posted
Quickie notes tonight.. As luck would have it, "Enterprise" is going to be showing opposite "24" this year, and I happen to consider the latter show worth wathing as it airs. So schmoo on that. Good choice, as this week was a fairly boring fluff episode with obvious lendings from "The Seven Samurai" and a bunch of "A-Team" episodes. The lack of significant depth this season continues to grate on me.
-The planet this week is an arid place, and as such we get to see the gang in their desert outfits again. T'Pol comes along when they land, so she gets to be seen in ANOTHER skin-tight outfit. An awful white number this time. Sigh.. PLEASE, let's see T'Pol in some REAL CLOTHES!! Actresses can look just as sexy, if not more so, in LESS FORM-FITTING OUTFITS!
-We're at a deuterium fueling station today. A Kretassan merchant (they must've become all nice-like since "Sickbay") told them where it was. Enterprise is short on fuel, having lost most of it a few weeks ago ("Dead Stop"). All they wanted was a few hundred liters regardless.
-Um, which Pod was lost in "Desert Crossing", if any? Pod 1 was used for the descent. The pod is designed for 1/4 impulse, but Trip contends that he can squeeze a lil' more out of her.
-The auto-suture staplegun that was seen in "Sickbay" is apparently a very expensive piece of equipment, according to the bumpies of the week. Phlox is still happy to give 'em one anyway.
-Archer: "Deuterium is a highly-valuable commodity". Th'hell?! One wonders how the bumpies are making the stuff, and why they can't just set up shop on a more watery world to do so a heck of a lot easier. As it stands, the stuff this time seems an awful lot like oil.
-Enterprise's sensors can make out a dozen Klingons on the incoming ship when it shows up. Is this a hiccup? We really haven't established the limits of certain aspects of 22nd century tech, but being able to scan specific lifesigns on a ship that just dropped out of warp feels awfully TNG to me. Strangely enough, the Klingons don't seem capable of returning the
-New Klingon ship this week! It's a frieghter, looks REALLY Vor'Cha, and sports a bunch of deuterium tanks slung underneath. They also have transporter technology, and use it freely to beam themselves up and down. They're still no match for Enterprise.
-If deuterium is do valuable, couldn't the bumpies trade some of it for some decent protecttion? Mercenaries, good sensors, maybe a ground-based artillery that can shoot down their freighter?
-The bumpies' weapons include a smattering of stock prop guns, including a Bajoran phaser rifle, a TR-116/Breen rifle (!), possibly a Kazon gun and others. All of them are suitably dirtified.
-Hoshi is cute when she's shooting things. T'pol is not as cute as a Vulcan martial arts teacher, and one wonders why she doesn't change our of her near-transparent white outfit when on Enterprise. Travis at least bothers to strip down to a thin white undershirt.
-Vulcans are familiar with the bat'leth and mek'leth, the latter of which is described as a "two-proned dagger". I do believe Worf would feel insulted. The Klingons use bulkier disruptor pistols at least. Reed gets to use his plasma rifle.
-As part of the "let's ditch the Klingons" plan, Archer gets the bumpies to move their whole town fifty meters away. Oddly enough, the Klingons still manage to beam down in EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE in town! How did they know to do this without realizing the town had moved?
-Continuing on the T'pol thing, she looks WAY better in the more conventional outfit she adopts to blend in with the bumpies as she literally kicks Klingon ass.
Mark
[ October 30, 2002, 09:16: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
posted
Without checking the credits, I'll bet twenty dollars that this is a Brannon Braga script. Who else would there be to continue the much-hated "Demon" conspiracy?
Damn, this is giving me awful flashbacks to "Voyager." Deuterium ore, deuterium at 500�K... I thought they were going to be paying more attention to science? Isn't Andre Bormanis (supposedly a science expert) still on the writing staff?
And why the hell are they running out of deuterium, but not antimatter -- or even that classic TOS staple, dilithium? This may be one more clue for me that the writers are really out to lunch...
-------------------- “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
| IP: Logged
posted
Andre Bormanis is a fucking moron. Star Trek would do better having my mom as science advisor than him. He's the guy who basically said that since "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" screwed up science so badly, so can Enterprise.
As for the Klingons, yet again this once (or will be?) proud Star Trek race has been reduced to cardboard thugs even worse than their depiction in TOS. And the fact that they clearly have superior technology to everyone else while acting like a bunch of savages is just ridiculous.
-------------------- "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
| IP: Logged
posted
I haven't seen it yet, of course, but while I enjoy getting my hate on as much as the next guy, there is enough of a difference between the hydrogen you find floating around in an atmosphere (or an ocean) and the kind you would need to top off your engine to make processing it a worthwhile enterprise.
And though I would agree that Voyager never quite addressed the issue in a really satisfying way, refueling should be, for any show about a lone ship far from home, an interesting topic. Consider: how did Earth plan on refueling Enterprise in the original mission plan? Waiting for deuterium/antideuterium tankers to arrive and preselected positions way out in deep space hardly sounds likely. (Why bother with the Enterprise at all in that case?) And trusting the Vulcans to do it can't be the most desirable option. We don't know how much fuel Enterprise carries, but it would appear to be a smaller amount than a similarly sized ship of the Federation. So having the ship come back when it was half empty (or less than that, since you'd have to leave a safety margain) would severely limit her range. (Just taking this episode as a guide, the ship would have had to turn around sometime after "Sleeping Dogs.")
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Refining deuterium? It's an atom! It's either deuterium or it's not. And I see no reason why it shouldn't be a simple matter to get any other molecules or atoms out of a collection -- hell, we can do that today! And deuterium fields? Jeez, that makes no sense...
I noticed a Bajoran phaser rifle in the "planning session" scene. Nice to know that Paramount is still amortizing the costs of those old props...
Those pulse rifles seemed to be built from some of the "First Contact" models. But I couldn't tell if they were supposed to be the NX-01's inventory or the natives' stock.
Also, it's a bit interesting to see that holographic target used in the armory again. (And my Dad joked "Use the Force, Luke" during that scene.)
The mek'leth is a dagger? Bah -- someone wasn't reading the Encyclopedia close enough!
Shifting the village 50 meters... now, I suppose it makes sense that the Klingon freighter wasn't top-of-the-line technology. But the transporter sensors MUST have noticed that either the village or the terrain had moved!
Either those weapons were awfully inaccurate, or else the people were lousy shots. I can't believe that the people simply couldn't just shoot them all.
I noticed that the Klingons' disruptor pistols looked rather similar to the TOS models from "Errand of Mercy."
I can accept that the Klingon ship was a freighter and didn't have great systems... but I can't believe that any of their ships would really be unarmed. Wouldn't they at least have turned the village into a smoking crater after they left as revenge?
-------------------- “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
| IP: Logged
posted
If I'm going to be burning deuterium, I'm going to want to be burning only deuterium, which means I need to first seperate the hydrogen from whatever medium it is in, and then I need to sort out my isotope of choice.
Look, like I said, I haven't seen the episode in question. Of course you don't mine the stuff. But you can't just pull up to Jupiter and top off your tank. (Or rather, you can, but you need the capacity to do what I just mentioned to the stuff you bring in.)
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Someone should reprimand Tucker for leaving the shuttlepod door wide open...twice...
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
"Wow! We're trapped by a ring of fire. Ship, why don't you just transport us a couple meters to the right, let's just pick up our batleth and tear these insolent miners a new hole!"
Registered: Mar 2001
| IP: Logged
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
