Star Trek: Business Rewatch: “Detained”

“Detained”
Created by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Mike Sussman & Phyllis Potent
Directed by David Livingston
Time 1, Episode 21
Manufacturing episode 021
Authentic air day: April 24, 2002
Day: not known

Captain’s star log. Archer and Mayweather wake up on a ground. They are in some sort of shut facility, and every person else within is a Suliban. Apparently their shuttlepod was attacked, but they never know by who.

An alarm goes off, and all the Suliban go into the corridors to stand for inspection, which is done by some aliens in uniform. A person of them, Major Klev, provides Archer and Mayweather to the human being in cost, Colonel Grat. The aliens are Tandarans and they’re at war with the Suliban Cabal. Grat describes that the planet they were being surveying was a Tandaran military set up, which mistook them for disguised Cabal associates. A DNA exam has discovered the truth, but Tandaran law is really rigorous: they need to keep on being detained at this facility until eventually they can be introduced prior to a justice of the peace on Tandar Primary, which won’t come about for a few times. Grat tells them that they’ll be fed effectively and held as snug as attainable till the transport arrives to get them to their day in court docket. Archer’s request to make contact with Enterprise is denied, but Grat says he’ll converse to them and let them know they are okay.

The food they are supplied doesn’t match possibly Archer or Mayweather’s thought of being fed properly, but they choke it down. The Suliban are not addressed particularly well—during inspection, a single drops a cup he was holding and receives strike with a shock-adhere for his trouble—and at very first Archer and Mayweather believe them to be Cabal troops that have been captured in the war. However, a conversation with Danik and his daughter Narra when all three are obtaining some water reveals that they are not Cabal, just standard Suliban who had been imprisoned entirely on the basis of what species they had been.

Their speak is interrupted by Klev, who says they’re out immediately after curfew. Archer attempts to get responsibility for that, as he was asking concerns, but procedures are procedures, and Klev reluctantly can take Danik to isolation.

Grat contacts Enterprise, filling them in on the condition. He urges T’Pol to travel to Tandara Primary in buy to select Archer and Mayweather up there soon after their listening to in a few days. Sato is not able to get a repair on in which the communiqué is coming from, as it is been scrambled. Tucker would like to mount a rescue mission, but T’Pol prefers to comply with Tandaran law.

After he’s freed from isolation, Danik is approached by a pretty apologetic Archer. Danik clarifies that the Suliban are mostly nomadic these days, as their homeworld turned uninhabitable a few hundred yrs in the past. Considering that the Cabal became lively, the Suliban who stay in Tandaran space have been specific, irrespective of any possible Cabal affiliation, supposedly for their possess protection. Danik has petitioned a number of situations to be reunited with his spouse, also Narra’s mother, who was sent to a unique facility, and those requests have been repeatedly denied.

Just after Archer leaves, yet another Suliban, Sajen, tells Danik to be wary of Archer, as he and Mayweather might be spies for Grat.

Grat summons Archer to his business office all over again. He’s gotten a additional comprehensive report on Organization’s activities from Tandaran intelligence, and now is aware that they’ve had quite a few dealings with the Cabal. Grat interrogates Archer about the Cabal, but he refuses to get either facet in this conflict and declines to provide any beneficial solutions to the colonel’s questions. Grat claims that he can preserve Archer below right after the transportation arrives tomorrow, and the up coming a single won’t be for two months. Archer stands his ground.

Then Grat contacts Business and says that the hearing has been delayed. He tells them to continue to Tandar Key and they’ll be supplied a tour of the money city. However, with this second conversation, Sato is capable to trace the signal. T’Pol now agrees with Tucker that Grat is total of shit, and they set study course for the detention centre now that they know wherever it is.

Screenshot: CBS

Danik tells Archer that he ought to notify Grat what he is aware, but the idea of cooperating with a person who would unjustly imprison innocent people today doesn’t sit properly with Archer. Danik also tells him of a docking bay that consists of Suliban-owned ships that have been impounded, and also the Organization shuttlepod that Archer and Mayweather have been shot down in. Archer straight away starts to program an escape.

Sajen nevertheless doesn’t believe in the humans, and an endeavor by Mayweather to talk to him is achieved with scorn. Sajen also thinks the idea of striving to escape is insanity and he refuses to enable Archer, Mayweather, and Danik system it.

Enterprise arrives in orbit and they beam a communicator down to Archer’s locale. Archer tells them not to beam him and Mayweather up just but. Owning Company‘s support will make the prison break easier to attain.

Grat inquiries Archer, then has Mayweather introduced in: the Tandarans have tortured the pilot and located a communicator on him. Archer is set in isolation. Grat is also not happy to see Company in orbit, and he contacts them by means of the confiscated communicator to notify them to back off.

Sajen sees that Mayweather has been tortured, and the latter snidely asks if the Suliban still thinks they are spies.

When he sees that Business is even now in orbit, Grat contacts them all over again, via a lot more standard channels, and tells them to back off. T’Pol insists that they want to invite him up to the ship for a meal and also share both of those Starfleet’s database and the Vulcan databases. Sato embeds the datastream with interference that messes with the detention center’s sensors extended adequate to beam a surgically altered Reed down and also start a shuttlepod with Tucker at the helm.

The Suliban-disguised Reed blows a couple holes in the detention heart and frees Archer from isolation, when Tucker usually takes out the guard tower. Sajen decides to be part of the entertaining, and the Suliban all regulate to escape. Grat is livid, and is persuaded that the Suliban will all go into the waiting arms of the Cabal now.

Archer admits to Mayweather and Reed as they fly back again to Enterprise in their retrieved shuttlepod that he does consider the Suliban will get out of Tandaran area safely, but he has no idea if they’ll be all appropriate.

The gazelle speech. Archer is reminded by T’Pol that he experienced sworn he was heading to prevent interfering in other cultures, and Archer suggests this is an exception. He refuses to cooperate with Grat in his war energy from the Cabal (specially just after Grat tortures his subordinate), and he refuses to let the unjust imprisonment of the Suliban stand.

I have been skilled to tolerate offensive cases. Following increasing her objection, T’Pol then jumps into making the jail split perform with both feet, feeding Grat a hilarious line of bullshit about inviting him to meal and sharing facts and this kind of.

Florida Gentleman. Florida Man Aids In Jail Break By Blowing Up Guard Tower.

Screenshot: CBS

Optimism, Captain! Phlox is equipped to make Reed search like a Suliban. It’s sufficient to idiot Mayweather, but hilariously not Archer. 

The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… At a person point, T’Pol gives to call the Vulcan Higher Command to mail an arbitrator to signify Archer and Mayweather at their hearing on Tandar Primary. Tucker rejects the idea, likening it to a dying sentence. Great to see that twenty-second-century people continue being racist assholes… (Seriously, whichever you might think of Vulcans, I’d love to have 1 as a law firm. See also, Tuvok in Voyager’s “Death Wish” and “Author, Creator.”)

I’ve acquired faith…

“I’m eager to compromise, Captain—just tell me what you know about Sillik.”

“Well, he’s about this tall, a tiny on the scrawny side, undesirable teeth…”

–Grat interrogating Archer and Archer pretending to cooperate.

Welcome aboard. Earlier Trek friends Dennis Christopher and Christopher Shea, who both equally performed Vorta on DS9 (the former as Borath in “The Research, Section II,” the latter as Keevan in “Rocks and Shoals” and “The Superb Ferengi“), engage in, respectively, Danik and Sajen. Shea, who also performed Saowin in Voyager’s “Think Tank,” will be again as an Andorian in “Cease Hearth.”

David Kagen plays Klev, Jessica D. Stone performs Narra, and Wilda Taylor plays the cynical Suliban lady.

But the massive visitor, of system, is the late fantastic Dean Stockwell, a person of the finest actors of any age, as Grat.

Trivial issues: This episode had some evident stunt casting, as Scott Bakula’s most significant part prior to Enterprise was starring on Quantum Leap along with Dean Stockwell. Your humble rewatcher was usually upset that they by no means acquired Robert Urich on DS9 to play together with his Spenser: for Use co-star Avery Brooks, so this was amazingly awesome to see.

Grat issues Archer and Mayweather about the situations of “Broken Bow” and “Cold Front.”

This episode is an allegory for the detaining of Japanese-Us residents in the U.S. through Planet War II, an allegory that Archer spells out when speaking about the detention heart with T’Pol, especially mentioning Manzanar, nevertheless that was only one of ten this sort of detention centers in the U.S. The website is now a historic landmark in remembrance of the internment.

Screenshot: CBS

It is been a prolonged road… “This is not about my legal rights, it is about theirs.” I required to appreciate this episode a whole lot more than I actually did. I imply, we start off with the Scott Bakula-Dean Stockwell reunion, which is truly worth the price of admission all by by itself, primarily to this enthusiast of Quantum Leap. And the storyline is very significantly a Trek one of shining a gentle on human habits by way of aliens—even far more so, as this specific time in history is just one that has been a lead to célèbre for a single of Trek’s icons, George Takei, who was place in a person of individuals detention facilities as a baby, an expertise that was the inspiration for the participate in Allegiance.

And nevertheless, I found myself let down in a ton of it. Aspect of it is that the metaphor was sledgehammered a very little as well greatly, with Archer really coming out and mentioning Manzanar. Admittedly, it is a component of U.S. record that doesn’t get reviewed almost as significantly as it need to be, which was even extra true in 2002, so it is probable that scripters Phyllis Powerful and Mike Sussman felt they wanted to be far more overt about the analogy.

In addition, the climactic jail crack is surprisingly lifeless. It’s primarily disappointing in an episode directed by David Livingston, whose Trek resumé contains (among many others) “Power Play” on TNG, “The Die is Cast” on DS9, and “Scorpion” on Voyager, all excellent motion items. In specific, I’m baffled as to why we hardly ever really see what the consequence is of Sajen likely again to assistance Danik. Did they endure? Did they make it to the ships? We’ve put in the total episode becoming invested in the plight of the Suliban in normal and of Danik, Sajen, and Narra in particular, and to not expose irrespective of whether or not they even survived the jail crack feels like a cheat or a failure of crafting. In addition, Sajen himself is a fatigued inventory character whose journey from opposite asshole to hero is depressingly paint-by-figures.

Also, Tucker’s bitching and moaning when Grat contacts Company feels horribly manufactured. They’ve determined that Tucker is likely to enjoy the McCoy position of bitching and moaning any time T’Pol/Spock does one thing, and they observe that preordained narrative phrase for predictable word, even if it does not make feeling, and provides us far more racist Tucker as he likens utilizing a Vulcan lawyer to the dying penalty.

Getting explained all that, it is nevertheless an episode with a lot of great bits. I like that Archer does not hesitate to assist out the Suliban in regardless of what way he can, going so significantly as to delay currently being rescued to do so—an motion that indirectly qualified prospects to his pilot finding tortured. I enjoy T’Pol bullshitting Grat to deal with Reed beaming down and Tucker having out the shuttlepod. Dennis Christopher does a great job as the imprisoned civilian who just would like to be reunited with his spouse and do the greatest he can to maintain his daughter safe.

And, of training course, Stockwell is under no circumstances not amazing. (Amusingly, I’ve been observing old episodes of Columbo on Peacock, and Stockwell appeared on a pair of episodes as a younger man—I almost did not understand him…) I enjoy how Grat starts off out affordable, seeming like a bureaucrat who’s just carrying out his job, but with each and every scene he’s in, the fanaticism arrives out, culminating in his ends-justify-the-suggests nonsense about how they are “protecting” the Suliban by imprisoning them without having because of course of action. I specifically like the trade in which Grat insists that the Suliban are desperate and have very little still left and will not be in a position to resist what the Cabal gives. Leaving apart the obvious—they only have nothing remaining and are desperate mainly because Grat and his ilk threw them in jail mainly because of what species they come about to be—Archer’s response is stunning: “I have not been right here extremely lengthy, but I appear to be to know these folks a helluva whole lot much better than you do.”

Warp element score: 7

Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at Indiana Comic Con this coming weekend at the Indiana Convention Middle. He will be at Bard’s Tower, booth 1536, promoting and signing his textbooks together with fellow authors John Jackson Miller, Gama Martinez, Rick Heinz, and Brian Anderson. Other Trek individuals who’ll be there include things like actors Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, John deLancie, and Carlos Ferro (Carlos will also be at Bard’s Tower with Keith). Keith will be carrying out panels as well—click in this article for details.