Is it just me, or did it look like Shran impaled his leg on some sort of Andorian marital aid?
Well, if that’s just you, then it was just me(I) who thought the Ice Bores were rather…odd-looking.
Pathetic. But the ending was nice. When I saw the Romulan arc news, I was expecting something better than this.
Shran said Andorian females were aggressive … but, I mean, really!
Are you saying Shran was more upset because his leg had gotten humped?
or
Are you saying males have the clitoris and females have the penis, and Shran felt he was being unfaithful to Talas?
or
Are you saying you’d like to show Bergama what ice bores can really do?
or
Are you going to introduce Bergama to your small garden gnome with the pointy hat.
or
Am I rambling and need more (or less) medicine?
Inquiring minds acquiring rhymes…
I watched the episode again. The destruction of the two drones really bothered me this time; the effects clearly showed them breaking apart into fragments instead of being vaporized or whatever. Now, don’t you think the Enterprise crew is going to gather up every last particle of debris they can find and that will fit in their cargo hold, to take back and share with Starfleet and Vulcan intelligence? It’s sloppy writing that leaves a hole, expecting us to believe that either they left the destroyed drones where they were, or they didn’t learn anything from studying the wreckage.
If it were me writing the show, I would have had the Romulan masters manually interrupting weapons control so the pilot couldn’t fire on himself any more, and demand he bring the drones back immediately. He’d put the drones into warp, the Romulans would relax for a moment, and Enterprise would be simultaneously relieved at the reprieve and frustrated at their failure to destroy them. Then everybody would suddenly realize that the pilot had sent the drones diving into the nearest star. Poof, same outcome, no evidence.
Oh, and did anybody else buy the “fire” cliffhanger? Was there even an iota of a chance that when we came back from commercial it’d turn out Archer was shooting at an actual Tellarite freighter instead of the camoflaged drone? They made like they were firing blind, like they were rolling the dice by blasting the other ship, but what happened to the “power signature” trick? Especially considering they used it immediately following when the “Andorian” vessel appeared. More sloppy writing.
And since I’ve been harping on bad exposition lately, this ep had another good example: After the first test with T’Pol, coming back to sickbay, Trip walks over to Phlox and says, “She wants to try again.” This is exactly what I’ve been saying before, about how they don’t realize that in order to deliver information to the audience, it isn’t necessary to have characters deliver information to one another. We would have figured it out just as well if they’d started with a shot of T’Pol settling back into the device and Trip off-camera saying, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
I point this out because the episode actually had a very good example of how to deliver exposition in context: the scene where we jump right in to Archer reacting to the Aenars’ decision not to assist. See, we don’t have to hear the Aenar Speaker tell Archer what they decided. We figure it out from context. Go straight to the conflict and trust us to figure out what’s going on. We’re smart. We’ve seen stories before. We don’t need to be spoon-fed, and this scene provides an excellent demonstration of how this stuff should work. See the difference?
Nice scene with the Romulan admiral and the scientist, too. “I don’t want your pity! I learned my lesson, not to question policy, and you should too.” I still think Trek generally overplays its villains, making them mustache-twirling baddies as if we can’t figure out from their actions that they’re the antagonists (as in the teaser, the drippingly evil tone of voice when the admiral says, “…and destroy them”), but this was a nice little scene.
I still say “meh,” but overall the show is still significantly better now than it was last year. They’re just hitting their stride, and… AXE!
Ppbbtptpbt.
What a coincidence! Quatloos! is one of my favorite websites. I frequent their “Tax Protestor nuts” bulletin board, as a matter of fact.
I just saw a news story on MSN or somesuch, about some Trekker fans doing a petition or something to save Enterprise. Anyone heard anything about this?
http://www.trektoday.com/news/160205_01.shtml
God, I hope so.
There was just a huge ad in the main section of the LA Times yesterday.
There are lots of campaigns, ads, petitions, etc. going on. They have been for some time.
See: www.trekunited.com
www.enterprisefans.com
www.enterpriseproject.org
www.saveenterprise.com
www.triphammered.com
Uh, no thank you. While I’m sure *B5 *was great, I have no interest in having someone from another established series messing with mine, especially when it was in direct competition with one of its spin-offs who he seems to have at least a little bit of contempt for since “…none of the spinoffs (with the exception of The Next Generation, “because Gene [Roddenberry] was still around to shepherd its creation and execution”) had lived up to the promise of the original” which is utter bullshit. *DS9 *was very much on the same level as TNG, if not higher, and was much more directly related to *TOS *in terms of theme, execution, and portrayal of honest human characters instead of the glurge *TNG *was too often fond of.
Agreeing with Aes, and by the way, I mailed your tapes to Our Contact yesterday.
I love B5. But Trek is not for JMS to revamp.
Just for some much needed comic relief re: ENT:
http://www.comics.com/comics/sheldon/archive/sheldon-20050214.html
Hehehe. It’s like they know me.
Naw, if they really knew us, they’d have him screaming “PORTHOS, NOOOOOOOO!!!”
Just once before the series ends (!), I want to see Porthos pee all over Archer’s room.
And I want to see Chef’s face.