Title :
The Augments
Series :
Rating :
Overall Ep :
82
First Aired :
12 Nov 2004
Stardate :
27 May 2154
Director :
Year :
Writers :
Season Ep :
YATI :
There's no way Archer would freeze that quickly in space. In fact, he wouldn't freeze at all - if anything the vacuum of space would tend to insulate him.
Great Moment :
Soong's deciding to give up on genetic engineering and work on robotics instead. It bordered on the cheesy, but I loved it!
The NX disabling the Klingon battlecruiser. It was getting old seeing the ship get it's ass kicked by everybody that came along, I enjoyed seeing them win out against a much more powerful enemy.
Body Count :
Malik kills Persis (boo!). Four Augments killed by the Enterprise's attack on the Bird of Prey, and eleven more when Malik blows up the disabled Bird of Prey; Malik himself is then killed by Archer.
Factoid :
Some more nice continuity - this episode establishes that it was Soong that named the Briar Patch - the area first seen in Insurrection. He mentions two planets are inside - one of which would be the Ba'ku homeworld. It also mentions the "legend" about Khan's escape on the Botany Bay.
Klingon ships have an area called "the Targ pit". Presumably this is the room we saw the animals being kept in on the Raptor in "Sleeping Dogs".
The scene in which an injured Malik crawls around the floor of the Bird of Prey is a reference to Star Trek II in which Khan does the same thing on the Reliant.
The Klingon Chancellor is called M'Rek, and he likes to head into the Borderland now and again to enjoy the company of Orion slave women.
Plotline
Archer is determined to capture the Augments before they can use the stolen bio weapons to ignite a war between Earth and the Klingon Empire. Meanwhile, Soong has to face the fact that his children have grown beyond his control - but can he bring himself to change sides and help Starfleet track down his own children?
Analysis
Another pretty good episode. I continue to like the character of Persis. After playing everybody around her so well for the last two episodes, she looks like she's going to carry on doing just that when she sides with Malik against Soong - only to then finally make a choice that isn't based purely on her own self-interest. And of course, the very first time she takes a stance like this it leads to her death. Nice touch, if a little nasty!
I didn't like Malik's sudden return from the dead, though. It was a little forced, as if the episode was running a couple of minutes short and they decided to stick this in to pad it out. More realistically, I think they probably just wanted to give Archer a little payback for the various beatings Malik has given him in the last couple of episodes.
