Archer and Travis are held at an internment camp for Suliban, although they soon discover that the prisoners aren't here because they've done anything wrong but more due to their species.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this episode. I like the way Archer just changes the rules if he decides he wants to interfere with another culture to make life better for them, and I like the way the ending leaves things up in the air about whether the escaped Suliban will be okay. However, the point being made is an obvious one about racial intolerance and one driven home not only by the fact of the only other featured Enterprise crew member being black but by Archer's stating of exactly what period in Earth's history this situation parallels. You half wish they'd just trundle along to the Nazi planet Kirk visited and have done with it.

The much-anticipated reunion of Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula demonstrates that the pair still work off each other well, but by making their characters enemies you lose a lot of the comradeship seen in Quantum Leap and it's not as enjoyable as it could have been in another kind of story. It is well acted, it is a strong story, it does have some pretty cool action at the end of it, but episodes with a message should be delivered a little more subtly than this. It starts off well but eventually just moves on to ramming the point home and with no subplots and a bunch of fairly wasteful bridge scenes that don't even show the usual friction between T'Pol and Trip, it's too light to really work properly. Good on the producers for continuing to do the Gene Roddenberry thing, but this needs to be cleverer.

***

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