A fun, if mindlessly-fluffy episode. Good tech to nitpick though, and is that not the big reason we watch?
-Okay, so the situation is dire. We start four days after the last episode (still no timestamp though), and they're pretty crippled. They can't polarize the port hull plating with so much of it missing, and even if they could find some tritanium, it'd take three or four months to fix the ship. Worst of all, they can barely manage warp two, putting them ten years away from Earth. Ouch.
-Speaking of ouch, Reed is still off with a messed up leg. He's gonna be off duty for a couple more weeks; less if he'd let Phlox pop in a couple more Rigelian blood worms. Reed is wary of this, since one of them has yet to pop back out...
-More name-dropping happens when a Tellarite freighter responds to their distress call, apparently directing them to a nearby repair station. They eventually find it - it looks like a couple of hair-curlers, one of which expands to accept the saucer.
-The station has a pretty nifty scan action going. Holo-displays show the damaged sections, right down to the scratched paint from when Archer and Trip nicked the job in "Broken Bow". Their scans download Enterprise's computer data, language, and even figure out that Reed is a lame duck. Anyway, in exchange for 200 liters of warp plasma, the gang will get back an unbroken ship. The hair curlers deploy arms, and the process begins...
-BTW, the station sounds remarkably like B'Elanna Torres. Perhaps coincidentally, Roxann Dawson is directing this episode. And like Torres, the atmosphere of the station is pretty crappy at first, but gets nicer later on.
-The station has lots and lots of nice toys to play with - suffice it to say that it's got all the familiar TNG stuff. There's a nifty VFX shot of the arms dematerializing some wreckage, then rematerializing a fresh corridor wall before installing it. They even fix up Reed's leg. Of course, the crew get high off all the tech. Of course, Archer gets worried.
-The Enterprise computer is "the most advanced in the fleet", and it's three decks high. Who's got the cutaway..?
-Hee hee! The station's metallic vent covering is really just a cardboard furnace filter, spraypainted white! Anyway, unable to resist the urge to snoop, Trip and Reed get caught and beamed off the station. And unable to resist a call from Archer, Mayweather gets killed. But not before contributing to the topless quotient of the show, of course.
-Before Mayweather recovers from being dead (what, you'd think otherwise?), everyone gets to do some mourning. Apparently, Travis was a practical jokester - really? Also, finding freighters isn't very easy apparently.
-Unlike just about everything in the TNG era, the warp plasma containers they use are clearly labelled "warp plasma". They still explode quite nicely, though.
-They escape from the Evil Repair Station in a shower of great special effects, though they decide to use torpedoes to blow away the clamped-on robot arms, instead of the phase cannons. It's strange, as the arm in question was certainly within the firing arc. Not enough punch, perhaps?
-Unfortunately, all the other aliens were neatly blown up. Good thing their being used in the station's computer core had effectively killed 'em. Still, in a Spooky Enterprise Ending, the station's wreackage is seen repairing itself...
Mark
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Oh, and Travis has a miniature of the Nomad probe in his quarters. The things you miss while writing stuff up for Flare.
Mark
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
How nice... regenerative technology worthy of the Borg.
Posted by Felix the Kzin (Member # 646) on :
Yet ANOTHER "Tellarite freighter" reference? Gee...you'd think they were like leading up to something, wouldn't you... Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Especially since, according to "Carbon Creek," the Tellarites had warp-capable freighters in 1950. Wouldn't that make them just underneath the Vulcans in terms of technology? Or at least make them worthy of an appearance?
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
The Enterprise's spaceframe is constructed out of Tritanium, but is apparently some part of the ship is held together by Duranium pins. IIRC, this would be the first mention of the common 24th Century material in ENT.
Someone actually paid attention to subspace field geometry!! The NX-01 can't make her top speed with a gap in the hull.
You can tell that the station's evil right off the bat because: 1, nothing good ever happens to the ship, and 2, it's the same sickly pale white you find in Star Wars cooridors.
If a station that advanced, why would it bother with using people's brains to boost processing power? No matter what technological "brain is the most powerful computer" rhetoric people throw around, a subspace computer, capable of FTL processing, is still the way to go. Heck of a lot more efficient, too, since people won't be trying to blow you apart.
Overall, too stupid and obvious a plot, and Voyager-esque "let's blow stuff up now that we're done with it". "Mayweather's brain", anyone?
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
Also, Jupiter Station existed back in the 22nd century. Kind of begs the question of wether or not it looks like it's 24th century counterpart. If it's supposed to, those can't be Ambassador saucers.
Posted by Boris (Member # 713) on :
I hope they decide that these guys repaired Nomad or V'Ger (especially given the Nomad clue), rather than establish a relationship with the Borg or someone else alltogether.
Note that the writers now seem to be using the TNG scale. Tucker's meal can't be found within 130 LY, which puts Earth at 130 LY or further, assuming there is a colony or a starbase serving that food. Given the aforementioned ten years' trip to Sol, this works out to at least 13c, whereas Wf 2.1, the most Tucker said they could do, is 12c on the TNG scale.
Of course, we won't know for certain until they mention Wf10 or pile up a bunch of nines.
Boris
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yeah, the station's so advanced that that inder the sickly 2001/star wars corridors we see rusted panels, the ol' slowly turning rusty fan nuggett and lots and lots of dirt and grime to soil up archer and co. They also used the DS9 idea of sneaking a bomb in with the Ketracel white...er...Warp Plasma.
Still, this ranks as one of my favorite eoisodes so far and I really liked it. The look on T'Pol's face when Malcom and Tripp materalize on the bridge was just priceless. Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boris: Note that the writers now seem to be using the TNG scale. Tucker's meal can't be found within 130 LY, which puts Earth at 130 LY or further, assuming there is a colony or a starbase serving that food. Given the aforementioned ten years' trip to Sol, this works out to at least 13c, whereas Wf 2.1, the most Tucker said they could do, is 12c on the TNG scale.
Yes. I'm positive the writers have their copies of the TNGTM Warp Table out (with the words that these are only baseline values crossed out, like any self-respecting fan has them) and dutifully crunched the numbers.
Actually, facetiousness aside, this is probably a good candidate of a case where they may have actually done this. But what I'm getting at is that I wouldn't take that as evidence for warp speeds canonically matching that table in every instance.
Incidentally, Mandel's Star Charts show the events of "Shockwave" taking place 45 ly SSW of Sol. If we wanted to try to place early season two onto them, though, we'd run into problems. 130 ly from Sol in a Romulanward direction puts Enterprise near Iconia (which, uh, could be damn cool if that's who built the station.) Quasi-unfortunately, that's about 100 ly from Paraaga, (though the uberlane from Earth to Kronos could have been hopped for a good chunk of it, I guess) and if we're visiting Kreetassa next week, that's 110 lightyears straight back past Paraaga again. I suppose this was inevitable with the book, though it's a bit of bad luck nonetheless.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
While we're on the subject of TNG technology in Enterprise, did anyone notice that the robot which healed Reed's leg was the same model used as the exocomp? See here:
Likewise, I believe the central holodoodad in the Evil Station's office is made from leftovers of the Think Tank's AI, itself later seen as a holodoodad for the renegade holograms.
Mark
Posted by O Captain Mike Captain (Member # 709) on :
hmm.. what was 'Quality of Life', like eight years ago? they must have a lot of frickin junk layin around.
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
If Paramount still has the Wolf 359 wreckage around, why not?
Posted by O Captain Mike Captain (Member # 709) on :
but that stuffs important!
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
On the topic of stellar cartography and the location of the Romulan minefield -- isn't it possible that the Romulans are a bit more widespread in the pre-Neutral Zone era? That would actually make sense if the Federation were trying to put a damper on Romulan expansion.
You guys forgot to mention the fancy doodad chip that could translate neural impulses into binary code! The Borg, anyone?
The biggest problem I had is the fact that this repair station is almost certainly within the future Federation's sphere of influence. Meaning that if they managed to get a good look at the thing, they could probably put Utopia Planitia out of business! The fact that the station starts to repair itself at the end just compounds the problem rather than solve it -- if it was left as a pile of rubble, I could understand the Federation not getting the technology...
Still, I did appreciate most of the Treknological details.
I'm going to use the opposite argument of the warp scale formula -- what if the "130 LY" comment was an error (or a figure that wasn't recalculated)? We know that the NX-01 is around 90 to 100 LY from Earth at this point according to "Two Days and Two Nights" -- assuming the TOS warp scale, it would take 10 years to travel 92.61 LY at Warp 2.1.
Alternatively, to go the additional 40 LY to reach the 130 LY mark would take 160 days at the established speed of Warp 4.5.
I think that that the writers are still using the TOS scale with only a few errors interspersed in the dialogue. But then, I'm an optimist. Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
I'm hoping that repair station was destroyed by the time of the Romulan War or at least during it. I don't think it would be good if it fell into enemy hands or anyone else's hands.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Regarding ENT's warp scale... In one episode last year, they gave some pretty exact times of how long it would take a Vulcan ship to reach them at warp 5 and at warp 7. The times were expressed in minutes, IIRC, so there's still a margin of error. However, in the end, I figured out that warp 7 is between 3.65 and 3.2 times as fast as warp 5. That's a little bit higher than what the figure would be on the TNG warp scale, but not a lot.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
The TOS warp scale (and really, the exact details of the TNG scale) isn't canon. It is entirely possible that TOS always used the TNG scale, minus the Warp 10 asymptote. The fact that speeds are chosen out of dramatic neccessity makes it pretty moot, anyway.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
quote:The biggest problem I had is the fact that this repair station is almost certainly within the future Federation's sphere of influence
Well, TOS (and perhaps TNG) had some pretty funky stuff too inside the Federation sphere of influense.. The Guardian of Forever, countless highly advanced androids, the Amusement Park Planet. And we saw very little evidence of these technologies in use by the Federation afterwards.
Posted by Cadet Sorak (Member # 874) on :
quote: The look on T'Pol's face when Malcom and Tripp materalize on the bridge was just priceless.
Anyone have a screen capture of that?
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
quote: Also, Jupiter Station existed back in the 22nd century.
As established way back in "Silent Enemy."
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
And is more like a repair/construction facility than the much later saucer-stacked research facility.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
*ba-bump*
Bringing ths to the top for this week's rerun. Anyone have any further thoughts about this nutty set of hair curlers gone mad?
Mark
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
I just have one thought...
Is Stephen King writing for Trek now???
*cough*Christine*cough*
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Oh, Stephen King's been writing for Trek ever since "Alice"...
Wasn't that episode also based on "Christine," too?
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
Yeah, I suppose so....though I cant say I have seen "Alice" in its entirity. I suppose Toms "obsession" with 'Alice' is the same as the dude who obsessed over "Christine"
...but the whole ending with the station rebuilding itself after being pretty much obliterated was just like the end of Christine with the (i forget) headlight flicker or metal retaking its shape or whatever after being compacted into a 19"-TV-sized-chunk of metal.
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