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A week after the “exciting” adventure that was “Marauders“, we return to Star Trek: Enterprise with “The Seventh”. And “The Seventh” tries its best to lay claim to being the worst episode of Enterprise to this point in the series. This is a T’Pol focused episode that eschews logic in favor of weepy eyes and pointless action and lays out several plot lines – none of which make any sense or bring any kind of emotional connection for the viewer. It’s a very strange episode that feels poorly constructed and conceived. And don’t even get us started about Travis Mayweather…
The Wikipedia plot summary for “The Seventh”:
Sub-Commander T’Pol receives a covert mission from the Vulcan High Command, and informs Captain Archer that Admiral Forrest will be contacting him later about it. She remains tight lipped despite Archer’s enquiries as to the exact nature of the expected diversion, but later meets privately with Archer and asks that he come as well, since she needs someone she trusts. In conversation with Archer, she later reveals that she was trained 17 (Earth) years earlier in reconnaissance retrieval, and now she is to capture the only one of six surgically altered, rogue Vulcan secret agents to have evaded her.
Archer, T’Pol, and Ensign Mayweather, easily track the fugitive, Menos, to a cantina on the icy Pernaia Prime moon. After a brief phase-pistol fight, they capture him, but are unable to leave due to a build up of acidic ice. Menos starts to play on T’Pol’s sense of fairness and honor. He has a good life, sustaining his family with an honest job, but apparently he is dying. T’Pol, trying to disprove his story, searches for biotoxins in his ship, but is unable to locate any. Meanwhile, back on Enterprise, Commander Tucker finds the continual interruptions of command more than he expected. It gets worse when a Vulcan ship arrives, and he impersonates Archer so as not to let the Vulcans know the Captain is away.
T’Pol also relates to Archer that she’s been having recent flashbacks to her previous hunt, where she shot another fugitive called Jossen. Because of the Vulcan ramifications on killing, she received “fullara” treatment on P’Jem,[2] where her memory and emotions of the incident were fully repressed. Back on the planet, Menos organizes an escape by starting a fire, but is recaptured by the away team when his cloaked hiding space is detected, confirming that he was indeed smuggling biotoxins as the Vulcan High Command had indicated. On Enterprise, T’Pol offers her support to Archer should he ever be in need of it.
In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “The Seventh” and why being down on Enterprise episodes is different from being down on every other Trek series. Plus! The guys talk about Trip being unwilling to inflict diarrhea on his shipmates, Mayweather in bokeh, and no one being concerned about the Vulcans fiddling with other cultures!