While there are definitely some things that raised my ire about this episode, overall I think it worked pretty well. First the annoying stuff, Archer has to be the hero as always but it felt like he was just going through the motions this time. Also, why is it still the wild west? I get that the people were taken from there, but why haven't they evolved since then? And did they really get to take horses when they were kidnapped to be slaves? And where did the guns come from? Are they all 300 years old? Or is there a more industrial part of the planet somewhere and Archer just decided to land in hicktown for no good reason. On the upside they actually used the transporter in a circumstance where it would actually be really helpful. And T'Pol only stepped in when there was actually going to be a threat to the Skagarans instead of the non-existent prime directive. And speaking of, I really liked that the solution in the end was to just reveal that they were from Earth and try to restart contact between the locals and the rest of humanity.
We open with the lynching of what turns out to be an alien somewhere in what appears to be the wild west. Archer, T'Pol and Trip are all in the village looking around and discover that this colony of humans is living along side a group of aliens called Skagarans. It seems the Skagarans kidnapped the humans as slaves but the humans over threw them 200 years earlier and now keep the Skagarans as second class citizens. Archer befriends a school teacher who is illegally teaching the Skagaran youth at night but since Archer isn't good at his job he is easily followed there and she gets arrested. The sheriff just wants Archer to leave town but he decides to break the teacher out of jail along the way. She gets shot and they both beam to Enterprise. The deputy who has been causing trouble abandons his job and sets out to go kill the Skagarans as Archer returns with a shuttlepod full of marines. But of course he has to go out alone somehow to win the day in single combat against the evil deputy. We close with a bunch of kids being taught in school (but the Skagaran makeup is so mild it is actually hard to tell if it they are there, but whatever).
Review: TOS did episodes like this all the damn time and they didn't bother me all that much then. But this show was made much more recently so I kinda wish they had put a bit more thought into the set up. Not a bad bit of social commentary, but I could have done without Archer saving everybody again.
5 out of 10
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