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Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
Ooh.. i get to start the thread. The ep isnt done yet, but its pretty interesting.
And fun, even if simply written

My first comment: The Malurians..

TOS aliens! and with a good explanation why they arent around canturies later.
The Malurians are antagonizing the Akalli(sp?) and they wont be around because their home star system will be destroyed by Nomad in 'The Changeling' .. with their entire culture wiped out.
 


Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
Hey good action-show ending..

nothing too deep, but a solid adventure too.

Blowing up the antimatter reactor created quite the explosion.. i wonder if Malcolm will get any ideas.. hmm antimatter?

78 LY from Earth and its July 31st, 2151. We're definitely out of Sector 001 now..
 


Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
 
I'm giving it two stars on my website... it didn't do anything for me, but it thankfully wasn't "Threshold" (VGR)-level crap. Some nice tech/ship stuff, but that's for another forum.
 
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
 
From the parts that I did see, the episode was pretty good (damn university cable problems). It was definitely a fun little episode. The episode wasn't complex in terms of writing or plotlines, but the direction and pacing was pretty good. To me, it seemed to be a solid episode.

I was worried that this episode was going to has a continuity error on the major boo-boo side. Early reports said that the Earth Starfleet had rules in place similar to the future Prime Directive that prevented non-interference in non-warping cultures. Nope, it's just the Vulcans with this rule. Eventually, we know that they'll get their wish to have the humans follow it as well.

The final battle sequences were pretty good. There was a minor visual effects goof, though. The torpedo that destroyed the reactor was fired from the port tube, not the starboard. However, this sequence does present new questions. Was the aft torpedo in "Fight or Flight" really fired from the aft pod or from under the saucer? What were those two orange globes fired at the alien ship? They didn't look like the torpedoes or the plasma pulse effect from "Broken Bow."

Here's a few minor details I'd like to point out. Apparently, the transporter cannot beam something from point A to point B without having it rematerialize on the pad first. Sato seems to be more eager about exploring in this episode than earlier in the season. Enterprise has a Quartmaster who must be a wonderful seamstress. Dr Phlox's character has definitely seemed to mellowed out a bit since his first appearance in "Broken Bow." Has his makeup changed? I don't remember there being so much brown around the edges of his facial ridges.

One complaint I had with "Civilizaton" was with the Tucker-T'Pol spar over "prepare to break orbit." Why did she give the order if she wasn't going to leave? This argument seemed to be thrown in for the hell of it. There wasn't much point to it other than a reminder of tension and to show that T'Pol is gaining respect for and loyalty to Captain Archer. I guess this is an extension of "Breaking the Ice" (which is good), but the insertion into the episode needed more though behind it.
 


Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
I'm giving it three combadges on my site.. it was not as Trekkily (new word!) exciting as The Andorian Incident or Breaking the Ice, but it was a helluva lot better that Terra Nova, which is two stars. One star is reserved for Thresholds and Force of Natures. Actually im considering Terra Nova for that.

Just seeing them do the cultural survey thing for the first time was thrilling, and addressing the translator issue in an entertaining manner was cool.

And Archers character is so un-Captain-like, that i can really relate to the guy. The series is really going to be his evolving as he faces all these new things and loses his wide eyed enthusiasm. So far, i have been loving all the screen time that Tucker gets and hes been a great character for me to relate to, but Archer is finally getting some of his due. I cant wait for a Phlox episode, because i have a feelnig he will really shine.
And i have a new favorite character every week.. they must be doing something right.
 


Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
This also featured Enterprise's first mention of the Tellarites.

I liked it, all things considered. I was rather apprehensive about this one, before hand, for reasons that seem, in retrospect, odd. The descriptions available for this episode made it sound very...TNG-esque. Now, of course, that isn't a bad thing, necessarily. Everyone loves TNG, after all. (At least, everyone who matters. ) But there seems to be this expectation regarding Enterprise that every story will somehow be inseperable from the premise. Or, in other words, that they should be stories untellable in previous shows.

This expectation is a bit unfair, considering how wide-ranging Star Trek tends to be with its stories. But nevertheless, as described, "Civilization" didn't seem to be a story that TNG couldn't have done.

Of course, in practice, the episode didn't quite follow the TNG pattern. For one thing, they couldn't instantly read the local signage.

Anyway, things I liked:
I was expecting the search for the intruding aliens to take a lot longer. Instead: "Hey, you're an alien!" "Yes. So are you." "Oh, yeah. So..." A nice twist.

The Enterprise, with T'Pol in command, gets to beat up on a ship for once. It took cunning over brute force, too. So they can be undergunned and still win. Nice. Now don't forget!

Things which troubled me a bit:

Lucky for Archer that the one native who was also looking into this was completely nonplussed by...well, everything. Flying metal beast sucks up crates into its gaping maw? No problem. Man's skin comes off, revealing scaly weirdness? Cool. Your hometown is being fought over by two groups of aliens from outer space? Nifty.

Audio hookups? Er, how? I could see such data being gathered by dropping probes near the area they plan to land. No mention of such, though. It's either that or they were dragging a microphone on a very long tether.

Not necessarily a complaint, but:

T'Pol gives orders. Tucker doesn't like said orders. Tucker threatens to shut down engines rather than leave orbit. (Without having heard any other details of T'Pol's plan. Not that she volunteered any.)

I can buy this. It seems like a pretty serious and potentially dangerous conflict, but a believable one. Having said that, when did T'Pol become a part of the chain of command? Well, I know when. Not long into "Broken Bow." But I can't recall anyone actually saying "T'Pol will be your second in command." Strange.
 


Posted by BlueElectron (Member # 281) on :
 
Wait, wait!

Before we get into the details, first, we must clear this profoundly important matter...

THEY HAVE DOGS ON THAT ALIEN PLANET!!??
 


Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
That's a surprise to you? I'm sure they've got something similar -- even if they don't have what we would consider a 'dog', they're sure to have some sort of 4-legged domesticated animal that the U.T. seemed to recognize.
 
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
 
The pacing seemed ALOT better this time. Good action scenes. Some terrific beauty shots over the planet. The premise was interesting, and I liked the dabblings in the Prime Directive. I loved it when his universal translator started hiccuping. Pretty clever smootch. I love that she called him on it later. As Simon mentioned, it was strange that she just took it all in stride. I mean that is some world-view shattering stuff there. When she mentions that no one would believe her anyway, I couldn't help but wonder just how many witnesses there were to the shootout in the street. I mean it was more than a couple. She'd be lucky if they didn't brand her a witch for consorting with these demons. I guess maybe their culture is more accepting of such extraordinary things. But that and the Quartermaster(?!) thing were my only real major issues. Yes, all in all I think I enjoyed this episode quite a bit.
 
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
 
quote:
THEY HAVE DOGS ON THAT ALIEN PLANET!!??

And the Vulcans in "The Andorian Incident" had a toy horse in their monastery.
 


Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
It's no biggie. Targs are dogs on Qu'onos. The horned blue horses seen in ST5 were probably not from Earth. Ditto for that horned pink dog from a TOS episode I can't remember...

Mark
 


Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
Pink dogs? I see those here on Earth. Little old ladies have them.
 
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
When Archer pulled that guy's fake skin off to see the reptilian underneath, did anyone else think "V"?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a slight flaw with the TOS name-dropping in this ep. The Malurians, according to the Encyclopedia, were a civilization being studied by the Federation in 2367 before they were wiped out by Nomad. IMHO, this sounds like they were either a pre-warp civilization, or were at the most less advanced than the Federation. However, according to "Civilization", 100 years before 2367 the Malurians had working transporters, energy weapons and very deadly battleships. Seems to me that they would have been more than a match for Nomad. Unless, of course, these aren't the same Malurians.
 


Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
I believe Kirk said the Malurian system had more than one inhabited planet in 'The Changeling' while expressing shock that the system was gone.

Please correct me if im wrong.
 


Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
 
Also, remember that Kirk's Enterprise was bitch-slapped by Nomad. While the Malurians are advanced by Enterprise standards, even that big warship could, for all we know, be pretty pathetic next to a Constitution.

We also have no information on the Malurian advancement (or lack thereof) after this episode. Maybe there was a massive war on their planet, bringing it back to the stone age, and Federation researchers were there just trying to figure out what caused it.

Or, did they say the researchers were studying the Malurians specifically in "The Changeling?" Maybe they were part of an exchange program and they were studying neutron stars, or termites, or whatever.
 


Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
 
The episode was ok.
I don't know about anyone else,
But I for one expected the plot twist where the aliens turned out to be “nice” and the local gal, Elian, was full of it.

After Reed said he couldn't scan what’s under the shop, I imagined a whole sinister complex down there or the alien ship itself.
And a sinister mining operation it was!
No plot twist.

The malfunction of the universal translator was pretty much the high point IMHO.
Despite its malfunction, it still seemed a little "too" high tech for this time period.
At least it shouldn’t be that compact, how did Archer fix it so quickly? Were the batteries low?

[ November 15, 2001: Message edited by: TheF0rce ]


 
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
 
I missed parts of the episode, so I'm not sure how the translating was done. However, in the scene where Archer's translator goes out (which I managed to catch), it looks like he's holding his communicator to grab a speech pattern.

My impression from "Fight or Flight" is that the universal translator is a program in the ship's computer and not an actual hand-held device. Sato and Archer were talking about the need for Sato to actual be aboard the Axanar freighter since she could run the translator from the ship over the comm line. It would seem to me that the ship's computer does the translation and sends instructions back to the translating device the crew is using. The universal translator wands in The Original Series seemed capable of doing the translating on its own without using the ship's computer.
 


Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
Good for the wands.
 
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
 
Oooh, that would have been good. Like the Malurians are doing the duckblind observation thing and the poisoning thing is just an unfortunate coincidence. Ok, yeah, that would've made a better episode.
 
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
That would've been pretty good too. So -- bit confused about this -- are the Malaurians reptiles, that WAS a Suliban, wasn't it?

I didn't pay enough attention to the episode, true, but it seemed like the crew got over seeing another Suliban pretty quickly.
 


Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
Er...no, it wasn't, obviously.
 
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
 
Yeah, given that it looked nothing like a Suliban, it's probably safe to say that the Malurians are herpeto-humanoids.
 
Posted by Alshrim (Member # 258) on :
 
When Archer pulled the skin off .. my first thought was "Ooooh.. Gorn".. but .. that lasted only a second.

I liked the ep. It's nowhere in the caliber of Breaking the Ice or Andorian Incident - but it was entertaining.

I liked that messing with the Prime Directive.
T'Pol kickin' ass was great.
I can't wait till the crew comes together as a unit.

I remember in Fight or Flight, Archer gave command of the ship to T'Pol. I think it is assumed that her Vulcan Rank carries over into StarFleet.

I could be wrong.
 


Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
 
oh Gorn??? How in the world do you think they fit a snout like that under a mask???

[ November 16, 2001: Message edited by: J ]


 
Posted by Proteus (Member # 212) on :
 
I was certain it was a suliban. but why would a suliban need a mask?? hmmm
 
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
 
Dude! It wasn't a Suliban! It was a Malurian, and it didn't look anything like our shapeshifting friends.
 
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Proteus:
I was certain it was a suliban. but why would a suliban need a mask?? hmmm

The most obvious piece of evidence that it wasn't Suliban (aside from the fact that they never called it anything other than Malurian) is that it had scales. Suliban, while mottled and textured, don't have scales.
 




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