Wacky Reviews: Star Trek

whisky

Boobie inspector
I saw a video the other night saying that the original plan was to have the entire first season set on earth meeting a new member of the crew each week, then the season finally would be the ship launching.

Kind of what we got with Picard.
 

SAUSAGEMAN

Registered User
I saw a video the other night saying that the original plan was to have the entire first season set on earth meeting a new member of the crew each week, then the season finally would be the ship launching.

Kind of what we got with Picard.
Braga posted this, on-line.

Yes, there were limitations — or opinions would be a better word — placed on us during the show’s development. But that’s part of the process. Paramount was understandably worried about protecting their huge franchise. You know, Rick’s initial idea was to play the first season on Earth as they were building the very first warp ship. But that was way too off-concept, I think, for the studio. Maybe they were right, who knows. Remember that the previous Trek shows were very successful for the most part. It’s a balancing act when you try to “reinvent”. So we ended up with Enterprise, an excellent TV show, if you ask me, but also with its share of compromises and problems. And yes, writing was a large part of it. I think we did some superb work, but there were times that we did things that felt too familiar. Sometimes without realizing it. Quite a strange situation, working on the fifth incarnation of a series. Quite a challenge, as you can imagine.

That would have been fun - kinda leaning into the Earth: Final Conflicty vibe of the human/Vulcan relationship, maybe.
 

CaptainWacky

I want to smell dark matter
Yeah that would have been better than "here's more TNG/Voyager episodes but with a weaker cast!"
 

Eggs Mayonnaise

All In With The Nuts
Suddenly all the reasons I decided it was okay for me to drift from this series is coming back to me, lol.
 

CaptainWacky

I want to smell dark matter
Fight or Flight - Phlox and Hoshi talk about a space slug in Sickbay. Hoshi thinks it doesn't belong in space and is obviously talking about herself. IT'S BEEN A LONG ROAD. Archer hears a squeak in the floor in his Ready Room and tries to find its source. He's so quirky! T'Pol tells him space is basically empty and it's unlikely they'll run into any aliens. Hoshi comes and complains that the stars move the wrong way in her quarters. Reed and Mayweahter work on getting the torpedos aligned. Archer lets Reed practice on some asteroids. Phlox talks to Trip about the different smells of everyone on the ship. He wants to watch two of them mate. He's wacky! T'Pol finds a ship adrift in space and Archer sends them a message which get no response. They find scorch marks on the ship indicating it's been fired on (this plays out more slowly than this type of scene normally would, which makes sense given the Enterprise's inexperience.) Archer wnats to take a team over when live signs are detected, despite T'Pol's constat suggestion to just leave the aliens alone. Trip is eager to join the away team but Archer tells him to chill out and stay with his engines. Archer records another log where he questions T'Pol's motives and feeds Porthos cheese. Hoshi comes to see him and asks to be excused from the Away Team but it doesn't go her way. Archer, Hoshi and Reed get changed into EV suits and take a shuttle over to the alien ship. Hoshi screams when she finds dead aliens hanging from the ceiling with their blood being pumped out by tubes.

Back on the Enterprise, Archer wants to help the aliens (even though they're already dead) but T'Pol thinks they should leave before the bad aliens show up again. She's got a point. The Enterprise leaves. Hoshi checks in on the slug with Phlox. She doesn't want to run into any corpses on hooks again and Phlox suggests she go back to Earth. They do more "slug as Hoshi" metaphor talk. Archer, T'Pol and Trip have dinner together. Archer still feels bad about leaving the dead aliens behind and asks T'Pol if she'd have left them if they were Vulcans. He tells off T'Pol for not having emotions (yeah, what a bitch!) and turns the Enterprise around. Another Away Team goes over and Trip gets the alien ship online. Hoshi works on translating their language. Trip says he's jealous of Hoshi because she'll get to go on more away missions than him but she tells him she's going to ask Archer if she can go home. The blood stealing bad aliens show up and start firing just as Archer's shuttle gets back to the Enterprise. See, it takes the shuttle longer to dock because it's a prequel. The warp engine is damaged and the Enterprise's torpedos are useless against the other ship's shields. A third ship arrives, Captained by an alien from the same species as the murdered crew. He doesn't know what's going on and Hoshi hasn't finished translating the lanaguage yet so has a hard time communicating with him thorugh the universal translator. Archer finally tells Hoshi to tell him to scan the pumps so he'll find out they belong to the bad aliens. Archer tells Hoshi not to wait for the translation and to answer the question (talk to the alien directly, I mean.) She thinks she won't be able to do it but because it's Star Trek she successfully gets through to him. The good alien saves them from the bad aliens. The Enterprise stops off at a planet so Hoshi can leave the slug there. She says it'll do just fine on this new planet. Err, how does she know? It's it really dangerous to introduce wildlife to an ecosystem they aren't adapted to?

Well, they're trying. Because it's a PREQUEL we do get a bit of Archer not really knowing what to do and being a bit out of his depth. T'Pol's objections are fairly reasonable. The problem is that T'Pol doesn't really come across as likable at all yet and Archer himself feels like a weak Captain. When Bones and Spock would argue you still liked both of the but we're not really there with either of them yet. Hoshi's story is fine and Linda Park does a good job. It follows the standard trek formula of a character being worried about something then saving the day at the end of the episode and that solves their problem. And the slug stuff is barely even a metaphor, they might as well have just called the slug HOSHI TWO. But it's fine. I like how they did the away team with no one really knowing what to do because it was their first time. A reasonable first episode.

SCORE: 7/10


Strange New World - Crewman Cutler and other less memorable characters are surprised to notice an alien planet outside the Mess Hall window. Archer wants to take a shuttle down but T'Pol suggestions doing tests for a week first to make sure the planet is Minshara Class (oh that's what the "M" stands for!) Archer laughs at the silly Vulcans and ignores her. Cutler thanks T'Pol for selecting her for the mission but T'Pol tells her she isn't specila (MAYBE CUTLER IS GAY AND IN LOVE WITH T'POL I'm sure someone posted on TrekBBS at the time.) Archer leads the away team with some of them wearing NX-01 baseball caps. Porthos pees. T'Pol wants to take scans but Archer wants to fuck around and take photos. Everyone has fun exploring before Archer returns to the ship, leaving T'Pol, Trip, Travis, Cutler and Other Guy to do research. Travis tells a ghost story around the campfire. Trip wants to shoot an alien scorpion. A storm comes and blwos their tents away so they have to go hide in some caves. Travis sees someone else outside and Other Guy starts hearing voices. Trip sees an alien come out of a rock and Cutler thinks she sees T'Pol talking to some aliens. Archer and Reed take a shuttle down as Trip accuses T'Pol of hiding something. Archer hits a rock and can't land.

Trip demands answers from T'Pol and she keeps telling him she doesn't know anything. Trip ends up pulling a phase pistoal on her. Reed tries to beam Other Guy up to the Enterprise but there's a transporter malfunction and some leaves and rocks and stuff get phased into him. Trip continues to rant at T'Pol and Travis joins in, until eventually T'Pol gets a bit angry and shouts at them (this is the most interesting T'Pol has been so far.) Phlox manages to remove all the stuff from Other Guy's skin (I like that they didn't just kill the redshirt) and reports he's been infected by hallucination pollen. Archer tries to tell the away team that they've been exposed to crazy pollen and they need to go deeper into the caves to be safe. Trip lowers his pistol but still thinks T'Pol is in league with the Rock People. Trip gets crazier and crazier and shoots his pistol around and such. Phlox tels Archer that Other Guy is now critically ill as the it turns out the pollen is toxic too. T'Pol starts to lose it too and speaking in Vulcan, though also this mean she can talk to Hoshi without Trip understanding. Archer tries to talk Trip into taking medecine but he's seeing Rock People now. Archer decides the only way to get through to Trip is to lie and tells him that T'Pol is on a top secret Starfleet mission to make first contact with the Rock People. Hoshi tells T'Pol to pretend to talk to the Rock People and she does it. T'Pol stuns him with the pistol and injects him and the others with the medecine. Everyone is better in the morning and Trip aplogises to T'Pol for threatening to "split her in two" (err...)

Star Trek loves doing an episode early on in the series where the crew go mad. This is a decent one thanks to Connor Trinneer's acting, but there's a pretty major annoyance. It starts wtih Archer not wanting to do any scans of the planet before sending the away team down, despite T'Pol's warning. T'Pol is shown to be completely correct but the episode ends without Archer admitting his huge mistake or apologising to her. I really really wish they'd done something with it because the episode just ends up being an okay "crazy crewman" story rather than something more memorable.

SCORE: 6/10
 

CaptainWacky

I want to smell dark matter
Unexpected - Archer is having a shower. The gravity cuts out but we don't see his dick. There's problems all over the ship but Trip thinks he can handle them until a fire breaks out in Engineering. Archer works out that there's a cloaked ship riding along in the Enterprise's warp field. The aliens need Trip's help to fix their warp drive because he's better at fixing things than their own crew, or something? Trip is dropped off in a weird room and made to breathe weird smoke while he decompresses. He finally gets out and finds the rest of the ship even WEIRDER with grasses on the floor and fungus on the walls and maybe time is moving more slowly? Trip is really disorientated and doesn't understand the ship's weird engines which again makes me wonder why the aliens needed his help. Trip eventually gets better after sleeping in a WEIRD BED and eating some weird ice cubes with Ah'Len, the ship's engineer. He fingers shoot little sparks when she touches him. Trip helps the aliens fix the engine he was clueless about a minute ago then goes to a Holodeck (yes, a holodeck FOUR EPISODES IN to this prequel series) with Ah'Len. They flirt on a holographic boat then Ah'Len invites Trip to put his hand in a box, claiming it's a "game they play." It connects their minds together. Travis picks Trip up in a shuttle to take him home and the crew say goodbye to the aliens.

Reed wonders what a holodeck would be used for if he had one, hinting that he wants to fuck on it because Reed's character in these early episodes is "guy who wants to fuck." Trip finds a nipple growing on his wrist and Phlox asks if he got laid on the alien ship. Yep, he's Tripregnant. The baby has none of Trip's DNA so don't worry he'll be able to give it up without caring by the end. T'Pol tells Trip off for not being able to go three days without sex (why does she care?) Even when she finds out that Trip got pregnant by putting his hand in a box she still acts like it's his fault. It's weird. Trip gets emotional and yells at an engineer because lol pregnancy hormones. Archer and Phlox talk to Trip about the possibility that he'll have to raise the baby. It's funny! The idea that a man would have to raise a child! Archer just keeps making fun of distressed Trip instead of showing concern for an officer under his command. The Enterprise tracks down the alien ship but finds they're now hiding in a Klingon ship's warp field (so Trip's repairs didn't even work.) The Klingons instantly start shooting at the Enterprise but still answer Archer's hail. They're having the same engine problems the Enterprise was experiencing. Archer tells them about the aliens but the Klingons decide to murder them and tell Archer to leave before they kill him too (the Klingon Captain is the most cliched Klingon you could possibly imagine.) T'Pol makes a speech to the Klingons about how Archer saved the Klingon Empire in 'Broken Bow' and Tripl tells them about the alien holodeck. Trip has to show his baby bump so the Klingons will let him come onboard too. Everyone laughs at Trip. Ah'Len says she had no idea aliens could get pregnant and has the baby beamed out. The Klingon commander says "I can see my house from here!" on the holodeck and it's very poorly delivered. The Klingons warn Archer to never contact them agan (why? He fucking helped them!)

This episode was written by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, meaning it's their idea of what the show should have been. That is not encouraging. It actually gets off to a decent start with Trip's trip to the alien ship. There's an effort made to make the ship seem truly alien. Then a holodeck shows up. Then Trip gets pregant from putting his hand in a box (and Ah'Len claims it's just a "game" meaning she basically raped him) and the pregnancy jokes start....if it had actually been funny then maybe I could have accepted the stupidness. But it's not! It's bad! And somehow the male pregnancy isn't the worst part! The Klingon commander is even worse, played by some guy who isn't good at playing a Klingon, written by two guys who know nothing about Klingons accept the most boring cliches. It's bad! This is bad! And I think having an episode like this only four episodes in probably turned off a lot of viewers.

(It's worth noting that the CGI team created an entirely new 22nd century Klingon battle crusier for this episode, but the producers rejected it...because it didn't have enough windows. So they had to use a model created for DS9 instead, meaning the Klingons kept the exact same design for over two hundred years. THANKS BERMBRAGA. en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/D4_class_(concept) )

SCORE: 2/10


Terra Nova -The Enterprise is about to arrive at 'Terra Nova', a lost colony that has fascinated space boomer Travis his whole life. It tooks nine years for the earliest human colonists to reach the planet, but relations with Earth became strained when Earth wanted to send a second colony and after five years nobody heard from Terra Nova again. It's been seventy years an dht Enterprise is about to find out what happened. Wait, so if it took nine years to get there, how was Earth even able to contact it at all? Archer, Reed, T'Pol and Travis go down to investigate and find Terra Nova all dusty and empty. An alien (OR IS IT) runs into a cave and the away team goes after him. Reed is abducted after some boring cave action. The away team returns to the ship and T'Pol reveals the "aliens" are actually humans. Archer wants to make friends with them. Aracher and Phlox return to the planet and are allowed to see Reed. The leader of the Novans (who all talk in "sky ship!" type speech like aliens from TOS) doesn't trust the human scum. An old woman (one of the original colonists, but she claims to have been born there) claims the human dropped "poison rain" on them. Phlox tries to win their trust by treating the old woman's lung cancer. They take her back to the Enterprise to treat her.

Reed eats dinner with a cave boy. Some cave kids play music on shells. The Enterprise recovers the logs of the original colonists and find that they blamed Earth for destroying the colony. All the adults somehow died and the chldren survived (like 'Miri' but not as good!) and remembered that hatred of humans. Phlox reports that the Novans are all being poisoned by the filthy underground water. The Novans still don't trust Archer or believe that giant rocks can fall from the sky ("it's all shale!") and think the humans are alien invaders. Archer shows the old woman a photograph of herself as a little girl with her human parents. They still dont'buy it. T'Pol suggests knocking out the Novans with stun grenades and taking them somewhere else. Archer wants them to return to Earth by choice, but T'Pol thinks they wouldn't be suited to that. The southern hemisphere turns out to be safe to live on so the Novans could be moved there. The Novan leader doesn't want to to move. There's a convenient cave in when the shuttle returns to the surface. Archer and the Novan leader work together to save a cave kid who is trapped under a tree (and underground tree?) The old woman convinces the leader to move to the southern hemisphere. Travis says this mystery is much more interesting than the mystery of Amelia Earhart. I've seen that episode too and he's wrong. They promise to let Travis write the report on the mission, like he's some little kid they're letting sit on the Bridge.

This could have been good! We could have learned so much about the ninety years between First Contact and this series! We could have seen what a human colony separated from Earth for seven five years would be like. Instead we get almost a remake of that Voyager episode where Carey died. We get humans talking in silly made-up speech (but still English.) Like, I get that it's a colony started by children and the idea of them developing a sllightly different language is good, but they end up sounding like when South Park would do a parody of a TOS episode. Most of the episode is boring, the caves are boring, it's all pretty boring. I didn't like it. It, at least, had a story so it's better than the previous one, I guess?

SCORE: 2.5/10
 

Fuddlemiff

Is this real life?
Are you aware of Garrett Wang and Robert McNeil’s Delta Flyers podcast where they watch each Voyager episode and detail their memories?


Garrett Wang comes off as a bit of a diva (nothing’s ever good enough and he has the most long winded stories), while Robert claims to have completely forgotten filming the show. Erm, it’s better than I made it sound!
 

Eggs Mayonnaise

All In With The Nuts
OMG talking for an hour and they're only at the scene with Tom and Stadi in the shuttle I had to turn it off.
 

CaptainWacky

I want to smell dark matter
I don't know if I have time a really long-winded Voyager podcast right now...
 

Fuddlemiff

Is this real life?
I just have it on while I work. In the Caretaker part 2 one to avoid copyright infringement Garrett acts out a scene doing all the voices.

Robert McNeil’s a lot more interesting since he’s directed and produced shows at this point.
 

Eggs Mayonnaise

All In With The Nuts
I just have it on while I work. In the Caretaker part 2 one to avoid copyright infringement Garrett acts out a scene doing all the voices.

Robert McNeil’s a lot more interesting since he’s directed and produced shows at this point.
Agree. I also like how McNeil kind of sits there and lets Wang go on and on and on, seemingly amused at his babbling the way listeners might be. He is our surrogate.
 

CaptainWacky

I want to smell dark matter
Do they throw shade at Beltran?

(I've got loads of wrestling podcasts I'm commited to.)
 

Fuddlemiff

Is this real life?
They haven’t yet. The only real mention he’s had is that he’d keep quoting The Caretaker “does anyone wants some corn? CORN?” woman for 7 years.
 

CaptainWacky

I want to smell dark matter
The Andorian Incident - Archer wants to stop at P'Jem, a Vulcan monastery. Phlox figures out that T'Pol doesn't want to be seen with humans. He reminds her of the Vulcan IDIC and...I'm not sure how T'Pol feels. Tim Russ could play Tuvok in such a way that you'd know how he felt without showing much emotion, but Jolene Blalock always just seems pissed off as T'Pol. Archer, T'Pol and Trip go down to the monastery (T'Pol says it's 3,000 years old, meaning Vulcans have been in space a really long time.) A monk asks them to leave, but T'Pol spots a statue perched at an odd angle(!) and notices the monk acting weird. Archer and Trip find an Andorian hiding behind a screen and tackle him, but more armed Andorians show up and lock them up with a bunch of Vulcans. The Andorians look cool and have antenna that move by themself! Their leader, Shran, is played by the great Jeffrey Combs and he suspects Archer of working with the Vulcans. Then hits him in the stomach. Another Andron says he'll enjoy "having" T'Pol...as a prisoner and I think that was supposed to sound like a rape threat? In Star Trek! T'Pol and the other Vulcans explain that the Andorians are paranoid assholes who think the Vulcans are going to invade their homeworld and that they're hiding a sensor array in the monastery. They've searched it before but are now even more suspicious because of the humans arriving (the Vulcans come across as asshoels here, because it's Enterprise.) Shran beats up Archer and asks him why he has a Vulcan science officer. Reed contacts Archer and finds out what's going on. The Anderians want the Enterprise to leave but Reed won't go. The Vulcans talk about how smelly the humans are. Archer is worried Reed is about to send an armed landing part down but luckily there's secret passages underneath the room they're all locked up in, leading to catacombs where there's a radio they can use to call for help.

Trip makes his way through the tunnels, passing mummified Vulcans. He gets back before the Andorians check on them, which is lucky. Archer invites T'Pol tell share his blanket and she deos so despite his smell. They debate a non-violent response versus fighting back as self defence. Trip manages to radio Reed and warn him not to send the boys in. Trip reports to Archer that he saw three holes in a wall down in the tunnel and Archer thinks they might match up to the eye and mouth holes in a big Vulcan face in a wall they saw earlier. Arccher pretends he has information for Shran but just waffles on a load of crap while the Andorians beat him up. It's all a ruse so he can throw a stone through the big face, then Trip can go back into the tunnel and find the stone to confirm what they suspected. Err, couldn't Trip have just LOOKED through the holes? There's light on the other side! He'd have been able to see the room. Archer did this for nothing. Reed and his lads reluctantly use the transporter to sneak in. They had behind the big face. The rapey Andorian says he's heard Vulcan women force their men to fight to the death and offers to kill for her. Reed and his bros finally spring into action but Shran escapes to the catacombs. The Vulcan priest just yells at Archer for tyring to save them. A younger Vulcan wants to help Archer fight Shran (to "protect the relics") so at least there's some hints of Vulcan depth there. There's more shooting before Archer discovers a hidden Vulcan sensor array in the catacombs. Yep, the Andorians were right all along! The young Vulcan threatens to blow Archer's head off but Archer punches him out (aren't Vulcans super strong?) T'Pol looks shocked and disappointed by it all so credit to Blalock there. Archer gives Shran all the details they've scanned of the array and has T'Pol give the order that they're allowed to leave. Shran tells Archer he's in his debt.

The thing everyone remembers about this episode is the ending. There's a reason for that: it's a great ending that elevates the rest of the episode. Wihtout it, the Andorians would have just bene mindless thugs. Archer punching out the Vulcan is satisfying given how annoying the Enterprise Vulcans are. But the body of the episode is a mixed bag. There's good stuff, like Archer and T;Pol's interections. But I'm not a big fan at all of the Vulcans just being total assholes all the time and moaning about how smelly humans are. I don't mind them having a hidden spy array, that's obviously settting up future stories and I'm totally cool with that, but make the such one dimensional twats is wearing thin. Jeffrey Combs is great but doesn't get much to do here as Shran execpt beat up Archer and sneer at Vulcans. Even though the Andorians turn out to be in the right they're still treated as typical hostile alien assholes and one of them seems to be a rapist, so I can't say I like them as characters yet. And the whole bit with the big stone face is so dumb. But yeah, that ending!

SCORE: 7.5/10


Breaking The Ice - The Enterprise discovers a comet. Archer wants to take a closer look even though T'Pol thiks comets are boring. Trip offers her some pecan pie but she's distracted by a letter. The comet contains a rare element so Archer prepares to land a shuttle on it. Vulcan Captain Vanik shows up in his ship just then. He says he's here to "observe" the humans. Archer's sick of Vulcans babysitting but agrees to let Vanik watch. Trip and Hoshi discover that T'Pol has received an encrypted message. Archer is disappointed that T'Pol is secretly talking to Vulcans behind his back and has Hoshi decrypt the message. Archer records a message answering questions from schoolchildren back on Earth. The questions are pretty dull until someone asks about the toilet. Archer wants Trip to answer and he's annoyed at getting a "poop question." This all goes on a bit long but I do like the idea that children on Earth are interested in Enterprise's mission. Reed and Travis make a snowman on the comet. Hoshi gives the decrypted letter to Trip to read. Trip tells Archer it's a personal letter and he'd rather not tell him the contents. Trip is angry at himself for reading it and thinks he should tell T'Pol. She makes him feel worse.

Reed and Mayweather turn their snowman into a Vulcan. They blow it up to blow a hole in the ice. Archer, T'Pol and Trip have dinner with guest Vanik. Vanik doesn't eat because he's already eaten. The conversation does't go well as Vanik just wants to sit there not eating. Archer gets bored and asks why Vanik is spying on them. He doesn't really get an answer. T'Pol talks to Trip about her personal situation as he's the only one onboard who knows about it. Her arranged marriage is due to happen soon and she'll have to leave the Enterprise if she wants it to go ahead. Trip asks her to use logic to make a decision. He wonders if she previously postponed the wedding because subconsciously she wants out of it. Travis hurts his leg. The comet rotates and faces the sun and starts to crack under them. They try to take off but the shuttle falls through the ice. The Enterprise tries to fish them out with their grappling hook but drops the shuttle further into the comet. T'Pol points out that Vanik could save them with his tractor beam. Archer doesn't want his help but realises he must swallow his pride and ask the Vulcan (T'Pol says this will show Vanik that humans aren't as prideful as he thinks.) The Vulcans rescue the shuttle. T'Pol sends a message to the Vulcan ship, presumably cancelling her marriage, then eats some pecan pie in her quarters.

It's the best episode yet, I'd say. It's a pretty light episode but all the stories are done fairly well. T'Pol is probably the most successful and she's finally starting to feel like a character. There's another Vulcan asshole Captain, yes, but at least there's a point to it with Archer accepting that the Vulcans really can help them. This is probably overly generous but...

(EDIT: Knocked 0.5 off the score because I'm a dick.)

SCORE: 7.510
 
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CaptainWacky

I want to smell dark matter
Civilization - Captain Archer decides to visit an M-class planet that is home to an alien civilization. It's pre industrial, and T'Pol points out that it would be a bad idea to go down there and interfere with the natural evolution of the species (apparently Starfleet doesn't have any protocols on this stuff yet.) Archer comes up with the idea of disguising the away team as aliens. Phlox creates alien facial prosthetics and glues them to Hoshi. T'Pol discovers antimatter readings on the planet, technology the people shouldn't possess. Archer, Trip, T'Pol and Hoshi visit the city where the readings were detected. The track the readings down to a shop and break into it. A woman named Riann spots them breaking in and accuses them of being responsible for strange night time deliveries and people getting sick. T'Pol stuns her. Archer convinces Riann that he was just investigating the shop like she was, and she tells him about the evil shop owner Garos. Trip suggests getting one of the sick people to Enterprise for Phlox to look at but T'Pol points out how scary alien abduction is. Trip and Archer go to the shop and scan Garos, finding that he's also from another world (he does the same to them.) Garos explains that he's an explorer too and stayed on the planet because he fell in love with it, the anti matter device is just a replicator and he's not responsible for the sickness. He's obviously lying and evil. Archer goes to see Riann to get more information.

Riann is a science lady looking into the sickness, so T'Pol takes her research back to an impressed Phlox, who finds that the water has been contaminated by industrial equipment. Archer and Riann stake out the shop. His universal translator malfunctions so he kisses her to cover fixing it. Luckily she's totally fine with this. I think this is an attempt to make Archer seem like Kirk but it doesn't really work. They follow some crates out of the shop and witness them being carried up to an alien ship by tractor beam. Archer has a fist fight with a bad guy and finds he's wearing a rubber mask. He has to come clean with Riann. They find Garos' secret underground drilling operation (it's pretty substational) and its infected drills. Archer can't shut down the antimatter reactor with his phase pistol and has to shut down a force field so it can be beamed up. He and Riann have a debate over which button to press and accidentally hit the one that sends for bad guys. A bad guy ship arrives. Garos says he'll let Archer and Riann go free if they promise to leave him and his murderous project alone. Trip and T'Pol now have their routine "we're not leaving them behind!" argument and get into a fight with the alien ship. Archer and Riann have a phaser fight in the city with more bad guys (there's a lot of them.) The Enterprise beams up the antimatter reactor then beams it into space and blows it up in front of the alien ship to bring its shields down (T'Pol has battle skills!) Archer blows up a barrel to defeat Garos and runs him off world. Archer tells Riann that he doubts any other planet he visits will be this memorable (that's not promising for the rest of the series) and they kiss again before he leaves.

tt's a pretty dull planet to be the first inhabitated one Enterprise visits. It's as generic as they come, with Riann being the only actual alien who gets any lines She's a decent guest star, but the guy playing Garos is wooden. It's a reasonable action/adventure type episode with some decent background music (I think they're tyring to make the music a bit more interesting on Enterprise?) but there's really not much to say about it. It doesn't try to be anything other than "Archer beats some bad guys" and that isn't particularly interesting. But not bad either really.

SCORE: 5.5/10


Fortunate Son - An Earth cargo ship (it's the famous SPACE BOOMERS) is attacked by Nausicaans. Admiral Forest calls Archer on space radio (there's some static because it's a prequel!) and lets him now the cargo ship (the Fortunate) needs help. The Fortunate doesn't respond to Enterprise's hails so Archer, Reed, Travis and Phlox go over in a shuttle. Archer meets first officer Ryan who says he doesn't need any help and a younger crewmember sent out a distress call because he panicked. He does let Phlox look at the injured Captain, who will take several days to recover. Ryan agrees to let some engineers over and we discover that he has a Nausicaan prisoner tied up and hasn't told Archer. Travis shows Ryan around the Enterprise and we get some backstory about Travis: his father expected him to take over the cargo ship but he joined Starfleet instead. Ryan claims to be fine with the Fortunate's warp 1.8 engine. They eat food together (the Enterprise has real food while the cargo ships have shit.) Ryan's parents died on another ship. He gets angry at Travis trying to recruit him to Starfleet and accuses him of abandoning his family. T'Pol encounters some boomer children who are playing hide and seek and detects the Nausicaan on her scanner. Ryan admits that he's got a prisoner but Starfleet has no authority over him and he won't give the prisoner up. Archer threatens to have Trip unistall all his repairs to the Fortunate so Ryan agrees to let him see the Nausicaan. But Ryan outsmarts Archer and traps him, Phlox, T'Pol and Reed in a section of the Fortunate which he then releases into space. The Fortunate escapes at warp and the Enterprise can't chase because Archer and friends are running out of air.

Mayweather explains that Ryan is going after the Nausicaans who attack them for revenge. Ryan beats up his prisoner to get him to give the Nausicaan ship's shield frequencies. He wants to kill the prisoner but another crewmember thinks this is all a bad idea and doesn't want to kill anyone. Travis goes to Archer and sugests they should just let Ryan do what he's doing because it's not their place to interfere. Archer says all humans should follow a code of behaviour not to be driver by revenge. Travis is really easily won around by this one statement. The Fortunate finds the Nausicaans at an asteroid base, but the shield frequencies the prisoner gave them were fake and the Fortunate gets its ass kicked. Nausicaans board the Fortunate to rescue the prisoner. Ryan wants to fight them rather than give up the prisoner. The Enterprise arrives and asks the Nausicaans what's up. Archer offers to have the prisoner returned if the Nausicaans lets the Fortunate leave. He warns that there will soon be more NX starships and the Nausicaans better beware. Archer talks to Ryan who doesn't want to stop fighting. Travis makes a big speech saying that Ryan is putting all space boomers at risk of revenge attacks from the Nausicaans. Anthony Montgomery is not a very good actor. Ryan finally gives up the prisoner. The Fortunate's Captain recovers and has a scene with Archer talking about Ryan. He explains that the space boomers feel they have a "speecial claim" on space and it'll be hard for them to accept they aren't going alone anymore.

It's a pretty good episode as we finally learn some more about what it's been like for humans in space since First Contact times. Ryan has reasonable motives as the Nausicaans are pirates (it's not clear if they've ever killed humans though, but they certainly nearly killed the Captain) and it's understandable why he'd be annoyed by Starfleet showing up and telling him what to do. But also picking a fight with Nausicaans is dumb. The main probme here is Travis. He gets one scene where he shows a different point of view from Archer but gives up after Archer says one thing back to him. Montgomery's acting is okay when he's just casually talking to people but bad when he has to do the big speech at the end. Also it's disappointing the Nausicaans just talk like normal people and don't want to PLAY DOHM JOT with anyone.

SCORE: 7/10
 

SAUSAGEMAN

Registered User
Civilization - Captain Archer decides to visit an M-class planet that is home to an alien civilization. It's pre industrial, and T'Pol points out that it would be a bad idea to go down there and interfere with the natural evolution of the species (apparently Starfleet doesn't have any protocols on this stuff yet.)
You're just a few episodes away from the ~that directive~ speech!
"Someday my people are going to come up with some sort of a doctrine, something that tells us what we can and can't do out here, should and shouldn't do. But until somebody tells me that they've drafted that directive I'm going to have to remind myself every day that we didn't come out here to play God."
 
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