“Damage”
Page 5 of 7him. He replies that maybe she wanted some company. She answers: “Perhaps.” He asks her how she feels. She tells him: “I thought that without the Trellium, I would no longer have difficulty suppressing my emotions…but that’s not true.” Phlox tells her that there are probably “residual effects” from the Trellium and that they “are probably temporary.” She asks what happens if they’re not. He tells her she will learn to “cope with them.” She is afraid. He tells her to be patient and to give it time.
Trip has installed the warp coil. He informs Archer that they can now get up to warp 3.2 and that they should be able to rendezvous with Degra. He tells Archer: “You did the right thing.” Archer replies: “Seems the longer we’re out here, the more I have to keep saying that to myself.” Trip tells him: “Those people will be ok. They’ll get home.” Archer calls Reed to tell him to prepare to go to maximum warp.
REVIEW:
It was certainly a treat to see Casey Biggs (DS9’s Damar) again as the *Illyrian* captain. It’s a pity that we got to see so little of him but hopefully we will see him again. I say this not only because I’d love to see him return but that it would make sense to have Archer give back the warp coil, assuming that the threat from the Xindi is resolved, since what Archer has done is obviously heinous although necessary. I truly hope that the Illyrians aren’t forgotten and we do get to see the warp coil returned and Casey Biggs again.
So far we’ve seen four DS9 actors on the show: Rene Auberjonois, Jeffrey Combs, J. G. Hertzler and now Casey Biggs. It’s great to see them and I hope we get to see more Niners in the future. In fact, I hope we get to see other, and I say this from the heart, *beloved* Trek actors from previous series, not only DS9.
There are two main storylines here, that of Archer’s decision to steal the warp coil from the Illyrians and T’Pol’s addiction to Trellium-D. First of all I must commend the writer for taking risks. Fans are always complaining that the writers seem afraid to go against the grain. Well, not this time. We see Archer doing something that is certainly not what we’d call Star Trek-like and I think that’s great if only because this is a prequel isn’t it? We don’t have the Prime Directive; there is no Federation. These are not enlightened twenty-fourth century humans and Archer is not your utopian, Roddenberry captain of the future. He can’t afford to be, at least not yet.
In Kirk’s and Picard’s time, things are a lot easier as they have guidelines to follow and precedents to guide them. And yet we do see that even Picard did not have it that easy when faced with a menace like the Borg. He was going to destroy them using Hugh and whichever way you look at it, it would have been genocide. Still, in the end he didn’t do it when he got to meet Hugh and realized he was a sentient being (see TNG’s “I, Borg”). What about Sisko and how he tricked the Romulans into getting into the war against the Dominion (see “In the Pale Moonlight”)? Even Kirk and Janeway had decisions to make that weren’t always *purely ethical*.
