Oasis

Over dinner with an alien trader, the Enterprise crew learns of the site of a crashed starship on a nearby planet, but the trader seems spooked by what he saw when he went there. Archer, however, insists that the trader’s tale of a haunted spaceship isn’t enough to scare him off, especially when the Enterprise could use a few repairs using parts from the crash site. What he finds there, however, is what seems to be the ship’s entire crew, all in good health. Trip is particularly taken with Liana, the daughter of the ship’s engineer, though the others from her ship seem nervous about her spending so much time with him. Archer is concerned when some of the ship’s logs about the crash are irreconcilable with the physical evidence – particularly when a member of the crashed ship’s crew, who’s still very much alive on the ship, turns up long dead in an escape pod.

telelplay by Stephen Beck
story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Stephen Beck
directed by Jim Charleston
music by Dennis McCarthy

Cast: Scott Bakula (Captain Jonathan Archer), Jolene Blalock (Subcommander T’Pol), John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox), Dominic Keating (Lt. Malcolm Reed), Anthony Montgomery (Ensign Travis Mayweather), Linda Park (Ensign Hoshi Sato), Connor Trinneer (Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker III), Rene Auberjonois (Ezral), Annie Wersching (Liana), Tom Bergeron (D’Marr), Rudolph Willrich (Kuulan), Claudette Sutherland (Maya)

Notes: The casting department’s tribute to Trek series past continues with this episode’s inclusion of Rene Auberjonois, who – after a slightly inauspicious start in the Trek universe (his scenes as a Starfleet turncoat in 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country were cut from the theatrical print but restored for home video) – played Odo for all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Auberjonois reportedly told Scott Bakula during filming that he had already shot this episode (probably meaning the similar plotline of the DS9 episode Shadowplay). Future casting directors would continue this tradition, as Annie Wersching, appearing here in here first TV role, would play a major role in the second season of Star Trek: Picard.