'Broken Bow' is a great episode, and probably one of the better Trek pilots out there. Thanks for your thoughts on it.
I really like Broken Bow alot I think it's one of the better Star trek pilots. I liked the Enterprise crew and that they went on their first mission despite Soval telling them not to do it. There's alot of great character moments and they got story arcs for the rest of the series.I like the scene where Hoshi is trying to translate what Klang is saying in sickbay about Stinky boots I thought that was funny.
^ Speaking of stinky and funny, I couldn't help but giggle when T'Pol mentioned, to one of those Vulcan monks in that Vulcan monastery episode, that she used a nasal numbing agent in order to put up with the foul smell of humans. T'Pol's unemotional antisocial behavior cracks me up at times.
At first, I just thought she was a racist, judgmental, condescending, stuck-up bitch, but she grew on me over the course of the first season. A lot of her insufferable attitude sprang from the fact that she was insecure about her self-control.
Broken Bow does good at Introducing Hoshi as Life Finder, T'Pol the Science Expert, Travis as Helmsman and Control Guru, Archer the Bad Boy Captain in Charge and Phlox as Doctor to their Pet Sanctuary. Awesome at that, Fight or Flight shows their new Space Suits as Astronauts and makes these first 2 Episodes more important than escapes the Attention for real.
About half way through the episode. Never watched the series before. When I found out Brannon Braga was in charge of the show, I expected lame-ass time travel episodes every 3rd or 4th show ala Voyager. Still apprehensive about that in the future. The intro sucks...the song sucks...the whole thing is out of character for Star Trek. I am kind of guessing they are going to show TPol's body off every episode hoping that it would appeal to teenage boys (of course...it was before the total internet age). The episode is slow with lots of exposition, but it's ok. Is this the highpoint for the series?
I just placed what the intro music reminds me of... The Real Men of Genius commercials. or Sponge Bob Sweet Victory song It sounds like a super cheesy 80s hair band ballet.
T-Pol's get-up gets less stupid in seasons 3 and 4. Her character was kind of obnoxious at first, but there's a reason for that, and she's pretty complex; Jolene does a great job, too, once given something to do except look good in a catsuit. The show is great. It has a few stinkers, sure, but it deals with some complicated issues and doesn't shy away from tough choices.
I liked her from the start, and Blalock in the role only got better as the series went on. That said the character remained racist, judgmental and condescending, this being at the core of the character. only the stuck-up bitch part receded significantly over time, as she figured out how to exist in the company of mostly Humans.
I honestly felt like her early attitude was only a front, as she's canonically bad at controlling her emotions and likes to overcompensate. I agree that she remained judgmental and condescending, but I'm not sure about the racism.
I never thought of T'Pol as racist. Condescending, sure, until she began to see that humans were worthy (doubtless not the prevailing POV of the Vulcan High Command). She, like Archer, had to outgrow her prejudices, which Vulcans doubtlessly considered a very logical perspective. I really enjoyed the evolution of T'Pol's viewpoint regarding humans, and the development of her relationships with the other characters, particularly Archer and Trip.
The music grows on you, and I agree on those decontamination scenes were a bit much, but as a man, I can't complain. The end of season 2 onwards it gets good, but there are some really good episodes before that. The TARDIS ship for example.
I’ve actually tried to find things I don’t like so far. But, no. I’m too Trekky. Old age does that to ya.
My wife and I have tried for two Saturdays now to watch "Broken Bow" on CBSAA (via Amazon Firestick) And while all other ENT episodes play, this one does not. Even the Amazon website itself shows it as unable to play. Anyone know what's going on here?
Firestick seems to have issues.....I see several people complain about them. I just tried AppleTV and PC and it plays fine.
I'm not exactly a newcomer but ENT was the first Star Trek Show I've seen and I really liked it. I've rewatched it many times and I still think it is underrated. It is really interesting that it is pre-Federation and looking back at it I think the animosity between humans and Vulcans is really interesting. Also the show tells quite a lot about Vulcan history.....
Loving the idea of them and Andorians as adversaries, too. ENT got quite a few tidbits "right" - they addressed key fan assumptions about that era, and then did something interesting with them. Vulcans, Andorians, Romulans... Too bad the ENT Klingons weren't made equally intriguing and unexpected. A lot of this potential was there in "Broken Bow" already. Even if what the pilot had to offer fan-assumptionwise was yet more TNG style Klingons, it compensated for that with the Vulcans who gave new depths to the concept of passive-aggressiveness... And with a couple of all-new concepts, although that potential wasn't well realized later on. Temporal Cold War might have been as cool as it sounded; the Suliban likewise an intriguing adversary. Oh, well. Timo Saloniemi
ENT really didn't need to bring in the Klingons and would've been better served really developing the Andorians and Tellarities like they did in Season 4. I was watching sfdebris' review of Stigma today and he made a good point about the Vulcans. The only reason we got the historical stories in Season 4 was to fix what had been done to them in the first two seasons. There was also a real chance to do something with the Denobulans, a race that were obviously newly imagined for ENT, but given that canonically they didn't show up in the future, meant they could have built a whole new species. They could've done an allegorical story about overcrowding or an environmental calamity and use the Denobulans.
Considering that "Broken Bow" introduced an annoying "temporal cold war" right out of the gate, you wouldn't be wrong to be apprehensive. Even with ENT's third season being pretty good, I'd have preferred that whole concept to have never existed. As another man, I can only roll my eyes at this comment. Of course you can complain about the gratuitous nonsense of those decontamination scenes.