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.