Enterprise | Season 4

The Aenar

Directed By: Mike Vejar
Teleplay By: Andre Bormanis
Story By: Manny Coto

Rating:

Reviewed on: 3 March 2005
Reviewed by: Michael Axe

In Brief:

Review: (Contains Spoilers)

The discovery by Enterprise's crew that the Romulan drone-ship is being piloted telepathically definitely makes sense, but it has to be said, the revelation that the pilot is an “Aenar” is certainly a little out of left-field. For one, there has been no mention of the Aenar at all in previous Trek lore – although it is made clear that there are only a small number of them remaining on Andor, and so it is feasible that even by the era of The Original Series the Aenar have become extinct. But primarily, it just seems an awfully convoluted complication to the Romulans' plan. Firstly, they would have had to have gone out (presumably all the way to Andor) to capture an Aenar (having first found out about the telepathic abilities of this secretive race somehow). Then they would have had to have convinced the Aenar to co-operate with the Romulan scheme (which apparently they did by lying to him – but that still doesn't make a lot of sense as (a) surely he would detect the lies telepathically, and (b) even if his race had been wiped out, why should he help start a war between all the other races?). Finally, one has to ask the question, even if the captured Aenar did believe the Romulan lies, why did he continue to co-operate with them when he was being so badly mistreated? All in all, given that Star Trek: Nemesis established that at least some Remans have fairly powerful telepathic abilities in their own right, you can't help but wonder why the Romulans relied so heavily on the Aenar.

Of course, there are possible explanations for the Romulans' decisions – for example, the captured Aenar may have co-operated merely out of self-preservation (and therefore it was irrelevant if he knew the Romulans were lying), and it could be that no race other than the Aenar were telepathically strong enough to control the drone-ship over such large distances. But it all just seems a bit bizarre and coincidental to all of a sudden invent a sister-race for the Andorians and have them be so centrally involved in the Romulan plot…

However, moving on from the somewhat surprising premise of the episode, the episode itself is actually very enjoyable. The introduction of the Aenar race, and the first appearance of the planet Andor, are both interesting developments, and the scenes in the ice caves are surprisingly believable. But the highlight of this episode is without a doubt the character moments.

In the main plot thread, Shran gets to flesh out his character even further, first with his scenes with Archer, then with his distrust of the Aenar elders, and finally with the bond that develops between him and Jhamel through their shared grief. Shran is now firmly established as one of the most developed supporting characters in the Trek universe, and as he beamed off Enterprise for possibly the final time, I was hit with a sudden pang of sorrow at the thought of never seeing the character again. But with the end of Enterprise now only eight episodes away, I'm sure there will be many more examples of “X's final appearance” in the forthcoming weeks.

The other highlight of the episode was the character moments involving Trip and T'Pol. As always, these scenes were sensitively handled and well executed, and Trip's realisation that his feelings for T'Pol may have started to affect his ability to carry out his work was portrayed wonderfully. The final scene between Archer and Trip, where Trip is still unable to open up to his friend about the real reason for his transfer request, was actually one of the best episode cliffhangers of the season so far.

The final confrontation with the Romulan ships was, if anything, a slight let down. The alliance fleet of the previous episode was suddenly nowhere to be seen, and the plan to build a second telepathic remote control device to hack into the ships' systems just felt a little far-fetched and forced. In the end, the fact that Jhamel managed to reach her brother so that he sacrificed himself to destroy the ships just felt too neat and predictable, and was a fairly unsatisfactory end to a plot thread that started off so promisingly. I can't help but think that after the drone-ship was defeated in the previous episode, the Romulans would have been far better off licking their wounds and refining the ship instead of sending both drone-ships out into enemy territory in a half-baked plan to exact revenge on the humans…

All in all, this episode has a lot going for it, but ultimately it just doesn't gel with the rest of the mini-arc. Maybe it would have been better if the character moments with Trip, T'Pol and Shran, the introduction of the Aenar and exploration of Andor could all have been done in a separate, standalone episode, while the Romulan drone-ship plot should have been kept as a two-parter with a much tighter and more focused plot?

Michael Axe is the author of a number of novellas and screenplays, and is a main reviewer for ST Universe. All his reviews are copyright © Michael Axe and are used here exclusively with his permission.