Did Paramount lose their Pan Focus lenses? That scene was slightly annoying the way it was done. Then again, pan focus takes alot of light, so maybe they did the best they could.
Soval has a battle station on NX-01, interesting.
Shelob’s Lair… oooh…
Quantum opens the door by doing Nipple, Nipple, Tweak, Tweak.
Oscar Gordon carrying the Egg of the Phoenis for Empress Star.
Nice touch with the battle board display V’Los used.
Another one bites the dust.
WMDs again… sigh… Startrek.com’s spoiler was the setup for the next ep of this arc. We should see Shran again.
Peter David is an excellent comic book writer (see his work on The Incredible Hulk, or the X-Men spin-off X-Factor). I’ve never read any of his novels, though.
Natalie Portman is a 23-year-old actress, who played Padme (Luke & Leia’s mother) in the Star Wars prequels. (Hence NoClueBoy’s reference). She’s also been in such recent movies as Cold Mountain and Garden State.
I thought “Awakening” was a decent episode, but I liked “The Forge” better. Most of “Awakening” was fairly predictable. I mean, we’d all already figured out that Archer had Surak’s katra and all that. The only real surprise was right at the end, when we found out that V’Los was planning a war against the Andorians. I’ve got to say, whether he’s strayed from the true teachings of Surak or not, V’Los seems just plain nuts. I mean, where’s the logic in starting a war with the Andorians, when that would probably bring as much harm to Vulcan as to Andoria.
It is the middle of the arc, so I would expect it to be predictable.
I would like to have some insight to V’Las. He is a rather stock character. I expect more from Reeves-Stevens already.
Pan Focus is a technique used to have everything in focus in a scene, foreground to back.
The wider the angle of lens, the easier to do. However, wide angle causes an apparant perspective distortion when used close up, esp noticable with people as the subject.
So, to make people look on film as normal, long focual lenghts (telephoto) are used. Apparant depth of focus (depth of field) is short. In a portrait, this works well. In movies, tho, it means having to focus anew for each new person speaking. When forground person is in focus, background person is fuzzy, and vicse versa.
The only way around that was to stop down the aperture of the short tele used for these shots to an extremely small f-stop. Say f90 or f128. Most available lenses only stopdown to f22.
So, some manufacturors started making short teles with the ability to stop down to that unbelieveably small f-stop. Some required a disc to be inserted, some hade the feature built in.
The only downside to the small f-stop, tho, is you need an a shitload of light to shutter speeds (still) or angles (movies) practical enough. Hence the problem in that scene with T’Pol and T’Les.
Oooo Andorians.
I’m glad they threw in the thing about Andoria building a superweapon to attack Vulcan based on the Xindi Happy Funball. It made sense of that episode in the Xindi arc, I liked the episode either way, but the change of “Andorian’s want a superweapon” to “Andorian’s are looking for a way to pre-emptivly strike Vulan” was welcome. Why do Vulcan’s and Andorian’s have such animosity towards eachother? Was it ever explained in detail?
They haven’t explained it much since the P’Jem debacle. It might come to a head when they get to the Babel business (it’s coming up).
It’s Kir’Shara (?), and I think that’s also the name of the next episode.
I wonder if the Vulcans were thinking, “Sheesh, these humans smell bad enough when they’re clean, and here’s a filthy guy who hasn’t bathed in days.”
I assumed that when Archer went mentally visiting Surak, their auras were meshing together or something, as 'plant mentioned.
All these Vulcans seem extremely emotional. I assume that they’ll settle down once the Syrannites get to take over.
I still don’t see how T’Pau could pick up that accent she has when she’s older–unless she married a guy from the other side of the planet and it just rubbed off on her over time, or she went to live in Russia for a long time.
Pretty good stuff. I look forward to the conclusion.
I liked this episode also. I’m starting to get worried; the more non-bad shows they string together, the more concerned I become that it’s just a lucky streak and when I let my hopes get the better of me I’m going to be bodyslammed when it returns to sucking.
But I’ll enjoy it for now.
I’m going to watch the episode a second time before commenting further.
UPN needs to stop running their little two-second spoiler-glimpses of what’s coming up 20 minutes later in the show. I didn’t appreciate knowing T’Les’s fate two acts before it happened.
After reading some other Trek site’s reviews, I see that there is something we Trek Dopers have missed.
Surak’s katra had Quantum find the Phoenix’ Egg, right? Why him? Why didn’t he have some other earlier person do it? He didn’t even trust Syrran himself (Arev) to do it. (Yes, Syrran and Arev are one and the same.)
Apparantly, Surak thinks that it has to be a non Vulcan. Well, surely, he has met (through his katra carrieres) other alien cultures. Why not use them? The answer goes back to the beginning of the first ep, The Forge. Vulcans see qualities in Humans that they fear. Because Hoo-mahns have the ability to be ruthlessly logical and violently illogical. And both qualities work for Humanilty. (Teela Brown Gene, anyone?)
This sets us up for the needed turn around. Vulcans and Humans essentially trade places. In the TOS-DS9 era of Trek, Humans are the movers and shakers, not Vulcans. Vulcans are well known in early post TOS era as the intellectual PUPPETS! of the Federation.
Yes, Quantum finds the Phoenix’ Egg and overrides Vulcanity as the prime power in this region. Soval takes his place (with Surak’s katra) as a second and moves us one step closer to the Human led and powered Federation we all know. (WAG)
On your TiVo, right? I was the same way right after I got mine.
I’m just dropping in to say that ENT is getting so much better. I wonder where we could’ve been if Manny and these writers had been helming the show from the get-go. I feel almost like the first three seasons were wasted, but at least maybe now they won’t cancel it right away.
Wow, I’m -really- liking these Vulcan-centric episodes! The writers are doing a great job, imho–although admittedly I’ve enjoyed most of their Trek novels. But this is the kind of stuff that we should have been seeing on Enterprise from the beginning. I agree with others; the show wouldn’t be in the position it’s been in of being almost -cancelled- if they’d gone about it the -right- way in the first damn place. JMHO, mind you. Hopefully they will now have a chance to lead us to the founding the Federation. And that will mean that I get to see more Tellarites! Woo hoo!
Does T’Les know that T’Pol has that AIDS-like disease? I’ve never been clear on that, although I do think that T’Pol swore Phlox to secrecy. Hehe, I’ve got to add that I thought T’Pau looked a bit ragged - I mean, her hair certainly didn’t fit the normal “bowl” cut of every other Vulcan we’ve ever seen. It also looks like next week is going to be a real treat; I’ll even get to see it on Friday night.
I was the same way right after I got mine.
Hopefully they will now have a chance to lead us to the founding the Federation. And that will mean that I get to see more Tellarites! Woo hoo!