Stratagem (Star Trek: Enterprise)

This episode begins three years in the future with Captain Archer and Degra (the scientist behind the Xindi weapon project) aboard a shuttle escaping from an Insectoid prison camp. Degra, however, cannot remember his time as Archer's cell-mate and friend, and remains suspicious despite having a prison tattoo and long greying hair. Archer convinces him that this memory loss is due to the blood worms in his system (used because they excrete a truth drug, but sometimes causes the victim to suffer amnesia afterwards), and removes a worm from Degra's arm.

It soon unfolds that they are in fact inside a simulator aboard Enterprise (and still in December, 2153) and the whole set up is a ploy to learn where the weapon is being constructed. Degra and his crew, for example, had been captured near the test site of the weapon, the worm was inserted by Doctor Phlox, and the fake ship was constructed by the crew. The ruse is partially successful, and Degra reveals information about his family, and inputs coordinates into the navigation system. He later becomes suspicious after a malfunction in which one of the windows of the simulator briefly glitches due to ship-wide power fluctuations, and attacks Archer.

This leaves Archer with a dilemma; travelling to the red giant star, Azati Prime, would take them three weeks, time they do not have to waste on a wild goose chase. Instead they again deceive Degra into thinking that they have utilized Xindi warp technology to open subspace vortices, and trick him into thinking that they have already arrived at the coordinates. Degra shouts that they will never be able to breach the base's defenses, thus proving that the coordinates do in fact relate to the weapon. The episode ends with a third deception, with the mind-wiped Degra and his crew being placed back on their ship.

Similar to the week before with "Proving Ground", a non-Enterprise crew member is the primary character studied. "Stratagem" "develops an intriguing supporting character"[1] as its primary mission who in this case is the Xindi Oppenheimer/Wernher von Braun figure, weapon designer Degra. Previously he has been shown to be the only one to attack the more belligerent members of the Xindi Council. Here both his family background and his anxiety over having ultimate responsibility for building a weapon that will save his race and civilization are portrayed. The reflections on to Archer, and his burdens, are, to the writers' credit, left mostly unstated.

Going here[2] and here[3] will find many examples of praise for how with this installment in the series the showrunners stayed more disciplined with the over arcing plotline of the Xindi conflict and avoided deadending episodic sidetrips. Perhaps Brian at Bureau 42 framed this ADD best by writing "Two weeks in a row for staying on track with the story? Someone tied up Berman and Braga, didn’t they?"[4] But with 42 minute episodes this plot discipline compels the writers to produce more plot details, which in this case reveals many logical flaws in the "weapon testing" plot device,[5] including how and when the Xindi deployed their weapons, a sequence of events which form the bedrock for Season 3.

• 36 Hours (1965 film)[6] starring James Garner for one instance (seen many times on the Mission: Impossible 1966 TV series ) of the drugged enemy - flashed forward in time - with a charade - to reveal a key secret.

• Stratagem at IMDb
• "Stratagem" at TV.com

• Stratagem at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)

• Stratagem at StarTrek.com