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Star Trek: Enterprise, after the surreal adventure of “A Night in Sickbay“, returns to form with a middling episode called “Marauders”. The Enterprise is seeking some warp fuel and gets a tip to head to an isolated alien planet. There are miners there who are digging up the precious fuel. When Archer and the crew shuttle down to the planet surface, they find a hostile leader who demands that the Enterprise leave orbit. Soon after, a ragtag group of Klingons show up and start slapping people around in the best space mafia impersonation imaginable. Archer must teach the miners to stick up for themselves before they blend into the beige background of the desert landscape.
The Wikipedia plot summary for “Marauders”:
Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), Sub-Commander T’Pol (Jolene Blalock), and Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker III (Connor Trinneer) fly down to a small colony of 76 miners in order to trade for deuterium. They initially try to barter with Tessic (Larry Cedar), the colony’s leader, but he appears reluctant to part with any of the 80,000 liters in inventory, which is being held for ‘someone else’. After negotiations however, a deal is struck − 200 liters of deuterium for four power cells and whatever medical supplies Enterprise can spare, on the proviso that the Enterprise crew can fix two offline pumps in two days.
Despite deuterium being a valuable commodity, Archer is startled by the lack of basic medical supplies and the run-down nature of the colony. The reason becomes apparent when seven Klingons show up to collect deuterium according to their ‘regular arrangement’. When Tessic informs Korok (Robertson Dean), the leader of the Klingons, that they do not have all the deuterium because two pumps were not working, Korok hits him and gives them four days to meet the order. Later, when Tucker and Archer attempt to talk them into fighting against the Klingons, Tessic tell them to take their 200 liters and leave. However, leaving does not sit well with Archer and he convinces the leader to resist with their support.
On Enterprise, T’Pol teaches some of the colonists how to evade edged-weapon attacks (from Vulcan martial-art ‘Suus-mahna’), while Ensign Hoshi Sato (Linda Park) and Lieutenant Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating) teach other colonists how to fire their weapons more accurately. Archer and Tucker then suggest the colonists shift the entire colony to the south 50 meters. When the Klingon marauders arrive, the colony appears deserted and silent. Finally the defenders show themselves, and in the ensuing fight the Klingons are lured into an area surrounded by the capped-off deuterium well heads. On cue, the wells are ignited, surrounding the Klingons with flames. Tessic then tells the Klingons to leave and never come back. After they depart, Archer is rewarded with 2,000 liters of deuterium by the grateful miners.
In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “Marauders” and why genre shows need to abandon doing their own version of The Magnificent Seven. Plus! The guys talk about Klingons not acting like Klingons, training montages, and beige landscapes!