Enterprise S1E21 - Vox Sola

An unknown alien boards Enterprise and starts capturing crew members, linking them together neurologically – Wikipedia.

The good:

There was a strong Alien vibe when the entity was crawling around the walls, and when first encountered by redshirts Rostov and Kelly.

The entity was pretty cool. Webs are creepy…especially giant, sentient, people-eating webs.

I like that the entity was clearly “alien” and mysterious, but not evil. It was made stronger by the fact that we never really know much about it, including why it attached to the Kreetassan’s ship, or why it decided to come onto Enterprise. It was ultimately understandably self-interested and had a clear goal, to get back home.

The psychic link between the captured crewmembers was cool. It heightened the tension by symbolically eating them, while also creating a huge obstacle to saving them. Of course, it also gave us a chance to learn that it was both intelligent and ultimately non-hostile as otherwise the security team would have just fried it during the first rescue attempt.

“Not in my sickbay.” Phlox is the man.

Porthos.

Malcolm gets to play hero by finalizing an operational force field.

I guess Ensign Mayweather was the acting captain? He was the only one left on the bridge and conducting intergalactic diplomacy on behalf of Starfleet. Good for him.

Cool closing scene with the massive hive entity.

The bad:

Anytime the spotlight is on Hoshi, she just annoys me. She’s always whining that it’s not her fault and everyone is picking on her. Hey Hoshi…you’re the communications officer. When talks break down over a language barrier, the ball was ultimately in your court. Deal with it. But the words in the Kreetassan language can have multiple meanings dependent on context! Yeah, sounds like pretty much every language ever.

Phlox speculates that the entity is sensitive to EM based on his examination of the severed tendril. Malcolm builds special EM laser guns to fight it. Holy lame sauce. Why didn’t they just fix the lights on the cargo deck? Or go back with bigger flashlights? Or bring in amplifiers and rock out to Quiet Riot “Metal Health”? Because you know, those are all types of EM radiation.

The Kreetassan’s were just a plot device to get the entity onto the ship. I guess I was supposed to be blown away by the cultural misunderstanding over something we take for granted, but whatever. It would have been better if they were not brought back after the opening scene. Even the negotiation to get the planetary coordinates was ultimately unnecessary, because the crew got that information from the entity after they established contact. Speaking of which, the entity knows the latitude and longitude of where it was picked up on its home planet? Cool.

The entity sure shrank down a lot to fit in that box at the end.