Star Trek: Enterprise — 2x13 — Dawn
Synopsis
Trip is fired upon by a territorial alien and forced to land on the night side of a moon.
Remarkable scenes
- Trip beginning to communicate with Zho'Kaan.
- Zho'Kaan healing Trip's scratch wound with his spit. An interesting ability.
- Trip regarding talking to Zho'Kaan: "It's like talking to Porthos!"
- Trip doing his best, despite the language barrier, to attempt to cooperate with Zho'Kaan, only to have Zho'Kaan attack him again.
- Zho'Kaan finally starting to cooperate with Trip.
- Trip recalling the interesting things that happened to him on his mission.
- Archer: "I guess we won't be adding the Arkonians to our list of friends." T'Pol: "The encounter was less volatile than I expected. You managed to establish better relations in a single day than the Vulcans have in a century."
- Trip finally being able to talk with Zho'Kaan with the aid of a translator in sickbay.
Review
Well, they should have just named the episode Enemy Mine to complete the plagiarism! The alien makeup was similar to the movie, the premise was similar to the movie, and the plot was similar to the movie! Keeping the review a little more confined to Star Trek, the episode was also a bit like TNG: The Enemy. Despite the lack of originality, this was a very nice episode. Trip's compassion for his would be sparring partner is commendable. I like how he threw away his weapon, which started a fight, then after he barely won the fight he threw away his weapon again! Even when Trip had the ability to escape, he stayed to make sure that Zho'Kaan would be all right. This episode nicely demonstrates human compassion. Perhaps the lack of human compassion is why the Vulcans never established good relations with the Arkonians in the past. ;) While maybe not so original, the episode was most true to the spirit of Star Trek; nicely above average.