Enterprise discovers a hatchery of Xindi eggs and babies.
I found this to be a pretty average episode with a predictable story and a strange message.
There are some decent moments such as the Enterprise crew v MACO scenes and the regimented nature of the MACO soldiers. However, when you see a main character portrayed as going a bit crazy it never makes a compelling plot line for me because you know they will be fine at the end of the 40 minutes. When this starts to happen early in an episode (and you know exactly when and why), all you really have left is a long time to sit and watch their behaviour.
The subject of Archer's behaviour is seemingly controversial. Through much of the episode I was 100% behind his actions even though they were brought on by his condition. There are other factors that come into play and make it easier for the story to go in a certain direction, but to me the writers took a good ethical idea and perverted it into what it needed to fit the 'captain's gone nuts' formula.
Why not just do a story where the captain chose to save Xindi babies at great risk to the mission and ended up annoying lots of crew members in the process? Maybe this could be linked to the overarching narrative in a positive way where a relative of one of the children does something good for Enterprise (that's crucial to the plot) in return for Archer's good deed. Then you have the more hawkish crew members having to eat humble pie.
Whatever intentions the writers had for this episode, the themes come through in a bit of a mess. Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was a missed opportunity.
