Review of Babel One

As this episode opens Andorian Captain Shren is aboard the burning bridge of his ship giving the order to evacuate after a presumed Tellarite attack. Enterprise meanwhile has been given the job of escorting the Tellarite ambassador and his entourage to a conference where he is due to begin negotiating with the Andorians. En Route they pick up Shren's distress beacon and reroute to pick up the survivors. Shren tells Captain Archer about what happened but when the accusations are put to the Tellarite they vehemently deny having anything to do with the attack. Not long afterwards Enterprise comes under attack from what appears to be an Andorian vessel but it refuses to answer when Shren orders them to stand down and when he fires at what should be the ship's vulnerable spot it has no effect. The Tellarites of course believe this to be an Andorian plot to prevent them from getting to the conference. The attacking ship retreats but Enterprise follows it and makes a shocking discovery; the ship is neither Andorian nor Tellarite but has employed holographic technology to give it the appearance of their ships. When an away team beams over they discover that it is an unmanned ship which T'Pol suspects might be Romulan.

This was a good episode that constantly kept the viewer wondering whether the guilty party would be Andorian or Tellarite before revealing that it was neither. The end where Shren tells his mortally wounded wife that she had just suffered a minor injury was quite touching; Jeffrey Combes does well in the role. Amusement was provided early on when we learnt that the Tellarite are blunt to the point of rudeness; in fact if somebody is not rude to them they are liable to take offence. After a couple of stand alone episodes it is nice to get another multi-part story ending with the words '...to be continued'.