Enterprise S1E12 - Dear Doctor

Phlox and Archer must decide where their morals lie about letting a species live or die from a pandemic – Wikipedia

The good:

This was a pretty deep one, particularly coming off the last shoot-em-up episode.

Phlox finally gets his spotlight . Good pacing between the opening montage/exposition scenes and the CSI planetary stuff, while keeping the focus clearly on Plox the entire time. I feel like this is what the writers really wanted to do for Malcolm in the last episode.

I continue to love Phlox, particularly the way his character walks the line between between being an outsider and companion amongst the crew. Of course, that has been a recurring gimmick on Star Trek from the beginning (e.g. Spock, Worf, Data, etc.) However, I think Phlox does it better than all of them. He is curious, but not naïve like Data. He is confident, but not stand-offish like Vulcans. And he is willing to be vulnerable, unlike certain Klingons I know.

Phlox and Porthos in a scene together! Boom.

We don’t get too caught up in the Trekno-babble of the medical research. Dudes are sick. Phlox is on the scene doing his thing. We learn just enough to follow along, and don’t care about the nitty gritty details. Phlox never even gives details on the cure, because it doesn’t really matter for the story.

Same thing with the relationship between the Valakians and the Menk. I think that this where the episode really could have gone south. In fact, I was kind of waiting for it to happen the whole time. But they pulled it off. The situation (peacefully co-existing humanoid species at different stages of development) is improbable but not impossible. We get little hints about the complexity of the relationship between the two species, but never anything definitive to make us feel like the Valakians are outright assholes to the Menk. 

Of course the centerpiece of the episode is the gut check Phlox and Archer face on “playing God”. It was set up perfectly with a relatively advanced race that had already encountered warp technology. We get to see their planet, and of course it sure looks a lot like Earth. We definitely want to help the Valakians.

Did Archer and Phlox make the right decision? We have the benefit of knowing that the Prime Directive is on the way, but they didn’t. This was a growing up episode for Archer. I feel like it is the first time he had to make a really tough command decision.

I was CONVINCED that the “cure” was going to be the Valakians and Menk interbreeding. I am so glad it didn’t go that way.

The bad:

Umm…nothing? How odd. 

I don’t want to go out of my way to find something just to make a point, so we’ll just chalk this up to a win and move on. Good job guys.

Vulcan LOL

Enterprise S1E11 - Silent Enemy

Archer faces an enemy that doesn’t respond to hails while Hoshi tries to find what Malcolm’s favorite food is to surprise him for his birthday – Wikipedia

The good:

Everything about the aliens was awesome. Their ship looked cool with the glowing green accents. Great use of CGI for the aliens themselves, it was refreshing to see something more than just humans with funny ears or face “stuff”. Their faces kind of reminded me of the bounty hunters from The Last Starfighter. The way they walked was smooth and spooky and weird, definitely evoked a wraith-like effect.

I LOVED the fact that the aliens didn’t talk, definitely upped the creepy factor.

The brief moment when the aliens skittered through the flashlights at the end of the corridor was terrific.

Holy crap, the transmission where they edited Archer’s macho “come and get us” speech into a surrender ultimatum was A-MAZING on at least two different levels.

There was some good ol’ fashioned treknobabble while installing the phase cannons. Power conversions over jury-rigged systems. Something about transferring overload energy to the ship’s structural field. Sparks flying. Relays blowing up all over the damn ship. Yeeeeeehaw!

I am going to assume that this was a one-off, I don’t expect to see these mystery aliens again. But it was a fun, classic battle episode while it lasted.

Porthos is the cutest space dog ever. I loved the scenes where he was just following Archer around the ship. Where does he poop? Who walks him while Archer is on duty? Who cares? He’s cute!

The bad:

The Wikipedia description alone should indicate how uneven this episode was. Archer battles mystery aliens. Hoshi tries to learn what Malcolm likes to eat. Lame-city. It all comes together at the end when Malcolm gets his special treat, but it was sooooooooooo forced. I don’t care how taciturn someone is, I REFUSE to believe that his parents, his sister, and his best friend collectively have NO idea about ANYTHING he likes to eat. Like, they were so clueless about his preferences that they couldn’t even fathom a guess? It’s OK that it was Malcolm’s turn for a character development episode, but the whole food thing was just awful.

The whiny “We don’t want to go back to back because that would mean we are losers” angle was overplayed. Of course, it was ultimately necessary for the Enterprise to install their own phase cannons because the aliens were still hunting them. But really? They have no schedule to return home for shore leave, or resupply, or transfer of personnel? The ship sure has gotten beat up, they must be running out of spare parts or torpedoes or something by now anyway.

It is evident that the phase cannons could be installed in a fairly short amount of time. Two days with maximum priority and double shifts could easily have been spread out over a couple weeks without too much effort. So with that in mind, it beggars the imagination that no one thought to install the damn things earlier…you know, just because. But I guess it makes sense, apparently they were not even aware they had all the necessary parts on board until now.

Does the Enterprise even HAVE shields? Yeah, I know it’s “polarized hull plating” this time around, but even so. A stiff space breeze knocks them offline, and I don’t remember a time when they actually prevented damage to the ship.

Enterprise S1E10 - Cold Front

Archer finds out a crewman is helping to fight the Temporal Cold War against Silk and some of the Suliban – Wikipedia

The good:

Very solid episode from start to finish. Glad to finally have a definite story arc rather than another one-off, particularly since it referenced back to the pilot.

I liked the cloak and dagger game between Daniels and the Silik. Who should Archer trust? Silik saved the ship, but he’s already proven to be a “bad guy”. Daniels has a great story, but no reason why he couldn’t just be a very convincing sleeper agent. Even at the end, we don’t really know what happened, other than Enterprise is caught up in something big.

It was a little forced of course, but I like that the writers made sure that all of the advanced gadgets were destroyed or lost.

Great cliffhanger-ish ending…obviously more to come with the Temporal Cold War.

The bad:

It did seem a bit overgenerous to give the pilgrims a detailed tour of the warp core, easily one of the most critical areas of the ship. Only reason to do it at all was to allow Silik to save the ship.

I guess Star Fleet doesn’t follow HIPAA. What if that poor bastard trying out the medical scanner had cancer or space syphilis? Luckily he was “in perfect health”.

The melt through the walls gadget. On the positive side, it WAS cool, and a great way to essentially settle the matter on whether or not Daniels was from the future. However, it did fail on the “selective application of the special power” issue. You mean to tell me that every part of the person using it becomes incorporeal except for the soles of their shoes? That is both very specific and highly useful.

Silik infiltrates engineering. For some reason, Daniels orders everyone out…which makes no sense whatsoever. Tripp can’t call for security from engineering…he has to actually “go get help”? Literally the exact moment that as everyone leaves, Silik appears and kills Daniels. Tripp and T’Pol witness the murder, and then run away to find the captain. They NEVER call for security. They just leave the most sensitive area of the ship in control of Silik. Malcolm is never alerted to the security breach until after Archer is revived.

On that note, isn’t odd that Malcolm wasn’t kept in the loop about the Silik-Daniels issue? Like, hey dude we’ve got two spies from the future on board…we’re giving one of them command-level access to our systems…and the other one can turn invisible and contort his body to fit through tiny access spaces…just a heads up.

As long as I live, I'll never surrender you.

Check out this Mental Floss article for more details.

Enterprise S1E9 - Fortunate Son

The cargo ship Fortunate was attacked by Nausicaans and the Enterprise lends a helping hand only to find the crew of the Fortunate has secret plans – Wikipedia

The good:

Directed by LeVar Burton.

The design of the freighter was good. It made sense to have a central section with modular cargo pods. Also, it looked cool.

Good establishment of mood when the Enterprise crew encountered the Fortunate crew. I really thought it was some kind of mutiny at first, and that the X.O. was edgy about them helping Captain Keene recover.

Great development episode for Ensign Mayweather. I liked the exposition on the blue-color “Boomer” culture. It isn’t just fancy pants ships like Enterprise flitting about out there.

The bad:

The cold open low-gravity football shot. In the moment it was really cool, but it didn’t hold up at all. At no other time do we see the low-gravity effect. Even in the same scene, Ryan and Keene appear to be in normal gravity conditions. I suppose it’s possible that the artificial gravity is off in the middle of the cargo bay for some reason, but very unlikely. Gravity is normal in every other cargo bay (we see at least two others during the episode).

They go out of the way to point out that the freighters are basically sitting ducks. Does that actually make sense? I understand that this is early exploration and ships are expensive, so providing an armed escort is probably prohibitively expensive. But is there an actual reason why they can’t just give the freighters halfway decent weapons? Even so, if their little beam cannon is basically crap, how did they take out the first Nausican anyway?

More punch-you-in-the-face style torture. Sorry, probably gonna call it out every time. I totally understand appropriate for TV and kids, but you could always set it up by a cut-away. Don’t show it at all, just let us fill in the blanks. Hereafter referred to as PYITFST.

I always cringe a little bit when Star Trek captains preach about human exceptionalism (e.g. nobility, bravery, perseverance, etc.). I get it. That was totally Roddenberry’s angle from the start, but I’ve never seen it come off anything but pompous when they actually talk about it.

Enterprise S1E8 - Civilization

Archer, Trip, Hoshi, and T’Pol go undercover to observe a pre-industrial civilization to find they aren’t the first observers there – Wikipedia

The good:

Aside from a few nitpicks, I really liked the storyline. It totally makes sense that more advanced civilizations would exploit less advanced civilizations for valuable raw materials. Also I dug the none-too-subtle anti-fracking message.

The cold open was good, T’Pol got to bond with the crew to set up the good news for Archer.

The very first images of the Akaali city from a distance were cool, particularly the moment when they got a shot of the sailing ship. As Archer pointed out, it basically fulfilled every history nerd’s dream of traveling back in time.

We got to see continued development of the Prime Directive in the bridge conversation between T’Pol and Archer.

Archer got his first alien-girl kiss.

T’Pol got to prove she can be quick-witted and bad-ass in a fight.

Hoshi got to feel all confident and have a translator-gasm.

The bad

The single most important word you need before interacting with a new civilization is the culture’s name for itself? Really? Like if I go to France, the most important thing I need to know is just the word “French”? How about “bathroom”?

If they are trying to go undercover, why do the following?

·        Have T’Pol go at all? She has Vulcan ears.

·        Not order T’Pol to at least wear her hood? Hoshi was wearing her hood. Of course, then we wouldn’t get to see our uptight Vulcan let her hair down a bit. BOOM…two puns in one blog post.

·        Send everyone down on a shuttle, which you plan on leaving unguarded, when you have a perfectly functioning transporter?

·        Whip out your damn tricorder and communicator every five feet?

That city sure was clean and sparkly.

But of course the most egregious sin was with the translator. Fine, Hoshi programmed the translator. But there two problems that we had to just ignore.

1.     Based on the alleyway scene between Archer and Riann, the crew clearly depended on their tricorder to do the translation. Meaning, the translated language in both directions would project from the tricorder itself. Even if we allow for the possibility that the crew were wearing earbuds, the Akaali certainly weren’t.

2.     Fine, the translator has a magic ventriloquism button that makes the sound come from the right spot, but Archer and pals are still MOUTHING WORDS IN ENGLISH. I can only imagine how freakin’ bizarre it would be to hear one language, and see lips moving in completely wrong ways to produce those words. Of course maybe I’m wrong. Riann’s lips change from “English” to Akaali when Archer’s translator goes on the fritz for no reason. 

Kirk and Spock get mad.

Enterprise S1E7 - Breaking the Ice

Malcom and Travis seek Eisilium on a comet while T’Pol considers marriage to Koss – Wikipedia

The good:

Another good character development episode for T’Pol. Her journey to the human darkside is nearly complete.

The comet was cool. Very reminiscent of "Armageddon" in a vanilla way.

 I thought the scene talking to the school children was great. It felt very realistic. This is the most famous human exploration in history (at the time), of course they’d have to PR/feel good stuff. Set up with just the right amount of awkwardness.

The bad:

The Vulcan tag-along stuff was very weird. Seriously, why did Captain Vanik agree to dinner with Archer if he was just going to be a dick the whole time? It’ll only be OK if it resolves somehow later on. Hopefully it was more than just a convenient plot device to deliver T’Pol’s mail and dues ex machina the shuttle craft at the end.

Why didn’t they just transport down to the surface? Seems pretty challenging to me to land a shuttlecraft on an unstable rotating surface literally surrounded by space debris. The only stated reason for not using the transporter was that they wouldn’t be able to get a core sample with it.

The comet was only 82 kilometers in diameter. There would barely be enough gravity to keep them on the surface.

Why take the core sample so far away from the shuttle craft, other than to create an artificially long distance to race against the clock on the way back?

Why blast a crater and then take a core sample? Do they want to ignore the most recent layers for some reason? Of course, blasting did set up both the alteration of comet’s rotation and Travis’s injury.

Once Travis was injured, why didn’t they use the transporter to beam him out, given that by that time the race against the clock had started?

The shuttle craft has no capacity to hover? It only has thrusters on the aft to take off like an airplane? I don’t buy it. I bet we see it hovering later on when they aren’t trying to avoid falling into an ice cavern.

Doesn’t the shuttle craft have seat belts? Sure seems like a handy thing to have on a shuttle craft.

Enterprise S1E6 - The Andorian Incident

Archer, Trip, and T’Pal are taken hostage by Andorians in the Vulcan monastery of P’Jem. – Wikipedia.

The good:

The open was pretty cool with the Andorians busting in on the Vulcans.

I always like the Vulcans-as-monks angle, and the idea of the Vulcan monastery was really cool.

Character development for T’Pol was important as she definitely chose her loyalty to Archer and the Enterprise over the Vulcans when push came to shove.

First successful use of the transporter for humans without any side effects. Also was completely uneventful…worked perfectly. Not sure if that’s a let down or not…

Nice subtle humor with the idea that the Vulcans literally can’t stand the smell of humans. Not sure if that was always true though…did Spock spend all those years taking nose cream to kill his sense of smell? If he did, I totally don’t remember it. I suspect a bit of retconning here.

The bad:

Sorry…I don’t want to be a jerk, but there was a lot wrong with this one.

Archer basically just invited himself to barge in on a freakin’ monastery just because it was close by. Honestly, sometimes it feels like the writers are trying too hard to put him in conflict with T’Pol. It felt fake, and I thought it made Archer look like a bit of an a’hole.

Minor nitpick, but I grow weary of the “punch you in the face” variety of Hollywood torture. And then they go straight from punching Archer to threatening to behead the Vulcans.

The Andorians had a sensor array. They used it to detect the transporter, and the additional human bio-signs. They also explicitly said they conducted a lot of scans to search for the spy equipment…but those sensors were incapable of detecting a network of tunnels underneath the entire complex? What about all the bio-signs of the Vulcan spy agents in the complex?

There is so much wrong with the ending that it’s hard to pull everything apart and discuss it one at a time.

So there is a huge secret intelligence-gathering center in underneath the monastery. Which came first?

At first consideration, it seems that the monastery was there first, because it was referred to as an ancient retreat, and we see the mummified remains of the order’s founder. That would mean that the Vulcan High Command decided to desecrate the monastery to put in the spy center. But that ALSO means that they managed to build that huge spy center under the occupied monastery without the monks ever finding out…doesn’t seem likely.

An alternative is the entire monastery was a sham from the start. I guess that could work. If its role was to conceal a super-dooper-top-secret spy center, it is easy enough to believe that they would spare no expense to make the monastery look totally authentic. So we have the catacombs fully stocked with “mummified remains” and “ancient relics”. Even a resident team of monks…even better I suppose if those monks are REALLY monks who don’t know about the spy center at all. Start with some monks that know about the center. Slowly “phase in” real monks that don’t know about it until one day, they are all dupes. TOTALLY makes sense.

Except…not really. First, why draw any attention to the center at all? The Andorians didn’t have any evidence of the center itself, they just assumed there MUST be something if the Vulcans were hanging out so close to their territory. That was a really big spy center. It obviously needed a lot of people to run it. People that need food and stuff…from another planet. The Andorians didn’t need to find the center to prove its existence, they just needed to continuously monitor the suspicious planet until they saw that a lot more shuttles were coming in than were needed to support a dozen monks.

But no matter, the monks knew about the center or they didn’t, right? And if they did know about it, then they MUST have been complicit in protecting it…otherwise there would be no point in them knowing at all.

Why have a beat up old transmitter in the catacombs, like 50 feet away from an ultra high-tech spy center? If the monks are in the know, then they obviously don’t need it. If it is legit, why would they store it in the catacombs? Even if they don’t use, except in the most dire of circumstances, it would more likely be in a closet somewhere…or I don’t know…a boarded up radio room. But no, we’ll just store it next to final resting place of their most holy leader, and the room with all of the relics so allegedly important that to merely look at them would cause irreparable harm to the Vulcan culture. Do they store all their other junk in the catacombs too?

It is evident that at least the Vulcan monk at the end was in the know when he threatened to kill the humans and Andorians after they discovered the spy center. If so…he was totally bad at his job. He should have just mowed them down as soon as they discovered the door. What else was he going to do in that situation, if his primary job was to protect the secret?

THE ENTRANCE TO THE SPY CENTER IS A HUGE METAL SECURITY DOOR CONCEALED BY A FREAKIN’ CURTAIN??? REALLY????? The only possible way that works is if the monks are in the know. Otherwise, the chance of discovery it way to high. Sure, they go on and on about how “no one ever goes into the reliquary” but it’s not like there was anything preventing them from doing so. Why have relics down there if you NEVER visit or use them. Don’t they ever add to the collection?

Having a door sure does suggest that someone goes through it for some reason. Again, I guess evidence that the monks were in the know. But again…why have a door at all to take the risk? Even if the center is under the monastery, just have the door pop out somewhere in the countryside as a precaution.

So, the evidence clearly suggests that the monks were aware of the spy center, even if they were not spies themselves. However, if they were…then why risk the whole operation by telling Archer about the catacombs? Just play dumb, and take the chance with the Andorians. Their “job” was to be cover…risking their life to do so would surely have been in the job description…even if it meant the lives of a couple of humans. National security and all. Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

High tech spy center. Super top secret. Like…its discovery could precipitate interstellar war top-secret. A poorly concealed entrance door isn’t even locked. When you open the unlocked door, there are apparently no sensors that alert security that the door has been opened. You can literally just walk into the place.

Even better…there were people inside working. You can clearly see them. Nobody raises an alarm. Fine. The operators are too busy doing spy stuff to see the intruders. But no cameras? NOBODY is in charge of internal security?

NOBODY NOTICES THERE IS A GOD-DAMNED ANDORIAN JUST STANDING THERE INSIDE THE TOP-SECRET SPY CENTER TASKED WITH SPYING ON ANDORIANS??? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I could forgive all of that…seriously…all of it. Except for the fact that when the Andorians ran into the reliquary room there were torches and candles burning. I think I just blacked out for a minute when that happened.