Enterprise S1E2 - Fight or Flight

Hoshi faces her fears on an alien ship whose crew was murdered, while Malcolm tries to upgrade the ship’s defense system. – Wikipedia.

First thoughts:

Not too bad, but nothing to write home about.

Good character development for Hoshi. It was interesting to hear her wistfully talk about going back home. In the other series, I always had the impression that people viewed the ship as home, she reminds us that this is actually supposed to be more like a tour of duty.

Hoshi seems like sort of a counselor Troi for the crew in this episode. She can get “impressions” of the Anaxar, but not perfect. I wonder if that’s going to keep going?

She did pull a “I’m a translator, not a…” line in sickbay. Nice throwback, as long as it doesn’t get overplayed.

I love Archer’s dog.

I really like Dr. Phlox.

I like the continued feel of the Enterprise crew still figuring everything out. They are all amateurs at this. For example, Malcom and Travis calibrating the targeting computer. The crew doesn’t have established protocols for encounters, because they haven’t had any yet. Who should go on away teams? What do they do when they actually find stuff? Lots of ways to build and maintain tension. Good times.

The argument on the bridge between Archer and T’Pol was interesting, but a little misplaced in my opinion. I get her argument that different species have different protocols for interaction, but there was fairly compelling evidence that the Anaxar ship had been raided and was in distress. The continuation of their argument over dinner was much more effective. Overall, it is still working to keep the “Vulcans and Humans learning to like each other” arc.

I LOVE that they quarantine the away teams when they return to ship (forgot to give props to that from the last episode). Nice touch that easily could have been overlooked. We are so used to the “clean” transporter mechanism. Nice that they aren’t relying on that yet…but I’m sure that’ll change soon enough.

I was kind of weird to see a photon torpedo ricochet off another ship. I know that they are basically super-sized artillery shells, but it was still odd…and r-e-a-l-l-y slow. But it does leave obvious room for the technology to improve over time.

Loved the super slow shuttle craft docking and the topside hatch. Very old school feel.

Nitpicks:

Hoshi was very whine-y in this episode. I know it was her character building episode, but still. Hope she’s gotten over herself for next time.

Translators…so they do have translators (used initially when hailing the Anaxar ship)…but Hoshi has to spend a lot of time on the computer decoding the Anaxar language, even though they had extended samples from the Anaxar ship logs. Even so, in the big moment, the computer couldn’t do it, but Hoshi could? Good for her, but it felt like a big stretch.

I know that it is the Star Trek “thing”, and I promise not to comment on it every time, but it makes NO sense at all that the captain…or any senior executive officer…would ever be the first on the ground for anything except the most routine of missions. Peaceful exploration or not, this is still basically the space navy. They would totally send a bunch of red-shirts first to scope it out every.single.time.

The captain started to order security teams to repel boarders from the bio-smugglers’ ship, but he is distracted by the hail from the incoming Anaxar ship. Malcolm was just about to get on the turbolift before the hail, but then immediate returned to his station on the bridge…like he couldn’t possible anticipate what Archer wanted? Archer never belayed the order. However, even when it is still going down, and their freakin’ hull is getting breached, Archer STILL never finalized the order for internal security. Like, everyone NOT on the bridge was just sitting around doing their thing, waiting to get murdered by space pirates.

And on a related note…any time that Archer wants to go to red alert is probably OK.

THE STUPID SLUG! Fine…it is moderately humorous that the Enterprise’s “first contact” (after meeting Vulcans, and Klingons, and Sulibans, and all the other assorted aliens from the space bar in the first episode…) was a simple slug. Why did Hoshi ever bring it back on the ship anyway? She seemed so worried about it but she couldn’t predict that they would know NOTHING about how to take care of it? Why take only one, if you are taking one at all? She said it needed an argon rich atmosphere…presumably different from typical class M atmosphere. But Dr. Phlox just casually opened the lid to feed it in sick bay. And when they dropped of the slug at the end, no one was wearing environmental suits. I know that argon is a non-reactive gas, but either the slug breathes Earth air, or it doesn’t. Archer really rerouted the ship just to drop off the slug? I guess. BUT THEY JUST DROPPED THE POOR THING OFF ON SOME RANDOM ALIEN (TO IT) WORLD. HOW IS THAT BETTER THAN JUST LETTING IT DIE IN SICK BAY? Yeah sure, Hoshi gets to tie it up all pretty at the end with her Hoshi/slug metaphor…but it isn’t going to magically survive on a different plant just because she feels better about herself.