43 – Canamar

Grade: D-

Summary

Captain Archer and Commander Tucker in Shuttlepod 1 will not respond to repeated hails from the Enterprise. The shuttle looks deserted and adrift. The rest of the Enterprise crew must find out what happened to them and try to get them back. They soon find out that Archer and Tucker have been kidnapped and are aboard a prison ship.

Commentary

As is common for this series, the story starts out after the event, and we’re supposed to put the pieces together to discover what happened. This kind of storytelling works best when the event itself is not the most important part of the story. In this case, I’m wondering if the right decision was made, since nothing really happens on the ship that abducted them.

The storyline that was produced was predictable, and it seemed like the writers were simply following a formula. Though I didn’t see the film, I’ve heard that this episode as far too much in common with Con Air to be coincidental.

What’s more, the viewer never sees the “Canamar” of the title. A more appropriate title would have been Journey to Canamar.

Rather than watch this predictable mess, I personally would have rather seen how Archer and Tucker reacted to being apprehended. After all, abductions seem to happen all the time in Star Trek, and it would be interesting to compare how Archer reacts to them from one season to another. Maybe this would have led to some of the precautions that would be used later.

There isn’t much that makes this episode stand out, and it will probably just be forgotten eventually. In all, it’s a below average effort.