In the ninth episode of the second season of Enterprise, everyone hates one another, and that’s literally the plot of this story. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.Â
I should sit down and figure out the categories of stories that we routinely get throughout all five Star Trek shows, partly because that would be a lot of fun. But I think it would be rewarding to come up with a name for episodes like “Singularity.” I think I’ve referred to them as Experience episodes, in that they’re less about advancing the season’s plot or any character development. Instead, the crew is dealt a huge problem, and the entertainment comes from watching these characters go through an Experience.
“Singularity” is absolutely that, and it’s a solid episode that derives tension from the way it toys with the audience. It opens in media res, which isn’t revolutionary for Star Trek, and having to figure out how we reach that arresting opener is also common for the series as a whole. We know that the ship set course for a black hole, and at some point along the journey, they all got sick except for T’Pol. Aside from passing out, there are no visual clues as to what did this or what they might have been afflicted with, and it’s a brilliant choice. Once we flash back two days prior, the episode becomes a game: what’s the infection point? Was this an airborne disease or was it passed by contact? What were the initial symptoms? When did T’Pol figure it all out?
So I was initially surprised by how mundane this episode felt. The writers dole out hobbies and interests and things to keep the crew busy in the two days prior to reaching the black hole. Archer has to write the preface to a biography on his father; Hoshi takes over for Chef, who fell sick (AND I THOUGHT HE WAS THE FIRST ONE BUT IT WAS A RED HERRING); Tucker is assigned a redesign of the captain’s chair; Reed busies himself with a new set of security protocols.
Which left Dr. Phlox and Travis, who deal with Travis’s lingering headache. See, then I figured that Travis got sick first, and Dr. Phlox discovered it, but then he was too late! Except a headache is pretty vague for a symptom, and I couldn’t see any other possible symptoms. Even when people started behaving strangely, I was skeptical. What if those were red herrings, too? What if some people were just frustrated by two days of travel? EXCEPT THIS WAS HOW THIS AFFLICTION MANIFESTED IN EVERYONE. Do I understand the science or biology behind this? NOPE. Not at all! I still don’t know why Vulcans were immune, but that seemed immaterial to the story. It felt fitting that the least emotional character went unaffected by the radiation that made everyone else intensely obsessed with minute and banal things. It’s an absurd scenario, but the viciousness with which this unfolds makes for compelling television. Everyone is fighting with everyone! Everyone hates everyone else! People bicker over the silliest things! And T’Pol watches over all of it with a muted sense of horror and shock that her human (and sole Denobulan) companions have devolved so quickly.
The resolution isn’t anything spectacular, and I’m not sure if the science behind leaving radiation clouds works exactly as it is depicted here. (Would they all really begin to snap out of it once they escaped it? It seems to happen too quickly, given that they were pretty far away once it first affected them.) But hey, this was still a lot of fun to watch, so… science be damned!
The video for “Singularity” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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