
And that night came, when the Mahdi's voice did ring out, and he cried with great lamentations "YATI! YATI!" And there was much gnashing of teeth in the land.
YATI, for those of you unitiated into the higher mysteries of Fandom, is an acronym meaning Yet Another Trek Inconsistency. In other words, the people who run Star Trek make so many continuity errors that we had reason to make this acronym.
"Mine Field" was so bad in terms of continuity I don't know where to begin. Oh, wait, yes I do.
The title is bearable, but only because it so clearly has three meanings, the mine field in question being not only the physical mine field they run into in space, but the metaphorical mine fields of interpersonal relations -- in this case, Archer and Reed -- and interspecies first contact situations.
The events of the episode itself are just mindnumbingly problematic. Here's why:
* When Kirk and crew first saw the Romulan cloaking device in action way back in "Balance of Terror", they were utterly and terribly surprised; they'd never seen anything like it before, not even in the long war they fought with them. It was brand new. Starfleet was so impressed by this new technology they sent Kirk's crew in to steal the thing not long after. Yet here, the Romulans have it -- 150 years before they ought to. The only way I can see to fix this is with some kind of Temporal slight-of-hand, erasing either Archer & crew's memories, the existence of the cloak, or the NX-1701's very existence (which would cause all SORTS of problems, so we'll likely have to live with this). *sigh* At least they didn't see the Romulans' faces; that would have been unforgivable.
* "Romulans". Dammit. Ok, I've always known and accepted that The Powers That Be weren't going to use Diane Duane's excellent and (if you'll understand my meaning) believable portrayal of the Romulans, whom she wrote as referring to themselves as "Rihanssu". So I've always swallowed my annoyance with the "Romans in Space" portrayal of the Romulans and just tried to enjoy the episode on its own merits. I always assumed the Romulans, like the Vulcans, just didn't use their own name for themselves when dealing with humans. But here, they actually called themselves "Romulans" in this episode without ever having the humans say it first. GAH! I mean, sure, I guess I can suppose that they just happened to have a name for themselves that sounded similar to our own "Romulus", but to suppose further that they call their homeworld "Romulus" is too much, and that's the next logical step.
Overall, though, the episode worked -- but only because of the B story, with Archer and Reed's conversation on the hull.
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Oh gods. This Twilight Zone episode is utter crap. Rod Serling is spinning so fast you could harness the energy and power New York City. Until 2070.