What Star Trek Ep/Movie Did you Watch Today?

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ENT 3.22 "The Council"
I really enjoy that for the first half of this episode, it has a really fantastic 'into the lion's den' feeling. It's certainly not as well-done as the Farscape episodes Into the Lion's Den (that would be difficult to do), but it's enjoyable in a....dreaded and 'things are finally coming to a head' sort of way.

My biggest complaint is in how the Reptilian/Sphere Builder relationship is characterized throughout this episode. It's just so painfully flat and obvious in its writing that it takes away from the overall story being told--which is otherwise a great addition to the season.

It goes a bit off the rails toward the end too, what with the unnecessary murder of Degra by the Reptilian commander. But even in spite of that, it manages to make up for it with the exciting conclusion. The hijack of the weapon by the Reptilians and Insectoids is well done, and the space battle that follows looks and plays out fantastic.


ENT 3.23 "Countdown"
A lot of not a whole lot going on for about the first half of the episode, except for struggling to wrap up leftover plot threads from the cliffhanger conclusion of the previous episode and a lot of sitting around waiting for the Aquatics.

And there's a pretty sizable goof in timeline estimate here: Archer does a log entry dated Feb 13 and goes on to say that they've been in the Expanse for nearly 8 months. From the date given in The Expanse and the amount of time said to have passed in that episode alone, there's just no way that the ship has been in the Expanse for more than 4.5 months. But c'est la vie.

Fortunately it picked up a bit past the halfway point. There was a really terrific intimate moment between Archer, Trip and T'Pol around the dinner table for the first time in god knows how long, discussing their plans for the future. For me it was a nice 'made you smile' scene, as they begin to realize that they might just have a future beyond the mission at hand.

The confrontation and battle at the weapon was another terrific sequence, and a credit to the VFX team. It was well-paced, well-edited, and fantastically 'shot' too. The tension of it all was great and added to considerably by the rescue mission undertaken by Major Hayes and the MACOs.

I'm a bit miffed at Hayes' death though, despite the general goodness of how this episode is in its second half. I don't see why a well-trained soldier with an instant escape route thought it made any tactical sense to send away an injured and and able-bodied soldier at the same time and leave himself alone to wait for the next ride. Why not just have the injured one beamed back, then have the two of you defend until you're able to get out?

Good ending though. Great set-up for the season finale.

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ENT 3.24 "Zero Hour"
Mmmm....having three actors put mice in their mouths, there's an attractive way to kick off your season finale

Generally a really nicely put together finale. Having Hoshi be so infirmed as a result of the parasites in the previous episode is a nice way to cover for the actress being sick (lol), and there's some really terrific makeup work done throughout the entire episode.

I think the A- and B-plots were also really nicely balanced. Archer, now and finally allied with (some of) the Xindi in a frantic race to catch the weapon before it can destroy Earth made a really nice counter-balance to the desperate struggle of the Enterprise and its crew to destroy the Sphere network and fulfill their promise to the Aquatics.

Throw in a nice and timely intervention by Shran, the best character on the series, and it's a pretty winning combination. It's just a shame that the ending cliffhanger is so completely frelling moronic. Really detracts from the entire experience.


ENT 4.01-02 "Storm Front"
I'm condensing this down into a single review because oh man.... The entire premise for this two-parter makes me *facepalm* so hard it hurts. Alien Nazis? Perhaps the most racially-driven regime in human history and aliens are trotting around in their uniforms? And not even just that, running around in Death's Head SS Division uniforms; the guys responsible for astonishing amounts of ethnic cleansing during the Second World War. UGH!

Add to that the corny and poor attempts at German accents, the horrendous CGI of the Nazified White House, and a piss-poor resolution of the Temporal Cold War story and you have one lousy frelling pair of episodes.

About the only part I can stand is that we get a couple more appearances by Silik and Daniels.

[Alan Wake]

Your fetish towards Shran is showing.

[DigiFluid]

Best character in Enterprise, and competing with Weyoun as Jeffrey Combs' best character

Speaking of which, where the hell did Shran disappear to in the closing moments of season 3? He was nowhere to be seen all of a sudden, and certainly wasn't there at the end of Storm Front II.

[Alan Wake]

Best character in Enterprise, and competing with Weyoun as Jeffrey Combs' best character

Speaking of which, where the hell did Shran disappear to in the closing moments of season 3? He was nowhere to be seen all of a sudden, and certainly wasn't there at the end of Storm Front II.

Watch TATY, and you'll see him.

Oh wait, you won't so I guess he's gone.

[DigiFluid]

Watch TATY, and you'll see him.

Oh wait, you won't so I guess he's gone.

Not at all, he's around in four more episodes I have yet to watch. And I'm reasonably sure he appears in the 'relaunch' novels too

[Alan Wake]

Here's what I think of him.

Spoiler:

[rushy]

Kirk-movie Wrath of Khan, TOS Trouble with Tribbles, TAS More Tribbles, more troubles, TNG Datalore, DS9 Tribbleations, Enterprise In a mirror, Darkly, Picard-movie Nemesis.

[rushy]

Oh, and Voyager Author, Author and Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy.

[DigiFluid]

ENT 4.03 "Home"
In a lot of ways, Home reminds me of TNG's Family. Both involve difficult and emotional homecomings for the series' respective crews after being involved in serious and life-changing events and both are strong additions to their series.

I find that the Archer/Hernandez story is a bit stiff, which at least partially (for me) comes down to a total lack of chemistry between Scott Bakula and Ada Maris. Bakula is doing an okay job here with the uninspired dialogue he's given, but Maris' on-screen presence is another matter entirely. She seems....I don't know, there's something about her that just seems too soft and supplicant for her to be believable as a Starfleet captain. It remains an interesting story though.

Even though I'm really not big on the Trip/T'Pol relationship, I think it's actually played out quite nicely here. I do like how it's portrayed as a 'bringing home the boyfriend to meet the parents'; the tension between T'Pol's mother and the two of them is palpable and a lot of fun to watch. And the visual sequences of Vulcan itself were quite nice.

Another thing I quite like is how the seeds of a xenophobic Earth are planted early on here, a plot thread that wouldn't bear fruit until Demons and Terra Prime at the end of the season. I think that's a pretty well-executed bit of planning by new showrunner Manny Coto.

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ENT 4.04 "Borderland"
In the words of Archer, "here we are again." After several months on Earth, with the ship in drydock, Enterprise and her crew are finally ready to get underway and begin their next mission. I guess, in a way, this is when the season really begins in earnest. Again the ship is repurposed, mercifully away from combat and into a more specialized diplomatic sort of a role.

And like a day out of drydock they're already being shot at lol. I really appreciate the return to the storytelling concept of Enterprise heading into areas of space that are a bit rough and tumble; not yet visited by humans and a bit lawless. There's a nice sort of Wild West feel going on here that's a bit reminiscent of TOS.

Speaking of TOS, I love Manny Coto finally took the series where it should've gone from the very beginning: exploring the earlier and more primitive relations with races and cool stuff of the TOS era. In this case....the Eugenics Wars and the Orion Syndicate.

I have a bit of a hard time with Alec Newman as Malik, but that's mostly because I have a hard time seeing him as anyone other than Paul Atreides. I also find, though it was intended as a nod to Trek fans, that casting Brent Spiner as a Soong ancestor was a bit too over-the-top. Could just be me though. And I don't mean to suggest he did a bad job, by any stretch of the imagination, he was great as Arik Soong. It just seemed a fanwank tie-in.

I love what they did with the Orion slave market. It was rough, unpleasant, crowded, and just felt dirty. Using rebar as the bars for the slave cages was a nice design decision too. And then there's the Jolly Green Giants they cast as the Orion males running the market, holy crap I wouldn't want to fight with them

Wicked Klingon Bird-of-Prey stuff too.


ENT 4.05 "Cold Station 12"
I like the way this opens with them landing at the 'colony' where the Augments grew up. The production people did a wonderful job of giving the place a really run-down feel that was nicely reminiscent of the Botany Bay in TWOK. And whoever decided to show the little flashback sequence and on-screen video of Soong with the children did wonders for humanizing him rather than just making him look like the proverbial mad scientist.

It's kind of fun that the writers have drawn on real-world things for Cold Station 12. It's more than a little reminiscent of these CDC centres that we have, how they contain all sorts of viral and disease strands that may or may not be a good idea to keep around. Good to see that bureaucracy doesn't change much in the next century in a half

Rather a nice episode in general, but in particular the second half deserves special mention. The hostage situation and torture of victims to try to get the codes out of the station chief was good stuff, and the back-and-forth battle between Enterprise and the Bird-of-Prey was a lot of fun. It's also a really nice design touch that there were those green circle thingies on the walls of the station lab--VERY reminiscent of TOS films era design philosophy.


ENT 4.06 "The Augments"
As I started The Augments it occurred to me that this trilogy of episodes so well-put together that watching them seamlessly like this makes them feel almost like a theatrical experience. Manny Coto's touch on the series is already MASSIVELY obvious at this point and makes everything prior feel like amateur night.

Some excellent references to other Star Trek stuff between Soong and Malik aboard the BOP as well. I'll admit, Soong's plan to go to "one of two habitable planets" in the Briar Patch made me smirk a little bit. And loved hearing the conversation about the myth of the Botany Bay and Khan Noonien Singh.

And in something I don't find myself complimenting much, I want to single out how wonderful some of the musical scoring is in this episode. In particular, the music playing as the Enterprise is about to violate Klingon space is amazing. It's modern, and yet nostalgically reminiscent of the Klingon-themed music in The Undiscovered Country.

Best plot-related sequence in the whole episode though? Malik's supposed death being an homage to the death of Khan in TWOK

Plus you know, any chance to see Abby Brammell in a state of undress (and, *ahem*, on) is a winner

[Alan Wake]

I've been thinking how funny it would be to see a Insectoid in Star Fleet

Can you imagine them in a uniform? Sitting in a captains chair?

How about them living on earth, you think flies would bother them?

[General Jumper One]

Datalore
Star Trek TNG, Season 1, Episode 12, Disc 4

Angel One
Star Trek TNG, Season 1, Episode 13, Disc 4

11001001
Star Trek TNG, Season 1, Episode 14, Disc 4

Too Short a Season
Star Trek TNG, Season 1, Episode 15, Disc 4

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ENT 4.07 "The Forge"
I love how things open after the intro credits for this. The scene between Adm. Forrest and Amb. Soval in the embassy ending on a bombing is really nicely juxtaposed against the cut to the command crew playing a round of basketball together. Furthermore, I also think it's really wonderful to see the cew finally enjoying a casual and relaxed moment together after so much seriousness!

ALTHOUGH I find it more than a little unfortunate that Adm. Forrest is killed (essentially) off-screen and we learn about it through Archer's log entry. That's a bit of a cop-out/halfassed writing IMO.

That aside though there's a lot of good stuff that happens in this first part of the Vulcan revolution arc. It's a small scene, but it's great that they have Malcolm and Travis be the ones sifting through the wreckage together. I can't even remember the last time these two were on-screen together and it works pretty well. And frankly, I think it would've been just odd to have anyone other than Malcolm doing the investigation of the bombing.

I bet the actor portraying Soval was glad to finally get some decent material to work with too. For the last three years he's really done nothing but be a pain in the ass, so to see that he was finally doing something useful and kind must've been an "about damn time!" moment for him. I know it was for me.

Lots of TOS-ey goodness too. Inner eyelids, referencing the questions the computer asked Spock at the beginning of The Voyage Home, mind melds, Mount Seleya, Vulcan deserts, talk of the Vulcans "under the raptor's wing" (a reference to Romulans ), Katra business (REMEMBER )....such lovely stuff!


ENT 4.08 "Awakening"
I'm glad they brought T'Pol's mother back into the story for this arc as well. It's nice to see that they didn't introduce an important character like that for naught. And while it's a little obvious to use her in this way, it's good to see effective utilization of a character introduced for a totally different purpose back in Home.

For the first half of the episode, not a whole lot happens--but it still manages to be interesting to the point that you don't quite notice. I certainly didn't, I was really surprised when I checked how far through I was.

The Surak Katra story is very interestingly approached, and I like how it's done. After the REMEMBER moment, I like seeing how they play it out. It's a different approach to it than The Search for Spock took. Seeing Archer chat with Surak while watching over the violent Vulcan wars of Awakening was just damn cool.

And T'Pau....wow, what a fantastic tie-in to Amok Time. At first it didn't quite click, but the more her name was spoken, the more it started to sound familiar. I'll admit, I had to look it up. But it's also 330am at the time I'm writing this so cut me some slack

One of the great strengths of this trilogy is in just how believable they make it feel. Back when the series started, or even in any of the other series, the idea of Vulcan cruisers firing on a Starfleet ship would've been unthinkable. But as the tension mounts across the first two episodes, it ends up being an exciting and interesting part of the story to see the High Command go off the deep end to attack the Enterprise and bombard their own planet.

I'm pretty sure the secret passageway door that Archer finds near the end is just a re-dressed Deep Space Nine door though





I wish I could watch part 3 tonight, but I was having trouble staying awake toward the end of this one so it'll have to wait tomorrow

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ENT 4.09 "Kir'Shara"
Pretty good conclusion to the Vulcan Reformation trilogy. More Vulcan-ey Katra goodness, more mind melding (and with it the cure of T'Pol's Panar Syndrome), a chase through a nebula, and SHRAN!!

The only really unfortunate part of the story is that the Archer/T'Pol/T'Pau/Kir'Shara story seems to take a back seat in importance to the goings-on between Enterprise and the Andorians and the war powderkeg that's about to blow up. Shran torturing Soval was especially good stuff.

That said though the balance seems to be restored considerably toward the end of the episode, particularly after Archer was shown to have learned the nerve pinch. T'Pol being brought before the High Command, the Vulcan-Andorian standoff and space battle, and Archer and T'Pau's entrance into the Vulcan capital city is all played out against one another really well. The resolution is just....a bit abrupt.

Nice ending moment too though, with V'Los meeting with a Romulan operative. If I remember right there's a bit more Romulan stuff to come in the series and I think it's interesting to see here them trying to spark a war between Vulcan and Andoria. I wish they'd done a bit better a job of explaining why V'Los was such an emotional Vulcan though.

And may I say thank god that they finally fixed the whole aggravating Vulcan nonsense.


ENT 4.10 "Daedalus"
Okay....mark that down as the strangest pre-credits tease in Star Trek history

This whole quantum transporting thing....interesting. Quite reminds me of the throwaway lines from Scotty in Trek2009 about transporting Admiral Archer's dog from one planet in a system to another.

I'm a little annoyed that this, at least at first, seems so much like a copy of TOS' The Ultimate Computer. In fairness though, I suppose I'd rather an ENT-era show be reminiscent of TOS rather than anything from the TNG era. Still, it manages to be different enough that it doesn't completely frustrate.

And it's hard to keep paying attention when the episode is so aptly titled Daedalus; pretty solidly gives away exactly how the story is going to end.

I don't care much for either of the guest actors either. It's like they realized how poorly cast the daughter was and tried to limit the amount of screen time they gave her. And Bill Cobbs as Emory was just so painfully flat that it was hard to believe him as a father obsessed with bringing his long-lost son home.


ENT 4.11 "Observer Effect"
Another very TOS-inspired episode. Manny Coto, you should've been running this show from Day 1. Reference to Klingons, Silicon-based virus, non-corporeal Organians, solid.

The trouble is, despite the fascinating conceptual stuff, the pacing is very plodding and slow. I was having a little trouble staying focused during.



Time for a break.