I wonder if that is lack of imagination or political correctness. Voyager tended to have a lot of “girl stuff” in it. ^:)^
The Horta.
The Whota?
I thought the second episode was somewhat better than the first.
Some observations:
The Vulcan chick (I don’t remember what the heck her name is) seems to be more of a Bitchy Ice Queen than a member of a Race Ruled by Logic. More “7 of 9” than Mr. Spock. But I don’t know that we can necessarily blame the writers for this – it could simply be that the actress hasn’t mastered the art of Vulcan Subtlety, so tends to over-emote many of her lines. I think much of what she says could be more effective if stated matter-of-factly (again, a la Spock), rather than dripping with sarcasm. However, I do recall in the last episode hearing her use a distinctly human idiom (which, again, I can’t remember exactly what she said), which struck me as being out of place.
I also question leaving her in charge of the ship at any time. Once the Klingon mission was finished, I would think that complete control would revert to Starfleet (thus Capt. Archer), and that she would henceforth be little more than an advisor/observer. Unless she holds a rank in Starfleet, I wouldn’t think she would be eligible for even a temporary command. But, I guess it is Archer’s ship and he can do as he pleases.
I couldn’t help but notice that even at this early stage of space exploration, all ships seem to have universal visual ship-to-ship communication. That’s something that always bothered me about all of the other Treks, too. I guess it’s just one of those Trek constants.
I liked the fact that the Weapon’s Officer was breaking out the heavy hardware prior to boarding the derelict ship. I also liked the fact that Archer asked Hoshi what weapons she was rated for prior to handing her a phase pistol.
I also liked the fact that, this time, Archer wouldn’t let his Chief Engineer go with them when they left the ship the first time.
I suspect that the better (and more familiar) ship weaponry probably won’t show up until the first war with the Klingons. At least, that’s how I’d liek to see it play out. Until then, starship combat is likely to be pretty one-sided, since we’ve seen how easily Enterprise can be disabled, and how useless its current weapons are against an older space-faring race.
I don’t know–I don’t really have as much trouble with T’Pol as everybody else seems to. Maybe it’s me, but I haven’t noticed her being especially “emotional.” More so than Spock, sure, but still less so than your average human. And why should every Vulcan be exactly like Spock? As has been pointed out before, Vulcans do not lack emotions. They have very strong emotions, which they keep under rigid control. It only makes sense that some of them would be better at it than others.
And besides, it’s only the second episode. Give her some time to settle into the role. Here’s a fun experiment. Go back and watch Leonard Nimoy’s performance in the first few episodes of TOS. It was very different than the Spock we’ve all come to know and love. He had some kind of weird shouting thing going on.
I remain guardedly optimistic about Enterprise. The first two shows have been about average as Trek episodes go. I’m willing to give them some time to figure out their characters.
The Horta were the silicon based creatures in the TOS episode “Devil in the Dark.” True, they didn’t seem to pair bond. I’ll add the Changelings from DS9, who also seemed to have no concept of monogamous mating (although Odo figured it out). I take tracer’s point, however. It would be refreshing to see aliens whose way of life is…well, alien.
The HealthSpawn from Planet SouthernCalifornia. (TNG episode “Justice”)
The J’naii. (TNG episode “Outcast”)
The Q.
Tribbles.
Better watch it, kid. Talk like that could get you banned. 
“The pain! The pain!”
I generally liked this one better than the premiere episode, and everyone else has brought up most of the good and bad points. But that last log entry (and I like that they aren’t using Stardates yet), wherein Archer mentions that, “Oh, by the way, the aliens were androgynous and live for 400 years. Anyway . . .” reminded me a little of something from The Simpsons:
Some good and some bad:
Bad: Forget about Hoshi (I keep thinking about Yoshi from Mario) learning to speak fluently in the end. How the heck did she “calibrate” the translator simply by repeating “ship” and “distress”?
Good: Cool Breeny enemy ship. Are they to be the series villians?
Bad: Archer’s Janeway-esque “Looks like we made a friend” comment.
Good: Cute puppy.
Bad: Do the helmets have lights shining on the wearer’s faces for any purpose other than to blind them?
Good: the doctor - perhaps people mistake him for a cook since he was jizzing over the taters. Eating the slug would have been AWESOME!
Bad: No decon scene!
Good: low tech transport, etc. Handy that the aliens had a handy dandy handle right outside the hatch! Is the British weapons officer going to be a “blast first, ask questions later” character? I always loved it when they’d ask Worf for his recommendations. You always knew what he’d say!
Bad: Why did the shuttle arm move achingly slow when first under attack, and then speed up after they were reattached?
Good: Tho the opening song sucks, they do a good job of making the technology seem to flow out of past and present tech.
Bad: I have to wait until next Wed to see the next episode.
I don’t think that’s what was happening. Here’s my take.
Once they got the ship’s computer up and running, they fed as much of the alien language to the translator and let it figure out what the individual words were. Hoshi was then asking the translator if it had the words for “ship” and “distress” yet. When it didn’t it went “beep”. When it did, it fed the word back to her.
Poetic license. Probably took a lot longer, but you’d change channels.
Yeah, that in the words of Dylan Hunt, sucks.
That’s where it usually goes. ^:)^
Maybe it works on adrenellin(sp) ? Maybe someone saw a promotion if he could make it faster.
She didn’t calibrate the translator. Remember all the trouble they had communicating with the alien at the end? All she was doing was trying to get a “Ship in distress” signal sent out, which would only require the words “ship”, “in”, and “distress”.
Ouch. I missed that!
OK, I’ll take up the unenviable defense of Hoshi’s rapid grasp of the language. Remember that she is at the top of the field of xenolinguistics. Presumably she’s familiar with a number of alien language families, and fluent in some. Presumably the ones she would be most familiar with would the ones most commonly in use around the Vulcan/Earth area, the edges of which they’re currently exploring. It’s not unreasonable to think that the new language could be substantially similar to one she already knew–more like picking up French when you already know Spanish than making the transition from French to Urdu. That would mean that she already had some common vocabulary, and could make a guess at more–if she spent most of her off-screen time in the episode studying that language and had her presumed talent, she could come up with a few good cognates. It would be on the level some other posters have described “Blood machine not I machine. Blood machine they machine.” (remember, she couldn’t come up with a word for pump).
Also, as has already been pointed out, the alien might have had more patience with a person who was obviously trying hard to be understood than with a mechanical translator. Go play with babelfish for a while and you’ll see what I mean. 
I’m not even going to try to defend the slug scene or the theme song.
Right! The languages could be similar because they developed on nearby… planets?
Sorry. Doesn’t hold water. There is a good way to approach the regular deciphering of non-human languages, and this ain’t it. And pity the poor actress who’s saddled with all the ridiculous “alien” gibberish. Like all that “cooing” in the pilot. I’ll take “I’m sensing great pain!” any day.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by TheeGrumpy *
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That wasn’t !Kung ?
^:)^
Before we get into whether languages that developed on sepsrate planets would be similar, (my take on it: no, unless the speakers were physiologically very similar and there was contact between the two for a long time) I think we should talk about sound production.
The sounds that we make that create words are a very small part of the sounds we could make. Furthermore, the sounds are created by very precise manipulations of our lips, tongue, throat and nasal cavity. In order to create intelligable speech, you have to have a highly trained vocal apparatus that is reasonably similar to the standard human vocal tract (or alien vocal tract as the case may be.) Neandethals couldn’t speak in the same way we do and they were human. The same goes for apes and they developed from the same stock that we did.
It is difficult to hear and produce sounds in other human languages that have sounds we don’t produce. It could be physically impossible for a human to produce an intelligible sound in an alien language much less learn their syntax and vocabulary.
(Oh yeah, could someone explain how the Klingon’s adaptive(?) syntax works? Sounds fishy to me.)
Nah–for this to work at all, you have to assume the prior development of a lingua franca or pidgin for trade purposes between races. The trade languages would eventually develop into a language family in themselves–the aliens in the episode use one that had just drifted far enough (or was archaic enough, given their lifespans) that she couldn’t readily understand it. If you don’t have the trade languages, then her performance is unreasonable no matter how much of a genius she may be.
Their syntax adapts to which style of head they are wearing, smooth or turtle.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Munch *
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I still don’t see how she was able to find those or any other words, even for the limited purposes of sending a message, if everything about the alien language was unlike anything in the UT database or that she had experienced (I forget her babble about syntax, phonetics, etc.)
You give me a Persian novel, dictionary, or newspaper, and I’m not gonna be able to find the words ship or distress, whether I want to interpret ancient Persian poetry, or send a distress signal. I seem to recall folks had a little trouble with hieroglyphics until they lucked into a key.
She was only second in her class.
How come Archer didn’t go with #1 (or #1 of any of the preceding years.)
Maybe as #2 she tries harder?