Spoilers for ENT "Silent Enemy" lie ahead. Be warned!
I'm not gonna be putting up as extensive tech notes as I was for the first batch of episodes. Some guy over on r.a.s.tech has been doing a great job on that. I saw it tonight; when you guys see it tomorrow (and afterwards), complement the comments here.
-Nutshell: the Pre-E can now kick ass. Seriously. Also, Reed has a favorite food.
-Timestamp: Starts on August 31, ends on Reed's birthday.
-Evil aliens don't get names or anything really known about them. They're CGI aliens reminiscent of the Skinnies in the CGI series "Roughnecks". They are resistant to phase pistol fire, and their ships are no slouch either. Strangely, their ship slooks like an F-117 stealth fighter.
-Enterprise came with one "phase modulated engergy weapon" uninstalled, but was supposed to mount three (two forward under the torpedo tubes, one somewhere aft). They managed to install one and build another from scratch to kick the alien guys' tails. Archer wanted to go back home to let the Jupiter Station people do it, but Reed and Trip showed him up. Maximum output is supposed to be 500 gigajoules. However, a destructive overload can cause it to become ten times as powerful - an advantage they use. The pahse cannons are kinda nifty as they deploy from the hull and aren't built into it. Spiff.
-Continuity: they're deploying a series of comm relays to enable real-time communications home. They're called "Echo" relays, look a little bit like Nomad, and can get blown up fairly easily.
-Anyone noticed yet that no one on the ship has died onscreen yet? However, we do get another crew count: 82 humans, a Vulcan and a Denobulan. Oh, and Porthos.
-The B-story of the episode revolves around Hoshi playing gumshoe to find out what Reed's favourite food is, to make him something of it for his birthday. Reed's just nuts when he's not blowing stuff up. Ain't he cool?
-Oh, "news from home" includes some Starfleet guy named Duvall getting command of a new ship, the Shennandoah. Perhaps the next NX-class ship? If so, then why in the 24th century is the Shennandoah name only worth granting to a puny runabout?
Mark
[ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Question Period begins.
Mr. Speaker, would the Minister for A-Channel Reporting be able to tell the house exactly how old Mr. Reed is?
Indeed, Mr. Speaker, this house would like to know if he knows if any explanation of the plasma artillery on the top of the saucer we saw in Broken Bow was provided.
(BTW, Mark, I loved the more extensive tech writeups.)
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Ask Darr Maqbool. He knows all.
And I don't think they mentioned Reed's age - just his birthday, September 2. His parents live in Malaysia, and he's descended from a line of Royal Navy men - his dad didn't seem all that enthused that Malcolm opted for space instead of the family tradition. Anyway, his parents, his sister, and a former shipmate (some guy on another ship, who was wearing a diffent ship patch - natch) agree that they really don't know anything about him. Ironically enough, by the end of the episode we end up finding out more about him than some of the other characters to this point!
Mark
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Um, silly question, but are joules and watts inter-exchangable?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
A joule is a measure of energy. A watt is a measure of enregy rate, in this case joules per second.
Mark
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
...in other words, Power.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Stuff the phasers, what was his favourite food?! 8)
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Obviously, this "Jupiter Station" is a different Jupiter Station than what we see in Voyager, because according to Rick Sternbach, the station was constructed from old Ambassador class saucers or whatnot.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
i should hope its not the huge station from VGR!
At least we see another ship patch. Did you notice that in Broken Bow that all of the non Enterprise officers always had that arm faced away from the camera (i suspect because no other patches had been designed)
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, the important question about that is... did the patch have a silhouette of the ship, like the ENT patch has? If so, what did the ship look like?
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
If I'm understanding Mark, then we don't actually see Jupiter Station in this episode. So, we can't start screaming about that as a continuity issue yet.
So... where did the materials for the the extra phase cannon come from? Is Enterprise carrying a load of material and stuff for emergency repairs, or did they have to cannibalize part of the ship? Or, is it even explained?
On another matter, this episode gives the crew complement as 84, right? If we add in Daniels from "Cold Front," that gives of an initial crew complement of 85. Is that what Enterprise started with, or are we going to have a flucuating crew count a la Voyager?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Actually, I thought it was 87 according to a previous episode. However, crew count isn't nearly as anal as on Voyager, as there is an actual SOURCE of new crew that is relatively accessible.
And no, we don't see Jupiter Station in the episode.
Mark
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
And to answer Lee's question, pineapple is Reed's favourite food.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
A couple other things:
-round spheres laying around on the table in the armor, if the phase modulated energy weapon was in fact a phaser, those would have been about the right sizes for prefire chambers, some called a "primary coil" was mentioned, a component not found in phasers AFAIK
-the shuttlebay doors does in fact have gravity, didn't look very variable gravity either
-the phase cannons lack coverage, but so does most of Enterprise's weapons, the only weapons mounted ontop of the saucer are the point defense plasmas
-again the lack of any sort of organized warning or effort during an attack, not even an alarm klaxon, people still don't know they're under attack unless they call into the bridge
-lack of aux power, when the warp power went down, secondary power from the impulse also died but was not mentioned, there's also no reserve power, not even emergency lighting
-the weapons the aliens used looked like the Plasmatic Pulsar Device from Starfleet Command II, except that it was green
-judging from what Malcome's father said, it sounded as if there was still a Navy back on Earth, a planetary wet Navy co-existing with Starfleet?
-forget the phase cannons, those subspace amplifiers are pretty damn big, just how many are the Enterprise carrying anyways?
This episode is positively hilarious. For the third time, IIRC, a powerful alien ship has given the Enterprise a good going over with pretty colored fireworks. However, yet again, our brave crew manages to repair all the damages, suffer no casualties, plus add a couple things from out of nowhere ("going Voyager"). I think Archer is determined not to bring Enterprise back to Earth until all that's left of her is burned-out wreckage.
T'Pol: "The Klingons have destroyed both of our warp nacelles. We have multiple hull breaches on all decks. The warp and impulse engines are destroyed." Archer: "Well, I think it's time we go home." T'Pol: "You stupid, stupid man." Archer: "Oh boy."
Forget Starfleet going "what did you do to my car?", they're gonna be going "why did you take a cab home?"
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I missed this episode thanks to the local UPN affiliate deciding that the Rockets game was more interesting than Enterprise.
Anyway, Voyager's "30 Days" established that there was still a wet navy on Earth, but it was under the jurisdiction of the Federation and not the planet. In Paris's letter to his father, he mentions how he would have rather joined the Navy than Starfleet.
Of course, I can't imagine there still being the need for a strictly military naval force on Earth in TNG's time, but it might be a form of planetary defense since Earth is still largely alone in the universe in the Enterprise era.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
The Federation Naval Service or whatnot from VOY timeframe is probably not tasked with military duties. There's plenty of peaceful stuff for a Wet Navy to do - the oceans are not a natural environment for humanoids, so population density there will always be low, and thus there's a need for a "service" or a "force" that goes from place to place to troubleshoot and carries the necessary hardware along. (This service need not be limited to Earth, really, but could span all Federation planets that have partial water cover.)
In the ENT timeframe, we now learn that an old family tradition required the kids to join the Royal Navy, up until Malcolm Reed's generation. But this is not solid proof that the Royal Navy still exists - perhaps it has recently been disbanded, and the family just thinks that there are better successor candidates to it than Starfleet?
The "Royal" part would be something of an affront to the supposed United Earth ideals, unless the royalty was completely stripped of governing power. Umm, was this the UK RN, or perhaps its Australian equivalent? Australia is said to have been a holdback in this unification business, and might have perpetuated a RN (and would have changed into a monarchy in this theory - perhaps King William IX of the UK escaped there when the Vulcans came and deposed/executed all the other royals and local leaders on Earth in favor of their more democratic model?).
Anyway, it seems likely IMHO that this Royal Navy was a traditional military organization till the very end, unlike the FNS.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
It was, IIRC, the Federation Naval Patrol. And does anyone seriously believe the Brits giving up their Royal Navy for a united government ? They don't even want to go with "the continent", much less the entire world.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
The UK would probably not have a royal navy at that point in time... remember the European Hegemony
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
So? The UK is arguably a weaker proponent of the current European Union. For all we know, they stayed out of the hegenomy. Or ruled it.
But then, who'd be first up against the wall when the revolution comes?
Mark
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
The frogs of course.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Reed's grandfather was in the Royal Navy.
For all we know, it could have been absorbed into the Unified European Naval Response Force when Grandpa Reed was 25.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Maximum output is supposed to be 500 gigajoules. However, a destructive overload can cause it to become ten times as powerful - an advantage they use. The pahse cannons are kinda nifty as they deploy from the hull and aren't built into it. Spiff.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)