“The Shipment”
Written by Chris Black & Brent V. Friedman
Directed by David Straiton
Season 3, Episode 7
Production episode 059
Original air date: October 29, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Enterprise makes for the coordinates provided by Tarquin in the previous episode. A scan of the planet reveals that it’s a sparsely populated colony, which has no planetary defenses, but there are energy readings concentrated in one area.
Degra reports to a couple of Xindi-Reptilian soldiers that the prototype weapon will be ready for testing as soon as they get an additional hundred kilograms of kemocite. If the test is successful, the weapon can be deployed in a matter of weeks. Why there’s another prototype to be tested when the thing that attacked Earth was a prototype that passed with flying colors is left as an exercise for the viewer.
With Enterprise staying hidden on the far side of the planet’s moon, Archer, Reed, and Hayes fly down in a shuttlepod to investigate. They see Xindi-Arboreals moving in and out of the building that the energy readings are coming from. The trio sneak into the facility and overhear Gralik Durr and his staff complaining about Degra’s demands. Archer recognizes that name.
Archer steals a canister of what they’re working on for Degra and beams it to Enterprise for T’Pol and Tucker to examine. Hayes outlines a plan to blow up the facility, but Archer is more interested in finding out where this stuff is being shipped. They follow Gralik to his home and hold him at gunpoint. Archer demands to know what the kemocite is being used for, and Gralik evasively says that kemocite has lots of uses. Archer specifically asks about Degra, saying that he’s building a weapon to be used against Archer’s homeworld. Gralik has no idea what Archer is talking about.
Tucker and T’Pol discover that the kemocite is also what was used in the probe that attacked Earth. Not only that, but Tucker on a whim ran a scan of the Xindi rifle they got their hands on, and it also has that same imprint. Now Tucker wants to take the rifle apart, and Archer gives the okay for him to do that. He also has Tucker beam down a portion of the Xindi probe.
Archer shows Gralik the probe fragment and explains what it is and what it’s done. And what is planned for the kemocite Gralik is refining for Degra. While Gralik is initially confused and upset, he comes around to realizing why Degra needed such heavily refined kemocite. It could be used as a weapon.
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Reed is all gung-ho to blow up the facility, but Archer doesn’t want to start a war, he wants to stop one. Reed reminds Archer that the Xindi killed seven million people, but Archer counters that they did so because they thought that Earth would be responsible for attacking them. They thought they were acting in self-defense, too.
Gralik gives Archer some more Xindi backstory. Their homeworld was destroyed by a civil war, and there used to be six Xindi species. The Xindi-Avians were all wiped out when the homeworld was destroyed. The war lasted for a century, with different species switching sides constantly, and nobody remembered what started it. What ended it were the Insectoids and Reptilians blowing up the planet. Now the Xindi are scattered throughout the Expanse, and most of them are peaceful.
Hayes reports increased activity around the facility at the same time that T’Pol reports that a Xindi-Reptilian ship is entering orbit.
Tucker recruits Phlox to examine the rifles, as they have a biological component: a worm-like creature that helps power the weapon. Phlox determines that the creatures are immune to pretty much every virus and pathogen he could throw at them, ditto most radiation, but they are vulnerable to delta radiation. (However, they thrive on omicron radiation.)
When Tucker tries to test the rifle, it won’t fire—and then it overloads. Tucker is barely able to beam it off the ship before it goes boom.
The Reptilian ship is carrying Degra, who is several days early for his shipment. Gralik’s staff have no idea where Gralik is, and the Reptilians start a search with drones. Archer destroys the drones before they can detect the three humans.
Gralik agrees to help Archer when the captain makes it clear he won’t blow up the facility and put them all out of work. Instead, T’Pol will put a tracker in the canister they stole and then Archer will put it in with Gralik’s shipment. Gralik himself goes back to work and says he’s almost ready, but Degra’s early. Degra talks urgently about a grave threat to the Xindi that they need this weapon to combat.
Reed is apprehensive about letting Gralik go, but Archer thinks they can trust him not to reveal anything about Enterprise to Degra or the Reptilian soldiers. Meanwhile, Gralik tells the Reptilians that he was out hunting and accidentally shot the drones.
After Degra leaves, Archer and Gralik share a final drink. Gralik hopes he hasn’t betrayed his people to a violent alien species. Archer hopes Gralik doesn’t get in trouble to letting that tracking signal get put in the shipment. Unfortunately, Enterprise lost the signal when the ship went through an energy portal. But they will keep searching. Gralik’s final words to Archer are to remember that not all Xindi are the enemy.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Xindi rifles have a biological component, which is actually kind of gross. They also have good security on those rifles…
The gazelle speech. Archer refuses to blow up a manufacturing facility run by innocent people just doing a job. It’s nice to see that he isn’t just indiscriminately blowing up anything that looks vaguely like a target…
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol is reluctant to let Tucker test the rifle on board, but decides to let him do so. She should’ve gone with her first instinct and remembered that she’s the brains of the outfit…
Florida Man. Florida Man Performs Weapons Test Inside Ship To Bad End.
Optimism, Captain! I honestly think that the rifles had those worms inside them in order to justify giving John Billingsley something to do this week…
Better get MACO. Hayes goes down on the landing party and proceeds to do absolutely nothing that one of Reed’s security guards couldn’t have done just as well.
I’ve got faith…
“You burst into my home, show me some twisted piece of metal, and tell me it proves I’m a mass murderer? I’ve never seen your species before, I’ve never heard of a planet called Earth, and whether you believe me or not, I had nothing to do with killing millions of its inhabitants!”
–Gralik expressing understandable annoyance with being held at gunpoint in his own house.
Welcome aboard. Recurring regulars Steven Culp (last seen in “The Xindi”) and Randy Oglesby (last seen in “Rajiin”) are back as Hayes and Degra, respectively. Oglesby will be back in “Proving Ground,” while Culp will return in “Harbinger.”
John Cothran Jr. plays Gralik, his third TV role on Trek, and his first non-Klingon, having played Nu’Daq in TNG’s “The Chase” and Telok in DS9’s “Crossover.” He also played Counselor Biraka in the videogame Star Trek: Borg. Also a bit of a Robert Knepper moment: one of the Xindi-Arboreals is played by Sam Witwer, who’s probably best known these days as the voice of Darth Maul on various Star Wars projects (The Clone Wars, Rebels, and Solo: A Star Wars Story).
Trivial matters: This episode picks up immediately from “Exile,” with Enterprise making immediate use of the intelligence provided by Tarquin.
Reed says that they’ve been in the Expanse for three months, which is the first time we’ve had any sense of time in a while, as the show has been avoiding specific date references. (The captain’s star logs have all said, “supplemental.”)
Kemocite was first established in DS9’s “Little Green Men.” The Enterprise crew got their hands on a Xindi rifle in “Rajiin.”
Though Sean McGowan does not appear, Hawkins is mentioned as standing by with a MACO assault team.
It’s been a long road… “I thought we were here to try to stop a war, not start one.” One of the things that has always been one of Star Trek’s hallmarks is that the solution to the problem of the week is one based on compassion and understanding and talking rather than having the bigger gun or the better fighter or whatever. It’s utopian fiction with occasional action sequences, not an action show.
My biggest concern about the direction the show was taking after “The Expanse” teaser was that the producers’ desperate attempt to goose the show’s anemic ratings was to turn it into an action show. No more tiptoeing around, as Tucker manfully proclaimed, they’re gonna do whatever it takes!
I’m very grateful to see that that was at least partly a stress response to a horrific act. With time passing, the crew is coming back to themselves, and Archer isn’t doing “whatever it takes.” Indeed, he’s thinking rationally. Reed and Hayes really really want to blow up the facility, because that’ll set back the construction of the weapon. But as Archer rightly points out, what does that get them? It’ll just allow the notion the Xindi have in their heads that humans are horrible people to grow roots.
Instead of violence, Archer goes for talking and compassion and also learning. He learns on purpose by putting a tracker in the kemocite so they can find out where it’s going, and he learns by accident when Gralik tells him the Xindi’s recent history of a century-long war. The contentiousness among the members of the Xindi Council makes more sense now, as they all fought each other in the big war that made the planet go boom.
The best thing about this episode, though, is that Archer rejects the notion of blowing up the facility. This is just a sub-contractor, civilian technicians doing their jobs. Blowing this facility up would be just as bad in its own way as the probe attack on Earth was in “The Expanse.”
Big points to John Cothran Jr., who makes Gralik a three-dimensional character, a working stiff. He’s initially (and justifiably) pissed at Archer breaking into his house and pulling a gun on him, but he comes around once he realizes what he’s actually doing. It also makes the Xindi a bit more complex, and the story of their century-long war puts a lot of their actions into focus.
The entire Xindi arc becomes much more interesting in this episode, and it improves things tremendously. Best of all, though, is that the episode reaffirms that this is still Star Trek, dangit…
Warp factor rating: 8
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