By O. Deus / 06:58, 6 February 2004 / ENTERPRISE Reviews

Synopsis: Enterprise captures the creator of the Xindi weapon and with time running out try to trick him into revealing the weapon's location.

Review: "Stratagem" is both a strong episode in and of itself and a worthy follow-up to "Proving Ground" as part of the Xindi arc. More intriguingly, "Stratagem" is an ENTERPRISE that plays out more like an episode ALIAS.

By committing to the premise of the third season in which Earth and humanity face the threat of imminent extermination, ENT created the problem of a threat that required extreme measures. "Anomaly" is about as far as a STAR TREK series is likely to take the idea of a Starfleet Captain using force to extract information. "Stratagem" does an ingenious end run around the problem by creating a logically worked out situation in which the solution is both ruthless and non-violent.

But at the same time, "Stratagem" also gives us one of the most human villains to date in terms of our ability to empathize with him. Randy Oglesby's 'Degra' is a fully realized character who is well aware of the moral consequences of his actions and manages to get across the character's emotions in a way that is shocking for a character who never seemed particularly significant or distinctive in earlier episodes. When Degra realizes what he has done in giving away the location on the bridge, his face falls and as perverse as it might be we can empathize with his pain at what he sees as his betrayal of his people.

It is ironic that "Stratagem" is essentially a holodeck episode minus the holodeck but that it manages to succeed far better than most holodeck episodes. Like Moriarty in "Ship in a Bottle," the premise involves a ship within a ship and an illusion within an illusion. But unlike that TNG episode, the goal is not to untangle all the layers of illusion but the interaction between Archer and Degra. Two characters both utterly determined and driven by the fear of a terrible future and the moral compromises they have had to make. And both lying to each other and suppressing their feelings to make themselves as cold and hard as they have to be to do what they believe needs to be done.

Visually the debris of the proving ground serve as both a plausible tool for Enterprise's malfunction without resorting to technobabble, and a credible source of tension whjile the incoming Xindi ship serves as a reminder for the destructive force Degra has unleashed.

Michael Sussman's teleplay and veteran STAR TREK director Mike Vejar bring together their talents to create an episode that flows seamlessly and smoothly without any noticeable gaps to its conclusion. Like "Proving Ground" before it, "Stratagem" has a momentum that the Xindi arc has lacked until now. It's another triumph of efficency in storytelling for ENTERPRISE, overcoming many of the obstacles that have traditionally held the series back.

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