posted
Peter Weller, known to most people for "Robocop" and nothing else, arrives for the first part of the "real" two-part series finale, as many fans have already dubbed it. Enterprise returns home to lay the groundwork for a "Coalition of Planets", but Robocop has other ideas. Look for:
-Colonel Green! And the different guy who plays him. And his recorded speech Paxton takes to heart.
-The first known Human-Vulcan hybrid. And how the hell they made it happen.
-And on that, Harris and his S31 flunkies. Reed having lines to that effect.
-Not much space action, likely.
-Travis not ONLY having lines, but an actual STORY... Something denied him for over two years now. Related to this, the state of Earth media compared to today, and tomorrow.
-Lots on the political situation on Earth, which will likely be the major source of analysis for this episode. There will likely be some moderated in opposition to the Coalition, but who knows if they'll be evident in light of the extremists.
quote:Peter Weller, known to most people for "Robocop" and nothing else, arrives for the first part of the "real" two-part series finale, as many fans have already dubbed it. Enterprise returns home to lay the groundwork for a "Coalition of Planets", but Robocop has other ideas.
Actually, besides Robocop, he's pretty famous (cult-classically speaking) for the title role in "Buckaroo Banzai." Here, his acting is very wooden, but honestly, it totally fits the character he's playing, so that's a good thing. And I'm not sure I even heard the term "Coalition of Planets" used in the episode.
quote:Colonel Green! And the different guy who plays him. And his recorded speech Paxton takes to heart.
Colonel Green gets the same treatment as Z. Cochrane did in "Broken Bow." That is, he's only shown on a tiny monitor screen without closeups. I couldn't even make out his face. Willian Shatner could have been playing him for all I know. Green was known for eradicating the nuclear radiation-diseased survivors of WWIII, in an effort to make the human race "pure" again, or something like that. Paxton uses this rhetoric to justify his similar feelings towards aliens.
quote:The first known Human-Vulcan hybrid. And how the hell they made it happen.
They never say how it happened. Presumably that mystery will be explained in Pt. II. However, Phlox makes a comment that humans and Vulcans probably wouldn't have too difficult a time mating together, which throws the whole "Spock needing all kinds of special treatment just to be born" fandom idea out the window.
quote:And on that, Harris and his S31 flunkies. Reed having lines to that effect.
Very small scene. Harris just gived Reed some info about Terra Prime. The more important thing is that Reed has to return to the organization in exchange for the info (not as if it really makes a difference now, though).
quote:Not much space action, likely.
WRONG! The Orpheus mining complex is actually a warp-capable spacecraft which launches from the moon and warps to Mars. Also, some of the ships flying around the moonbase: The Arctic One is now a moon transport which Trip & T'Pol use to infiltrate the mining complex. Also, I could be wrong about this, but I thought I saw the Antares class freighter of Xhosa & Norkova fame as one of the moonbase ships.
quote:Travis not ONLY having lines, but an actual STORY... Something denied him for over two years now.
And a good story it was, although briefly elucidated upon. Montgomery sure got underutilized all these years.
quote:Lots on the political situation on Earth, which will likely be the major source of analysis for this episode. There will likely be some moderated in opposition to the Coalition, but who knows if they'll be evident in light of the extremists.
Good stuff here, but this should really be discussed in the Enterprise forum, since it's not tech-related.
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OnToMars
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Also, a "verteron weapon" which is ostensibly used to deflect comets and has the curious ability to "hit any target in the system." Some how, this weapon, which appears to be your standard run of the mill beam weapon, isn't limited by line of sight and can hit, say, planets on the opposite side of the sun, the near side of the moon, and gosh, it must even be capable of hitting the opposite hemisphere of Mars.
Once again, Mars is depicted as lifeless and devoid of any infrastructure whatsoever. There should be, at the very minimum, millions of people on Mars, and surely there's a Mars Police Force that's capable of neutralizing one little mining station.
Also, do they ever mention what exactly they're mining on the Moon? Since the only thing worth mining on the moon is hydrogen isotopes and water, what exactly is the station's purpose there? They should've set it on an asteroid, it would've given them a concrete reason for being there and also would've made the "flying mine" idea a little more plausible. And that's not to say anything about a beam weapon traveling slower than the speed of light and thus taking minutes or more to reach its target.
Apparently, we're coming up on the founding of the Federation and we still have extremist, fundamentalist xenophobes running around. Blech.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
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- Okay.. so no-one ever wondered why a mining complex has warp engines?
- Trip seems to forget that he himself piloted the NX-01 at warp in the solar system in the pilot. He was quite shocked at the idea of Paxton flying his behemoth to Mars.
It may not be tech, but this is episode is mostly about politics, so I'll mention it anyway.
- Nathan Samuals is called 'Minister', but of what and for which organization is not very clear. Presumably, he's something like a foreign affairs minister for the United Earth.
- There are a lot of aliens attending. Andorians, Tellarites, Vulcans, Denobulans, and a host of weird one-off aliens. At least, I didn't spot any other familiars.
- The Tellarites are pushing for an embargo against the Orions, because the Orions have allegedly been attacking Tellarite freighters. The 'facehugger' ambassador is opposed to an embargo, and also says Coridan will never agree to trade sanctions (making it sound almost like he is supposed to be a Coridanite. But we already know they look different). It seems there are (at this stage at least) a lot more 'founding members' than the classic four (or five, counting Alpha Centauri).
- Yeah.. Mars seems devoid of civilization. No mention of the fleetyards or any habitation.
- And indeed.. what the hell is there to mine on the Moon?
- Colonel Green became leader after the signing of a peace treaty. It seems like he only came into power until *after* the nuclear war. WWIII looks to be a short but devastating nuclear war, followed by a 'peace treaty' and presumably followed by a more 'conventional' war to get rid of Green.
posted
Is Mars merely depicted as lifeless, or declared lifeless? Even if there has been a colony on the planet for half a century, this doesn't mean that there would be anything truly worthwhile there. Most of the planet could be wasteland, and remain so even in the TNG era. The dockyards in orbit in the TNG era might be there mainly because they were shooed away from all other insystem locations, not because there'd be something useful for them on or under Martian surface.
The flying mining station might not be a "lunar" one per se, but just spending the "winter months" or maintenance downtime there. Its normal assignment might indeed be to hop from asteroid to asteroid, in which case warp drive makes eminent sense. Except if warp drive isn't normally used within the Sol system...
Any taboo on insystem warping at this point sounds really weird, given how many obvious insystem vessels are obviously warp-capable in this and other episodes. Is the dialogue on this "fatally explicit" or merely "suggestive of a YATI but creatively interpretable"?
posted
It's the usual "Prepare for warp speed!" "In system!?" kind of dialogue. A slightly worried Trip.
Of course, we see that weird weapon array on Mars, and it is very likely that we simply didn't see the other signs of habitation. Sattelites and small settlements are pretty much invisible on a planetary scale, after all.
And there was genuine surprise with Starfleet when the mining station flew off. Sometimes I wish they did not have the budget for gratuitous FX shots like this. All in all, the politics were nice, but the technical bits were not very well thought out and a bit too much like a children's comic-book.
posted
Mars is smaller than Earth, but it's still a big planet. Plenty of room for everything that should be there, although I personally wouldn't have expected much in any case. A small colony sure, and this verteron array, but what else is supposed to be there at this point? It's not the 24th century.
I rather got the impression that the Orpheus' warp engines weren't spec, but had been added by Paxton and his workers specifically with this nefarious purpose in mind.
And yeah, the warping in-system comment was very strange (if scientifically sensible) seeing as how the only other time this was mentioned was in TMP. Every other series including ENT itself has shown numerous in-system jumps without incident. But wasn't it T'Pol who made the comment, not Trip?
There were indeed Xhosa/Norkova-type ("Antares-class") freighters flying over the lunar colony. Quite a long-lasted design...
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
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1. The facility-ship's take-off thrusters and warp engines appeared to be contained in the same units . . . the louvered ports were expelling flame during take off, and flashed blue upon activation of warp drive.
2. On January 19, 2155, the distance from Mars to the moon will be approximately 1.0393 AU, per Celestia. Or, in other words, about 150,000,000 kilometers, give or take. A five-second warp jump means that the facility-ship was travelling at around 100c.
3. In "Mosaic", Mars was said to be largely red still, but in possession of patches of blue and green in the neighborhood of Olympus Mons. By 2103, the terraforming of Mars was underway and just under a century later, Mars possessed a breathable atmosphere.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
The problem with the warp-complex was the fact that it was supposed to be 'secret'. How can you hide warp coils, a M/ARA, deflectors, and expensive dilithium right on the doorstep of Starfleet Command? It's like hiding a Space Shuttle complete with launch rockets, in the garden of the White House.
posted
Harry: Why would Starfleet have any reason to observe the mining complex, though, prior to the events of this episode? It seems they've had their hands full the past couple of years, what with Xindi and Klingon attacks, embassy bombings, etc.
Guardian: 2. Wouldn't know about those calculations, but just because the engines were fired for a five-second burst doesn't mean that it only took them five seconds to get there. You can't warp right into the atmosphere.
3. Since Mosaic isn't canonical, it really doesn't matter.
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
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"The problem with the warp-complex was the fact that it was supposed to be 'secret'. How can you hide warp coils, a M/ARA, deflectors, and expensive dilithium right on the doorstep of Starfleet Command? It's like hiding a Space Shuttle complete with launch rockets, in the garden of the White House."
Except, a space shuttle is huge, and the White House garden is not. It would be more like hiding a centimeter-high model of a space shuttle in the White House garden. Amidst hundreds of other space shuttle models.
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OnToMars
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What is Mosiac again? A novel?
And again, perhaps Starfleet has been awfully busy with its respective crises but it still begs the question, aren't there other organizations licensed to carry guns in system who are tasked with keeping the rule of law? Another thing that bugged me was that Archer and company seemed to have no trouble taking on an undercover mission in an area over which they had no jurisdiction. "Hey, guys, we should check this shit out." "Won't the Lunar Police get pissed at us?" "Who?"
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: Guardian: 2. Wouldn't know about those calculations, but just because the engines were fired for a five-second burst doesn't mean that it only took them five seconds to get there. You can't warp right into the atmosphere.
And they didn't warp right into the atmosphere . . . they warped to Mars, dropping out of warp and flying past the camera to show an almost screen-filling planet.
This they did from very near the moon. They were hailed shortly prior to going to warp, and the time between Archer being informed that the facility-ship was taking off to the time when the vessel went to warp was a sufficiently short amount of time that Archer had just made it to the bridge.
The total amount of screen time between warp entry and warp exit was less than 20 seconds, which still gives them an average speed of 25c if one wishes to ignore the dialog. However, a five-second burst of warp drive plus coasting would require a greater initial speed than that anyway.
quote:3. Since Mosaic isn't canonical, it really doesn't matter.
Here is a link to the StarTrek.com FAQ. While you are of course perfectly at liberty to refuse to consider it a canon work for your own purposes, it is a part of the official canon.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Weren't many things from those novels eventually dismissed by on screen canon thereby really making the entire novels noncanon (except those bit which have been used as canon on screen)? If what I just said really makes sense to anyone.
-------------------- Is it Friday yet?
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Perhaps the array is situated in a pretty shitty part of Mars that hasn't been terrafordem much (or can't be, for some reason or other). The power source may be dangerous or unstable.
Also, I hope nothing happens to that baby. I'm really sensitive about harm towards children right now, for obvious reasons. . .
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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