The ENT and Melakon

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Enterprise' started by Melakon, Feb 6, 2013.

  1. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Oh now..

    Erika fits that very nicely!

    Let's look at her.. behind the spoiler tags :D

    [​IMG]

    :adore:
     
  2. jespah

    jespah Taller than a Hobbit Moderator

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    Agreed, reminds me of how
    [​IMG]
     
  3. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    I think another reason I never watched Quantum Leap is for its first few years, I was working nights. I had read a TV Guide Fall Preview description, and the premise didn't interest me too much, because it sounded sort of like The Time Tunnel without the fancy hardware and a smaller cast. Other time travel shows had failed to impress me too, because they always failed in the hardware department and focused on whatever past the characters were trapped in. TT often had a lot of stuff happening at Tic Toc Base with former Miss America Lee Meriweather.

    So who's the woman in the Quantum Leap screenshot? I don't recognize her.
     
  4. jespah

    jespah Taller than a Hobbit Moderator

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  5. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    I'm sort of surprised that Scott's partner/wife Chelsea Field never squeezed in a cameo on Enterprise.
     
  6. horatio83

    horatio83 Commodore Commodore

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    I like the episode, particularly that the "not trying hard can work better than trying hard" idea, and of course I am totally aware of limited budgets and limited screen time for four plot threads ... but it was an episode which made me want to see more of Risa, e.g. when Archer made a trip.
     
  7. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    1:26 - Shockwave (1st Season Finale)

    TV Blurb: The Temporal Cold War begins to boil when it appears Enterprise is responsible for an accident destroying an entire mining colony. Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga. Directed by Allan Kroeker.

    I really hate the Temporal Cold War arc, which is why it took a week to get around to reviewing this cliffhanger. Despite multiple viewings, I don't think I ever managed to watch the whole thing in a single sitting.

    Archer punishes himself (again) for the colony's destruction, especially after Enterprise is ordered to return home for an investigation. Scott Bakula is very good in these scenes of self-doubt, desperately trying to understand how a treknically impossible accident happened.

    Matt Winston returns as the presumed dead Daniels, and gives Archer the answer. I think the reason I don't like Daniels is because in every appearance, poor Winston has to go through lengthy expository dialogue explaining what's going on to Archer and us each time. Daniels isn't a character, he's a prop, a mouthpiece for the writers to continually explain the TCW arc. Daniels never gets to do any thing interesting, just stands around and bores us with recitation.

    John Fleck is also back as Silik, but doesn't get to do much more than make threats and metaphorically twirl his mustache. Future Guy (James Horan) returns too, issuing orders.

    And I think this is the problem with the TCW. Unless Daniels, or Silik, or Future Guy are around, there's no way to tell what the hell's going on. We're constantly being given information Archer and the crew are unaware of, and can't learn until one of those other characters explains everything.

    There are a few good special effects moments. The first one is in the teaser, with the colony disaster. Another appears at the end, and ably illustrates the hopelessness of Archer's situation in the cliffhanger.

    Next: "Shockwave, Part II"
     
  8. RPOW0614

    RPOW0614 Commander Red Shirt

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    Excellent work Melakon. Your reviews have been spot on so far. Because I have a friend who just got into trek I too have been rewatching ENT from the begining and I stopped at Shockwave too. I am trying to keep current with her viewing so she has someone to bounce her thoughts off of. I didn't think she would make it thru VOY, but she perservered. ENT is my favorite series of all of Trek (heresey, I know). Keep up the good work. I know I am little late to the thread but is there any way we could get a count on how many times Archer gets punched in the face? Seems like every episode he's eating a knuckle sandwich.
     
  9. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    I imagine someone, somewhere, has already done the tally, and I'm no statistics expert.

    I almost added a line in the analysis wondering how many viewers had given up on the show before this episode.
     
  10. horatio83

    horatio83 Commodore Commodore

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    I like the Temporal Cold War and fail to see why it it supposed to be so bad. Its only problem is that it makes the show feel too futuristic.
    In general ENT worked well when it focused on genuine 22nd century stuff.
     
  11. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Maybe this is part of the reason I have a problem with it. I don't see it as futuristic, but as a cliche. I got into sci-fi at 8, and maybe I've just seen too many sci-fi stories in the 54 years since. I can see antecedents of the TCW in The Outer Limits' "Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand". It would have probably worked for me as its own self-contained series. I just don't think it had any business being squeezed into Enterprise's premise. I initially thought they were using the TCW to establish that Archer & Company were in an alternate universe from the beginning (as Abrams later did), but they didn't even do that.
     
  12. Redsskull

    Redsskull Ensign Newbie

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    My issue with the TCW is I never quite understood who is fighting against who, and who's exactly doing the right thing? what they did to start the fourth season, I loved.
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2013
  13. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Well with Shockwave it's hard to take that cliffhanger seriously... "oh no, the timeline is screwed up!" yeah... I'm biting my nails over that one from Enterprise. :rolleyes:

    As for the TCW... well it serves no purpose... we don't know who's fighting who and why... there's no coherent plot... and no resolution... so yeah. I think it's terrible. This without mentioning that time travel in Trek is so cliche it's apparently easier to travel in time and screw up the timeline than it is to warp from point a to point b.
     
  14. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Admiral

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    And these are all things that are the fault of Berman and Braga. Yes the studio put the kibosh on some things, but the things that were still under their control were half-baked and they were constantly using the other series as crutches.
     
  15. horatio83

    horatio83 Commodore Commodore

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    I'd say that the TCW is not supposed to be a clear conflict which is transparent to the crew of the NX or the audience. First the Suliban are enemy, later they are allies.
    I think it was overall very well done and not something we had seen before but I didn't like that it became so dominant; the beginnings of all four seasons are after all about the TCW.
     
  16. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    I've not seen Matt Winston in anything but Enterprise, so I don't know what he's capable of. But either his performance or his direction was implausible to me when conveying Daniels' state of shock in the future. I was once in an auto accident that totalled my car and smashed up my face-- tore the nose and almost lost an eye when the metal horn ring popped off the steering wheel and clobbered me. For a few moments, with blood pouring out of my face, I thought I was dead. Then realized I couldn't be dead if I was thinking about it. So I managed to squeeze out of the car and ran around in a panic when I saw the damage, "Oh no, my car!" People had to force me to sit down until an ambulance arrived. :guffaw: After surgery an hour later, the adrenalin wore off and I did go into shock, shaking like I was cold. Amazingly, there was no pain or broken bones. Apparently the force of the blow from the horn ring left my face numb for a few days.
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2013
  17. BruntFCA

    BruntFCA Commander Red Shirt

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    The TCW always kind of seemed to me like B&B cutting off their noses to spite their faces, "Fine we'll do it but we won't try very hard".
     
  18. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Sorry for the unexpected absence. It took them over a month to get my phone line fixed. :brickwall:

    2:01 - Shockwave, Part II (2nd Season Opener)

    TV Blurb: Archer tries to get back from the future, T'Pol babbles mindlessly, Hoshi drops in and surprises Malcolm. Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga. Directed by Allan Kroeker.

    Starting immediately after the events of Part 1, this is a very fast paced episode with space battles, corridor firefights, and lots of scene cuttings as we jump between T'Pol and Enterprise trying to cope with Silik and his soldiers capturing the ship, Archer and Daniels trying to escape a timeline where the Federation never existed, and Admiral Forrest dealing with Ambassador Soval's usual crap.

    The Archer-Daniels subplot made me remember the old tried and true formula of putting a character in a locked room, and having him try to get out. Daniels takes a tip from all those 1000 year old MacGyver reruns and manages to build a way to escape a 31st century that has no suitable technology. Or even other people apparently. The scenes during the walk through the destroyed city (San Francisco?) reminded of Logan's Run and its ruined Washington DC.

    The episode does what it needs to do to wrap up the previous installment, and I didn't find it boring, but it's all pretty straightforward. Some of the characters get to do something a little different-- Malcolm gets beat up instead of the usual Archer, Hoshi crawls through a ventilation shaft (shades of Mission: Impossible), and T'Pol gets to sprawl on a bed in her undies. Well, that part of it isn't all that different, but she's delirious after an interrogation scene.

    Of course the highlight of the episode, loved by so many on this board, is The Gazelle Speech® by Jonathan Archer. But the payoff with that speech is Soval's response to it, and maybe it's sometimes overlooked. Soval wants Starfleet to permanently recall Enterprise, then Archer gives his impassioned Gazelle Speech. And Gary Graham as Soval, with usual Vulcan verbosity, says to the effect, 'WTF does that have to do with what we're talking about?'

    In the season's outtakes, Scott Bakula does a dead-on Woody Woodpecker impression in the final scene.

    Next up: "Carbon Creek"
     
  19. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    A month to fix your phone line?! Yeah that's when it's time to find a new provider. :p Welcome back though! :)

    Shockwave part 2? Yeah.. you can tell they wrote this one well after part 1. Gotta love T'Pol's religious like faith in there not being time travel. The bibl-- I mean Vulcan Science Academy says so! Despite the apparent overwhelming evidence!
     
  20. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Thanks and yeah, it's the worst problem I've ever had with a phone company. I may have to switch to wireless or cable, and I didn't want to do either.

    Though on the bright side, during the outage I got myself a wireless keyboard (Logitech), as my old one was like a $5 piece of crap and half the keys required going into Hulk mode to put enough pressure on the keys. Which was slow going for a touch typist.