Extinction

[pookha]

I realize nobody much likes this episode, but I thought it dealt with some compelling issues.

I think so, too.

I don't think having the characters (*all the characters*) revert back to primal instincts was what's wrong with the show though. I think that many of the best Trek episodes have shown that, including All Our Yesterdays and the TNG show where Worf bit Troi on the cheek.

ughh i try to forget that tng one

frankly the characters reverting to primal is to me the big thing wrong with this episode.
while the they do start to gradually evolve and regain things like speech it is done so slowly a lot of people just dont see it.

it would have been far better if the grunting snarling eating insects had been kept to a very short sequence and then hoshi , archer and mal (who are far more affected then tpol) fall asleep and dream .
we actually see more then one dream and each dream is more complex then the first.
after they awaken from each dream their behaviour is more complex,,, we really see the "people" who could have created that civilization.

 

[JiNX-01]

^ Seeing rapid evolution would have been infinitely better than what we got. But I still maintain the episode added nothing to the mission and therefore nothing to the season. At least if the Reptilians/Insectoids had discovered the virus and taken it during an incursion on the ship, it would have meant something.

 

[pookha]

actually what i would have done with it was use it to give us more hints about the sphere builders.
make this race the people who helped to actually built the spheres but they saw what the true intent was and turned against them.
that the sphere builders then as punishment turned the bio agent against them.
the retro virus then becomes not what we saw but instead its true intent was supposed to have let people know what happened.

but some where along the way possibly due to lack of time and what
was done to them the loque'eque scientist mess up and it goes wild.

they dont find all this out at first just hints of it.
because the crew actually find the xindi ship in the midst of the city.
so hoshi had started to record some makrings for later study.
they get some more info from the transformation itself and the memories installed within the virus but some things dont come through perfectly just flashes of images in their sleep.

 

[JiNX-01]

actually what i would have done with it was use it to give us more hints about the sphere builders.
make this race the people who helped to actually built the spheres but they saw what the true intent was and turned against them.
that the sphere builders then as punishment turned the bio agent against them.
the retro virus then becomes not what we saw but instead its true intent was supposed to have let people know what happened.

but some where along the way possibly due to lack of time and what
was done to them the loque'eque scientist mess up and it goes wild.

they dont find all this out at first just hints of it.
because the crew actually find the xindi ship in the midst of the city.
so hoshi had started to record some makrings for later study.
they get some more info from the transformation itself and the memories installed within the virus but some things dont come through perfectly just flashes of images in their sleep.

that would have been a great way to tie the episode into the season and the mission, especially because it would have been an accident that they even learned about the origin of the spheres (and their purpose).

 

[DrTaylor]

I agree. I didn't like this episode at all. It added nothing to the S3 arc and Archer's decision to preserve the virus was wreckless, particularly in that region of space where the ship was vulnerable to anomalies as well as any number of other threats that could have damaged even a secure medical container. And even worse than that, we never heard of it again, so this incredible decision meant absolutely nothing in the entire scheme of the show.

Bleah.

It came back in Season 5, remember? *sighs* Enterprise never finished it's run. Who knows what would have happened.

 

[Captain X]

I found it annoying that Archer was so determined to keep the virus in stasis as a way of preserving the extinct species. That virus was a weapon used against innocnet beings, not the last survivor of a species. It's tragic that their species was dying off but changing other species into their own was very wrong. If the only choices offered to them was extinction or turning other people into their species against their will, they should have gone extinct.
Keeping the virus in stasis means there's a chance the virus could be used to transform other people, either intentionally or thru accident. It was too dangerous to keep imo.

You know what makes this even worse? Dear Doctor. Phlox and Archer doomed a living civilization to extinction, and possibly screwed over another one in doing so, and yet here they want to keep a virus which mutates unwilling humanoids into a new species in order to keep an extinct civilization "alive".

 

[Nebusj]

It's tragic that their species was dying off but changing other species into their own was very wrong. If the only choices offered to them was extinction or turning other people into their species against their will, they should have gone extinct.

Are you certain that the design was to change people against their will? Perhaps the intent was that it should be voluntary, but what with the collapse of civilization and all the plans don't quite work out to satisfaction.

 

[Captain X]

I'm going to guess that it was supposed to be involuntary, because this episode was a lot like that episode of VOY where the crew was forced to relive memories of an atrocity, and in the end they decide to repair the thing that caused it so it can keep on doing it to random passer-bys.