Well, tonight's episode was pretty darn good IMHO.
In a nutshell: Religous fanatics hijack the Enterprise to end a holy war on their home planet. The small band of fanatics employ internal organic explosives and an Enterprise crewman is killed in an "example" explosion. Two others are severly burned and/or explosivly decompressed: Phlox manages to (presumably) save these injured crew.
The fanatic's religion? they worship the makers of the Spheres and consider anyone "violating" them to be heretics.
Very obvious ties with the religous fundamentalist mindset, with trek commentary on the madness of it all.
Very much in keeping with the TOS tradition of social commentary.
On the tech side, the aliens o' the week fly small ships that look a bit like the Slave One design and arent very tough in combat. Archer uses the Enterprise's "Execution machine" on himself. Enterprise fires torpedos from that pod between the nacelles again. Bad fanatic leader erases all of the data gathered in Enterprise's computers on the Expanse, the Spheres and probably the Xindi as well. Fucker.
Reed kicks butt as usual but T'Pol's Vulcan strength seems to have left het when she lamely tries to subdue one of the hijackers.
A great ending for this episode. I'm sure I've missed a ton of stuff, but that's my first impression of the episode for ya. Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
My question is... why don't they have a protected backup archive?
Posted by deadcujo (Member # 13) on :
The preview looked good enough for me to watch Enterprise instead of Smallville. It was decent enough, I guess, but I couldn't help thinking of the aliens as Bajoran militants throughout the entire episode.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dat: My question is... why don't they have a protected backup archive?
I thought the smae thing...the only explanation I could come up with was excessive file size on that old ship made it prohibitive. ...still, T'Pol should be able to re-assemble some of the Sphere imformation at least. if not the scan results.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
They might have a backup in one of the shuttle pods?
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
On the other tentacle, it would make future episodes interesting if they have to start over, with only their memories to go on.
Posted by WizArtist (Member # 1095) on :
Too, bad they can't wipe all previous episodes from OUR memory...
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
quote: Reed kicks butt as usual but T'Pol's Vulcan strength seems to have left het when she lamely tries to subdue one of the hijackers.
My wife and I both wondered why she didn't try the neck pinch thing.
quote: but I couldn't help thinking of the aliens as Bajoran militants throughout the entire episode.
Me too. Probably because they both have the nose ridge thing going for them. So, nose ridge + facial decoration = religious fanatic?
B.J.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Not to mention that 'magically' bringing back all the Sphere info would make this action entirely pointless.
Another thing I learned from this episode is that the Expanse is actually quite big. Huge, even. I previously thought it *was* Xindi space, but these Triannon guys have never even heard of the Xindi! Besides, their planet is mentioned to be in some sector, meaning that the expanse probably spans quite a number of sectors.
More reason to believe that we will be needing some sort of Reset Button before ENT is over.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Bit of a bummer about that crewmember, though.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
I think it would be easy enough to get that information back... it's called a recycling bin---that or the archives at Starfleet Command, just ask for a transmission of all previously sent data. They do have communication with Earth right [I seem to remember them setting up the subspace beacons]?
Also, the social commentary here doesn't really compare to the way they did it on TOS, I just don't really see the same depth. Their only differnce was 1 day, everything else was the same. While it is fanaticism, it is on an entirely different level than what we have in the modern day. Our arguments, especially concerning East vs. West, is one of built-in philosophical differences. We have two completely different societies that disagree on basic issues. So the social commentary in this episode lacks alot since the point of disagreement is 1 day, and not a disagreement between societies--- They Have the Same Society!
But, the real reason this episode sucks isn't their use of a social commentary gone amuck. The reason this episode sucks is because once again the ship has been taken over... Once Again!!! How pathetic can they get? How many times did this happen on Voyager--- per season? Let's see some simple safe guards they ignored:
1) Don't take on the entire crew or a majority of it from an alien ship!
2) When you have to take aliens in a first contact situation [defined: first contact with that species, or with that social-political-economic group of that species], don't let the roam unsupervised on your ship!
3) Main Engineering and the Bridge should be off limits! Why were the aliens able to get into Main Engineering, again unsupervised--- next to the core?
4) "Scanning violates my religion" --- then you don't have to come aboard!!! Archer should have learned by now that the safety of his crew is above that of the health of aliens visiting his ship.
5) How the heck did they get all those weapons? They were Starfleet issue right [they seemed to look the same and I doubt they had time to get them from their ship].
I'm gonna stop there... I think this episode just proves to show why this forum was so inactive during the time new episodes weren't playing... Enterprise sucks.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
So, you're the John Ashcroft of Trek?
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
The preview looked good enough for me to watch Enterprise instead of Smallville.
YOU VOLUNTARILY MISSED LAST NIGHT'S SMALLVILLE!?
*THWAP*
Posted by deadcujo (Member # 13) on :
Well, it was either tape Smallville and watch Enterprise or vice versa. Smallville sucked anyway.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
They got the weapons from the armoury, you saw them collecting them.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Lee... the point was how the heck did they get into the armory, and why weren't the weapons locked up inside the armory. They had weapons when they took over the bridge which means someone would have had to let them into the armory and then let them into the weapons locker [of course there isn't much of one there, it's kinda open].
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
They had no weapons until they were seen taking them from the armoury. The actual takeover was done using the organic explosives (sounds like a euphemism for baked beans!), then once they had been granted control of the ship they tooled themselves up. Reed was there in the armoury, it was probably him who let them in.
EDIT: Yes, I've checked. The hull blows out, Archer rushes onto the bridge to find out what happened, Donjohnson (or whatever his name was) follows from the Ready Room and tells him to surrender. You then see the armoury being rifled (no pun intended) followed by some now-tooled-up Triannons clearing the Bridge of nonessesntial personnel.
Posted by Kazeite (Member # 970) on :
quote:Originally posted by J: How pathetic can they get? How many times did this happen on Voyager--- per season?
0.4285 times Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
How many times did it happen on TOS? ...and that was a ship with over three times the crew no less, and they were always taken over by a tiny force of jerks as well IIRC. And none of the goons that took over the TOS Enterprise could blow up a large chunk of the ship just with a quick stab and looking constipated for a second...
Besides, the TOS crew had the advantage of being able to just look back at the history tapes to see how Archer handled the situation to make their plans! Posted by WizArtist (Member # 1095) on :
Probably their Terror level wasn't at "Orange" at the time.
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