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:

I don't think Tucker and Archer walked quite around in a circle and ended exactly where they started, but they did certainly make an elaborate path of it. Perhaps they're still a little unfamiliar with the ship 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.

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.

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.

"...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."

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.

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:

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a female officer who has a particular smell after she exercises in the gym.

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Yes. It's called 'sweat.' Presumeably, either Phlox isn't around the gym very much, or his own species doesn't sweat.

quote:

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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?

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[ October 04, 2001: Message edited by: Dukhat ]