The Communicator

[mitchconner]

I watched this episode recently as I re-watch Enterprise. I think this is episode had a lot of potential, but I just couldn't get over the sudden willingness to die to protect the culture of these people. I'd imagine their story of being spies and the following rescue mission did more harm to that planet than knowledge of extra terrestrials. And I can't remember if they explained this, but how come they never thought of beaming them up with the transporters? Was this one of those times where the sensors won't work?

Regardless, Archer and Reed being willing to be executed seemed a little ridiculous. It was like the episode where Phlox convinces Archer not to give a race of pre-warp aliens the cure to their disease. Their willingness to get involved with other cultures seems very... selective... and it made for several cumbersome episodes. Although The Communicator was a good episode, it was a little too heavy on the "noninterference" message in my opinion.

 

[Timo]

And I can't remember if they explained this, but how come they never thought of beaming them up with the transporters? Was this one of those times where the sensors won't work?

Supposedly, sensors never have been good enough to identify something as small as a (turned-off) communicator from orbit. Whether they could identify two humans among a planetful of aliens is the relevant point: later starships can do this (sometimes with ease, sometimes with difficulty), but the track record of ENT itself is uneven.

OTOH, when the two planetbound heroes initially have their own communicators turned on, and their location thus is more or less known, the orbiting heroes tell the audience why they fail to attempt beam-up: it would attract too much attention.

Archer and Reed being willing to be executed seemed a little ridiculous.

Wholeheartedly agreed. But are they?

Initially, Archer tells Reed not talk about space aliens because such a story would sound too silly. That's a good and plausible reason for staying mum, and has nothing to do with a desire to protect native naivete. Later on, when all the facts are there for the locals to see already, Archer reverses his opinion. And the next thing we see is the locals marching the pair to the gallows. So apparently, a reversed opinion did Archer no good!

I don't see any sign of our pair actually volunteering to be executed for the common (or uncommon) good. They try their damnedest, telling a lie, then telling the truth, then telling a lie again, but nothing works.

Only T'Pol ever actually expresses the weird alien sentiment that the natives should be kept in the dark about the existence of the interstellar community. And while her sentiment influences the initial decision to go back for the communicator, it does not affect Archer and Reed's survival plans, or those of the rest of the heroes, in any significant manner.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JiNX-01]

I had a lot of problems with this episode:

1. T'Pol tells Archer it's imperative they find the communicator because they can't risk contaminating a pre-warp society.
2. After Archer and Reed are captured, T'Pol tries to contact them, thus demonstrating that it was a communication device (up to that point, the natives had no idea what it was).
3. Why didn't T'Pol simply beam them up when they were alone? Surely Enteprise's scanners could isolate humans from the aliens.
4. T'Pol, Trip and Travis take the cloaked ship to the planet and Trip jumps out to free the prisoners. Apparently an invisible spaceship would never "contaminate" a pre-warp society.

Conclusion: The crew would have done less damage if they had just left orbit.

 

[creek_chub]

Conclusion: The crew would have done less damage if they had just left orbit.

I think that was part of the point. They were inexperienced with the situation and had no definite protocol to deal with it. Not only does it reinforce the idea that human space exploration is still in it's early stages, it also shows us that the rules of the Federation in Kirk's time and beyond weren't instituted due to theoretical speculation on the part of the admirals, but because of trial and error situations.

 

[JiNX-01]

Conclusion: The crew would have done less damage if they had just left orbit.

I think that was part of the point. They were inexperienced with the situation and had no definite protocol to deal with it. Not only does it reinforce the idea that human space exploration is still in it's early stages, it also shows us that the rules of the Federation in Kirk's time and beyond weren't instituted due to theoretical speculation on the part of the admirals, but because of trial and error situations.

T'Pol wasn't inexperienced. Archer was taking her advice. The crew were following her orders.

 

[creek_chub]

To be fair, the situation was definitely lost once Jon and Malcolm wandered down the hallway (a hallway Malcolm admits he didn't enter when they were there before) in search of the communicator. For all we know, once it was clear the communicator wasn't in the booth, T'Pol's advice could very well have been to abandon it. Jon and Malcolm made the independent decision to continue searching and T'Pol's later decisions were a last ditch effort to extricate them from the situation they ended up in.

 

[Skywalker]

I also thought it was strange that Archer thought it was somehow less dangerous to tell these paranoid military types that he and Reed were genetically enhanced super-soldiers armed with advanced weaponry than it was to tell them that they were alien explorers.

 

[bluedana]

One is natural, the other is supernatural. If the bad guys are just men, the worst that happens is that you kick off an arms race until eventually you achieve peace based on mutually assured distruction. If the bad guys are aliens -- or gods -- you have upended your whole belief system and are facing the Apocalypse. What would panic the world more: some whackadoo with a nuclear bomb, or finding out for certain that aliens have been scoping out your planet for real?

They picked the lesser of two evils.

 

[Skywalker]

No, the worst that happens is that you kick off an arms race until eventually both sides annihilate each other. There's absolutely no guarantee that cooler heads would have prevailed on that planet.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The obvious question why they didn't just lock onto it with the transporter and beam the frakking thing up.

 

[Timo]

One can't beam up a passive communicator - its transporting function has to be turned on, as shown in many a TOS episode. Locating something that small by ship scanners is patently impossible without the targeting aid of the active signal. There's even dialogue to that effect, a heavy emphasis on how they cannot pinpoint the device, nor the two captives.

I also thought it was strange that Archer thought it was somehow less dangerous to tell these paranoid military types that he and Reed were genetically enhanced super-soldiers armed with advanced weaponry than it was to tell them that they were alien explorers.

Archer wasn't motivated by the desire to protect the planet. He was motivated by a desire to stay alive! A story about space aliens would be considered a lie and a sign of failure to cooperate. A story about supersoldiers would be considered to have the seeds of truth in it, allowing Archer to wiggle and scheme and live a little longer.

Nowhere in the show does Archer support T'Pol's ideas about protecting the natives from contamination. He's hesistant to go and pick up the communicator in the first place. And he never argues the natives shouldn't be contaminated. He only argues that stories about space aliens would be counterproductive in their personal plight.

When our secondary heroes speak of noncontamination, they only do it because they have to appease T'Pol who's in nominal charge. Trip gets to do a rescue mission only by arguing to T'Pol that he can do it while invisible.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

The only time I recall an active component in the communicator/transporter relationship was in "The Cage", and that line was a holdover from the early development stage, when it was assumed that the landing party had remote access to the transporter, allowing them to beam themselves up (the argument against this capability was that allowing Captain April to just thumb his nose and the big bad ugly beastie and beam himself out of trouble had the potential to drastically undercut the drama). Otherwise, the impression I got was that all you had to do was have a communicator on you, and the ship could track you and beam you up at their discretion.

 

[Timo]

The TNG commbadges indeed seem to have just two modes: on (when they can be tracked and beamed up, in addition to being communicated through) and off. Goes with them having but one button...

The TOS and ENT commsets have lots of controls, though. And the beaming up of a communicator never occurs in TOS, either. For example, in "Return of the Archons", a security officer with a supposedly working communicator is stranded down below, while Sulu is recovered thanks to him activating his respective unit for beam-up - yet our heroes decide the way to proceed is to send down another landing party, and not try and beam the hapless Lt O'Neil up to relative safety first.

Situations where the enemy may be assumed to be holding the voice-active communicator of the heroes ("Taste of Armageddon", "Bread and Circuses", "Whom Gods Destroy") do not prompt our sidekicks to attempt tactically helpful beam-ups, either...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SFRabid]

The Communicator was instantly one of my least favorite episodes of Enterprise. If you are going to rehash an old episode at least make it better. It would have been interesting if, after Archer told them he was an enhanced soldier, war had broken out. The crew could have witnessed what a devastating effect their actions can have on a planet.

 

[Captain Robert April]

"Return of the Archons" - It's possible that to minimize the chance of something happening, Sulu had the only communicator. A stretch, but possible.

"A Taste of Armageddon" - It's a pretty safe bet their equipment was confiscated long before the Enterprise even knew anything was up. Hell, a guard is shown grabbing Kirk's hand as he was reaching for his phaser.

"Bread and Circuses" - Their equipment was confiscated when they were arrested; Procounsul had to hand Kirk a communicator for him to contact the ship, and in short order made it quite clear that before the words "beam us up" would ever be completed, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy would be reduced to hamburger by those submachine guns. "No sense sending up bullet-riddled corpses."

"Whom Gods Destory" - At no time did Kirk or Spock contact the ship via communicator. They used the colony's communications gear, thanks to the security force field (which was shown in "Dagger of the Mind" to be capable of blocking communicator signals, unless specifically accounted for).

 

[Timo]

Fair enough - but the issue with the middle two eps was that the communicator was obviously in enemy hands, literally being gripped by the villain; beaming it up at that point would have helped the heroes quite a bit, as Scotty would then have held a high-ranking hostage!

At the end of "Piece of the Action", would it have been an option to beam up McCoy's communicator? We simply never see anything like that happen in the TOS era, which might already tell us something...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

By the time McCoy reports the communicator as missing, they've already left Sigma Iotia long behind.

SPOCK: Captain. If the Iotians, who are very bright and imitative people, should take that communicator apart --

KIRK: They will, they will. And they'll find out how the transtator works.

SPOCK: The transtator is the basis for every important piece of equipment that we have.
KIRK: Everything.

MCCOY: You really think it's that serious?

KIRK: Serious? Serious, Bones? It upsets the whole percentage.

MCCOY: How do you mean?

KIRK: Well, in a few years, the Iotians may demand a piece of our action.

In short, by the time McCoy fesses up, it's probably already too late.

 

[Timo]

If we speculated McCoy noticed the missing communicator fairly early on, we could use this to argue that getting the device back when your starship is still orbiting the planet is a major hassle involving landing parties (which would delay McCoy's confession, because he just doesn't dare, not until he's absolutely sure), not a simple procedure of transporting up the unit (in which case McCoy could just have asked Scotty to do that and not tell the Captain)...

If McCoy only just noticed, and if Kirk and Spock are serious about their concerns and not just pulling the Doctor's leg, a landing party is probably the only way to go - if the Iotians are capable of kicking up a 1920s Chicago out of nothing much, they will certainly have at least found the passivation switch of the communicator, and indeed probably taken it apart in no time flat.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gaith]

It was a lame piece of writing, is all. The First TV Drama review is pretty solid.