Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I'm glad folks are enjoying my year-long exercise in procrastination! The ENT mediocrity keeps on coming:

“Terra Nova” so Earth lost contact with its first deep space colony 70 years ago and Enterprise investigates what happened. We learn that Archer really does have an anger management problem because he’s blown up at one of his crew members for no rational reason in every single episode so far. The humans were driven underground and forgot they were human. Nothing new or interesting to see here.

“The Andorian Incident” so Jeffrey Combs turns blue, grow antenna, and kicks Archer’s butt multiple times. We learn that Vulcans and Andorians are not on the best of terms and Reed appears to have been chomping at the bit to blow something up. It was by far the most interesting episode so far but I think that is due to Combs and the butt kicking. I do love that Archer unilaterally decided to stab Earth’s closest ally in the back by giving vital information to the Andorians even after Combs tortured him for information. Archer could be responsible for starting a war between the Vulcans and the Andorias…way to go.

“Breaking the Ice” I’m not going to comment on the numerous scientific mistakes that occur in this episode because that would just take too long. Archer must have some incriminating evidence on the Starfleet brass because he is a horrible diplomat. Say what you want about Janeway, and I did, she at least attempted diplomacy before blowing someone out of the sky. Archer can’t handle the bad attitude from a Vulcan ally without getting his underwear in a bunch. He was almost willing to let Reed and Mayweather die than ask a Vulcan for assistance which had already been offered. Wow and after the two built such an adorable Vulcan snowman on the comet.

"Civilization” I often criticized Picard and Janeway’s invocation of the Prime Directive to avoid helping people. We see this play out when Archer helps a less developed society fend off an alien poisoning their ground water. Archer’s plan wasn’t thought out but his heart was in the right place. Tucker should have spent the next episode in the brig for countermanding T’Pol’s orders while the ship was engaged in hostilities. I know Starfleet is a new organization and all but that kind of crap would get you court martialed in the 21st century so I’m sure it is also frowned upon in the 22nd century.

“Fortunate Son” hello Nausicaan’s you have not been playing well with others have you. And that’s how you end up with a freighter captain hell bent on vengeance torturing one of your people and seeking revenge. Since Mayweather doesn’t get a lot of screen time it was nice to see him speechify at the end of the episode.

I think I missed something in the sfdebris reviews because I can't figure out why he keeps calling Archer duchess even though I find it hilarious.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I'm not sure about that either

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

Yeah, I marathon-ed Enterprise a few years ago and, after starting, was overwhelmed by how dull it was at the beginning. But then, at the end of Season 1, it started getting interesting and generally got much better as the remaining seasons went on (of course, it still had a few clunker episodes scattered about, like every other ST series). By the end of the series, I was sad that Enterprise had been canceled because I think it deserved 7 full seasons a lot more than Voyager.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I'm as massive a Star Trek fan as they come and own all 5 series on DVD, but for the life of me, I have not watched every single episode of Enterprise or even the majority of them. I was told the show got better in its 3rd season, so I sat through the whole of season 3...and it was like getting my teeth cleaned. Very little of this show is fresh or interesting. It just seems like a patchwork of old Modern Trek tropes sewn together, with very little original to make it compelling television.

Now, I know that the other 4 shows have their flaws (Voyager being the most notable), but Enterprise is easily the weakest. Part of it being that it was hamstrung from the very beginning by being a prequel to The Original Series...so they couldn't out and out do a lot of high concept stuff that was first done by Kirk and Co. So, what do we get? Mainly territory disputes, political chicanery like DS9, without the dramatic weight. Time travel/reset button stories without the kooky invention of TNG or Voyager. It was Trek on complete auto pilot. However, season 4 was beginning to escape the doldrums of the previous 3 seasons and tie it in to the mythology of the other shows. "In a Mirror Darkly" parts I and II was brilliant fun. If only the people working on the show thought outside of the box like that earlier and more often, Enterprise would have gotten a full 7 year run.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

if they had been able to build on season 4 it could have been really good

although I'm not entirely sold on the refit the NX class would have gotten. Part of me likes it but part of me doesn't
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2010/...refit-diagram/
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2011/...x-refit-plans/
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2010/...drexlerdrolet/

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I don't think the Xindi Crisis, which was the main arc in Season 3, fits any of those descriptions.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

"Cold Front" so the writers decide that the temporal cold war is going to have a substantive story arc and here's are re-introduction to it. Like I wrote earlier, if the writers actually had a plan for this from the get-go it might have been a lot of fun. This episode was actually interesting and set up a number of questions but since the temporal cold war hasn't been glanced at since the pilot, no one remembers or cares about it by the time this episode rolls around. The writers drop it again for several episodes so there's really no momentum to the story.

"Silent Enemy" OK, a little more imagination from the writers, that's a good thing. I like that we never find out who's attacking Enterprise or even why they're attacking. In the end it doesn't matter since the point of the story is to show how ill prepared the ship and crew really are. The episode also gave you insight into Reed being a aloof character and Hoshi's methods of figuring out his favorite food. I do wonder about why Archer decided not to return to Earth at the end of the episode. Yes you got the canons to work but as you mentioned earlier in the episode, there's a bunch of other stuff that needed repairs and upgrades not to mention the fact that the crew might want to see their families after being in space for several months.

"Sleeping Dogs" oh those pesky Klingons again get themselves drugged and stuck in a gas giant. You know, for a race that is supposed to be peaceful the Vulcans have no problems letting Klingons die for any number of reasons. In the pilot they're willing to pull the plug on Klang and here T'Pol is all for letting the crew of the Klingon ship get crushed. The whole "dieing with honor" argument doesn't even hold water in this situation since as the captain's log states, there's no honor in getting crushed by a planet. I do love that Hoshi finally got her space legs and has become less of a wuss.

"Shadows of P'Jem" hey Archer, remember when you sold out the Vulcans by exposing their listening post, yeah they're still a bit pissed about that. Decisions have consequences dutchess. The Vulcans are recalled T'Pol as punishment for the destruction of P'Jem but Archer and T'Pol get kidnapped first. Jeffrey Combs comes to the rescue because he hates being in Archer's debt. T'Pol saves the Vulcan captain's life so Archer lays a huge guilt trip on him so T'Pol can stay on Enterprise. Notice that Archer didn't bother to ask T'Pol if she wanted to stay on Enterprise until after the fact.

"Dear Doctor" I have to say that this is the first thought provoking episode of the season. Here we have a moral dilemma: Phlox is charged with finding a cure to a plague which has a 1 in 3 mortality rate. That would be an awesome feather in any doctor's cap. The Valakian home planet has a second race, the Menk, who are not effected by the plague and are treated like pets by the Valakians. While Phlox looks for a cure the Menk show incredible intellectual capacity and the scientist in Phlox believes that they could evolve into the dominant species on the planet. Moral dilemma: do you hand over the cure to save the Valakians or do you let evolution play itself out?

Archer compares this situation to the Vulcans withholding info from humans. Well that analogy isn't quite accurate. The Valakians want access to warp drive so they can seek help from others but they know nothing about anti-matter. Humans already had working warp technology so it's not like Starfleet was asking for something they didn't already have. They could have tried to explore the tension between Vulcans and Humans but they didn't. Phlox poses a different question: what if an alien race had given an advantage to neanderthals. Well that would be an interesting question if VOY hadn't already given us an episode showing aliens giving early Native Americans an advantage. Now the characters wouldn't know this because ENT is a prequel but the audience knows and the writers should. It undercuts Phlox's entire argument.

The B-story of a romantic relationship between Phlox and Cutler could have /should have been axed but it does give us some Phlox character development so I'm willing to let it slide.

Phlox finds a cure but doesn't want to provide it. The original ending had Archer and Phlox at odds over the issue and that would have been a much more interesting ending. Unfortunately, the network didn't want actual conflict so instead of Phlox making the decision on his own he makes Archer complicit in genocide and we get an over the top speech about the need for a prime directive. Well a Prime Directive wouldn't have changed the outcome: a Starfleet vessel would have delivered the Valakians to their planet and left without even finding a cure because they are/were a pre-warp species. I guess it's the difference between being actively responsible for the extinction of a species or passively responsible.

Here's the thing, this isn't a bad episode to me: sfdebri gave it a 1, yikes. I don't agree with the decision or the rationale for the decision and I think the series relinquishes the moral high ground from this point forward. Billingsley gives a solid performance and besides some misunderstandings of how science works, the script is solid.

For those who actually watched ENT, what did you think of "Dear Doctor"?

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“Shuttlepod One” my favorite episode from the first season and the episode that launched a thousand slashy fan fics. A nice bottle show with some character development for Trip and Reed. My only complaint is this: given that there was only 10 days of breathable air in the shuttlepod, you’d think our dynamic duo would try to conserve air instead of arguing with each other and letting Reed rattle off letters everyone he’s ever met.

“Fusion” we meet a ship of Vulcans who embrace logic but don’t suppress their emotions. The concept had a lot of potential considering the Vulcans in ENT bear little resemblance to Vulcans in any other series. There was no need to make Tolaris a date rapist and subject T’Pol to his assault. Kov was fun and inquisitive, the writers could have moved the conflict Kov faced with his father to the A-story and let the assault storyline go. I think the writers just wanted an excuse to throw Archer across a room.

“Rogue Planet” so let me see if I understand this correctly: in “Dear Doctor” Archer is more than willing to let an entire species become extent but he goes all out to help an overgrown slug masquerading as a scantily clad blond woman (T’Pol’s words not mine). I’m not a fan of hunting in its current incarnation and I agree with Archer’s decision here but I dislike hypocrisy.

“Acquisition” oh good lord what a fracking mess. Were the writers so lazy that they just had to shoehorn the Fernegi into an ENT episode despite the fact that first contact doesn’t occur until TNG. No we don’t learn the name of their species but I would think that Archer would provide a thorough description of the race that incapacitated his ship and crew and beat him to a bloody pulp. If that doesn’t work for you, once the crew was awake, wouldn’t it have made sense for Hoshi to look through their database. Or better yet, once Archer was untied don’t you think his first question would have been “who the hell are you?” You would think that last question would have come up at least once while the Ferengi were porting all of the equipment back to Enterprise. On a side note, I think Jeffrey Combs enjoys slapping Bakula around – he’s done it multiple times this season.

“Oasis” You know Archer, you wouldn’t have to go skulking around a haunted ship if you had returned to Earth at the end of “Silent Enemy” like you originally planned. It’s always nice to see Odo though not surprisingly I didn’t have the same feelings toward seeing Neelix in the previous episode. It was kinda tacky for T’Pol to throw Trip’s sexual assault in his face. In essence it was a holodeck episode and basically a less interesting retread of TNG’s “The Survivors.”

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Detained” the fun of this episode is lost on me because I wasn’t a Quantum Leap fan. Seeing Bakula and Stockwell reunited just didn’t cut it for me. The writers undercut the Suliban threat and give us an internment camp allegory, neither was particularly successful.

“Vox Sola” a giant tentacle traps Archer, Trip, and three other random crew members. Reed creates a force field which was nice though I can’t remember if it was used again on Enterprise. Aside from Hoshi and Mayweather actually having something to do, this episode was pretty bad.

“Fallen Hero” T’Pol suggests that the crew go to Risa for some R&R but the Vulcan high command cock blocks them by asking them to transport a disgraced ambassador. This episode was pretty good. I like Fionnula Flanigan: she did a good job as Data’s “mom” on TNG and a reluctant witness on DS9. V’Lar provides a glimmer a of who the Vulcans become in subsequent Trek episodes with a dash of someone who is open-minded about relating to new cultures.

“Desert Crossing” the crew is still trying to get to Risa but this time they’re sidetracked when Archer and Trip have to do their best Lawrence of Arabia impersonation by trekking through the desert. Turns out the Suliban are hyping Archer as the second coming of Harriet Tubman leading thousands to freedom in greats battles. You see dutchess, no good deed goes unpunished.

“Two Days and Two Nights” Enterprise finally gets to Risa. Trip and Reed are robbed by a couple of shape shifters and left in a basement in their underwear; Mayweather breaks his leg while rock climbing and damn near dies due to an allergic reaction to the pain meds; Archer’s lady friend is a Tandaran who is more interested in drugging him and gaining intel on the Suliban; Hoshi’s the only one who makes a new friend. You go girl. Sad this was Ensign Cutler’s final episode, the actress’s death came out of nowhere.

“Shockwave Pt 1” Enterprise seems to be responsible for the destruction of a colony with over 3000 people. After mourning and being recalled to Earth, Daniels transport Archer and Porthos to the day before the events in “Broken Bow” and explains that Enterprise wasn’t responsible. With some futuristic help Enterprise gets the evidence needed to exonerate them but Archer gets pulled to the 31st century without a way home.

You know, I was always under the assumption that a Cold War was fought without arms. There’s an awful lot of shooting, explosions, and death in this Temporal Cold War. I don’t think the phrase Cold War means what the writers think it means.

Since it had been way too many episodes since the Temporal Cold War was last mentioned in any detail, I don’t care about the storyline. This isn’t like the Dominion War where there was a gradual buildup of tensions and it isn’t even like the Borg in TNG where there a singular incident occurred and it was just a matter of time before the next confrontation. It’s like the writers were going for a slow buildup, dropped the storyline altogether, picked it back up for a hot second before dropping it again and then went whole hog.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Shockwave Pt 2” I thought the first part was better. The Suliban taking over the ship seemed odd (they had the technology to see Archer wasn’t on Enterprise so why did they spend 15 minutes searching the ship to confirm info they already had.

“Carbon Creek” T’Pol regales of the story of her great grandmother landing in a random Pennsylvania mining town during the 1950s. It isn’t a bad episode and Mestral was an interesting character but overall, the episode just isn’t one of my favorites. I’m a bit surprised this episode was nominated for a Hugo Award – goes to show how out of touch my opinions are!

“Minefield” We hear the Romulans for the first time though we don’t see them. Reed gets attached to Enterprise and an undetonated mine. Whenever I see this episode Reed reminds me of Marcus from Babylon 5 – someone unwilling to get close to people who care about him and someone who’s looking for something to die for. I like Reed as a character so I’ve always enjoyed the episode.

“Dead Stop” I’m fond of this episode too if for no other reason than it acknowledges that the ship was damaged in “Minefield” and needs to be fixed. Yes the ending kinda ripped off The Matrix but on the plus side, it was nice to see Anthony Montgomery without his shirt. I know when the episode aired there was some speculation that the space station was an early version of the Borg but that doesn’t mesh with continuity at all (yes I know the ENT writers don’t seem to give a crap about continuity but still). Except for the events in “Regeneration,” the Borg shouldn’t be in the Alpha Quadrant yet – in the VOY episode “Dragon’s Teeth,” the alien recognized Seven and said he encountered the Borg in the Delta Quadrant almost 900 years prior.

“A Night in Sickbay” there are aspects of this episode I like and aspects I think are pretty ridiculous. The decon scenes showing how sexy the show is, the treadmill race between Archer and T’Pol and the completely out of nowhere erotic dreams Archer has about T’Pol, and Archer’s psychotic behavior toward everyone drive me co-co for cocoa puffs. Don’t get me started on the final scene showing a shirtless Archer with beaded braids, tattoos, and a chainsaw: that image is going to give me nightmares. Archer’s concern for Porthos, as unhinged as it was, and some of the late night shenanigans Phlox has to deal with in sick bay with all of his animals were the enjoyable parts of the episode. Again, really surprised this episode was nominated for a Hugo must have been slim pickings that year. The sfdebris review completely eviscerated this episode for thirty minutes and it was absolutely hilarious.

“Mauraders” there be Klingons terrorizing a mining colony. We then get a crude Seven Samurai knockoff. It’s OK.

Aside from the horror that was “A Night in Sickbay,” the quality of getting better. I just hate I didn’t make it to 100 entries for the sci-fi challenge.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“The Seven” T’Pol does her worst Jason Bourne impersonation by having her memory of a fugitive retrieval gone bad erased from her memory. She finally captures Bruce Davidson and all is right in the Vulcan intelligence world. It was an odd episode. The Vulcans have been talking about being in control of their emotions since the first episode but the entire premise of this episode deals with T’Pol not being in control and yet there’s no real discussion of that.

“The Communicator” so Malcolm accidently leaves his communicator on a pre-warp planet, this is why we can’t have nice things. Archer goes with him to retrieve it and they end up in jail. Why would anyone go on an away mission with Archer? Trip ended up damn near dead on a desert planet, Mayweather ended up in jail and now so did Reed, who also almost got hanged for his trouble. The next time Archer asks for volunteers for an away mission, just say no!

“Singularity” thanks to a black hole the entire crew gets OCD. Trip is obsessed about upgrading the captain’s chair, Reed wants an emergency protocol, Phlox damn near performs a lobotomy on Mayweather, Hoshi need to perfect dinner (did the writers really have to have the female crewmember in the kitchen), and Archer nearly bites Porthos’s head off trying to finish the forward to his father’s biography. They should all take a valium because everything was completely over the top.

“Vanishing Point” Hoshi goes through the transporter and thinks she’s disappearing. Didn’t I see this episode on TNG when Geordi and Ro were invisible? Thankfully the whole thing was a hallucination because Archer completely tanked notifying Hoshi’s father about her death. I know that’s a job that nobody wants to do but Archer made the situation worse. And when Archer sees the SOS and identifies what it is he takes a nap instead of investigating. Worst.Captain,Ever.

“Precious Cargo” Enterprise inadvertently help a couple of kidnappers and Trip ends up a hostage as well. I was kinda hoping the kidnapper pushed Trip and the princess out of the nearest airlock. The whole uptight, self-righteous royalty / opposites attract things has been done over and over again. Those two had no chemistry what-so-ever.

“The Catwalk” Enterprise has to hold a slumber party in one of the warp nacelles to avoid a radiation storm. This was more exiting than the VOY episode where the crew went into stasis for similar reasons. Being cooped up in a crawl space with eighty other people made the crew mighty testy. That was pretty funny to see.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Dawn” looks like an amalgam of “Precious Cargo” and TNG’s “Darmok.” This version was no where near as good as the latter but marginally better than the former. The alien Trip was stranded with in “Dawn” was way less annoying than the princess from “Cargo.”

“Cease Fire” Shran shows how much he hates Archer by recommending that the Captain arbitrate a cease fire between the Andorians and the Vulcans. Archer, T’Pol, and Soval are shot down before getting to Shran and hijinks ensue. Oh dutchess, haven’t you learned that no good deed goes unpunished? At least the writers are aiming for a story arc dealing with the Andorian/Vulcan conflict. Not a bad episode. Whenever I see Gary Graham I want to watch Alien Nation.

“Future Tense” Enterprise finds a TARDIS and the Suliban and Tholians both want it. Turns out it’s a ship from 900 years in the future and a human/Vulcan corpse. A few time loops later and the owners retrieve their property before the Tholians grab it. It would have been nicer if the original ending where someone from the 31st century actually appeared and shed a teeny tiny bit of light on the situation. Again it’s not a bad episode but the whole temporal cold war was so completely mishandled that it renders the individual episode quality moot.

“Canamar” are you kidding me, Archer ends up in jail during an away mission again! Trip is with him again and right as they’re about to get pardoned, prisoners stage a jail break. Sucks to be you Archer.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Stigma” gets its own entry. This episode is about as subtle as a sledge hammer but it is a good episode. What we have here is an allegory for HIV/AIDS where Tolaris’s assault on T’Pol last season has led to her contracting a lethal disease. The high command doesn’t approve of mind melds or the people who perform them so they’re content to let the disease run its course (almost exactly how the US treated HIV/AIDS in the 1980s). Unfortunately the episode ties itself into knots assuring everyone that T’Pol is not a member of the minority afflicted with the disease so it’s not really challenging any prejudice. On the contrary T’Pol got to stay on Enterprise because she was a victim but the doctor who helped her and is a member of the minority, Dr. Yuris, was dismissed and will lose his standing on Vulcan. I would assume that most viewers know that decision is total bs but it’s not like we can even take the moral high ground: the US only lifted the travel ban on people with HIV/AIDS two years ago and not even half the states have laws protecting GLB folks from workplace discrimination (which is essentially what happens to Dr. Yuris).

Unfortunately, this episode is at least fifteen years too late. By 2003 most reasonable people understood that HIV/AIDS isn’t just for GLB folks anymore so the TOS episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is far more progressive. Maybe if it was an early TNG episode it might have been more effective but then I think back to those first season TNG episodes and I nix that possibility. And heaven forbid Trek actually create a gay character and explicitly deal with the issue of prejudice based on sexual identity. That would be too much like right.

It didn’t help matters that the writers paired the story with a light-hearted subplot involving one of Phlox’s wives hitting on Trip. The b-story itself was cute but it felt out of place with the seriousness of the a-story.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“The Crossing” non-corporeal whisps of light possess the crew and try to take over the ship. A couple of the actors got to stretch their legs and act completely out of character, Reed hitting on T’Pol was weird and funny at the same time, but otherwise it was just ok.

“Judgment” Archer runs afowl of the Klingons yet again and gets sent to Rura Penthe. Martok defends Archer (seriously, how many different characters has Hertzler played on Trek) and the writers set the audience up to not trust the main witness by making him a Duras – does anyone in that family have any honor, in any century. The courtroom sequences were a direct rip-off of The Undiscovered Country so we weren't really breaking any originality territory with this episode.

“Horizon” Mayweather gets to visit his family. Montgomery does an amazing job in the scene where he’s mourning and Archer tells him about the letter his father sent. See writers, you have capable actors if only you’d finally give them something to do. Starfleet needs to work out their communication system because a six-week delay in notifying someone about the loss of a family member is unacceptable.

“The Breach” Phlox has a Tribble and he promptly fed it to one of his reptiles. That was cold but quite humorous. Enterprise helps the Denobulans search for missing scientists and we find out that Phlox’s people engaged in genocide against the Antarans. Of course an Antaran ends up in sickbay and doesn’t want Phlox to come near him with a 39 ½ foot pole. Of course Phlox convinces the Antaran to undergo treatment so he doesn’t die and they all live happily ever after. The genocide revelation came out of nowhere and was forgotten just that quickly if memory serves. On the other hand, this episode goes a long way to explain Phlox’s actions in “Dear Doctor” when he talked Archer into allowing an entire species to go extinct. Given what we’ve seen of Phlox for over a year his complete over reaction to the Antaran taunting him about his people’s history was out of character. Phlox acknowledged that what the Antaran was saying was true so if you're so enlightened, hearing the truth shouldn't cause you to throw a temper tantrum.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

This episode gets its own entry...

“Cogenitor” one of ENT’s more interesting episodes and one that has gotten me into quite a bit of trouble. This is also one of the episodes that makes me believe the Prime Directive was specifically created because of Trip’s blundering.

So while G’Kar and Archer are off charting a star Trip entertains the Vissian’s chief engineer, his wife, and their cogenitor, a third sex individual whose purpose is to assist in the reproductive process. The Vissian’s treat the cogenitor like a pet and this irks Trip who makes it his mission to liberate the cogenitor. Trip teaches it to read and write and gets it to understand that it has the same potential and rights as the male and female of the species. The cogenitor learns quickly and Trip is eager to help introducing it to books, films, games, etc. and it even wants to be called Charles in honor of Trip. Our engineer gets busted and T’Pol chews him out (and the writers can’t get over their bias: the characters refer to the cogenitor as “she” throughout most of the episode though it was made clear that it is neither a he nor a she). When the cogenitor realizes it won’t be allowed to continue its education, it requests asylum on Enterprise and Archer is rightfully pissed. Archer rejects the request and the cogenitor is returned to the Vissian’s ship.

Now I’m normally the first person to diss the Federation for its noninterference policy but this is not one of those cases. Trip never should have interfered. Yes the Vissians were total jerks to the cogenitors but that’s no reason to impose human values onto another culture. Trip tries to say that what he did was no diferent than Archer giving the Vissians books and movies but Archer makes the key distinction: the Vissians asked for those things and the cogenitor did not. In fact, when Trip first arrived with his hooked on phonics, the cogenitor told him to leave. Unfortunately, once any creature gets a taste of knowledge, they can’t go back and the cogenitor commits suicide. Archer gives Trip a much needed verbal lashing and Trip does realize that the was his fault.

When this episode originally aired I made this same argument and some folks jumped down my throat. A few tried to make comparisons between how the Vissians treated the cogenitor and how white folks treated slaves; however, there is no freaking comparison. From day one, slaves were running away and screaming from the rooftops that they wanted freedom and equality. Most oppressed people on earth at least are very vocal, in one form or another, when they believe they’re not being treated fairly. That didn’t happen here. When the Federation is asked for help and they decline because of the Prime Directive, that’s being an ass. Interfering in situations where you’re not invited and told not to interfere by everyone involved is also being an ass and it’s also called imperialism and it usually doesn’t end well for either party as this episode points out.

Levar Burton did an amazing job directing this episode and Bakula and Trinneer played the final scene very well. Sad that this was one of Andreas Katsulas's final performances.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Regeneration” oops, scientists in the Artic dig up the Borg from First Contact. Unfortunately the head scientist doesn’t assume they’re hostile so he allows them to thaw and that doesn’t end well. The scientists are assimilated and they all fly away to meet and try to assimilate Enterprise. My only real complaint about the episode is that Enterprise’s weapons had any effect. These are Borg with knowledge and technology from the 24th century, not fully functional to be sure but still. If Picard’s Enterprise barely got out alive then Archer’s Enterprise should have been toast. Malcolm and Archer were able to use their pistols five or six times and the Borg never adapted. Really good episode though.

“First Flight” a friend of Archer’s is killed in an accident and he learns about it a hell of a lot faster than Mayweather learned of his father’s death in “Horizon.” We are treated to flashbacks of Archer and A.G. vying for the chance to fly the first Warp 2 vessel. A.G. wins but the ship blows up real good and they have to figure out a way to convince Starfleet to stick with the program. Forest was a bit put out when he discovers that Archer and A.G. steal the Beta prototype to prove it works. Good episode.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I'd say that, maybe, since the Borg were cut off from the collective they were significantly weakened. Of course they've never been hugely consistent when it comes to Borg who seem to go from being invincible to being target practice. Nothing unique to Star Trek, though... The Shadows on Babylon 5 and Turok-Han on Buffy the Vampire Slayer were the same way.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

I would buy the weakened Borg theory except for the fact that the writers were inconsistent with their characterization of the Borg within the episode itself. When the Borg originally board Enterprise it takes two shots before they adapt. Reed makes a couple of modifications to the phasers and suddenly the Borg haven't adapted after six shots. Plus, one of the Borg damn near assimilates Enterprise itself within a couple seconds but Phlox manages to have the Borg nano probes rolling around his bloodstream for the majority of the episode and isn't fully assimilated. Again, it's one of the best episodes of Enterprise but the writers don't seem to be paying attention to what they write.

"Bounty" the Klingons are still pissed about Archer's escape so they put a price on his head. One lucky winner manages to kidnap Archer Enterprise itself but for the second time in a row, Archer manages to talk someone into dissing the Klingons and helping him. I'm sure most viewers were far more interested in the b-story: T'Pol goes into pon farr early and runs all over the ship half naked trying to mate with Phlox and Reed; not at the same time though.

“The Expanse” realizing that the show just ain’t working, the writers decide to move to season long arcs. North and South America get carved up like a holiday turkey by the Xindi and Enterprise is upgraded and tasked with stopping them before they can come back and finish the job. The Xindi are located in the Delphic Expanse which is an unusually hostile region of space. Trip’s sister is one of the millions killed and he does not handle it well: he skips right to the anger stage of grief and stays there for quite a few episodes. We get military personnel (MACOs) on Enterprise too but we don’t meet them until next time. The move to story arcs certainly improved the series IMHO now there was no reason or excuse to have the characters meandering around doing stupid crap. This episode was a solid start.

“The Xindi” we meet our destructive aliens for the first time and it’s always nice to see Tucker Smallwood (I still miss Space: Above and Beyond). I accidentally caught a segment of the series updated theme song and did they really think it was a good idea to make the theme more upbeat given the season’s theme? Archer is back to his snippy self, barking at his crew for no understandable reason. Steven Culp (West Wing), Daniel Dae Kim (Crusade), and Marco Sanchez (Seaquest) are three of the new MACOs and I adore them all but they didn’t do much here. The crew travel to some random mining colony to meet a Xindi and get the coordinates to the Xindi home world. Archer and Trip get captured (I told you about going on away missions with Archer) but the MACOs rescue them. Enterprise gets to the home world but it was obliterated quite some time ago.

Here starts my major beef with this season’s story: the completely unnecessary establishment of a romantic relationship between T’Pol and Trip. Phlox volunteers T’Pol to help Trip sleep after the loss of his sister and from there, the two being neuropressure sessions that lead to romance. Again the writers choose to pair two actors who have no romantic chemistry whatsoever and two characters who are far more likely to strangle each other than have sex. I’m with the slash writers, I’d believe Trip and Reed before I believe Trip and T’Pol.

“Anomaly” spatial distortions cause all sorts of problems on the ship and we get space pirates who snatch everything that isn’t bolted down. All that upgraded shielding and weapons and the extra military personnel don’t do a damn bit of good. Maybe that’s because my three favorite MACOs were nowhere to be seen in this episode. Archer goes all Jack Bauer and almost decompresses a prisoner for information. When Sisko took a trip down the dark side you understood exactly why he was doing it and he felt remorse – though still confident he was out of options and did the right thing. We’re only into the second episode of the arc so this wasn’t an act of last resort and Archer didn’t feel an ounce of remorse so he just came off as a torturer. I guess since dutchess came off as a jerk from day one this wasn't a huge character arc.

I don’t usually comment on the score but the music during the raid scene was pretty awesome. The only other time I noticed the score in a good way was in “Regeneration” and in both cases the music was decidedly different than the show’s normal soundtrack.

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“Extinction” remember when I wrote that the Xindi arc would preclude stories where the crew was doing stupid crap? Well, guess I was wrong. I feel horrible for the actors since the episode involves Archer, Hoshi, and Reed being transformed into a different species. They did this on TNG and this episode has remnants of VOY’s “Threshold” and that’s not a good thing. This was a pretty horrid episode and according to Memory Alpha, LeVar Burton said he was ashamed of the episode and I don’t blame him. The horridness of this episode was matched only by the next one…

“Rajiin” WTF were they thinking with this episode. You want the Xindi to get info so they can create a bioweapon, fine. You have a character basically sexually assault her way through the crew to get the info, not’s not fine. Do the writers hate T’Pol so much that they’ll sexually assault her twice on the show so far? This episode was just sleazy and I felt like I needed a shower after watching it.

“Impulse” this episode goes full on Night of the Living Dead by having zombie Vulcans all over the place. If you like zombies you’ll like the episode. If you don’t like zombies, and I don’t, you won’t like the episode.

“Exile” is the annual Hoshi episode. Thankfully it was better than the previous two episodes but that’s not saying a whole lot. The episode does have a Beauty and the Beast feel to it with a powerful psychic wants Hoshi to stay with him in exchange for info on the Xindi weapon. Park was fine in the episode but the b-story about the spatial anomalies turning Enterprise inside out was more interesting.

“The Shipment” psychic guy gives Enterprise the location of a Xindi weapons base. Archer, Reed, and Hayes befriend a scientist responsible for creating one of the weapon’s components and gets him to betray his people and alter the recipe. Apparently, not everyone appreciates having their work used for mass genocide especially without their knowledge or permission.

“Twilight” one of the best episodes of the series and it originally started out as a VOY story (it probably would have worked better on VOY). Enterprise is hit by an anomaly and Archer is left with the inability to form long-term memories. The entire episode is told through flashbacks from 12 years in the future. T’Pol has to tell Archer that she was made captain after his injury and that the mission failed: Earth is destroyed as is every Earth colony. T’Pol resigns her commission to become Archer’s caretaker. We get a slight yet understandable reset button when we learn that treating Archer in the present also treats him in the past and could alter humanity’s future. After the bridge is destroyed Phlox is able to eliminate the parasites and we return to our timeline sans extinction future.

The writers showed the futility of human’s struggle in this timeline by putting the last colony on Ceti Alpha 5 which, if I remember Wrath of Khan correctly, will experience some serious problems in about one century. It was nice to see T’Pol in a uniform just like it was awesome when they finally put Troi into an official uniform. If only we could have kept that. If the writers knew they were going to create a relationship between T’Pol and Trip, they should have started that story after this episode: the relationship between Archer and T’Pol here was far more touching and believable than what’s beginning to evolve with Trip.

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“North Star” the ENT writers remake VOY “the 37s.” We have humans from back in the day abducted by aliens and brought to a random planet but here the humans are stuck in a wild west time and mentality. I’m not a fan of westerns as a genre so not my favorite episode.

“Carpenter Street” you know, if you’re going to have an episode take place in a certain location at least find a set that looks like the location in question. I’ve worked in Detroit for six years now and nothing in this episode resembled Motown and believe me, the architecture didn’t change that much between 2004 and 2012. Why not just say the episode takes place in LA? You do have to give the Xindi credit for ingenuity: if you want to build a bio weapon where no one can find it, 150 years in the past is as good a hiding place as any.

“Chosen Realm” wow, two remakes in one day. First ENT remakes a VOY episode and now they’re reaching back to TOS “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” Two sides of a conflict at war over something trifle (9 days to create the sphere vs 10 days), one faction of the conflict takes over the ship, captain threatens to blow up the ship to prevent any more nonsense, planet was destroyed some time ago due to trifling conflict. Seriously, I think all the writers did was change the names on the TOS script and add Porthos.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

“Similitude” is in a class by itself

I love this episode and I do have to applaud the writers for their consistency here. Janeway killed a sentient being in “Tuvik” and now Archer gets his chance. Trip is critically injured and they grow a clone to replace his damaged neural tissue. The being, Sim, has a 15-day life span but of course in the time it takes for him to get to the point where he’s ready for surgery, Sim becomes a fully sentient and intelligent being who retained Trip’s memories and obviously doesn’t want to die. On the moral side, Janeway gets the benefit of the doubt because Tuvik was created by accident. Archer knew he was going a sentient being for the purpose of harvesting tissue. To be fair, they originally thought Sim would survive the procedure but once they knew Sim wouldn’t survive, it turns out Phlox knew of an experimental procedure that would prolong Sim’s life. On the flip side, Sim could only live 15 days so he had already had a relatively long life before Archer pulled the plug. Tuvik on the other hand could have lived for decades if Janeway hadn’t killed him.

It would have been interesting if they had found a way to keep Sim alive as a replacement for Trip. VOY episode “Deadlock” did kill Kim and Naomi and replace them with their duplicates. That was a ballsy move on VOY’s part even if the difference was only mentioned a couple times during the remainder of the series. It would have been a ballsy move for ENT to go there and it would have been a good way to put the kibosh on the T’Pol/Trip pairing since the former was clearly uncomfortable with Sim but did kiss him before sending him off to his death. The scene where Sim tells T’Pol that he’s not sure whether his feelings are his or Trips was well done. It was a bit of a copout to have Sim change his mind in the end. Janeway had the balls to kill Tuvik herself and it’s clear that the writers are having Archer go over to the dark side so why not push him over the edge here. It seems that a holographic doctor has better medial ethics than Phlox who was obviously uncomfortable with killing Sim but did it anyway.

One of the best episodes of the series.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

"Proving Ground" Enterprise finds out where the Xindi are testing their weapon and Shran offers to 'help'. It's good to know that Shran didn't want to screw Archer over even though he did and it's good to know that Archer wasn't dumb enough to let the Andorians have access to key systems without supervision. Archer threatening to blow up the weapon while it was inside Shran's ship was a bold move, they really are pushing Archer further and further to the dark side.

"Strategum". Archer tries to trick Degra into revealing the location of the weapon and the deception just barely works. The time shifts between the present and the past got a tad confusing but overall it was an OK episode.

"Harbinger". The ham-fisted and ill advised relationship between T'Pol and Trip moves to the next level complete with Blalock's bare butt on my TV screen. For reasons I can't fathom the writers then have the happy couple forget they had sex. Why even bother with this story if that's the direction it was going ot take. The highlight of the episode was Reed and Hayes having a knock down drag out fight throughout the ship. The two of them standing in Archer's office looking like they just went 12 rounds with each other was freaking hilarious. We also meet one of the sphere builders and appear to be behind the Xindi's appetite for destruction.

"Doctor's Orders" wait didn't I see this episode on VOY? Phlox has to put the rest of the crew in a coma due to some spatial anomaly and he starts to hallucinate.. It was ok the first time around but this time it just came off as derivative. Phlox damn near shot Porthos and that ain't right.

"Hatchery". Archer gets all paternal toward a ship of Xindi insect eggs. He specifically states that morality doesn't go out the window during war which is funny considering some of Archer's recent decisions. The fact that he was actually concerned about someone else's well-being was the first hint that something was wrong. Unfortunately he puts the entire mission at risk due to being chemically altered by one of the eggs. We do get a full fledged mutiny and it was nice to see Hayes get more to do but otherwise it was just an odd and unnecessary episode.

"Azati Prime". Enterprise finally makes it to the Xindi weapon (seriously this should have happened a few episodes ago). The multi-episode story arc worked on DS9 because 1) it was a strong story 2) we had well defined characters and and character arcs within the story and 3) the writing was strong enough that even the episodes that didn't directly tie into the arc served a purpose within the arc and were well-written. For ENT we have the first part but we're missing the second and third part. Archer decides to go on a suicide mission to destroy the weapon as penance for his recent bad behavior and because the writers haven't really done enough with the rest of the senior staff for the audience to care if they go on a suicide mission. We see T'Pol get weepy when Archer leaves and to make matters worse, Archer doesn't even succeed: dutchess gets captured and tortured but does manage to convince Degra that eradicating humans isn't such a good idea while Enterprise gets its butt handed to it in battle.

"Damage" picks up where "Prime" left off with Enterprise completly incapacitated and the Xindi council is hamving a disagreement. The aquatic Xindi return Archer to Enterprise and T'Pol has a full-on nervous breakdown - and I don't blame her but I do blame the writers for the out of nowhere drug addict storyline we get for T'Pol. Really? This is the first episode that we've had any indication that something was wrong but apparently it had been going on for three months. Yeah, if you want to make T'Pol an addict, fine, but you have to provide breadcrumbs in a few episodes or else it looks like you pulled the storry out of your butt at the last mintue.

Here's what I don't understand, Archer went on the suicide mission in "Prime" partially to atone for his crappy behavior. He survived and so did the ship but instead of learning anything, he becomes a pirate and jacks a ship that came to Enterprise's aid. When Enterprise gets ship-jacked in "Anomoly," Archer is rightfully pissed about being robbed and stranded but he turns around and does the exact same thing to someone else. I guess we should be greatful that Archer recognized that he was stepping over the line but the fact that he flat out says this probably won't be the last time (hell it's not even the first, don't kid yourself dutchess) makes me shake my head. At least Sisko was introspective and guilty about his decision in "Moonlight" that doesn't happen here. Plus, Garak was a willing participant in Sisko's deception but it is clear that the senior staff does not want to participate in the raid but they have to anyway. When T'Pol confronted Archer with his baldface hypocracy he has the nerve to be mad and make it sound like her concerns were unjustified.

DS9 got crushed by people saying it was too dark. ENT is just as dark but it managed to get away with it because it takes place in an earlier time period and because DS9 managed to pull it off. Maybe folks were just so busy complaining about how bad ENT was that no one noticed how dark it was?

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

"The Forgotten" I'm going to give Archer the benefit of the doubt here and say that he was trying to have Trip finally deal with losing his sister. Having Trip go though the anger stage of grief while the man responsible for killing his sister may not have been good timing but oh well. Otherwise, Archer ordering Trip to compose a letter to a dead crewman's parents was completely inappropriate. That's the captain's job, period, full stop. I'm happy Trip dealt with his grief as the rest of the crew mourned their fallen comrades but Archer gets a family feud X for that order.

"E2" hey, this looks a lot like the DS9 episode "Children of Time." An accident throws Enterprise 100+ years into the past and their descendents catch up to our timeline and try to help. Apparently Archer's sense of ethics were passed on to the next captain as he promptly tries to steal Archer's warp coils! Once again Archer is pissed but considering you stole the coils too, I don't think he could take the moral high ground. I felt so bad for Reed as he was one of the crew who didn't pair off on the E2 but of course T'Pol and Trip got together and had a son which made the Vulcan quite unhappy.

"The Council" Archer and Hoshi try to convince the Xindi council that they're being played like a guitar but it doesn't go as well as planned. Degra gets stabbed, Hoshi gets kidnapped, and the reptiles and insects get ready to launch the weapon. I did love Reed's reaction to losing yet another crew member: he was understandably pissed and laments how used to losing people they've become. Reed had some nice character development in the last couple episodes of the season.

"Countdown" turns out the weapon needs three command codes to arm which is why Hoshi was abducted. They torture Hoshi to get her to decode the aquatic's code but she's a trooper and resists for awhile. I'm pleased the writers gave Hoshi a backbone after how they wrote her in the first season. The aquatics join the fight as Archer promises he can disable the spheres. I hate that they killed Hayes especially since they never game him a first name and in the pilot we see Archer survive being shot while transporting. I remember when this episode originally aired I watched it and then watched The West Wing episode "Memorial Day". Stephen Culp was on that episode screaming about retribution after a character was killed on that show. It was a strange yet funny confluence of random events - avenge Major Hayes! Anyway, he saves Hoshi but the weapon is on its way to Earth as the sphere builders get involved. Archer, Reed, some MACOs and an unconscious Hoshi head after the weapon.

"Zero Hour" The season finale and the end of the Xindi storyline. The last three episodes were solid and it almost makes up for the clumsy path the series took to get to this point. Enterprise destroyed the sphere, Archer "died" destroying the weapon, Shran shows up at the last minute to help and Enterprise gets back to Earth. It's all good until the last 3 minutes of the episode when it turns out Enterprise returned to Earth in the 1940s. Really? Well now we're obviously in an alternate timeline because there's a random alien collaborating with the Nazi's and staring at an unconscious Archer. So close to decentness just to be sideswiped in the last couple minutes *sigh* I completely forgot about this twist. Thousands of years of earth history available and ENT goes where both TOS and VOY has gone before: WWII. I guess those were the sets and costumes that are the most readily available.

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

"Storm Front Pt 1 & 2" the red-eyed aliens continue to jack with human history. Instead of doing away with the temporal cold war the writers make things more complicated by giving us Daniels, Silik, and our new red-eyed friends all vying to come out ahead. Archer and Silik restore the timeline with the help of the resistance. Thankfully I think this is the last episode dealing with time travel issues not counting the alternate universe episodes.

*begin mini rant* Dear Trek writers, I thought I made it clear in my rant against TNG's "Time's Arrow," if your characters are going any earlier in time than 1980, leave the black man on the ship. Way on earth would Trip take Mayweather with him to the surface? It's 1944, that's no place for someone with a tan and that's even without the Nazi's running around. Take Reed; take a red shirt; but leave the brother at home unless you're going to address the issue because otherwise you're going to get him killed. *end mini rant*

Re: Starting a Star Trek journey
 

"Home" very reminiscent of TNG's "Family." Enterprise is finally back on Earth and unlike VOY, the crew actually puts boots on the ground. The CG shots before and during Archer's speech were horribly obvious but besides that I enjoyed the episode. Archer finally reflected on the horrible deeds he committed during this mission but he got is grove back by climbing mountains and having sex with Columbia's captain. The writers did a good job of slipping in the xenophobia which will play a part in upcoming story lines and T'Pol gets married which should kill the Trip/T'Pol story for good.

My one teeny tiny complaint has to do with Phloix's reaction to what happened during his return to earth. Reed and Mayweather defend him against the xenophobic jerks in the bar and I love watching a good bar fight as much as the next person. When Hoshi talks to him about it later Phlox says he understands how people feel, doesn't blame them, and says it will take time to heal. OK, I know the writers were going for the 9/11 parallel and all but Phlox mentioned having multiple degrees in psychology. Now it's been awhile since I've taken a psych class but I don't remember the lesson that says blaming innocent folks helps the healing process. Blaming all extraterrestrials for the Xindi attacks isn't rational and probably not helpful in terms of dealing with the trauma just like blaming all Muslims for the 9/11 attacks wasn't/isn't rational or helpful. The guy in the bar was a douche who deserved to get his butt kicked by Reed and Mayweather and the fact that the writers let him off the hook a bit left me a tad unsettled.

"Borderland" / "Cold Station 12" / "The Augments" so this season is made up of several mini-arcs which I think was a wonderful idea. Season 3 wasn't very consistent. Whether that was an issue with the writing, the acting, or some combo of the two I can't tell. The mini-arcs were very well executed. This one has Brent Spiner chewing up all kinds of scenery as a scientists who revived genetic engineering and a bunch of little Khans who have stolen a Bird of Prey and are causing all kinds of trouble. Bashir really got lucky with his genetic enhancements because everyone else in the Trek universe who's been enhanced turns out to be violently bat poop crazy. The shout out at the end that Soong switches from enhancing humans to creating cybernetic lifeforms was cool. Data has a very interesting family tree.

"The Forge" / "Awakening" / "Kir'Shara" man did they have to kill Admiral Forrest? That wasn't right. Someone blows up an Embassy on Earth killing 43 people. The cool thing about this trilogy is that we finally get an explanation as to why the Vulcans on ENT are nothing like the Vulcans we've seen on every other Trek: they haven't been living by Surak's actual teachings. Gary Graham got more to do than just growl which was a nice change of pace. Archer averts a war between the Vulcans and Andorians, exposes a conspiracy within the high command, retrieves a historical artifact and carries around the soul of a Vulcan that's been dead for almost two centuries. Not bad for three episodes and we get a sneak peek at the Romulans too. Much to my dismay not only do the writers kill T'Pol's mom (I liked Joanna Cassidy in this role) but T'Pol gets a divorce too which puts the Trip/T'Pol shippers back in business.