posted
Wow, I must admit The_Tom was right, that was an impressive episode. Good pacing, some new innovations, nice art direction, and finally some interesting writing.
The good:
Grenades! Support of an away team with shipboard phasers... tying the away team into shipboard sensors to plan tactical movemtns...all in one sleek paced away mission.
Continuity, nuf' said.
Interesting use of time travel (finally), with a weird new "Quantum Leap" style, where the time-travelling subject takes the place of the old self.....and a really nice view of an apocalyptic (the doomsday, not the dance type) wasteland.
Glimpses of the future (Klingon vessels) in an EFC style holographic viewer
The bad:
Its a pity Star Trek first parters are usually better than the second, here's hoping they don't trip and fall. (Especially since the Powers that Be, pretty much said they don't know where they're going for sure)
Voyager did overuse time travel, lets just forget about them.....and their starship Relativity *shudder*
Dude....don't send your three highest ranking officers on an away mission, especially with no expendable ensign!
But all, in all, one of the better episodes of Star Trek in recent memory, and if this continues it might even convince me that this Enterprise deal is worth it all
[ May 22, 2002, 18:11: Message edited by: Mucus ]
Registered: Mar 1999
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Am I the only person who found the episode less than orgasmically impressive? It was a decent episode, but hardly the best. The only things I thought were particularly noteworthy were Bakula's acting in the first half and the actual cliffhanger at the end.
My biggest beef with the episode is the plot. I sure hope they come up with some sort of decent technobabble reason why Daniels and friends couldn't just go back in time and remove the plasma emitter from the shuttle's hull after the Suliban planted it... presumably the same reason they couldn't go back and apprehend Silik before he came aboard the pilgrim's ship in "Cold Front." Or, for that matter, the reason they can't go back and fix all the problems of the Temporal Cold War as soon as they are detected. Why must they enlist the Enterprise crew to do the dirty work after the fact, when there is no "after" to a time-traveller? And why didn't Daniels materialize on Enterprise and retrieve his technogoodies after "Cold Front" to prevent contamination? I'm not saying that the writers just overlooked all this stuff, since both "Cold Front" and "Shockwave" have indicated that there's more to the time travel thing than there seems. But it's getting to the point where it needs to be made more clear how things work so that the gaping plot holes don't get worse. It could be as simple as "temporal degredation," so you can only time-travel to one time once without damaging the fabric of spacetime. But there needs to be something.
I previously assumed that the temporal police had a continuity-blocking shield like the Krenim had. When, say Enterprise got hypothetically destroyed after "Cold Front," they noted the change, sent Daniels back, and we saw the fix he made. But in "Shockwave," the changes to the past cause destruction of the temporal police's own equipment, certainly suggesting that it isn't shielded... yet Daniels remembers everything, suggesting that he is. I've never been a fan of time-travel episodes, and these are the reasons why.
Otherwise, I simply found the action lackluster and the volumnous technobabble annoying. The episode wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. It was pretty good. But I don't think it is worthy of the high accolades it's been getting.
[ May 23, 2002, 07:45: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]
I agree that this is one of the best Trek episodes in years, simply because it's got great excitement, great characterization, and a plot that questions the very premise of the entire series. When else do you get the lead of a "Star Trek" series questioning Humanity's right to explore the stars? And the little commando raid on the Suliban ship puts all of those "Voyager" escapades to shame.
Yes, the Temporal Hooha� is getting a little out of hand. I would've expected that the Temporal Police had a shield to protect them from the timeline -- that idea goes all the way back to Asimov's "The End of Eternity," and probably even further.
However, I think it's a novel idea. Consider that in the past, it's always been possible to go back and fix a mistake by traveling to a point before the event and changing things. Instead, we see them make a mistake that's so big, it's IMPOSSIBLE to fix. Very different from what we usually see.
Here's what I think happened, based on a few comments from Berman and Braga. (This is only speculation.) -- Because Archer was taken to the 31st century and didn't board the Suliban ship, Silik retaliated by destroying the Enterprise. B&B have hinted that the NX-01 will play an important role in helping to build the Federation in later years, so without the Enterprise, there was no Federation. And Earth was destroyed in some alien attack, maybe the Romulans, or someone else. And since there was no Federation, there's no Time Police in the future, etc etc etc...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Assuming that the destroyed city was on Earth. Perhaps I'm giving too much credit to the show's cleverness, but it seems to me that they've been a little reluctant to come out and say "Daniels is from the 31st century Federation."
Registered: Mar 1999
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Of course, if Daniels told Archer that a human like him worked under the auspices of something called "the Federation" it might well shape Archer's actions in the critical decade leading to its formation.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote: Assuming that the destroyed city was on Earth.
I may be way off base, wouldn't be the first time, but it looked to me like the destroyed building they were in was Archer's apartment building, from earlier in the episode. Same room and all.
-------------------- Sparky:: Think! Question Authority, Authoritatively. “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” EMSparks
Shalamar: To save face, keep lower half shut.
Registered: Jun 1999
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Again, that's certainly possible, but that was Daniels apartment or office or whatever, and the idea that he lives and/or works in the same building 800 years after Archer did seems improbable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Just having watched the episode, I pose this question: Is Daniels from the 30th or 31st Century? I'm fairly sure he said the 30th in "Cold Front," although there could be a few explanations for it (It's been more than a few months from Daniels' point of view, or it's the year 3001).
And is anyone else beginning to suspect Future Guy might belong to the same faction as Daniels?
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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And while it's not inconcievable that FG and Daniels are working on the same side against some as of yet unseen other faction, the whole conflict in "Cold Front" would be somewhat moot if they were, no? Granted, there would be several reasonable ways to explain around it if they did want to actually pull such a twist out of the bag.
One thing that I noticed and liked in "Shockwave:" Daniels referenced how he was wary of "the other factions." A three, four, or five-sided temporal political juggernaut is IMHO way cooler than just maybe-good-guys vs. maybe-bad-guys.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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Hmm... now THERE's a thought. Maybe someone we've never even seen (or Braxton) wiped out the Federation somehow, and Daniels and Future Guy (assuming they're seperate people) are simply Time Police manipulating things from both sides to make things right again.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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I don't know. That sort of Forrest Gump stuff worked in "Trials and Tribble-ations" because it wasn't played entirely straight. Sure, there was some serious stuff going on, but the overall tone was in line with the original episode. I'm not sure you could pop Archer and company into a serious TOS context, what with the vast differences in design.
Registered: Mar 1999
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