633. UnexpectedFORMULA: The Disease + The Child + Body Parts + Profit and Lace
WHY WE LIKE IT: Aliens more alien than the usual aliens.
WHY WE DON'T: Trip's blossoming womanhood.
REVIEW: Archer's antigrav shower scene aside, we've been through the malfunctions bit too many times to find the early scenes interesting, but Unexpected gets better when we meet the Xyrillians. This race is your usual Trek humanoid alien, but their ship is truly unusual. It includes a number of biological features that work with the species' own biology - a grassy floor that helps with digestion, food that grows on walls, a cool aquarium full of eels - and requires besides that visitors stay in a decompression tank for three hours. Their strange atmosphere is disorienting, an effect created with fish-eye lenses, sound distortions and strobing lights.
Trip goes over there to help with engine repairs and for the first half of the episode at least, the creators make us feel the weirdness of this first contact. The jelloed water, the electric touch, the odd-looking technology and architecture. And because we're used to aliens, they also give us the Xyrillians' take on humanity, making us alien as well. And of course, there's an intimate encounter that doesn't seem sexual at all, but that impregnates Trip with Ah'len's baby. And that's where the episode makes an incredibly wrong turn...
The transfer of genetic material seems dubious as shown, but let that pass. More dubious is how Trip can be so compatible, he grows nipples on his wrists and a womb on his torso. In other words, he's genetically altered by the encounter. But let that pass too. No, what's really terrible is the "motherly" behaviour he suddenly exhibits. Ridiculous concern for child safety in Engineering, mood swings and weird eating habits... It's a comedic parody of pregnancy, and it's comedy that's at odds with the realistic feel of the series. It just doesn't work.
The Klingons reappear (fine, since space isn't so big at this point), in what might or might not be that "first disastrous contact" with the Empire, though it's really not that disastrous (unless Vorok later went to the Chancellor who might have been outraged than T'Pol put words in his mouth). They react to the Xyrillians pretty much how you'd expect them to, but tensions are defused in two ways, both of which I found annoying. First, everybody on the bridge of the Enterprise is way too gabby in the diplomatic sequence. No way does Trip need to explain his business to the Klingons, nor does it do any good. Archer needs for his crew to shut up during these things (though T'Pol's ploy is a good one). Second, the Klingons leave the Xyrillians alone in exchange for some holographic technology. So while I didn't really have a problem with this first chronological appearance of a holodeck, it only made sense as the inspiration for such things on ships 200 years later. By giving it to the Klingons, the tech has passed into usage much too early for the timeline to be realistic. Anyway, the danger and pregnancy are easily undone, which makes for a lazy resolution.
LESSON: Men were not made for pregnancy.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-Low: An interesting first contact story takes a bad spill into lame comedy.
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