4x10 Daedalus

[7.6/10] I’ve said it before, and Ill say it again -- a good guest star goes a long way on Star Trek. Bill Cobbs as Emory Erickson, the inventor of the transporter, is a real boon to “Daedelus”. He is avuncular and cantankerous enough to feel distinct among the otherwise staid professionals in Starfleet. There’s more flavor to him, with his quips and recollections and the relaxed way in which he carries himself despite being on Starfleet’s flagship.

But at the same time, he can carry the dramatic chops necessary to make the episode work. When confronted by Archer, he pleads with the captain to help him, to aid him in this quest to recover his son. He can be believably insistent, subtly guiding or chiding or misleading the people around him. Cobb’s take on the famed inventor is both the new ingredient in the Enterprise stew who needs to be flavorful enough to stand out, but he also channels the emotional contingent of the episode, convincingly portraying a father who is haunted by the role he may have had in losing his son, who’s desperate to bring him back.

That’s a compelling motivation, which is necessary for an episode like this one. This is the first purely standalone story Enterprise has featured in a while, and it’s refreshing. These individualized stories allow the show to go smaller stakes, making the losses and gains more personal, and character-focused, than on the galaxy-shaping consequences of whatever course of action Archer and company decide on. This one feels like classic Trek, both for its standalone plot, and for the way it’s as interested in the mental state of the man toying with the limits of his technology as it is about the treknobabble mystery and challenge at the heart of the narrative.

That narrative sees Emery misleading Archer about the purpose of his visit. Supposedly, he is on Enterprise at the behest of Starfleet, to test out his new “quantum state” transporter in an empty stretch of space known as “the barrens.” But as Trip and others sniff out over time, he has ulterior motives. After the inconsistencies start adding up, Archer confronts him, and Emery admits that he lost his son in a quantum transporter accident years ago, but believes that he can use Enterprise’s transporter to connect with his subspace signal and bring him back.

I can’t say I love the mystery angle of that before Emery puts his cards on the table. I can see the story’s need to establish who Emery is, how he’s reversed by people like Trip, and his near-familial connection with Archer before revealing his true mission. But it leads to leaden conversations about “what if he’s hiding something?” and cryptic exchanges about what exactly he is hiding before the episode removes the veil and lets the audience in on the secret.

Amid all of this, “Daedalus” tries to work in a subplot about T’Pol reexamining her life thanks to the Kir’Shara. The whole thing feels like more of a summation, or a check-in to remind the audience of what’s going on with her rather than an organic part of the episode. She’s engrossed by the discovery and what it says about the Vulcan way of life. She is, per Dr. Phlox himself, cured of her space AIDS and the stigma is going away on Vulcan. And most importantly for the show’s purposes, the will they/won’t they switch for her and Trip has firmly been switched into the “won’t” position.

The only way in which it really connects to the broader episode is thematically. “Daedalus” is an episode about how we respond to the loss of a loved one. That’s most plain in the case of Emery, and his quest to recover his son. But it also provides him a connection with Trip, who can relate through the still-fresh loss of his sister in the Xindi attack. And it’s what also prompts him to try to comfort T’Pol, who has lost her mother and, while claiming to be fine, is throwing herself into the teaching her mother died to try to bring to the world. So much of T’Pol’s story feels inchoate at this juncture, but that’s the one thing that seems to tie it to the broader proceedings of the episode.

Those broader proceedings involve Archer giving Emery the go ahead to try to use the ship’s technology to bring his son back. What I like about that choice is that it’s a morally compromised one by Archer. You get the sense that he wouldn’t do this for just anyone, and yet, like Trip he’s not starry-eyed at the request from the inventor of the transporter. He’s taking it as a request from a surrogate father, to rescue a best friend, and maybe free a would-be sister. It leads to disbelief from Archer and T’Pol, and some questionable choices in the follow-up.

But he lets Emery go through with it, and I really like where the show chooses to go with that. This being Star Trek, I expected the show to have Emery end up accepting Trip’s help and recaboobling the energymotron in order to get enough power to bring Quinn back and return everyone to normal. Instead, all this experimental transporter procedure allows Emery to do is bring back his son for a few fleeting moments before he dies, and ask his forgiveness. It lets him recover a corpse, which is its own sort of solace, but cold comfort to a father who feels he condemned his son to die in an effort to push the limits of science and technology in his hubris.

In that, “Daedalus” is both a spiritual successor to, and an evolution of, episodes like “The Ultimate Computer” from The Original Series and “Evolution” from The Next Generation about brilliant scientists who take things too far in an effort to push past their defining achievements and right what went wrong. This episode helps meet its predecessors through a stellar turn from Cobbs, who sells the gravity of holding his son in his arms, asking for his forgiveness, and just wanting the chance to say goodbye.