Minefield

While having breakfast with the tense and formal Reed, Captain Archer is called from the bridge by T'Pol. The Enterprise finds a Minshara planet with a volcanic hemisphere, and T'Pol waits for further instructions. Suddenly there is an explosion in the hull of the Enterprise, with the destruction of many decks and wounded crew. Archer realizes that the Enterprise is in a cloaked minefield and one mine is attached to the hull. Reed wears an EV suit to disarm the mine, but a sharp device is activated and penetrates his leg, and attaching him to the hull. Meanwhile, an aggressive Romulan ship orders the Enterprise to leave immediately that sector of the space.

"Minefield" is a tense and dramatic episode, with great performances of Dominic Keating and Scott Bakula. The story is engaging, developed in an adequate pace, and has good dialogs between Reed and Archer. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Campo Minado" ("Minefield")

This is another one of those episodes that would be over in five minutes if the crew followed some logic and safety protocols. But that would of course be boring for the viewer. In order to create suspense and thrills, as a viewer you have to get the feeling that the main characters are in great danger - which of course they are not. Because none of the main characters will bite the dust. Especially not for such a trivial task as defusing a mine.

Although this episode is certainly amusing, the lack of logic and questionable decisions lead to a rather implausible plot. For example, Enterprise is damaged by a detonation shortly after entering the minefield. But instead of putting the spaceship in reverse and slowly flying back out the same way they came in, Mayweather flies through the entire minefield until they are out again. Or why would a captain risk defusing an explosive mine of unknown technology clinging to the hull when it could easily have been catapulted away from the ship by blowing off a metal plate? Speaking of captain: Which captain would endanger himself, his crew, his ship, his mission and the entire chain of command by getting into an EV suit and defusing the mine himself? I don't even want to know how many Starfleet regulations are broken by such an unnecessary suicide mission! Also: Why would Reed carry out such an away mission alone? If there was the slightest accident, he would be left without help and would end up floating in space.

And then the contact with the Romulans. Enterprise is hailed, no one understands a word, but instead of trying to answer, people simply remain silent. Just because the UT fails on the Enterprise doesn't mean the Romulans don't have better technology and could understand the language. It should have been standard protocol to respond, for example, "We have an emergency. Our ship has been badly damaged. We have no hostile intentions. We accidentally entered your territory and will leave as quickly as possible." Maybe they should have even offered to beam the Romulans onto the ship to show them that Enterprise wasn't carrying out a spy mission. But instead nothing is said at all, which understandably seems suspicious.

By the way, this episode shows once again that Malcom Reed is an absolutely boring character. Already in the episode where Archer wanted to find out his favorite dish, it was clear that Reed simply doesn't have any special characteristics. And in this episode that becomes more than obvious. He has no hobbies, is neither funny nor particularly eloquent. He is also not a typical Star Trek officer who is a specialist in his field and a tech nerd. The only thing that has stuck is that he first starts a pointless away mission to defuse the mine and then wants to sacrifice himself for the crew in order to die a hero like his uncle - which is only up for debate because he put himself in danger with this unnecessary mission in the first place instead of directly blowing the hull plating away.

This is one of the most well written, well paced and well acted episodes of Enterprise's second season. Unlike the typical episode involving in-house franchise writing, Minefield is story-driven, suspenseful and dramatic. Although it included some of the most annoying and absurd aspects of Enterprise - such as the crew's advanced (pre-Kirk) intelligence concerning cloaking devices - the plot gave the principal cast a rare opportunity to shine. Keating and Bakula do especially well as they work out their personal and professional relationship in the middle of a cloaked Romulan minefield with both of their lives hanging by a thread. Thankfully, the Romulans are not at all rewritten, and are not even seen in person, in this episode. The fact that no Romulan is seen during the episode is important to the fact that Enterprise is supposed to be a prequel for all the other Star Trek series. A lot of story arcs involving the Romulans depend on the relationship between the Romulans and Vulcans being slowly revealed. The Romulans are depicted as belligerent, xenophobic and unreasonable - very consistent with the earlier series.

Enterprise is caught in a minefield and Malcolm Reed has to defuse one such device attached to the ship.

This one starts superbly with a great awkward sequence where Archer tries to get to know Reed over breakfast. Archer is pulling teeth trying to get any decent conversation out of Reed and it's probably something most people can identify with who have been in that type of situation. Then we have the set up of a pretty intense situation involving a minefield and the series introduction to the Romulans.

Things go slightly flat from there as we have an instance similar to the episode 'Shuttlepod One' where the writers dump a load of Reed character exposition on us during his interaction with Archer. Again this does not reflect well on Reed's character as it seems to bring out the most annoying traits out in Dominic Keating's performance. It is nowhere near as bad as the previously mentioned episode but it feels like a missed opportunity for he and Scott Bakula to 'right what what once went wrong' (see what I did there) with Reed's characterisation.

It would have been nice if Reed could have just done the job himself without the need to be rescued by Archer during a hissy-fit of bumbling Englishman self-sacrifice that we know isn't necessary because they won't kill off a main character.

There is also likely to be some legitimate complaint from hardcore Trekkers about franchise continuity regarding the Romulans, which might have been overlooked had the episode been better.

What they should have done is focussed more on the potential suspense associated with defusing the mine rather than suck the drama out of it with all the chat.

When the show begins, Captain Archer is trying to get to know Lt. Malcolm Reed by sharing breakfast with him. However, Malcolm is a very dull guy who is obsessed with protocol (he would make a great match for T'Pol actually). Fortunately, this stiff and uncomfortable breakfast is cut short when the ship hits a mine! If this isn't bad enough, when the lieutenant tries to detach a mine which has attached itself to the ship, it also attached to him! The Captain (inexplicably) goes out himself to try to help--and the two finally get a chance to talk and get to know each other better. But it's not all fun and games, as the mine is still ready to explode AND several Romulan ships have appeared and are ready to blow up these 'spies'.

This isn't a bad episode...until the end when the mine explodes. What happens next is pretty dumb. But the good does more than make up for the bad on this one.