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ENTERPRISE |
Johnathan Archer - Scott Bakula Trip Tucker - Connor Trinneer T'Pol - Jolene Blalock Lt Reed - Dominic Keating Ensign Sato - Linda Park Dr Phlox - John Billingsley Ensign Mayweather - Anthony Montgomery 
OTHER SEASONS Season 1 Season 3 Season 4 OTHER STAR TREK SHOWS Star Trek The Next Generation Deep Space Nine Voyager OTHER TREKS THROUGH SPACE Babylon 5 The new Battlestar Galactica 
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Shockwave - Part 2The Suliban take the Enterprise and its crew hostage, torturing T'Pol for information about the whereabouts of Captain Archer. He is still stranded in the far future. Using only the few devices that they took with them, he and Daniels fashion a device that can send a message through time, a message that might be the key to getting Archer back to the Enterprise and the future back to how it should be. Oh those tricksy humans. The plotting that brings Archer back to the ship is clever enough to get them out of the corner they'd written themselves into, but it does rely on a deus ex machina device that is hidden in Daniels' quarters on the ship in the present. The stand out moments, though are Hoshi's topless duct crawling, Malcolm's beating and T'Pol's suffering following her torture. For once torture is shown as something that you can't just walk away from. The posturing at the end over whether the mission should continue is a bit pompous, but then if there was one flaw that the STAR TREK franchise could always be accused of it was a tendency towards pomposity at times. TopCarbon CreekIt's the first anniversary of T'Pol's stationing on the ship and Archer and Trip take her to dinner to celebrate. There she tells the tale one of her ancestors, a woman in charge of a mission that crashed to Earth and made contact with humanity centuries before the official first contact, in 1957. It would appear that the show has so little faith in the standard characters that it feels it has to resort to telling stories about characters completely unconnected to the ship or any of the crew. The fact that the story, of aliens affecting and being affected by the planet they are visiting, is an old and hackneyed one with nothing new to make it stand out from every other telling of this particular tale doesn't make it any better either. Jolene Blalock gets to play T'Pol's ancestor and so gets a story all to herself, but she could hace asked for a much more interesting one, or at least one with a single surprise in it. TopMinefieldEn route to an undiscovered planet, part of the Enterprise explodes. The cause is a cloaked mine, but not of Suliban origin. It turns out that the ship has wandered into a minefield lain by a race known as Romulans. Those Romulans now want the ship to leave, but Malcolm is out on the hull trying to defuse an unexploded mine. After spending time getting to know T'Pol last week it's time to get to know Lt Malcolm Reed this time. Archer spends much of the episode outside on the hull having a chat with his crewman because it helps him focus on defusing the mine. Unfortunately, the audience has to focus with him. The main problem is that Reed is just such a terrible character. The last time that we had to spend this much time with him (Shuttlepod 1) he spent the entire time whining about how he was going to die. This time he spends all his time whining about how the captain should let him die. It's really annoying and not least because he's the token British character and they could have made him a bit less feeble. It's not the performance from Dominic Keating (although that doesn't help) so much as the way that the man is written. Season Two has gotten off to a very poor start and is going to need to buck its ideas pretty quick. Who would have thought there was further to fall after the unimpressive Season 1? TopDead StopFollowing its encounter with the Romulan minefield (in the imaginatively entitled Minefield) the Enterprise is left badly damaged and a long way from home. Fortunately, nearby there is a fully automated repair facility. The repairs go well, but the price demanded is too high. At last an original story with a reasonable premise. '"Come into my parlour," said the spider to the fly' is the theme and the atmosphere at the beginning when the facility is first encountered is suitably creepy. The death of the crewmember is worked in unsensationally and the revelation of the truth is all fairly nicely done. TopA Night in SickbayA meeting with the galaxy's most touchy race leads to another inadvertant insult when Porthos the dog wees on their sacred trees. Archer isn't about to consider apologising as the dog has been taken sick and he spends an eventful night in the sickbay to be by its side. It's hard to believe that someone, somewhere thought that this was a good idea. The plot is as insulting as the aliens find the crew's behaviour, the humour isn't very funny and it all feels very, very irrelevant to anything at all. How Archer got to be a captain when he abandons all his command duties to be with his sick dog is beyond us. TopMaraudersThe Enterprise needs to replace its deuterium and there is a mining colony that would seem to meet their needs, but the miners seem reticent to sell them any. The reason why becomes clear when a Klingon ship enters the system demanding their share. If you're going to steal your plot then you might as well steal it from something good and THE SEVEN SAMURAI (or THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN if you don't read subtitles) is one of the best stories around. Of course, if you do steal from the best then you better have something new to bring to the mix or you just end up with a pallid re-run of something that everyone is fond of and suffer by comparison. You can pretty much guess what happens here. The plot is predictable from minute one and the dialogue is exactly what you would expect at each turn. There is nothing new and nothing exciting and nothing interesting and the will to go on with watching this show just slips further and further away. TopThe SeventhT'Pol gets a message from the Vulcan High Command concerning a fugitive that she failed to capture some years earlier. She is to apprehend the man now, but asks Archer to go with her as she feels conflicted by emotions she cannot identify. Once the fugitive is apprehended, the truth comes to light and T'Pol's mental state deteriorates under a weight of guilt long suppressed. Vulcans are not good with emotions, we have long known this, but the speed with which T'Pol comes apart after a few words from the fugitive is completely unbelievable. The more that we come to know the Vulcans the less that we like them. This is certainly not the race of good guys that the other shows in the franchise have pictured for us. The fact that Trip isn't able to deal with a single command decision in the captain's absence is also a worry for the crew who will no doubt be left under his control in future episodes. These issues aside, this is a much more diverting episode than the others we have been faced with this season. TopThe CommunicatorWhilst surveying a pre-warp civilisation, one of the crew loses his communicator. A quick scramble to retrieve it finds Archer and Malcolm in a military prison awaiting execution for espionage and T'Pol and the crew considering a desperate rescue attempt. The prime directive wasn't active in these days of early exploration, so it's OK for ship's crew to lose high-tech pieces of equipment that could fundamentally alter the fate of whole races. That's irony for you. Less ironic is that, having lost the communicator, the team go back with lots and lots more technology to lose, including weaponry. Now that's smart thinking. Whilst we're on the subject of smart thinking, how come the crew of the Enterprise has got themselves a cloaked ship working when all of those other, later entries in the franchise made a point of the Federation being the only organisation without one? ENTERPRISE is as sloppy with the timeline as ever. TopSingularityThe ship sets about the survey of a black hole amongst a trinity of stars. The crew start to act strangely, obssessing over small things to the exclusion of all else and losing their patience with each other and anything. The radiation rises to fatal point and only a desperate run through the heart of an asteroid field on the edge of the black hole can save the crew. Variations on this story have been told time and time again in all the variations of the franchise and they were all pretty much better than this one. The trivialities with which the crew become obsessed are so trivial that it's hard to care about the increasingly erratic behaviour of the crew and the fact that Archer can overcome the effects after a cold shower destroy what little credibility the plot actually had to that point. TopVanishing PointA brace of dangerous energy storms on a dead planet cause Trip and Hoshi to take an emergency beam out from the surface. Hoshi doesn't feel quite herself when she comes out the other side and is alarmed when others start to be unable to see her, her reflection starts to fade and the drops of her shower pass right through her. Being invisible, however, gives her the advantage of spying on the creatures setting a bomb on board. Now if only she can warn someone. There is so much about this episode that doesn't make sense, but it's all the usual things that don't make sense in episodes using this same story. Things pass through Hoshi, but she doesn't pass through the floor. She can pass through solid matter and manipulate that matter at the same time. It's all been done before, generally better and the payoff is the most utterly banal one that you can't quite bring yourself to believe that they used it. TopPrecious CargoThe Enterprise pauses to help two freight haulers only to find that their cargo is a beautiful woman, a woman who has been kidnapped. Whilst one of the kidnappers gets away with the woman and Tucker, the Enterprise is left with the other. Resourceful as ever, Tucker manages to escape, but finds the hostage more trouble than the kidnappers. Heavy shades of STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION episodes The Dauphin and The Perfect Mate in its mismatching of Starfleet personnel and powerful women, not to mention women stored in stasis, but having taken its plot from previous incarnations of the franchise the episode goes on to do absolutely nothing new with it whatsoever. If there is anything unpredicatable about the whole thing then it is that it could possibly be quite so predictable. It doesn't help that neither side of the relationship between Tucker and the Princess (or whatever her title was) is a character that we'd care to spend a lot of time locked in an escape pod with and so the resulting hate turning to attraction thing is as unbelievable as it is uncompelling. TopThe CatwalkA deadly radiation storm bears down on the Enterprise and forces the crew to take shelter in the only place on board that is shielded against that level of radiation, inside one of the warp nacelles. As the crew start to get fractious at the enforced closeness, it becomes clear that the ship has fallen under threat from a race of radiation-proof aliens. This episode owes a big debt to the STAR TREK:THE NEXT GENERATION episode Starship Mine. Aliens trying to steal the Enterprise from under the nose of the captain during a sweep of radiation? It's almost a direct lift. That said, it's also one of the more entertaining episodes that the show has come up with to date, which is not saying too much. The set up is much more interesting than the plot that works with it and it all sort of fizzles out when it ought to build to a crescendo. Story of the show's life really. TopDawnTucker is on a shuttle mission when he is fired upon and crashlands on a moon. As the night progresses, he learns that the ship that fired upon him also crashed and the alien is not far away. A struggle for survival and dominance ensues as Dawn approaches with heat that will kill them both. A blatant rip-off of the Dennis Quaid/Louis Gossett Jr film ENEMY MINE right down to having the alien look a lot like the one in the film and using some of its mannerisms (laugh etc) as well, this episode lives or dies by its protagonists and as a result it totally depends on your reaction to Connor Trinneer as Commander Tucker as to whether you enjoy this story or not. TopStigmaT'Pol has contracted a disease through a mind meld that she was forced to undertake and needs medical information. The Vulcan delegation at medical conference refuses that information on the grounds that practitioners of mind melds are a dangerous and disaffected minority and a threat to their society. Archer is faced again with the possibility of having his science officer recalled. Just in case anyone was in any doubt (and we can't possibly believe that they might be) this an allegory on AIDS. If it were any more obvious there would be a flashing neon sign in the background saying 'This is really about AIDS'. Prejudice is bad, even when practised by good people. Simple enough moral hammered home with all the subtlety of a freight train to the face. The fact that it is a sort of sequel to events in Fusion doesn't make things any better for having an established timeline. In order to deflect criticisms of being too backward in all this moral posturing there is a subplot in which Tucker is hit on by the wife of Dr Phlox. He doesn't believe in messing about with other men's wives, but then Denobulan morality is an entirely different thing altogether. Double standards? Oh, you bet. TopCeasefireA planet with disputed ownership becomes the centre of a firefight between the Vulcans and the Andorians. It is therefore a surprise when the key to resolving the situation without further bloodshed turns out to be a human captain known as Archer. The Andorians of The Andorian Incident and The Shadows of P'Jem are back and bring with them a story that is so close to The Vengeance Factor (to name but one) from STAR TREK:THE NEXT GENERATION that it could be a direct lift. That means that there are no surprises and no suspense and precious little to get excited about. If you haven't seen too many episodes of the other incarnations of the show then you might be able to find this entertaining, because it won't be too familiar. TopFuture TenseThe Enterprise finds a strange vessel floating dead in space. Inside, the thing is larger than on the outside, but contains a single occupant. That occupant shares several genetic anomalies that could only come from several generations of species interbreeding, including human and vulcan. The Suliban show up demanding the ship be given to them, making Archer think that the vessel must be from the future. Then the Tholians show up as well and full on war breaks out. When is this ship from? What was its purpose? How did it get damaged? Why do the Suliban want it so badly? What do the Tholians want with it and who are they working for anyway? None of these questions are properly answered in this episode and, for once, the story is all the better for it. The human ship is caught in the crossfire of two vastly superior forces and is unable to stand against either. Their future as a slowly spreading cloud of atoms is assured unless they can come up with something clever, and fast. This is STAR TREK:ENTERPRISE as it should always be. The story is fast and furious and full of mysteries, few of which are answered, but it doesn't matter. Firepower isn't the answer as the the Enterprise is outgunned at all turns, but clever thinking and split second timing can turn any situation to an advantage. It's not all good news, however, as the two periods of repeating time seem to exist merely to spread the plot out across a running time that it didn't quite meet. Even so, this is one of the better episodes of this show. TopCanamarCaptain Archer and Tucker are taken from their shuttle as suspected smugglers and put on a prison transport to the penal colony of Canamar. T'Pol aboard the Enterprise straightens things out with the authorities, but in the meantime two of the inmates stage a prison break, take over the ship and force the two Starfleet officers to help them. Considering the number of people that the local authorities suspect of being criminals you would have thought that they would have better security procedures. On a ship with two dozen criminals they have three security personnel and one of those is the pilot. They put all of their faith in electronic shackles and yet don't check for what appear to be easily visible subdermal implants on prisoners' wrists. On top of that, they equip a prison ship with weapons even though it is operating in their own space. Still, it's a more original storyline and Tucker's benchmate is definitely the travelling companion from Hell. TopThe CrossingA giant ship swallows the Enterprise and the crew encounter strange energy beings that are able to swap with the inhabitants of the bodies, giving them great experiences whilst they explore our world. Or that's what they want the crew to believe. As more and more people are taken over, Archer takes the survivors into the nacelle catwalk whilst they look for a way to get their people back into their bodies. Silly us - we always thought those nacelle thingies on the back of starships was for expelling plasma and other nasties that are generated by warp drive. On this ship, however, it seems to be a place where you can run the whole ship from and hide out from every mean and nasty alien that comes aboard whenever the fancy takes you. Unfortunately, there is nowhere for the audience to hide from a plot that is as tired as the gimmick of aliens taking over crewmembers' bodies and a final escape that is so easy as to make you wonder why they didn't try it the first time around when they had full power. TopJudgementCaptain Archer is brought before the Klingon court to answer for crimes that will see him sentenced to death, or worse start a war between Earth and the Klingon Empire. The klingon court, as depicted here, is a very impressive place, but it is the only thing that is impressive about this particular story, a good deal of which has been liberally borrowed from STAR TREK VI - THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. Whilst Archer's so-called crimes get depicted twice (RASHOMON style, once from the point of view of the prosecution and once for the defence) exactly how he came to be arrested and transported to the court remains a mystery throughout. And whilst the sentence comes as something of a shock, the turnaround in the manner of his defence attorney is mawkish at best and deeply unoriginal at worst. At least he doesn't say that he has been saved in every way that a klingon could be saved. The final resolution of the story is also so low key that a column of soldier ants could probably trip over it. TopHorizonEnsign Mayweater goes back to his freighter home in the wake of his father's death to find things are a bit rocky. His brother's captaincy isn't going well and the there are pilots on the prowl, but personal issues are also a problem. Family drama is fine if it's trying to make a point, but there is so much quality drama in earthbound series that it needs to be done really well to be anything other than tedious and irrelevant. This is both. The series has not invested enough time in the character of Mayweather for any of this to really matter and the whole pirate subplot construct is clumsy and perfunctory. The subplot regarding T'Pol and the ship's film night showing of FRANKENSTEIN is fun, but lightweight. TopThe BreachThe Enterprise goes to the aid of some of Dr Phlox's compatriots who are lost in a cave system on a disputed planet where aliens are no longer welcome. Whilst Tucker, Reed and Mayweather try to work their way through the caves, Dr Phlox is faced with a hostile alien who brings some painful memories to the fore for the good doctor. It's hard to know what to make of this episode. The hunt through the caves injects some much needed action, but doesn't really serve a plot strand that goes anywhere or achieves anything. The more interesting strand is that of the racial enmity between Dr Phlox's race and that of his patient. Sadly, this is also the more static storyline with not a lot happening other than a lot of talk. Quite frankly, the themes here have been done several times over in other STAR TREK series and always better. TopCogenitorWhilst studying a huge star, the Enterprise encounters a ship even closer in than they are. For a change, the race are explorers and wish to make friends. Tucker gets to know the chief engineer, his wife and their cogenitor. The cogenitor is the third gender of the race and vital to the conception of children. They are kept like pets, without education or stimulation. Tucker takes it upon himself to teach this one to read, with tragic consequences. This story owes a lot to the STAR TREK:THE NEXT GENERATION episode The Outcast. True, in that episode the difference was that there were no genders and here there are three and Tucker doesn't fall in love with the cogenitor, but it comes down to the same thing, someone being oppressed because of their gender and an officer of the Enterprise taking it upon himself to use his human perspective to sort matters out. There has always been a sense of moral arrogance about the Federation and this is just a continuation of that. It is nice, however, to find an episode that takes place in a spirit of friendship and co-operation than strife and shooting. Of course, friendship and co-operation are somewhat less exciting than shooting and so is this episode. Lt Reed's little fling is a storyline that just gets forgotten in the rest, so you wonder why it was ever included in the first place. Andreas Katsulas (so impressive as G'Kar in BABYLON 5) appears as the alien ship captain. TopRegenerationA research survey team in the Arctic discover the remnants of a spaceship crashed for 200 years and some alien bodies that show the ability to regenerate. In fact, they come back to life and escape from Earth, assimilating their prisoners and declaring that Resistance is Futile. This episode brings back everyone's favourite STAR TREK aliens the Borg by creating a direct sequel to events occurring in the film STAR TREK:FIRST CONTACT. Remnants of the Borg who came back in time to destroy the Federation by assimilating Earth in the past are found, come back to life and are challenged by a ship called Enterprise. Borg stories are always good, often excellent, but whilst the story itself is fine it makes such a mess of the franchise timeline that it is impossible to forgive. When Picard first encountered the Borg he knew nothing about them. Starfleet set up a specialist unit to create weapons to fight them, but failed miserably in two years of trying. The crew of the Enterprise get detailed bio-organism information on the Borg, the Doctor finds a way to block and reverse the assimilation process and Lt Reed finds a way to make phase pistols punch through their shielding no matter what and yet it would appear that nobody thought to write any of this down for future posterity, or did so in such a fashion that nobody could find it when it was needed. This is just sloppy research and storytelling and undermines what would otherwise be a pretty good tale. There is an extended opening with the research team that reintroduces the Borg nicely and then the story takes off and just runs with it. It isn't the story that's the problem it's the legacy that it so casually trashes. TopFirst FlightCaptain Archer takes T'Pol into the heart of a theoretical dark matter nebula to carry out an experiment and in order to pass the time relates the story of the first warp two flight. At the start of this second season T'Pol told a story about one of her ancestors in Carbon Creek. We weren't too impressed by that and this is, if anything, even worse. Apart from the fact that it is a hackneyed tale of pilot rivalry over who will get the big flight with only the fact that they are all dressed in Starfleet uniforms as a novelty it proves to have no atmosphere of their past or our future. If its purpose was to cast light on Archer's personality then the only thing that it reveals is that he is unable to tell a good story. TopBountyA bounty hunter manages to take Archer prisoner and intends to deliver him to the Klingon High Command, but there is more than one person out to collect the bounty on his head. On a chasing Enterprise, T'Pol is locked away in the sickbay with the Doctor when she starts to go into the Pon Farr mating cycle. You can't have a Vulcan character without putting them through Pon Farr, it's a STAR TREK rule. At least the show manages to pay lip service to the timeline by T'Pol swearing the Doctor to secrecy about her condition. Pon Farr gives the show a chance to exploit Jolene Blalock's physique to the full by keeping her in her, admittedly functional, underwear throughout and even coming up with an excuse for her to smear oil all over herself. Subtle it surely isn't, but it's way more fun than the Archer kidnapping plotline, which is both tedious and untidy as plot strands flap around all over the place, getting dropped after only a couple of minutes or just never being tied up at the end. TopThe ExpanseAn attack on Earth leaves more than 7 million dead, Tucker's sister amongst them. The Suliban kidnap Archer, but to explain what has happened rather than harm him. A race called the Xindi carried out the attack as a test and are now constructing a weapon that will end the human race before it can destroy the Xindi 400 years in the future. In order to stop them, Archer must be prepared to go into the most dangerous reaches of space. First, though, he has to get rid of a particularly vengeful Klingon. ENTERPRISE has not been the most beloved of the STAR TREK franchise and for very good reasons, but this episode feels more like a set up pilot episode than a season finale. The cliffhanger is the start of a new mission, a mission with the survival of Earth at stake. The ship's weapons are better, there are soldiers aboard and the armour has been upgraded. This is no longer a mission of exploration, but one of survival. It's a desperate bid to save the series and the franchise and, on this evidence at least, it might just succeed. Top |
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