Star Trek: Enterprise (TV Series) The Seventh (2002) User Reviews

Bonds of Trust

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 10 January 2008]

T'Pol receives a message from the Vulcan High Command and tells Captain Archer that he will be called by Admiral Forest sooner to use the Enterprise to help her in a classified mission. Later she invites Archer to go with her because she trusts him. Archer asks for details, and T'Pol explains that she worked in a Security Agency many years ago and she had been assigned to capture six surgically altered Vulcan agents of a group that worked undercover in a corrupt planet and refused to return to Vulcan. However, the former agent Menos escaped from her in Risa, and now he has been located in a planet in the route of the Enterprise. They go to the planet with Travis in the shuttle pod and when they capture the fugitive, T'Pol partially recalls details of her past mission. Archer recalls T'Pol that her assignment is to capture the fugitive, not to judge him.

"The Seventh" is another great episode of the Second Season. The story shows a vulnerable T'Pol maybe for the first time, and how important the wise Archer is for her. I feel that with the final statement of T'Pol, her bonds of trust and loyalty with Captain Archer have increased much more. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Sétimo" ("The Seventh")

T'Pol the Bounty Hunter

[Samuel-Shovel · 7/10 · 2 November 2017]

The Seventh (also the 7th episode of the season, see what they did there?) is a T'Pol centered episode. It follows T'Pol, Captain Archer, and Travis as they attempt to track down and capture a rogue Vulcan agent. This episode reveals a little bit of back story on T'Pol's past. What secrets is she hiding? T'Pol is really one of the only characters from the crew that I'm attached to at this point so anytime we get a T'Pol-centric episode I perk up a little. This episode is actually not too bad. It shows us the struggles that Vulcans can have subduing their emotions in high stress situations. T'Pol is forced to think about her blocked memories and relive the decisions of her past. There are actually some stakes to this episode and it builds trust between the captain and T'Pol.

Now, for the bad parts. I couldn't care less about Trip's subplot of his duties as Captain. I know we're suppose to find this amusing but it's really just a boring time-filler and destroys all the impetus being created from the main story line.

I also wasn't a huge fan of the ending. I would have like to have seen an ambiguous ending where we are unaware of whether Menos is a good guy or a villain. By showing us his illegal smuggling activities, we have the gray area turned to black & white, cut & dry.

Conclusion: An episode important to T'Pol's character but average beyond this.

Decent enough story but more revisionist Vulcan history and high emotion

[snoozejonc · 6/10 · 4 September 2020]

T'Pol is given a classified mission to capture a Vulcan renegade.

The plot is relatively intriguing, if somewhat predictable, but this is probably Jolene Blalock's best performance so far in the series. She has to release quite a bit of repressed emotions in certain scenes and she does it well. It's also nice to see Archer and T'Pol bonding.

Bruce Davidson gives a pretty solid performance as Menos, but I'm not sure the character ever feels that he was at one point a Vulcan, but I don't think that is the actor's fault, it's more to do with the material.

The other members of the crew don't have much of a contribution to make other than a mildly funny subplot. Mayweather is part of the away mission but is not given anything tangible to do as usual.

I think the likability of this episode depends on how someone cares to see Vulcan characters behaving emotionally and doesn't take umbrage with the writers revising established Vulcan cultural practises. Although the reasons are clearly explained within the plot, I'm not sure it ever feels right to me.

Call me a boring old traditionalist but the only Vulcan emotional display I ever enjoyed was Spock's outburst at the end of Amok Time and that's because they showed his immediate realisation and self correction. That worked well.

I can see how a lot of the show's unpopularity stems from it's take on Vulcan characters and it's hard to disagree with it based on what I've seen so far.

Mildly entertaining but please don't pretend that there's no stun setting on phasers.

[wwcanoer-tech · 7/10 · 20 November 2021]

Why does the Enterprise series do so many things that don't make any sense. 4 hours of acid to remove ice? That's weird. Then T'Pol protects her feet from the acid with a few thin straps? That made absolutely no sense and was completely unnecessary. They could have stated that there's a magnetic storm that will disrupt sensors or even a regular storm. Or simply that they need to wait for the magistrate to arrive to review their extradition case. T'Pol can still go search the ship. In fact, they should have inspected or taken possession of his ship to search for evidence, regardless.

As another reviewer stated, a major weakness was choosing an actor, to play fugitive Menos, who had never acted as a Vulcan before. The story that he was a Vulcan agent was completely unbelievable. It was an opportunity to show how a Vulcan can change and lie, but we need to recognize some core Vulcan traits. They could make that part of the script. Archer could say "you don't seem vary Vulcan to me" and then Menos could flip between Vulcan and alien traits.

Budget appears to greatly restrict what this series can do, otherwise why does most of the episode occur in the one crowded room? They invested a lot in makeup (or masks) to have many aliens in the crowded room but then do very little with those characters. I'd rather have a humor injected through interaction with an alien than the lame jokes on Enterprise. (Trip is chief engineer. He's no stranger to making decisions! Plus, they were simple decisions! Why make him look so weak and pathetic?)

In what world would a bar full of unsavory characters accept a phaser fight and arrest of a person by nobodies? That wasn't reasonable at all. More interesting, if a little cliché, would be for them to find Menos, talk to him, but he points out that they can't do anything in this crowded bar or they will lose because the crowd won't accept it. So, Archer & T'Pol must find a way to either surreptitiously remove him, somehow convince the crowd that they have authority, or simply get the authorities, who say that they can detain Menos but not allow him to leave until the magistrate arrives.

We all know that phasers have stun settings! Yet we twice need to ignore this! First, why does Jossen die from T'Pol's phaser hit? Maybe if she tripped and accidentally hit him in the head, which killed instead of stunned, or Jossen had an artificial heart or pacemaker that was disrupted. Some logical reason for him to die and her to feel guilty. Second, at the climax Menos tells T'Pol "You're not going to kill an innocent man.", which probably puzzled the entire audience . "Why would she kill him? Just stun him!" And then Archer's words convince her to stun him. It falls so flat, for no reason. He could have simply pled to be let go but that would fall flat when a moment before he was threatening her life at gunpoint. The scene was not set up correctly.

As another reviewer said, "Mayweather is part of the away mission but is not given anything tangible to do, as usual." Why is it always like this? Wouldn't the show be better if episodes were a real team effort? There's no reason that Mayweather isn't the one to save the day at some point. Yes, he realizes that there's a hot relay but is so wimpy about it. Why not the more likely and direct "Captain, there's something powered up on the ship! And then explain it to the Captain." The Captain is still there to make the decisions to turn it off.

(Also, something powered on would normally be hot and have less condensation than the surrounding equipment (not more condensation), even though that's bunk too because they would leave the ship warm enough to prevent condensation, assuming there's some humidity source inside the ship because the inside of your car doesn't get condensation when no-on is inside it. More believable would be if, before he turned things on, Mayweather saw a faint light or felt a warm spot on the console.)

It was a mildly interesting episode because we need to try to determine whether to believe Menos or not.

T'Pol and Archer go off on an adventure

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 26 March 2015]

T'Pol is about to go on a secret mission to capture a Vulcan renegade named Menos (Bruce Davison). However, instead of going alone or waiting to be joined by a Vulcan ship, she chooses to take along Captain Archer, as she trusts him and his judgment more in this case. But why? What is it about Menos that causes her to doubt herself or her fellow Vulcans? Well, when she does meet up with Menos, he seems like a pretty reasonable sort and soon T'Pol begins to doubt her memories and her sanity.

This is an average episode--no more, no less. It does further solidify the relationship between T'Pol and Archer but otherwise a non- remarkable show in every way.

Vulcan Mind Games

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 16 March 2017]

I thought this was quite well done. T'Pol is instructed by the Vulcan high command to go after a man who years ago went rogue after spying on a culture that was dangerous to Vulcan. He and some of his confederates were sought out by Vulcan patrols to be brought back. T'Pol was give seven of them to return, but in the process of bringing them back, two escaped. But something happened on Reisa (Sp?). T'Pol has had some sort of mental reconstruction to repress her emotions after she killed someone on the planet. She is now filled with guilt about what happened and the man she is seeking, who is suspected of selling biotoxins uses her guilt to manipulate her. I thought this was very exciting and a plot that was clever and well written. It also continues to tell the story of the Vulcans and some of their weaknesses as they attempt to evolve.

Fairly Typical for this Series

[bkkaz · 5/10 · 27 December 2021]

Star Trek: Enterprise was the first of the franchise's series to get me excited -- a prequel to the one that started them all. None of the successors to that point had even tried to capture the economy of storytelling that defined the original series. Whereas Captain Kirk might say, "Shut it off," the stuffy characters in the newer series would have someone word vomit drivel like "Disengage the harmonic resonance couplings and power down to zero." You could tell they were just padding the scripts with technobabble that, even in the midst of crises and explosions, the actors said with the utmost of seriousness. It was almost campy. If Scotty could -- like a real person -- bottom line it to "Shields almost gone," comparable characters in these newer shows would have to say ridiculous things like, "The polarized hull plating is down to 3 percent and rapidly dropping, sir."

That's part of what is so disappointing about this series. While it has perhaps the best cast overall -- with the exception of Scott Bakula, who performs the amazing feat of being both wooden and scene-chewing at the same time -- it's weighed down by the bloviating scripts, many of which just seem recycled from the previous series. There are all sorts of anachronisms. In the original series, time travel, cloaking devices, shape-shifting aliens, and holodecks and similar technology obviously were new. But this show makes it seem like they were run of the mill 100 years earlier. And, of course, the writers can't resist sticking their tired creations -- Ferengi, the Borg, etc. -- into the show, too, making it seem like a prequel to TNG.

All this is why The Seventh is such a pedestrian -- and representative -- episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. It benefits from some outstanding acting by Jolene Blalock, so clearly the best Vulcan since Spock and Sarek and a truly underappreciated talent. That's countered by Bakula's usual theatrics. The script, though, is just weighed down by talk, talk, talk. They're talking in hallways, on the bridge, in big storage rooms, to each other on viewscreens -- before shooting the bad guy! It's the sort of conversation that could be pared down to its essence but instead is teased out like a teenager discovering hairspray.

That makes The Seventh grind down under its own weight. Truly, there's only about half an hour of plot here, as T'Pol has to come to terms with her role in tracking down fugitives years before and the personal violence it may have required. The basic idea is good, and Blalock delivers the goods. But the rest is so padded and lethargic, it just drones on. (This correlates to Bruce Davison guest-starring -- Star Trek: Enterprise relied on a lot of the same guest actors as the other modern Star Trek shows, and they brought with them the same level of bland acting; it's not their fault.) Too bad this show went that way.