the delphic expanse

Teleplay By
Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong

Story By
Rick Berman & Brannon Braga

Directed By
David Livingston

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With Kayjay busy with her new job, I've opened this thread! Discuss at will.

Oh thank you. I had this up to do last night but petered out... orientation for six hours today (done), then nap, then 8 hour shift overnight at old job. Ugh. Hopefully I'll be aware tomorrow on my day off and update this with links -- and maybe even discuss it myself, lol.

No problem at all! I'm still gathering thoughts to post on the episode, but we had a nice crowd during the chat!

I thought this was a well done episode. Another 'message show' perhaps, but hey, that's Star Trek for you!

Being a Quantum Leap fan, it was cool to see Dean Stockwell on the show.

And Travis got something to do!

During the rewatch chat, it was certainly commented on how much Travis had to do, and it was a true ensemble piece. Everyone did something significant, even the barely present Phlox when he gave Malcolm his disguise.

While it was heavy handed with the Nazi/Japanese Internment camp, Guantanamo Bay messaging, I thought it was important that Archer recognized that life wasn't going to be easy for the escapees. He didn't seem very happy toward the end. But I did think that the evocation of Japanese internment was a good one, because it indicated that this was a situation that had a deep impact on Archer and that humans are still struggling with their own past and their hypocrisy. It hit such an emotional nerve with Archer that he refused to escape until he could help the Suliban. Also, I think it was a comeuppance for him to be called on the fact that he assumed the prisoners were guilty and members of the cabal, when he had knowledge that not all Suliban were with the cabal.

I was a little squeamish about some of the concentration camp imagery, primarily because I just visited Anne Frank house last month and I saw a lot of footage there. I think I wasn't ready to see the imagery evoked, though I don't object in principle. I just wasn't in the headspace for it.

I did like the scenes on the ship, with T'Pol, Trip and Hoshi working together to thwart the bad guys. I liked that Malcolm led a successful escape. I tell myself he was made up to look like a specific Suliban they had scanned to explain why the guard didn't notice he was a strange Suliban.

I had this episode mixed up with the one where Archer and Trip were mistakenly taken prisoner. If we ever get an Ent drinking game going, we all need to have a shot every time Archer gets taken prisoner.

I thought this was a pretty good episode, though the message was kind of heavy-handed. I always wished that we would have found out later that at least one of the escapees had joined the Cabal. One thing I liked about it was that they did show the consequences of Archer's decision later in the season, in "Desert Crossing" and "Two Days, Two Nights." They revisited the Tandarans in 2D2N, but I can't remember them ever appearing again. With their extensive intelligence network, they could have played an interesting role in later seasons.

Edit: I had a couple of paragraphs about the Suliban in general, but they weren't directly relevant to this episode so I moved them to a separate post in "People of Enterprise."

Haven't watched it yet, but tomorrow hopefully. Just wanted to say that DK refers to this disguise as the Cantelope Head.