Sorry to drag this back on topic, but I finally saw the episode on tape. And…
Laaaame.
Yet another all-powerful alien who can’t get enough of the human meat-sacks. Yeah, I know, we’re basically narcissistic, and we assume that out of a thousand extraterrestrial species we will be the most interesting and intelligent and important and all of that. But gimme a break. I mean, at least they could have made it interesting: Alien dude could have said something like, “Your head is freakishly free of crab legs, but in my situation I’m not able to be choosy. Here, please wear this pipe-cleaner hat. Ah, much better.”
And hey, while we’re at it, if alien dude is able to project images into Hoshi’s head, why did he reveal himself as an alien right off the bat? Wouldn’t it have been much more interesting if Archer & Team came down, and the alien guy was much more normal-looking? Except Archer etc reacted slightly differently? And then later, Hoshi’s talking to him, and she glances over and sees his reflection and he’s all freaky head, and she snaps back and he’s normal, and she snaps back to the reflection and now that’s normal too, except now she doesn’t know what’s up? And of course later she realizes she’s being fooled? I know, I know, this pushes it even further into Beauty and the Beast territory, but shit, as long as they’re going to rip off the story, they might as well do it right.
I like NCB’s idea of “graves to the horizon.”
The bouncing shuttle on the sphere was dumb.
Hoshi’s poky nipples in the first scene were adorable. However, I didn’t see her carrying a giant stack of luggage down to the planet, so the costume changes were distracting. How much crap did she bring, anyway? Ordinary uniform, Vulcania’s Secret nightgown, phaser-cutting-phaser with special stick-it-under-pillow customization…
The bit where she finally stood up to Crab Legs Head at the end (“I’ll smash your sphere! I’ll swallow your soul!” oh, wait) was pretty good, but it just highlights how incompetently the whole story was structured. There was never any mystery about what was going on: Okay, he wants Hoshi to stay. It’s obvious, but nobody seems to realize it, so we’re just spinning our wheels dramatically until the characters figure out what we already know. The situation doesn’t actually develop, which means the characters aren’t being called on to make choices and decisions.
I keep complaining about how the writers are handling the characters, and I think that’s key: The lack of choices and decisions is crippling their storytelling. The only way we get to know about a character is in seeing them make a choice or a decision. And I’m not talking about a tactic, like Archer sticking the guy in the airlock. That’s a means of making the other guy make a choice: talk or die? A true choice is forcing Archer to decide what to do if the guy doesn’t talk. Do you let him out or kill him?
We must see decisions — a difficult choice between option A and option B — to understand the character. It is through the accumulation of these choices that we get to know these people. Picard, Worf, and Riker may all choose A in situation X, but LaForge and Data might choose B. Then in situation Y, Picard and Worf might choose A, while Riker, Data, and LaForge choose B. But then in situation Z, Worf and (unexpectedly) Data choose A, while Picard, Riker, and LaForge choose B.
What decisions were made in this episode by the central characters? There were two, by my count. First, Archer decided to take Hoshi’s word and make a detour. Minor decision. Not a tough choice. Tells us a little bit about his character, that he trusts his people, but that’s about it. The other decision was by Hoshi: I’m not stayin’ on this frozen goddamn planet with a dude who looks like he had a transporter accident with a lobster and a bag of macrame. Not only is it not a tough choice, it wasn’t handled correctly; it was made immediately and then not changed, thereby eliminating any possibility of suspense.
It seems to me that the writers are going out of their way to avoid giving the characters actual choices. It’s like they don’t want to alienate any part of the audience by forcing the characters to choose between difficult alternatives. But don’t they see, that’s what makes good storytelling?
What are generally considered the best episodes of TNG? Yesterday’s Enterprise and Best of Both Worlds. And why? Well, lots of reasons, but among them are that both stories are filled with difficult decisions. Picard doesn’t have anything more than Guinan’s word that he has to send back the Enterprise-B. Tasha decides to join the suicide mission. Riker decides to fire on the Borg cube despite the fact that Picard is over there. And so on. These are thrilling. They advance the story, and they give us insights into the characters. And that’s all we need, really, to keep us tuning in week after week.
I’m thinking back over the shows so far this season, looking at choices and decisions. I’m doing this because the thing I keep complaining about is the storytelling. The stories aren’t working, obviously; we collectively agree they’re usually kind of boring, with occasional exceptions. We may be briefly impressed by neat special effects (the overhead shot of the asteroid field in “Impulse”, for example) or a single exciting scene (the pirate raid in “Anomaly”), but in general, taken overall, the stories are lacking. So let’s look back over this season so far, and see where the characters had to make difficult choices that emotionally engage us, that cause us to identify with their predicament and put ourselves in their position.
The Xindi. Archer & Trip, seeking information on their foe, get captured (again). What choices are made here? “Hey, Cap’n, should we try to escape or should we sit on our butts?” Or, “Lieutenant Reed, should we attempt to rescue the captain or should we leave them to die in the mines?” Nothin’. Zippo. Instead, what did we get? “Ladder climbing, Joel!”
Anomaly. Weird shit happens. Our heroes investigate. Pirates attack. Our heroes find a mysterious sphere and prowl around. Space battle with a couple of cool effects. Okay, choices? Archer puts a dude in the airlock, and… his bluff isn’t called. The closest thing to a tough decision in this episode is when they’re trying to download the pirate database, and they’re having trouble, and they’re taking damage, and they may have to break off, but “no, let’s keep trying,” and of course it mostly works and then the show is over. Um, what?
Extinction. Not only are there no choices in this episode, three of our primary characters aren’t even themselves. A big waste of time. The less said, the better.
Rajiin. Minor decision early on when Archer agrees to take the slave girl back to Enterprise. Opportunity later when Rajiin is being taken by Xindi raiders and Archer has a clear shot at her. Again, zilch. If I’m missing something here, please remind me.
Impulse. We get a stupid decision a third of the way in when both shuttlecraft are off Enterprise with no backup plan. Now, to be fair, there’s actually an extremely compelling choice in this story, when Archer elects to kill everybody on the Vulcan ship by destroying it in order to save himself and his team. But it’s glossed over, as though the writers didn’t know the true potential of their story and skipped right over it.
Exile. Discussed above.
Now: Think back to what we’ve generally agreed have been the strongest episodes of Enterprise thus far.
Cogenitor. Trip makes a choice to sneak around and help somebody. The choice backfires in a big way, and there are serious consequences. We learned something about Trip in this episode. We get to know what kind of man he is (not that these characteristics have been followed up on in any meaningful way). And what’s more, we get to learn about Archer, too, because he’s forced to deal with the fallout.
The Andorian Incident. This is the one where Enterprise stumbles into a hostage situation in the Vulcan monastery and inadvertently exposes the Vulcan listening station to the Andorian commandos. A big choice at the end, when Archer hands evidence to the Andorians at the risk of damaging Earth’s relationship with Vulcan.
The Communicator. A mistake is made by a crewmember. There are no easy alternatives: leave the equipment, or try to get it back. They choose the latter, and fuck it up. Again, consequences.
I’m serious here. Look at the episodes that really work. You’ll find, in most if not all cases, there’s a dilemma the characters are not allowed to escape. I’m not talking about a lame choice, like the one in “Horizon” where Mayweather disregards his brother’s order not to upgrade the freighter’s weapons. That’s not the kind of decision I’m talking about, because there’s no downside, either potential or realized. Or at least it’s, again, glossed over. When the show originally aired, I sided with the brother’s position: There’s nobody on the freighter crew qualified to maintain the Starfleet-level weapon systems in the future, and if they break down, the freighter’s going to be worse off with no weapons than with weak weapons. I suggested that the show should follow up on it, letting Mayweather’s family get captured or killed because of his stupidity. Then it would be a decision. As it is, he did something dumb, there were no consequences, end of story. Bullshit, sez I.
And even on the intermittent occasions where there is a decision, they give it to the supporting cast, instead of to the primary characters. Look at that episode “Judgment,” where Archer’s on trial and has to convince the Klingon advocate dude to actually make a presentation. Who has the decision? The Klingon. Not Archer. Why the hell should we care? Why do we want to learn about a character we’re probably never going to see again? Archer’s path through the story is a straight line, without deviation. Same as Hoshi’s path in the new episode: She never questions her situation, she never has occasion to think maybe she’s wrong. She pursues a single objective with unchanging tactics: “No! No! No!” until it’s over.
I’d better stop. I’m working myself into a lather. The thing is, I keep complaining about the same stuff, and it isn’t changing. The stories aren’t working for the same reasons they always haven’t been working. I don’t know if it’s the Bermaga’s influence, that they’re telling the writers to work on the wrong stuff, or if they’ve got a bunch of writers who just don’t know what they’re doing. But the show is not improving, and it’s getting really, really tiresome.
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[sub]{sound of grinding wheel spinning. We pan to see sparks flying from a phaser-cutting-phaser being sharpened}[/sub]
and 
just in case.