Archer and Trip are abducted under the belief that they are smugglers and put on a prison ship bound for a penal colony called Canamar. Naturally, the Enterprise crew heads out to pick them up, but they don't reckon on the prisoners taking control…

There's nothing really inherently bad or wrong with this story, it's nicely put together and has points of excitement and danger. It's just depressingly predictable. The Enterprise finds out where the prison ship is very quickly, and even takes along a local diplomat to make sure everything is sorted out. So that's that then, all okay, episode over in 10 minutes. Would that we were that lucky. Then we have the prisoners taking control, or rather two of them, and Archer offering his services in assisting so that he can set things to rights.

There are some issues here, the main one being why, after Archer has spent so long pleading his innocence and claiming to be a starship captain, the released prisoner is so happy to believe his every word. He's not stupid enough to release Trip as well, but he certainly gets what he deserves for throwing in with Archer in the first place. More importantly, his escape plan sucks. He needs to rendezvous with some friends, yet he doesn't have any piloting skills and nor does his Nausicaan associate. How was he planning to get there short of keeping his fingers crossed for someone like Archer? On top of this, at the end Archer and company release all the prisoners so they can escape to Enterprise. Is this really a good plan? Isn't there a chance they won't all come quietly and will start causing trouble?

Beyond this, it's all the same old tricks we've seen before. Plasma fires, sending a secret message to Enterprise, setting the ship on a collision course, tricking stupid thug-like people and generally being gung-ho. You know who will find the captain and Trip, you know how, and you know just when they'll appear. Quite why this series insists on doing every story by the numbers I have no idea. The only slight highlight is Trip's imprisoned 'neighbour', who is at least mildly amusing at times.

Otherwise, while it shares the odd moral lesson, once again it's the same old dreary grind done in the usual way with the usual disregard for audience enthusiasm. Most tellingly, though, is Archer's suggestion that there may be innocent people on Canamar and then the episode ends. The first mildly interesting part of the concept and we never get to see anything about it. This scene should be in the middle of the episode and then expanded upon. There could have been a lot more to this and there isn't.

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