posted
Mmm.. Fun episode, and one that effectively deals with the notion of retrieving gadgets accidentally left behind - something poorly handled in TOS "A Piece of the Action". Point form notes follow:
-How human - Reed can blow stuff up with pinpoint accuracy, but he can't keep track of a cellphone.
-Didn't catch the aliens' names this time either. Were they mentioned?
-I'm confused about decon... Why is it so far away from the shuttlebay, which is the typical entry vector for dengerous pathogens? Ideally, shouldn't a decon room be adjacent to a shuttlebay, such that personel can move to it without danger of contamination of anyone in between? Ditto for their transporter bay, I guess. With a starship being such a closed system, there should've been a wee bit more thought put into that, even from the set designers. OTOH, returning NASA astronauts in the 60s were picked up in an open chopper and then walked to a quarantine chamber some distance away.
-The locals think Hoshi is hot! Finally, someone makes an innuendo and it has nothing to do with T'Pol. Interesting that the planet's bar looks so much like... a bar, though.
-Production values on this alien planet are so good, it's not even funny. Alien weapons this time are projectile-based, and look it. We even see some jet fighters later on, firing machine guns. The FX guys really get to flex some muscle here!
-Our heroes this week clearly wear prothetics - and the aliens conclude that they're "surgically altered". I'd hate to see their science fiction movies.
-The Suliban cell ship Trip uses to save the day is the same one they got back in "Broken Bow". Trip's been working on it in his "spare time". I'm quite surprised that they hadn't taken it apart piece by piece, or sent it back to Earth for a much more thorough analysis.
-The cell ship opens more than just its docking hatch: the whole front third opens up on a hinge. Strange we've not seen this feature before, but I guess it makes sense. Actually, the opening thing is more of an excuse to show that a cell ship is really a lot bigger than what we'd originally thought... There's apparently a lot of space in front of the pilot's seat, enough for up to five people total in a pinch. Yes, it's obviously a production gaffe.
-The Suliban cloak seems to function on an entirely different concept than the light-benders we're familiar with. It involves some sort of quantum alteration field which is transmissible; Trip is accidentally cloaked when trying to figure out how the thing works, and goes for the rest of the episode with parts of his arm and sleeve invisible. They're still there though, and he can hold stuff with the vanished hand.
-More agonizing over what will eventually become the Prime Directive. This time, it's about the decision to sacrifice lives to prevent cultural contamination, and how right it is despite how much it sucks. These guys are pre-atomic, so it's decided that they wouldn't be able to handle First Contact like Earth did.
-The climatic fight scene is obviously to demonstrate just how cool 22nd century technology is compared to stuff that's pretty close to our own. None of the rescue party gets hit by the projectile weapons, while the stun setting is pretty effectively used. Still, it's interesting to note that even the pistole shape can't fix some Trek actors' propensity to aim high.
capped
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posted
i gotta say, based on the desriptions (and some fans' "this is a bastardization of Piece of the Action" howls and complaints).. that its clear this ep sounds better than it did when i read its first premise.
if anything, those continuity-kids should be reminded that, this ENT episode was a well rounded tale it seems, while the TOS left-behind-communicator concept was a poor ending, thematically, to a lame episode.
BTW, has anyone read 'A Piece of Reaction' it was a TNG story published in Marvel's Trek Unlimited series.. it centered around the 1701-E finding a Federation starbase on the surface of Iotia, staffed with officers dressed in 60s hairdos and TOS uniforms. (they got the technology by reverse engineering the communicator) The guy who was leading them was the kid who Kirk promised a piece of the action to... this story was based on the Shane Johnson 'Worlds of the Federation' entry
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The Suliban cell ship Trip uses to save the day is the same one they got back in "Broken Bow". Trip's been working on it in his "spare time". I'm quite surprised that they hadn't taken it apart piece by piece, or sent it back to Earth for a much more thorough analysis.
I'm generally quite forgiving of Enterprise oddities, but this one bothers me. He's just been tinkering with it? A tiny craft which, times 30ish, has the ability to pursue and take down Earth's finest? This itty-bitty thing has warp drive (evidently with excellent speed and range for the time), a cloaking device, good sensors, and mad-crazy docking capabilities.
And all he did was tinker? C'mon, Travis figured out how to operate the damn thing in the premiere. Trip's new goal in life should've been to figure out how to make more.
(BTW, am I the only one who finds these cell ships to be a bit too capable for the time period?)
quote:-The Suliban cloak seems to function on an entirely different concept than the light-benders we're familiar with.
Which is odd, given the utility of the positron beacon thingy against Romulan cloaks, as well. Perhaps they'll try to explain away all the 22nd Century cloaking devices as merely old, crappy-tech cloaking devices (which happen to work just as well as the others).
quote:Trip is accidentally cloaked when trying to figure out how the thing works, and goes for the rest of the episode with parts of his arm and sleeve invisible. They're still there though, and he can hold stuff with the vanished hand.
Though many are annoyed at the wanton sexuality in Enterprise, I think we can all agree that the potential for a dirty joke here was too good to have been passed up.
"No, T'Pol, I didn't grab your enormous breasts. Did you see my hand anywhere near your enormous breasts?"
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quote: (BTW, am I the only one who finds these cell ships to be a bit too capable for the time period?)
Uh, that the Suliban have access to technology far in advance of anything any local Alpha/Beta powers have is a Rather Important Plot Point.
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The Suliban cell ship Trip uses to save the day is the same one they got back in "Broken Bow". Trip's been working on it in his "spare time". I'm quite surprised that they hadn't taken it apart piece by piece, or sent it back to Earth for a much more thorough analysis.
Sent it back to Earth how? This isn't TNG where there are always passing starships to offload cargo/passengers onto. Has the Enterprise met up with any vessels heading to Earth?
The only way of sending the cell ship back to Earth would be ask the Vulcans to take it. Wanna bet that Archer doesn't trust the Vulcans not to 'carry out a complete study using the more advanced facilities on Vulcan' ?
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Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
That's what I'm saying. Given al the fun they had in the pilot episode, the lack of phase cannons, and the scrape Trip still had to paint over, you'd think that the first thing they'd do is head home and start off the way they wanted to. Granted, they could have decided to (and did) finish off the cannons, Trip didn't care about the paint job, and Hoshi didn't care about going back to that university... But Earth was allegedly only four days away! What's wrong with a pop & drop, at the very least?
posted
^Yeah, and even I'm getting tired about cracking jokes about how the ship refuses to go back to Earth. I'm thinking that all the senior officers did something really bad before they left, say Malcolm "I swore she told me she was 18", Tripp "I didn't steal that car, just took it to examine it thurroughly at my home", Archer "it wasn't me in those S&M dominatrix movies, honest, I don't like being hit".
Or maybe the ship is Earth's first interstellar penial colony. I bet you everyone onboard's got a degree in hair styling and accounting.
Anyhoo, tech bits. Couldn't ID the pistols, but the rifles were all pretty obvious. MP5s with integrated silencer painted silver and non-adjustable stock, with them less common drum magazines. I assume these aliens are typically strong or in good shape or stupid something, carrying that much ammo around makes the submachine gun clumsy and unwieldly. None of them packed a spare mag though, so that could explain it.
The alien aircraft was really interesting. They had "aerodynamically unstable" written all over them, so I'm thinking FBW. I think they were jets, too. They seem to be aware of computers, and definately a developed use of radar, which is also interesting, since this would be significant technological maturity while being pre-atomic. I think I saw missiles on their fighters, but I'm not sure. Certainly, none of our pre-atomic aircraft could have attacked the pod ship like that.
Projectile weapons = action hero syndrome. If those guns were anywhere near a MP5, and if those officers were even remotely competent, Archer and co would have been dead. I mean, being numerically superior, they could have pinned the Enterprise crew down with sheer volume of fire until even more of their people arrived.
Enterprise Sensor(TM)! Out performs 23rd Century counterparts 9 times out of 10! Get yours in the 22nd Century, today!
Polarizing the hull plating apparently doesn't make the hull simply harder, either. It adds a stealth characteristic to radar. Right.
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quote:Originally posted by David Templar: penial colony
quote:Polarizing the hull plating apparently doesn't make the hull simply harder, either. It adds a stealth characteristic to radar. Right.
I thought they polarized the plating not so much because it would give them stealth but because it would give them protection from fire in case they met with military aircraft---which they did.
-MMoM
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posted
I haven't seen the episode, but radar reflection hardly seems to be an unreasonable side effect of hull polarization.
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Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I just don't get how this Suliban cloaking device works.
It puts out an invisibility rendering radiation? So it's not like a force field that "bends" light and only "can" make stuff invisible within its field? Given what happened to Trip's arm, how come the people inside the ship don't become invisible as well?
^granted that would make piloting the ship really hard, you can't even tell where yourself and the panels are.
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -Our heroes this week clearly wear prothetics - and the aliens conclude that they're "surgically altered". I'd hate to see their science fiction movies.
Um... I think that the aliens-of-the-week's comment was expressing their assumption that the smooth heads *under* the prosthetics were the results of surgical alteration.
BTW, has anyone read 'A Piece of Reaction' it was a TNG story published in Marvel's Trek Unlimited series.. it centered around the 1701-E finding a Federation starbase on the surface of Iotia, staffed with officers dressed in 60s hairdos and TOS uniforms. (they got the technology by reverse engineering the communicator) The guy who was leading them was the kid who Kirk promised a piece of the action to... this story was based on the Shane Johnson 'Worlds of the Federation' entry
Wasn't that one of the original proposals for DS9's anniversay episode, before they decided on Trials and Tribble-ations?
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [QUOTE] Perhaps they'll try to explain away all the 22nd Century cloaking devices as merely old, crappy-tech cloaking devices (which happen to work just as well as the others).
Only because the sensors are less advanced. No-one's complaining that DS9 cloaks don't seem to be more advanced than the cloaks from "The Enterprise Incident".
The stance of Okuda and co has always been that improvements in sensors are met with improvements in cloaks, and vice-versa. The Enterprise-E could probably see through these 22nd century cloaks.
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posted
I wouldn't necessarily bet on that, though, since it is possible the Suliban cloak is four or five hundred years more advanced than the Enterprise E's sensors.
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