Archer seems really quick to shoot down T'Pol's suggestions about attempting to make contact. I mean, if it takes 1/2 an hour to prep a shuttle, didn't they have enough time to try the "Theta" frequency?
I like the armory ... especially how the torpedoes are loaded. The ladder at the rear of the set to the upper level -- homage to the TOS Engineering set?
I also like the doors to sickbay. I don't think I saw them in the first episode. And if I did, I didn't pay enough attention to them ::shrug::
Nit: At the beginning of the 2nd Act, Archer and Tucker are walking down a corridor. They turn left onto a side corridor, then a right onto a larger corridor. They then make another right into a corridor, then another right. In other words, they walk in a big circle and head back the same way they come from.
[ October 03, 2001: Message edited by: Malnurtured Snay ]
I concur with the torpedo/armory set. It reminds me a lot of the torpedo rooms on submarines (I watch way too much TLC and Discovery). The arrangement is good, I like the main control panel being positioned between the two tubes. Archer really did make quick work of those stairs, huh?
I like that this episode is fleshing out more of the characters, though. Dr. Phlox needs some help, though. He's still coming off a bit as a Neelix clone with an MD. I think the writers could effectively show his enthusiasm with humanity while at the same time toning it down a notch. The mess hall sequence was a nice exchange between Phlox and Tucker. Both are explorers, but only one is actually getting to explore.
T'Pol really does come across as a damp rag. She's the ship's killjoy to be sure, and you could still the tension between her and Archer when he was insisting on boarding the alien ship. Nice to see that they didn't immediately get buddy-buddy after "Broken Bow." Along with that tension, I think Archer is also developing in that he realizes that T'Pol is his grounding influence. After all, he agrees with her decision to leave the alien ship after finding the dead bodies.
Hoshi Sato is getting a fairly decent workout in the character development department in this episode. However, some of the "I'm afraid of space" is over the top. On the plus side, though, watching her talk about her fears with Phlox is nice in that she is being fleshed and growing. She definitely has mixed emotions about being out in space. It was good to see that come out as well in her conversation with Phlox.
I didn't really care a whole lot for this episode. I think the way the crew got out of the prediciment ... well, sucked ... it was almost too easy, although it was nice for Sato to realize her "purpose" (so to speak).
[ October 03, 2001: Message edited by: Malnurtured Snay ]
Phlox definitely got better after the mess hall scene. His character was pretty professional when he was working on the dead Axanar on the ship. I really liked the interchange between him and Sato in Sickbay, though. Brought out something good in both of the characters.
I think Linda Park did a pretty good handling this episode. There were a couple of points that were over the top. Talking with Archer in his quarters (or ready room?) was one of them. I think the EVA suit dressing room was the other. However, everything else about her I think worked better. I liked the frustration she showed with herself after freaking out on the Axanar vessel. I liked her fear on the bridge and with communicating with the Axanar. I think that worked pretty well.
I think the the Archer/T'Pol/Tucker interplay is slowly beginning to take shape. For a moment, Archer seemed really ticked off at the both of them. However, he seemed to take off of both of their personalities and reactions to the situation the impetus he needed to decide to go back and figure out what the right thing to do was.
It looks like Mayweather and Reed are going to have a close friendship that akin to the one Bashir and O'Brien had in Deep Space Nine. They were both working on the targetting scanners together, and the interchange between them reminding of that. Reed needs some development, I hope he gets an episode pretty soon. In this one, he came across as someone who just wants to "blow shit up." There has got to be more to him than arming the teams with rifles and using microexplosives to break into ships.
- torpedoes: nice loading sequence, reminds me of "The Undiscovered Country"; more like a missile than a torpedo, though, configuration reminds me of a miniture version of the NMD interceptor (they even mentioned IR targeting!), looks like old style reaction drive, rather slow, explosion looks like conventional warhead (nuke blasts are generally more uniformed), not quite sure what the guidence is (active, semi-active, continuous datalink with ship, dumb, whatever), but there is a self destruction function
- Vulcans: I dunno, they seems a little TOO stuck up, were Vulcans really that irrational? you'd think they would have assisted or at least investigated disabled vessels, and explored a lot more than what T'Pol indicated
- "pulse rifles": I can hear the hardcore B5 guys laughing, I thought the bolts fired in the "Broken Bow" looked remarkably like PPG fire; the little sequence with Archer demonstrating how you can pull the battery out of a phase pistol reminded me of pulling the power tap on a PPG
- Archer: he's being kinda rash, you would have thought he would at least try all the comm options before going over there
- Hoshi: the Reg Barkley of 22nd Century, same question as back in TNG: "How did she make it through Starfleet?"
- when the Enterprise engaged the enemy ship, it felt like it was just to show off the new torpedoes; they could have opened up with their energy battery when the torpedoes failed, but instead they chose to rely on something unreliable, I doubt that single successful shot at the end did much damage in anycase
- "sluggy": I thought they were going to find a nice Argon rich environment for it, so why was Hoshi and the Doctor Z not in EVA suits?
I liked the shuttle docking sequence, too. That really is a fragile and painstaking process. I guess the new Enterprise definitely wasn't designed to be a warship (taking this into account as well as the limited weapons).
I think we already know the answer behind how Sato got through training school. As she said to Archer, she bit her lip and just got through what was needed to pass the training. I also noticed that she said her Starfleet training took only three years. Plus, since she's in the communications department, she probably wasn't subjected to everything else that Archer got in command training. As she said earlier too, she wasn't trained to deal with dead people hanging on hooks.
I'm not sure about the atmosphere, but if the atmosphere had a proper content of oxygen, I suppose that humanoids could spend a limited amount of time in an argon-based atmosphere without a spacesuit. Sluggo's problem could also have been related to being in captivity and not out in the wild. Of course, one has to wonder about the effects of placing an extraterrestrial slug in a completely foreign environment. I'm having flashbacks of the Simpsons episode with the American frog being unleashed on Australia.
Am i right or do i look stupid (i havent done science since high school.. its not a requirement for art majors)
I loved the torpedo room. However, Reed is gonna need a charactor work out. I even commented to my bro while watching this episode that all Reed seemed to want to do is blow stuff up.
The Tucker/Phlox exchange was.....interesting. I don't think that that one couple would be willing to have Phlox watch them while they are having sex though. What a shame. 
I guess that's it for me. BYE! *runs away*
The 'stabilization beam' -- because they dont know what a tractor beam is yet? Anyway.. the effect actually looked a little wierd.. but familiar as a tractor beam.
The action sequences seemed poorly staged compared to last week.. it took forever for the ship to drag them in, but i wasnt feeling any tension. the interior/exterior switches werent timed right to include the viewer in worrying about the state of the ship. The torpedo launches could have used a little more acting to give them an 'oh, crap, were screwed' kind of quality instead of a 'hey were standing here on the bridge' In those scenes, Sato was the only one who was really reacting to the situation, everyone else seemed to decorate their station.
On the other hand, the hand held camera portions of suit up room were well done, as was the dinner scene where we see the captain really question himself with his two first officers. much more than i was expecting from the new show. the overall pacing of the show impressed me also, spending 45 minutes of pure character before we got to the threat seemed a bit odd, but its almost a relief that they didnt get action happy right away
I don't think Sato was the only one reacting to the situation. Archer seemed pretty desperate to try to do whatever to get Sato up there to speak with the Axanar. T'Pol was also urging her. Notice that she called her "Hoshi" instead of "Sato" or "Ensign?" Mayweather looks a bit concerned, but I think he would have been showing a bit more fear at that point. Reed and Phlox were pretty stiff in that scene. I guess Phlox wasn't too concerned since he didn't say that he had the compounds the aliens needed.
But man, Starfleet sucks compare to other race at that time.
I mean, no shield, no tractor beam, and their torp. was so pathatically slow that it was shot down by "bad guy's" weapon.
This made me wonder how Starfleet all of a sudden became the "boss" in the future.
Some quickie thoughts:
Plot:
Very oddly paced episode in that there's a rather heavy preface of character development before the actual A-plot kicks in. It does give the first half a very Deep Space Nine-ish feel, which I think many fans will like. The only problem seems to be that the actual crisis gets all worked out and solved in the remaining half hour, which comes off as a bit punctuated. At least the five minute resolution here doesn't leave you feeling like a Voyager episode which spent 55 minutes building up predictibly to the conclusion.
Acting:
Bakula rules. He had some uneven lines in the pilot, but he seemed geniuely passionate and interested throughout the episode. Park is very much taster's choice, I think. Personally I found her strong and believeable, but I can understand why people might think she's coming off a bit hammy too.
Directing:
Interestingly, its been noted that James Conway didn't treat us to larger establishing shots of the crew on the new sets during the pilot, preferring to do tighter close-ups on the characters. The same holds true here, with little artistry as far as settings are concerned. But Kroeker does get a little artsy in placing characters faces during conversations, especially in the spacesuits with the lighted faces and such. What are emerging as typical camera positions on the bridge are far more visually interesting than anything on Voyager, probably owing to the far better-layed out bridge set which actually allows one to get three different characters in a shot without backing out so far as to make their faces unreadable.
Widescreen is the greatest thing to happen to Trek yet though. It just looks better. I saw West Wing immediately afterward, again in widescreen, which only reaffirmed my belief that going the 16:9 makes something that was pretty well-directed to begin with look even better.
Music:
Jay Chattaway is far more daring than McCarthy, and we get some rather nice newish sounds this week. There's some guitar thrown in there and a bit of percussion thumping during the climax. I like. The big news is that the end credits theme has been scrapped and redone. The somewhat-listenable acoustic version of Faith of the Heart has been booted off to the land of Star Trek trivia questions after a one episode stand and we now have a kinda nondescript but still fairly unique orchestral-type theme. Of course, my local station had to dub over most of it with an inane announcement about what's coming up on the nightly news, so I probably missed the most interesting parts of the music.
Eye Candy:
The VFX are fairly tepid in scope when placed next to Broken Bow but still rather beautiful, especially the shuttle sequence. My only gripe is some really awful bluescreen work that would look bad on first season TNG... there's some very obvious matte lines around T'Pol's hair during the scene in the captain's dining room and some less awful (but still noticeable) matting around Sato and Phlox on the planet at the episode's end. (But hey, it wasn't the cave set.) I like look of the torpedoes, although they aren't jaw-droppingly visually impressive.
Miscellany:
Nonetheless, that's one huge honking hallway set, and the different layout is a change from the old one with every single corner familiar to us.[ October 03, 2001: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
Archer calls EVERYONE by their first name. He called Mayweather "Travis" in the first act.
I hated how voyager nearly bullied her way past dozens of delta quadrent species, or at least pushed her weight around even though a lone ship had no right to do so in its current position.
1) Calling his subordintates by first names. Kirk never let himself get that close. Did Kirk even know anybody's first name? He sure didnt call Uhura or Sulu or Chekov by theirs. He couldnt pronounce Spock's and he always called McCoy 'Bones' and Scott 'Scotty'.
2) He changed his mind and made quite an emotional display in front of his senior officers at the dinner (Kirk would spend a lot of time steeling himself to make a show of bravado in front of his crew, rather than getting wishy washy in front of them.. Spock and McCoy are a loophole for him though, but Archer doesnt seem as chummy with T'Pol and Tucker as Kirk was with them, so i consider Archer losing it like that to be a violation of Kirk's law.)
And didnt Picard once say that if a captain made a wrong decision, they should stick to it instead of changing their mind in front of the crew.
That wasnt quite the case here.
These arent criticisms.. i love that this show is going to be different from that Starfleet statud quo. And its nice to see Archer is no Kirk. (not necessarily a bad thing!)
Class-L planets are often described as having an oxygen-argon atmosphere, though the planet at the end of the show need not fit that category - it may just have had a high content of argon.
Mark
"...since our oxygen atmosphere is mixed with a percentage (20 something%?) of nitrogen..."
You've got it backward. The 20% is oxygen. We've got about 70% nitrogen. Which is good. If the atmosphere were 70% oxygen, the planet would have blown up a long time ago.
"Another Nausican reference!"
"Another"? I don't recall any in "Broken Bow", and I've only heard about one in "Fight or Flight"...
"It looks like Mayweather and Reed are going to have a close friendship that akin to the one Bashir and O'Brien had in Deep Space Nine."
I thought it was Mayweather and Tucker who were supposed to be buddies. Or am I remembering incorrectly?
The two major points about having argon instead of nitrogen for the bulk of the atmosphere would be thermal conductance and the overall density. You might get mightily chilly in an argon atmosphere, or have fancy dehydration effects.
And while argon is heavier than nitrogen, the thing is that nitrogen bobs around as a two-atom molecule while argon remains a swinging single, with e.g. greater penetration capability through tissues. Your blood might get bubbly or something in high-pressure argon. Hard to tell. Unless there's some research paper by an inquisitive Nazi scientist on the subject, I doubt the subject has been given much thought.
Then again, helium atmospheres are important in saturation-diving work, and have been extensively researched. Argon could be cheaper than helium in bulk, so perhaps somebody *has* done a study on it.
Timo Saloniemi
Ship Enterprise NX-01
Has a gymnasium.
Time line
Dr. Phlox's experiences and Ms. Sato's training and experiences.
April 17, 2151 to May 6, 2151. Survey of hydrogen sulfide world and argon world. Sluggo retrieved from argon world. Events of "Fight or "Flight".
Concerns
What is the role of the 80 other crew members aboard this ship? Are they going to be window dressing or are they going to serve a purpose?
Terrible promotions. Promotion for next week's show says, I am paraphrasing here, Enterprise NX-01 visits an Earth like world. Weren't Sato and Phlox on an Earth-like world at the end of the show, placing our banana slug Sluggo at a new home?
[ October 04, 2001: Message edited by: targetemployee ]
The reversal of Archer's decision to leave the massacred Axanar ship seemed tenative and his insecurity (a theme of the episode it would seem) would be a dangerous (and unlikely) trait for any Starship Captain, let alone the first. Had I been a writer in the meeting, I would have proposed cutting out the double-back, make Archer give the 'human code' speech to T'pol right there (maybe hint that he be a little anxious about the possibility of getting his crew in over his heads, or something if TPTB need some vulnerability), and pushed those minutes into the tension for the resolution, more shouting from the Axanar, less overt uncomfortability from Sato (the scene with Phlox was great, and I think they could've left it at that even). Sato was really grating on my nerves throughout this episode. She was really really whiny(sp?) and downright unprofessional at times. That's not at all what I would expect from one of humanity's best exo-linguistics experts. She didn't come across as being so bookish in "Broken Bow" (her curiosity about the Klingon audio recording, and her strong inflections with the Klingon). I suppose she's inexperienced and some trepidation could only be expected, but that kind of indecisiveness in the thick of it could get the crew killed really fast and for a really dumb reason. They really seemed to be hitting us over the head with her insecurity. I'm hoping this'll be a one-time thing and not a recurring theme 'cause it'd get tired REAL fast. Faster than Reed's Worf impression. (Which didn't really bother me as much as others have expressed.)
All told: I don't see this being one of those episodes that makes me think about it a lot, and compels me to watch the tape over and over again.
(note: except when Archer open up the phase pistol [drools])
[ October 04, 2001: Message edited by: Balaam Xumucane ]
quote:
a female officer who has a particular smell after she exercises in the gym.
Yes. It's called 'sweat.' Presumeably, either Phlox isn't around the gym very much, or his own species doesn't sweat.
quote:
What is the role of the 80 other crew members aboard this ship? Are they going to be window dressing or are they going to serve a purpose?
Um. Did you wonder what the role of the other 1,000 people on the Enterprise-D was going to be? What the role of the thousands of crewmen, visitors, etc. on DS9 was going to be? What the role of the other 100+ crew on Voyager was going to be?
.
[ October 04, 2001: Message edited by: Dukhat ]
Well it would be a boring show without visual powwows..
Explanation.. either the Romulans dont have visual capabilities, or the Romulans chose to never visually contact Starfleet, to keep their natures secret. seems like a romulan thing to do
quote:
Originally posted by Dukhat:
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that the Enterprise has ship-to-ship visual communication.
Since we can have ship-to-ship visual communication now, I'm surprised you have mentioned it.
quote:
Originally posted by Dukhat:
I could have sworn that Spock pointed out in "Balance of Terror" that Romulan War-era Earth forces did not have this capability.
You're mistaken. He said that the two sides never saw each other face to face. He also said that the treaty was negotiated by subspace radio. He never gave any indication that either side actually lacked the capacity for visual communication. That would be rather silly, since we had that capability even in the sixties. There is nothing that makes video any more difficult to transmit than audio.
For that matter, based solely on Spock's statements, it is entirely possible that they used visual communication, and the Romulans just wore helmets the whole time. 
[ October 04, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]
quote:
The Tucker
The Tucker?
oh no, theyre going ashore.. weve lost them!
No wait, theres an inlet!
Oh, theres always an inlet.. or a canal.. or a fj�rd!