'Azati Prime' #318

[jefferiestubes8]

I felt Azati Prime was a great Episode.
The music from Captain Archer's farewell speech before he left to fly the mission solo was amazing
and also the climax battle scene's music was great.

The CGI visual effects of the battle with Enterprise in the last 5 minutes were better than most of Voyager's CGI battle shots and I've watched all of VOY and liked the CGI battles in that series but not blown away by most of the battles on ENT.
In one shot there was a hull breach and 3 members of the crew are blown out into space. Even better than when Archer blows the Borg drones out of the airlock in Regeneration.
I'd love to see this climax battle in high definition!

The practical on-set effects of the bridge and engineering exploding and falling apart.

very end when the Enterprise is getting railed by the Xindi, and the bridge is coming down in pieces.. the camera zooms in right on T'Pol's eyes.

already mentioned.
It seemed very feature film-ish, not JJverse but just much more than television episodic series. Well TOS did fast dolly ins like on season 1 I think it was the reveal of the Romulan in Balance of Terror but that stayed on a medium shot. T'Pol's eyes were a dolly in to an extreme closeup.

T'Pol sheds tears!
also she totally loses her emotions and yells at Trip. Wow so out of character. Loved it!

We even got to see what part of the Enterprise-J looked like. You can hear the interior ambience hum sounded different than Enterprise NX-01 for sure. I did not compare it to ENT-D or ENT-E.
When we are on the ENT-J and watching the battle out the window what are the Federation ships classes in the shot? They looked 24th Century alright.

 

[Roald]

Definitely one of the best Enterprise episodes, and one of the most movie-like episodes of Star Trek ever. The underwater scenes are stunning..!

The one thing that I never really liked was the character of the Reptillian leader, prominently appearing in Azati Prime as well. Like Voyager's Maj Culluh, 1-dimensional bad guys who talk with a slightly grunted overarticulated slow voice just don't work for me.

But overall, a fantastic show, and if one thing it proves how shamelessly underrated Enterprise was..!

 

[jefferiestubes8]

... one of the most movie-like episodes of Star Trek ever. The underwater scenes are stunning..!

Yes the CGI underwater scenes how could I have forgotten them? This episode had a lot of CGI visual effects.

On the DVD there were no commentary tracks or deleted scenes. I'd like to have a commentary track on this episode on the Blu-ray.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

It has a pretty awesome cliffhanger... Archer is in the hands of the Xindi and Enterprise gets shot to pieces (and the best thing is, the ship stays that way for the rest of the season).

Other good scenes:
- Archer is forced to eliminate that Xindi outpost.
- Archer decides to fly the mission to Azati Prime himself, because he doesn't want to see more people die.

 

[Michael]

I thought Azati Prime was fine, but I'm curious: What purpose does the #318 in the thread title serve? I figure it refers to the episode being the 18th episode of the third season, but what relevance does this have to a discussion about the episode?

 

[jefferiestubes8]

What purpose does the #318 in the thread title serve?

Just to define the episode# as some people like to know right away what season an episode was if they only remember the title. The fan collective DVDs put the episode# also next to the episode names on the slipcase.

It was my first time watching it.

No threads were on this episode at all when I searched so I didn't want to make it a specific topic about the episode.

 

[DonIago]

It has a pretty awesome cliffhanger... Archer is in the hands of the Xindi and Enterprise gets shot to pieces (and the best thing is, the ship stays that way for the rest of the season).

Other good scenes:
- Archer is forced to eliminate that Xindi outpost.
- Archer decides to fly the mission to Azati Prime himself, because he doesn't want to see more people die.

I liked the first point, but if Archer's unwilling to see people die, he's really not fit to captain a starship. This is akin to Janeway making the ludicrous statement at the end of Friendship One that space exploration isn't worth it if people get killed.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

I liked the first point, but if Archer's unwilling to see people die, he's really not fit to captain a starship. This is akin to Janeway making the ludicrous statement at the end of Friendship One that space exploration isn't worth it if people get killed.

I don't have much problems believing this. First of all, Archer is pretty inexperienced as a starship commander... at least compared to later generations (Kirk etc.). He's the captain of Earth's very first deep space vessel on its first mission. And while he has some experience as the commander of an exploration vessel at this point, he still has minimal combat experience. Dialogue in the Season 2 finale implied that Starfleet wasn't even considered a military at this time in history.

I'd say the whole Xindi mission was way over Archer's head in the beginning. Then again, he was the best Starfleet had at this point. But going after the Xindi was never the kind of mission he wanted. He and Starfleet just hadn't any other choice.

That Archer has to re-evaluate his original preconceptions about his mission was a recurring theme in the show though. Originally, he also felt very uncomfortable with installing phase cannons (in Season 1) or a Tactical Alert (in Season 2) on the ship. Yeah, he was somewhat naive and had to learn it the hard way. Space was just more dangerous than he had anticipated or wished for.