Since I posted my thoughts for "Demons" the other day, I figured I may as well do the same for the second half. (Don't hold your breath for me to review the episode that comes after this, but I may decide to do it for a couple of random episodes down the line). -Am I the only one who found it odd that they didn't take any MACO's on the shuttle mission? This seems like exactly the time of thing they're perfect for. In fact it just occurred to me as I was writing this: Aren't there any military personnel already on Mars? -Again, I really found myself not caring about Travis' girlfriend at all. She was rather pointless in this episode, since Travis didn't listen to her anyway. I think a more interesting premise might've been if she'd convinced him she was on his side after all... only for us to find out she was a Terra Prime spy! (Heaven knows Travis gave her plenty of time in the shuttlepod to do something! ). Of course, it might've been harder for her to gain access to T'pol and Trip's DNA, so that dubious honor had to go to Ensign Massaro, whom we really have no investment in (apparently he appeared uncredited once before in a season 3 episode). Unfortunately, "Enterprise" didn't really have a lot of recurring junior officers we know well enough to fit that bill. -As they said in the DVD commentary, it's a nice touch that Soval (Archer's toughest critic for most of the show's run) is the first to applaud his speech (even bitter old Vulcans can reconsider their positions). Also interesting that the Andorians, whose existence Earth only learned about less than four years ago, already has an embassy on Earth (I wonder if Earth has one on Andoria). Much as we all love Shran, I think it's important to remind the viewer that he's not the only Andorian that humans have dealings with. -I'd forgotten about little conversation between Trip and Paxton's right-hand man. The kind of paranoid crap he espouses seem awfully familiar. On a lighter note, I forgot to mention in my "Demons" post that the actor also happens to be the unlucky SOB that Gerard Butler kicked into the pit at the start of "300", so it was kind of amusing seeing him give Trip a very similar looking kick. -I wonder whether they would've ended up doing anything with Kelby, had the show continued. He clearly wasn't as capable, but he did kind of get screwed over by Trip, (who I might reminded you specifically told Kelby at the start of "Bound" that he was only back temporarily). -That gray alien with the whiskers kind of stood out, didn't he (or she? ) According to Memory Alpha, the look was put together with a couple of spare Xindi parts. -I'm sorry, but I've seen the trope about the badguy broadcasting on EVERY channel with no way to block him in tons of TV shows and movies and I don't buy it, especially in the 22nd Century. -Apparently JGRS planned to have Paxton die at the end, but Manny Coto vetoed this, wanting to keep him as a potential menace for future episodes (I think he just wanted the ability to work with Peter Weller again at a later date, which of course, he would on "24" and "Dexter"). I really can't see a compelling premise where he comes back though. -On the other hand, I hope we would've seen more of Harris and his mysterious "section" that seems to like recruiting officers with British accents. I think their conversation was meant to tie of that loose end, but there was clearly the potential for more. -If you want to regard this as the REAL "Enterprise" finale, it works okay on that level, apart from no Shran, but there were a couple of loose ends that, regrettably wouldn't be tied up (in canon, at least). Anyway, those are my thoughts. What are yours?
I just watched it this morning, and I liked it very much. Archer's speech to the delegates at the end was one of Scott Bakula's finest moments in the series, and you really believed that Archer was a person who would later be viewed in the same way as a Washington, a Lincoln, or some such. Wish Shran had been in it somewhere. Agree that the sub-plot with Mayweather and his girlfriend never seemed to go much of anywhere, and you probably could have cut it without much trouble. I thought the scenes near the end with Trip and T'Pol were quite lovely, and I feel quite robbed knowing that we're not going to get anything else with those characters and their relationship again (aprt from the books, of course). All in all, a great episode, and although not perhaps the perfect finale for the series, a more than fitting send-off for it, and for the fantastic show that Manny Coto had by this time turned it into.
The kind of paranoid crap he espouses ... If the Terra Prime people's depiction had been less heavy handed, and had some justification to reasonable hang their cause on, the episode would have been better.
This would be like asking for a subtle, nuanced presentation of a story about the Ku Klux Klan. Hard to be subtle about hate. The feelings of Terra Prime were presented quite realistically, I thought. The kind of hatred they felt was not based on anything reasonable. Of course they used the Xindi attack on earth and the threat that with "inter-species mixing", the humans would be bred out of existance. This was false and completely unreasonable, but they still used it. I'm trying to figure out what they could have come up with that could have reasonbly justified hatred of "all" of any species. Because that is what they were about.
I remember reading in an interview once the writers had wanted Shran for Terra Prime but Jeffrey Combs was filming a tv role or a movie role so they chose a different actor to play the Andorian ambassador in Terra Prime .I liked this show for a finale and I didn't like Travis' reporter girlfriend either. I didn't like Gannet Brooks in the Enterprise Romulan war novels either she's so annoying in a couple of the books. Thank goodness she's not in the The Enterprise rise of the Federation novels.
That's kind of my point. Terra Prime group, as presented, has no reasonable position. If you've ever read some of the threads here on the movie Insurrection, all the factions in that movie had positives and negatives on display, and the audience was given a choice as to who to support. With Terra Prime the audience really had no choices. This was a flaw.
Terra Prime was a hate group. Their position was based on the things that hate groups' positons are usually based on; fear of the unknown, ignorance, etc. I don't know how you portray any of that as "reasonable". If their position was reasonable they wouldn't be a hate group.