To be clear I went in to this episode fully prepared to hate it. The previous episode was exciting but raised so many more questions than it answered and had both the confusing virus plot and the dumb Malcolm working for Section 31 plot working against it. And both those stories continue in this episode, but damn it, I still loved it. The opening bit with Trip having to take a cable between Columbia and Enterprise at high warp was awesome. Then Trip had to reboot the whole engine system in under two minutes and they managed to make it feel actually rushed, very dangerous and down to the wire without being dumb. Then injecting Archer with the virus to make antibodies didn't pass muster with my biologist wife, but it was still a cool scene and I am totally with Trip, Archer is way better off with some head ridges. It also gave Phlox a chance to shine in his fight with the Klingon admiral in a way we haven't seen him do many times before.
We open with Enterprise stuck at warp, Malcolm in the brig, and Phlox working to cure the augment virus (or maybe perfect it, honestly not sure). They deal with the biggest problem first and Trip has to make his way to Enterprise over a cable between the two ships while they are locked at maximum warp. The way they put the scene together just worked for me and seeing Malcolm hauled back to the brig and the look on Trips face made it fantastic. Trip doesn't have much time go deal with it though as he rushes to engineering and restarts the engines in under two minutes while Columbia protected them with its warp field. Things slow down a bit as they deal with the Malcolm thing by having Archer yell at his commander or something and also we see the commander is losing control of the mission to the Klingons as Enterprise and Columbia head to the colony where Phlox is being held. They show up and beam Archer down while Columbia and Enterprise try to stop the destruction of the colony by a battle cruiser. On the surface Archer offers to speed things up by being injected with the virus which works, but also gives him ridges. Phlox beams the active virus onto the battle cruiser forcing them to choose between dying and letting the colony live to get the cure. Honestly I wasn't sure what the admiral would do. It seems like the Klingon thing to do is accept your death and do your job, but luckily he takes the other path. We close with Malcolm telling his Section 31 commander to get bent, but I am not sure it works that way...
Review: Certainly not perfect, but so much fun I can't give it anything other than a strong score. I wish the Malcolm spy plot had been started season 1 as it might have given him something interesting to do all these seasons, but adding it now felt like too much of an acknowledgement that his character is paper thin.
8 out of 10
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