720. DivergenceFORMULA: Nemesis + The Pegasus + Cold Station 12 + Hippocratic Oath
WHY WE LIKE IT: Same as Affliction.
WHY WE DON'T: Trip's pointless restlessness.
REVIEW: The second part of the Klingon Augment arc isn't directed by David Straiton, but it's the same kind of crash zoom-happy direction he's so fond of. It really breaks an arc's continuity when various parts are so disparately directed. That said, it's not quite as bad as Staiton's work, and there's a funky shot flying into the Columbia's bridge. As the sabotaged Enterprise is speeding to its death, the Columbia must fly close to it and transfer Trip over. Enterprise's new engineer sucks real bad, see, and they need the best man for the job. It's a crazy-ass sequence that requires Trip to climb a grappler cable between the two ships at high warp. Cool effects and cowboy action (the equivalent of Cold Station 12's cliffhanger save).
Otherwise, the episode basically follows Affliction and has the same strengths and weaknesses. Antaak remains a sympathetic doctor, revealed here to have caused the viral infection in the first place and only trying to fix his mistake, even if it means abandoning the idea of Klingon Augments. In fact, saving his species will require Klingons to be gutted and made much weaker than their ridged forebears. It's believable then that Phlox would want to stick around as long as possible, even when a rescue party arrives.
The Section 31 material still seems like overkill, though we do learn the origin of the name and how it was part of Earth's charter even before it was in the Federation's. However, I again question their unnecessary manipulations. Reed gets out of the bridge at least, and cuts ties with Harris, his contact, but he's not done with him. Perhaps this'll seem better - necessary set-up - once the Section 31 arc wraps up in a few episodes.
In the end, as a battle rages in orbit and a Klingon cruiser fires on the colony to sterilize the virus, Phlox finds the cure and turns Archer into an antibody factory to produce enough of it. The final gambit involved infecting the attacking cruiser and ransoming the cure. It's a good climax.
LESSON: There's more money in palliatives than in cures.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: A lot like Affliction, although it seems like that previous episodes held all the actual revelations.
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