but this very refreshing (icing) episode deserves more than two stars, especially when we look at the DS9 episodes that were given two stars!
Thank you for this website and continue the good work.
Sincerely,
Paul
The biggest difficulty I had with this episode is that there are only supposed to be a few thousand Aenar, they have no contact with the rest of the Andorians, and yet they have very advanced technology - good enough to fix Shran's leg, for instance.
Perhaps their telepathic ability allows them to access Andorian technology without physical contact. I can't see how else they could have developed it.
This whole trilogy was an insult to intelligence, most notably the ridiculously out of place in the 22nd century Romulan technology.
However, even if all the ingredients are top quality in general, any given episode may fail to click for the viewer. I don't begrudge Jammer awarding star ratings based on his honest response. It's true that his ENT ratings skew far lower than any season of DS9; he gave 4 stars to only four ENT episodes, fewer for the whole series than in some individual seasons of DS9. That could be the result of DS9 setting a standard that ENT couldn't match, rather than judging ENT on its own merits.
On the merits, "The Aenar" works as well as any 2.5 or 3 star DS9 episode. Following Paul's suggestion, compare this episode to the 2-star outings from DS9's best season (according to Jammer's ratings), season 5. Is this episode better than "Empok Nor"? I'll say it is. Is it at least as good as the 2.5 star "The Ship"? I'd say so, and I liked "The Ship" more than Jammer did. I definitely prefer "The Aenar" to DS9's "The Assignment," which Jammer gave 2.5 stars. This is not to split hairs over star ratings or accuse this site's proprietor of bias. If anything, this shows that the rating scale does not apply across series and is mainly useful for comparing episodes within a series. In that case, "The Aenar" may be a merely average episode of ENT, but that in itself doesn't mean it's awful.
I also liked the interactions between Shran and Jhamel, as it brings humanity (er... Andorianity?) to what Gareb has done (or rather been forced to do). Prior to meeting Jhamel, Shran is appalled by the deaths the drone ship caused (including obviously his mate Talas). After the revelation Jhamel is Gareb's sister, the poor kidnapped Aenar is given a background and isn't merely the pawn-of-the-Romulans any longer... he becomes someone's loved one. Despite what Jammer says, I did empathize with him somewhat even though the final scenes (him turning the drones on each other, his "sacrifice", his goodbye to his sister) were a bit too melodramatic.
I will agree on your 4th-to-last paragraph though: the whole design of the drones requiring a telepathic Aenar, as well as the elimination of a seemingly vital piece of the whole puzzle being dismissed as "of no consequence"... well it doesn't really make sense.
As for the Trip/T'Pol sublot at the end, I really felt it was unnecessary. This is almost turning into Ross & Rachel, something which really has no place in a Star Trek context.