Archer confronts the Xindi council.
This is what Babylon 5 used to call a ‘WHAM’ episode. A clever drawing together of a lot of the threads from the season, with appropriate consequences. And a quick pivot onto a slightly new path for the conclusion of the season.
My lingering discomfort is the anthropomorphism – it seems cliche for the insectoids and reptillians to be the ones that can’t be convinced about the truth. It would have been better in some ways if one of those were the ones on our side, no matter how expensive the special effects.
The T’Pol subplot was puzzling. I expected this to be the ‘sudden last minute evidence’ that would persuade some of the council. But instead it doesn’t seem to go anywhere this time – it’ll presumably pay off before the end of the season.
Callbacks: Exhaust vents on a giant sphere? Oh no, that’s the other thing. There’s also one of the purest red shirt deaths in quite a long while. And T’Pol actually directly quotes ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’.
712 down, 25 to go.