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A fun adventure epiode tonight, showcasing a usual lack of depth in the A plot combined with some entertaining secondary aspects - and quite a bit of tech. No, it's not "The Perfect Mate"... Or is it? Or perhaps will it be? Read on...
-Tucker is seen fake-playing a harmonica in his quarters when they drop out of warp ("fake" meaning they poorly looped the actor's air-monica playing). Anyway, his quarters are the same set as the Captain's, complete with window. So T'Pol doesn't get a window, and she's the first officer? Trip's quarters include an old brass diving helmet, BTW. Odd, since he doesn't seem the nautical type.
-The freighter guys are Retellians. When they first meet, Archer heartily extends his hand for a shake, which he recieves from both of 'em. One wonders how common a handshake is out in the universe, anyway...
-The freighter looks like the ECS Fortunate in general, with a split central hull, outboard cargo pods, and underslung warp nacelles. It's a completely different model, but the similarities are rather striking.
-Sure, NOW Enterprise has guest quarters. We remember back from the first season that they had none, and Hoshi had to move out to accomodate a guest. Did the Evil Repair Station from "Dead Stop" give them more than they'd asked for? Or are we slyly acknowledging the reduced crew count we've been complaining about all season?
-Enterprise is four days away from the freighter's destination at warp 4.5. They say it's five months for them at 2.2, their top speed. When the ship takes off with the kidnapped babe-in-pod and Tucker, they spray a combination of materials at Enterprise, fouling their sensors.
-The babe-containing stasis pod looks like the ones used on Voyager, painted red and with a different lid. Surprise, surprise.
-Even more surprises - icy-babe is the monarch of Krios Prime, spots and all! There's an obvious link to the later use of stasis in "The Perfect Mate" here somewhere... Gonna have to think about that one for a bit.
-Eventually, Tucker and icy-babe eject from their captor's ship in a one-person escape pod. There's some subtle, but probably accurate, dialogue about leaving the ship's warp field, and crossing the subspace threshold.
-I believe it's the communicators that have a mini universal translator built in... Here, we see that a communicator can slip into a peripheral device that makes it able to translate and interact with technology - possibly allowing a user to program it, since in "Broken Bow" (et. al.?) they apparently had to be pre-loaded with whatever language they were using on Rigel. Has Hoshi been seen using it before?
-The kidnapper group leaves one of their own behind on Enterprise when escaping. Archer and T'Pol play a really funny "good cop / bad cop" routine on him to get info out... They use the mess hall set to thie effect, stripping it down save for a table and chair. It's unknown if this is the actual mess hall set or some other room, since we've not seen the room used as anything else except the movie theatre, which is probably the same room anyway.
-Tucker ultimately lands his pod in a flurry of cool special effects. Interestingly enough, the pod's artificial gravity keeps them correctly oriented during the descent, but once they land it unceremoniously cuts out, dumping them into normal gravity. Points for consistency, though!
-Not really tech, but following the "T'Pol commands us to have sex!" plot arc that culminated with Tucker NOT getting any in "Two Days and Two Nights", he finally enjoys some hot Blue Lagoon action. How long?
-At the end, icy-babe is picked up by a Kriosian battlecruiser, which is really the Lokirrim warship from VOY "Body and Soul" and company. It docks by rolling 90 degrees and attaching at its dorsal side. Wierd!
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The freighter looks like the ECS Fortunate in general, with a split central hull, outboard cargo pods, and underslung warp nacelles. It's a completely different model, but the similarities are rather striking.
That same general layout was also used for the Babylon 5 freighters and for the oh-so-fun-to-blow-up freighters of the old X-Wing computer games. I suppose there aren't that many ways of designing a non-threatening bulky ship. *shrug* If it ain't broke...
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I really wish the producers had stopped to think about the fact that slower travel in the early years means a slower pace, and less action-driven scenes. I was surprised that that freighter made it out of sensor range (at WARP TWO) in less than thirty seconds. At that speed and duration, the ship would make it no further than 72,070,015 kilometers -- not even one astronomical unit! And then later, Archer comments that the ship could have made it "a half-dozen light years." Um... I doubt that this episode takes place over more than 250 days...
Then, Trip mourns about his old car -- a four-wheeled vehicle. But as Voyager mentioned a few times that wheeled vehicles went out of fashion before 2050... Nitpicking, yeah... but isn't that what this forum is about?
Oh, and the Lokirrim warship was originally used as a tiny Akritiri fighter in "The Chute" way back in Voyager's third season.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Right. Because the plot-device drive (that among other things has allowed a bigass grade-"a"-TNG-plot-advancement nebula to be literally 30 seconds away from a random spot in interstellar space) won't be invented for another 200 years.
Oh, and not to counternitpick to excess, but one could say the horse went out of fashion as a transportation tool 100 years ago. Doesn't prevent people from owning and using one today.
The Kriosian thing is rather cool, though. There's a followup just begging to be had later on in the series when the Klingon Empire drops in on Krios and disrupts the taping of cable cooking shows in the name of expanding the Empire.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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I couldn't watch this episode for more than twenty minutes before I changed it to TNG, which is on at the same time. I won't go into how bad I thought this ep was here; suffice it to say that for S&T purposes, all I'll say right now is that it's too bad that the Retellian freighter was an alien-of-the-week design. It would have made a perfect J-Class freighter Horizon, for a Mayweather episode. Ah, well.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: It would have made a perfect J-Class freighter
I think PsyLiam will appreciate hearing that.
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
Registered: Mar 2000
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I can't believe you didn't LIKE this episode, Dukkie! I thought it was pretty good. I absolutely loved the whole Archer-and-T'Pol-try-to-intimidate-the-prisoner thing! Classic!
Nobody mentioned the nice TOS name-dropping. The alien guy mentioned an Ardanan shuttle near the beginnning. (Ardana being the planet from "The Cloud Minders" [TOS].)
posted
In 'A Piece of the Action' - Kirk seemed amazed at the presence of "wheels, Mr. Spock!" on the 'fliver'. I realize that is some time in Enterprise's future - but at least Kirk is still familiar with the concept.
-------------------- 'One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.' - Lazarus Long
Registered: Feb 2001
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Question: What was the gunk that the freighter spewed at the NX-01 in this episode? Because in the rerun of BOBW tonight, the Paulson Nebula was made partially of dilithium hydroxyls. Was that the same stuff in "Precious Cargo"?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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