Star Trek Ent - Season 3 - Episode 15
Star Trek Ent - 3x15 - Harbinger
Originally Aired: 2004-2-11
Synopsis:
As Archer tries to unravel the mystery of a rescued alien, long-simmering feelings explode among his senior officers. [DVD]
Problems
None
Factoids
- This episode establishes that Vulcan females can have sex whenever they want, not just during their Pon Farr.
- This episode was set one day after Christmas! I guess it's no longer celebrated in the 22nd century...
Remarkable Scenes
- Anomalies floating around the bridge.
- Trip and Reed getting hostile over Reed's conflict with Major Hayes and the Vulcan neural pressure thing.
- T'Pol and Trip discussing Sim declaring his love for T'Pol.
- Trip: "I can't believe this... I'm jealous of myself?"
- T'Pol offering herself to Trip.
- Reed and Hayes sparring.
- Reed and Hayes disabling the alien.
- T'Pol writing off her sexual encounter with T'Pol as an experiment in human sexuality.
- Archer laying into Reed and Hayes for their fighting.
My Review
This has got to be the most juvenile episode of Star Trek I've ever seen, but it was reasonably entertaining. I know some fans complained that Ent: Harbinger was needlessly childish, that Trip and T'Pol's long awaited sexual encounter was handled poorly, that Reed and Hayes' showdown was immature, and that the alien plot in this episode was inadequate at best. All of these things I agree with, to a point. First there's Trip and T'Pol. I think their relationship was handled well for the most part. There was some immaturity to it, but it was mostly Trip in my opinion. T'Pol was just dropping herself to his level, in their little verbal pissing contest. After all, she has to endeavor to become more human in order to have a human sexual encounter. Then there's Reed and Hayes. This was much more easy to swallow. Their poor relations was hinted on as early as Ent: The Xindi but was never followed up on. I'm glad it resurfaced here. I've been waiting for this kind of conflict for a while. I'm glad they had a chance to fight and a chance to realize how stupid it is to compete with each other. Finally, there's the alien plot. I think it's obvious that their involvement in the arc will be elaborated further later, so I don't want to discuss the fact that we learned next to nothing about them. In short, this episode was a decent contributor to the current arc. Yes, it was juvenile, but everyone is a little immature now and then, even the crew of a starship. I'm much more forgiving of this episode than others may be; hell I genuinely enjoyed it. So there.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
T'Pol have such a sweet small ass.
it's observation, not a diagnosis.
Agreed. I think 2 main things made this episode a bit more bearable and entertaining then similar episodes.
#1 The gratuitousness of the sexual and violent themes had context as well as a bit of charming humor. It wasn't just sex and violence for it's own sake. It was used to settle established conflicts and further characterization.
#2 It takes place after a run of mostly good (and some great) episodes, as opposed to just being a continuation of mediocre and poor episodes. So it's not like "here we go again with this crap", but more "ok, not great.. but a change of pace".