“Rajin”
Written by Paul Brown and Brent V. Friedman and Chris Black
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 3, episode 4
Production episode 056
Original Airdate: October 1, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s Star Diary. We look at the Xindi Council. Degra suffered setbacks in creating his world-destroying weapon, and Dolim wants to revisit the notion of a bio-weapon that will target the human race instead of his homeworld. The others continue their opposition (with the exception of the Xindi-Insectoids), but Kiaphet Amman’sor warns that they will have to think about it if Degra doesn’t show progress soon.
BusinessThe search for trellium-D – which will protect them from Delphic Expanse anomalies – leads them to a planet with a large bazaar. Archer – who is still recovering from the Loque’eque virus – goes down with Reed and Tucker to meet a chemist named B’Rat Ud. B’Rat provides them with a recipe for making their own trellium-D, and he also has information on the Xindi. Apparently some Xindi-Reptilians visited the bazaar, especially Zjod, who is a space pimp, specializing in selling women as slaves. While Tucker negotiates the price with B’Rat, Archer approaches Zjod, who tries to convince Archer to buy one of the women he has for sale. As for the Xindi, all he knows is that they came and went two days earlier.
Tucker obtains the recipe for making trellium-D in exchange for exotic spices: mustard seeds, pepper, paprika and cayenne pepper.
One of the women, Rajiin, runs away from Zjod and asks Archer for asylum, which he grants after some punches with Zjod.
Tucker and T’Pol begin work on assembling the trellium-D in a space on E Deck, with the emergency bulkheads down, as the hardware is unstable.
Archer provides Rajiin with a meal and also finds her homeworld in the Xindi database they downloaded, and he offers to take her home. She says she knows very little about the Xindi, thinking to confirm that those who came to see Zjod were reptilians. Archer says she can move around the ship freely, although some sensitive sections are off limits.
Tucker and T’Pol’s first attempt to create trellium-D is a rather explosive failure, and they have to go back to the proverbial drawing board.
Rajiin shows up at Archer’s quarters, saying she wishes to thank him for his help. Archer hesitates, and what appears to be the Standard Hot Babe Sedcues The Captain scene quickly spins left as Rajiin runs her hands over Archer’s body in a way that makes it glow, as if performing a medical examination of him . When she finishes, he has no memory of what just happened and Rajiin politely apologizes.
Rajiin meets Sato in the hallway, and she does the same seduction setup on her that she did on Archer.
Screenshot: CBS
When she tries it on T’Pol, however, the Vulcan is able to resist. Rajiin pushes and T’Pol falls into a coma. Tucker shows up for his neuropressure session to find T’Pol unconscious and Rajiin in his cabin. Rajiin throws things at Tucker and runs away; Tucker calls security.
Rajiin manages to seduce one of Reed’s security guards and obtain his phase gun. She also communicates with someone off the ship and says she will use the carrier. But when she arrives in the transporter room, Archer is waiting for her with a security guard, who takes her to the brig.
Rajiin refuses to talk at first, but eventually reveals that she works for the Xindi-Reptilians who want medical information on humans in order to create a bioweapon.
Two Xindi-reptilian ships attack Business, bringing it out of the distortion. They board the ship and have a tedious time getting past Reed’s security forces and the MACOs. They release Rajiin and flee through a subspace vortex through which Business can’t follow.
The rest of the council are pissed that Dolim went ahead and sanctioned this mission without the approval of the rest of them. But now, thanks to Rajiin, they have all the biological data they need to craft a weapon that will wipe out humanity.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently, to synthesize trellium-D, you need to infuse delta radiation and theta radiation in such a way that the pressure does not increase. If you don’t, it’s going boom.
The speech of the gazelle. Archer has itchy skin, a byproduct of the Loque’eque virus, and it keeps him awake. When he do sleep, he dreams of the underground city of Urquat de Lorque’eque.
I was trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol talks Tucker out of canceling the neuropressure sessions. Tucker’s argument is that the ship’s gossip machine is in overdrive and wonders why Tucker goes to T’Pol’s quarters all the time. T’Pol’s counter-argument is that the neuropressure sessions work and the ship’s gossip machine is a dumb goose.
Florida man. A Florida man belatedly worries about what his neighbors will think.
Well done Porthos! Archer’s inability to sleep keeps Porthos awake at night. Poor puppy!
Better to take MACO. The MACOs, working with Reed’s security details, utterly fail to repel or contain the Xindi-Reptilian boarding party or prevent them from taking Rajiin. What do these guys bring to the table, exactly?
No sex please, we are Starfleet. Rajiin wears low-cut and/or skin-tight outfits and uses her sex appeal to fulfill her mission, being all flirty and seductive with Archer, T’Pol, Sato, and a security guard.
I have faith…
“On our planet, wars have been fought for the latter – watch out!”
[sneezes] “What’s this one called?” »
“Black pepper. There’s paprika, mustard seeds – I like cayenne pepper myself. I’m sure you’ll find it all very exotic.
–Tucker sells too many condiments to B’Rat Ud.
Welcome aboard. Nikita Ager plays the title role, while Steve Larson plays her pimp. The other merchants are played by Dell Yount (B’Rat Ud) and BK Kennelly (the Groundhog Merchant). Yount once played a Boslic in DS9“Son of Mogh”.
Additionally, the Xindi Council officially becomes a recurring feature in this episode, as Tucker Smallwood (Xindi-Primate Councilor), Randy Oglesby (Degra), Rick Worthy (Jannar), and Scott MacDonald (Dolim) all return from “The Xindi”. Oglesby will next appear in “The Shipment”, while the other three will next be seen in “Proving Ground”.
Screenshot: CBS
Trivial questions: Although Kelly Waymire does not appear, Cutler is mentioned as having suffered a broken arm when Business traveled through one of the Expanse’s anomalies. This is the last time she will be referenced, as Waymire died a month after this episode aired, and the producers decided not to use the character even in dialogue after that.
Archer is still recovering from having his DNA rewritten in “Extinction”.
It’s been a long road… “Some of our calculations may have been slightly off.” We’re now four episodes into season three, and I’m beginning to understand why it didn’t do what it was supposed to.
The whole point of the supposed drastic change in direction in season three was to boost the ratings, to try a different approach, to get away from taking it easy where no one has gone before without rhyme or reason for a proper story arc that would give our heroes purpose and all.
The problem is the same with seasons 1 and 2: they are half wrong. The Delphic Expanse was sold in “The Expanse” like this incredibly dangerous And very strange And completely incomprehensible region of space from which the Vulcans and Klingons did not emerge alive. And since then it turned out to be just another region of space. And what we got plot-wise is pretty standard, from the Prison episode at the top of the season to the Fun With DNA™ episode last week, The Slave Woman From Outer Space Episode this time.
What is infuriating is knowing what they could have done, but they continue to default to the simplest scenario or plot possible without thinking about it beyond the obvious. Thus, in the Xindi Council, the reasonable ones are those who look like humans or human pets, while those who look like filthy animals or vermin are the most uncompromising and wicked. So the only sold slave who most closely resembles a pretty Western white woman is the one who infiltrates the ship.
They even half-broken continuity from episode to episode. Archer starts the episode itchy and irritated and talks about dreams, which is a nice callback to the previous episode, except it’s all There is. We don’t see how this affected Sato or Reed, we don’t see Archer scratching his arms or talking about his dreams or anything after visiting Phlox in Act 1.
And we’re back to redshirting the extras. It’s pretty clear that several security guards and MACOs were killed by the boarding party, but they’re not even mentioned, mourned, or taken care of. And, to repeat myself for what feels like the millionth time already, why are the MACOs even there if they can’t fend off a boarding party or prevent the prisoner from being released from the brig?
The Xindi plan continues to sow confusion. If it’s so difficult to create a planet-destroying weapon, why did they send their tiny prototype to Earth in the first place? And the bio-weapon doesn’t make much sense either, given that humanity isn’t on one planet anymore, so a genetically-targeted weapon is much less useful.
I’ll give them credit for using the “exotic” spices you can find in most kitchen cabinets on Earth as bargaining chips. But it’s sad when the original use of condiments is the smartest thing about a screenplay…
Deformation Factor Rating: 4
Keith RA DeCandidois the last star trek work includes co-writing Klingon-focused Star Trek Adventures game mod Incident at Kraav III (with Fred Love) and wrote the DS9 short story “You can’t buy fate”, which will appear in issue 7 of star trek explorer this spring.
