The make-up team were required to make Brent Spiner look younger for flashbacks and to show the progression of a character's exposure to a number of pathogens.
The story-arc has been considered one of the best seen in Enterprise, and critics praised "Cold Station 12", specifically for the special effects and character development, but felt that the death scene crossed the line.
On Trialis IV, the away team find an abandoned building where the young Augments were raised and schooled by "father" Soong.
Nicknamed "Smike" by his Augment siblings after a handicapped character from the comic novel Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, he is taken to Enterprise.
Due to security protocols, tensions begin to surface between Soong and Malik, as to how to coerce Lucas into divulging the entry codes.
Soong and the Augments then escape, but not before Malik kills Smike, helps himself to a number of pathogen samples, and sets the viral containment fields to fail.
Also, the team added several different appliances to Kris Iyer to show his character go through a series of levels of infection of a number of diseases at the hands of Soong.
Guest stars Spiner, Alec Newman and Abby Brammell resumed their roles from the previous episode in the trilogy, "Borderland".
[6] Bill Gordon, writing for the website Sci-Fi Pulse, said that it was a "nearly flawless episode", with his one critique in his analysis of the plot being targeted at Captain Archer telling Soong that they were sending over the self-destruct code for the station.
[10] The mini-arc featuring the episodes "Borderland", "Cold Station 12" and "The Augments" were ranked the sixth best story of Enterprise by Den of Geek writer James Hunt.
[12] The University of Dubuque included viewing of "Cold Station 12" alongside the Doctor Who episode "The Beast Below" in the course "Captain Picard Meets Dr. Who" to demonstrate the idea of sacrificing one person to save many.
[15] "Cold Station 12" was as part of the season the four DVD box set of Enterprise, originally released in the United States on November 1, 2005.