Weird Star Trek Episodes - Regeneration aka "An Obvious Ratings Grab Gone Right!"

Oh man... someone get the flamethrower or Kurt Russell. Either will get the job done.

So, Enterprise used the Borg for an episode… Let me say that again. The prequel to the whole franchise decided to bring in the Borg for an episode. You might be shocked at what I think about this episode. “Regeneration” takes place during the second season of Enterprise. That was a pretty sub-par season, so you know the producers needed something to increase the ratings. Jolene Blaylock’s hotness wasn’t cutting it, I guess. So let’s see what happens.

The show starts out on Earth in the Arctic. A Starfleet team finds the remains of the destroyed Borg sphere from Star Trek: First Contact. They also find a couple of drones. Guess what happens when they decide to thaw them out. The Borg assimilates the team and leave Earth in the team’s ship. Starfleet Command contacts the Enterprise and orders them to find the ship. They find the pretty modified Borg ship attacking another alien ship. The ship escapes, so the Enterprise tends to the other ship.

I'll say this about Reed. At least he has more sense than most folk when dealing with the Borg. 

 They teleport the survivors to Sickbay but they were assimilated beforehand and try to take over the ship. They also assimilate Phlox, who handles the situation as well as he can.  The crew is able to stop the assimilated survivors by reluctantly jettisoning them out into space. While Phlox desperately searches for a cure, Archer wonders if he can save the Starfleet team. Eventually, he realizes he can’t do anything for them when they find the ship again. Archer and Reed transport over to the ship in order to place charges while Phlox uses the cure he concocted up (yeah, I’ll get to that). In the end, the ship is destroyed and Phlox is cured. Still, the episode ends on an ominous note as T’Pol reveals that the ship sent out a subspace message to the Delta Quadrant.

While I jabbered on about it was a push for ratings, I really enjoyed this episode. The Borg is one of Trek’s best villains, so I liked that they were used here. It also ties in well with First Contact. It would make some sense that some of that Borg sphere would end up somewhere on Earth since the sphere was really close to Earth when it was destroyed. I also liked the obvious homage to The Thing at the beginning. The Borg was treated as a real threat especially since this is the 22nd century we’re dealing with. The Enterprise crew was also good here for the most part. I liked how Archer struggled to deal with an uncompromising enemy.

The continuity issues it brings up don’t really bother me. You could probably explain most of the issues away with something. What I’m not a big fan of is Phlox curing himself from assimilation. That was a little too much though you could explain that big continuity issue up as well. Other than that and the Borg’s inconsistent adapting, I thought this was a good action-packed episode. While it’s not the greatest episode in general, it’s definitely better than a lot of the episodes from season 2.