Comment Stream

Re: ENT S2: First Flight

Great episode. I agree with what Yanks said above. Loved it. Three great ones in a row, after a whole bunch of duds. Nice to see.

Re: ENT S4: Terra Prime

So no one else thought that Hoshi rocked as substitute captain? I thought she was looking exactly like a captaincy was in her future. She shut down that political guy with no trouble at all.

Re: ENT S2: Cogenitor

Did no one else but me think that the way Katsulas said, "Consider what I've said" had a slightly menacing undertone? Even though it was not backed up by the script?

Re: ENT S2: Cogenitor

Over 10 years of comments! That's what I call a successful episode. Not perfect, but successful.

I'm not going to weigh in on what Archer or Tucker or the Vissians should have done, or even on possible failings in the script. I want to talk about a larger issue which doesn't seem to have been mentioned (though I've only read maybe half of the hundreds of comments).

Remember how this show literally did not have "Star Trek" in its name for the first couple of seasons? And how many people said they hated it because "it wasn't really Star Trek"? I think those things are a result of a very ambitious, perhaps foolish choice the producers of this series made. They decided to make a show about how the Star Trek universe we learned to love came into being. Many of the commenters are forgetting the established parameters of the Enterprise time period: There is NO prime directive at this time. There is NO Federation at this time, only a rather weak Starfleet. The humans have ONE reliable ally, Vulcan, which basically considers them unpredictable children.

Clearly the producers' intention was to show humanity's progress toward the Federation with its prime directive and dominant position in the quadrant. But that progress must begin with a human society that is essentially ours today, with all the vices and confusion that entails. Considering this, I don't think it's entirely fair to judge an individual episode by itself. In order for the progress to occur, there have to be situations where good intentions (but lack of experience and naivete) bring terribly bad consequences. The one thing we should clearly see is that each time this happens, the humans understand what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

Of course, yes, the episode should be as good as possible on its own, but it's intended to fit into a larger arc. My question, as I watch this series for the first time, is whether that larger arc is successful. We know that at the end the Federation will be formed and a prime directive will be articulated, but will I be satisfied with the way the series gets me there? I have two more seasons to go, so I can't answer that yet, but so far I would say yes.

There are major problems with the series in the writing and the acting (not to mention all the excessively human-looking aliens), but I think the biggest problem is the job it sets itself. Watching the first human explorers make mistake after mistake isn't inspiring. Choosing to tell a story like this required, IMHO, the highest quality writing, and that's far from what we get. Still, they clearly are trying, at least in general. Personally, I dislike almost all the characters except Phlox and Hoshi, but I can see slow character growth in Archer and T'pol. So far, all the others without exception have been presented one-dimensionally.

All I'm trying to say is that I've enjoyed the series more than I expected so far, and understanding the difficulty of their vision has helped with that.

Re: ENT S2: Horizon

Jeff probably won't see this 10 years later, but this is the first time for me watching Enterprise, so it's fresh for me. Somewhere I saw an interview with Montgomery in which he said he had no vision for the character of Travis, no conception of where he wanted him to go. To me that goes a long way toward explaining why his performance was so poor. HE didn't know who the guy was either. If he had, the poor scripts wouldn't have been quite so noticeable.

Re: ENT S2: Future Tense

For those who mused about the "bigger inside" capsule - the script for this episode literally says in a comment, "Let's start calling it a Tardis, shall we?" and refers to it that way from then on.

Re: ENT S2: Stigma

I wonder how many of the commenters are women. There seems to be a great lack of understanding about why T'pol didn't want to discuss her mind-meld situation. I read it as being exactly like what a human woman often feels: shame at being violated. And for those who say, "Well she consented at first," what she actually did was submit to rather strong persuasion, and then said No after a couple of minutes, whereupon the guy forced her. That is certainly rape.

Some people also keep forgetting that Vulcans DO have emotions, and developed the adherence to Logic Over All because their emotions were so violent that they actually got in the way of having a decent society. It's to be expected that many of them would have less than perfect control over their emotions even now, even with logic training that started in early childhood and lasted the rest of their lives. I do think Enterprise goes too far with the negative side of Vulcan personalities, but it's useful to acknowledge that they're not all Spock-level saints.

I found the B plot juvenile and overacted, as almost all Trek sex/seduction scenes are. This one reminded me of the Riker sex slave episode.

Re: ENT S2: The Catwalk

Teo - about the alien captain reading the log: It seems quite likely to me that Archer hadn't yet recorded a log for the incident. Remember the first 3 aliens only gave them 4 hours warning of the storm. Archer and the crew were pretty busy after that.

Re: ENT S1: Fallen Hero

Jason R - "So the criminal gangsters thought V'Lar was dead after shooting up the medical pod (allegedly containing her body) and in an act of Ferengi like stupidity neglect to check the pod. Then ambassador dumbass waltzes in to show them she's alive and nya nya nya to them in their faces. Except the joke's on her because in two months she has to return to their world to testify in open court. Hey um ambassador don't you think the bad guys thinking you were dead would have been kind of sort of massively useful?"

I thought this for a moment too. Then I considered, maybe in thinking ahead to the trial (which she mentions) she decided they should have eyewitness proof that she didn't get killed.

Or it could be, once again, lazy writing.