I officially began my journey through all Star Trek on October 9th...

If you think the temporal cold war is confusing and pointless now, just wait another three seasons.

 

Do us a favor... if during the course of the remainder of the show, you ever find or figure out the answers to the things that left you confused in Cold Front... PLEASE LET US KNOW!!!! (I wish I was joking about this)

 

I agree, I watched the show. But maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention. That temporal cold war/Suliban plot never made sense to me.

On another note, wasn't Cold Front directed by Robert Duncan McNeill?

 

Check out the book Watching the Clock by @Christopher L. Bennett for one amazing take. It puts together a cogent and consistent theory of time travel that includes every example of it across all Trek, including making sense of the entire Temporal Cold War arc, while also incorporating concepts from real-life physics to help support it (if a bit twisted for the sake of sci-fi).

 

IIRC, the writers who came up with the temporal cold war admitted they had no game plan for it. Just threw it out there and hoped they could wing it.

 

Ah, Hoshi's epic Quest. Literally a filler subplot.

 

Okay, I feel like I'm the only one that likes pure-character-based subplots completely disconnected from the A-plot here. Is it really just me?

 

I actually enjoyed that whole episode myself including the subplot. It was light but kept my attention well enough.

 

I really like the episode, apart from the bad ending. It's the Phlox and Cutler dynamic that saves it (barely) for me, as well as the letter-writing framework. I agree that an episode purely based on this with no dodgy ethics would have been better.

 

As you say it asked interesting questions and arrived at hamhanded answers designed more to shoe horn in later TOS/TNG concepts. That was the episode that John Bilingsley had issues with. Apparently the original script was much better and at least followed a consistent logic path, but was changed due to network or producer interference.

The sad thing is while they frequently try and force TNG type deep question philosophical episodes onto Enterprise, they almost never ever work well. Just something about Enterprises makeup always makes them ring hollow. Maybe it is the fact that unlike TNG where Picard and the 1701-D almost always are the advanced alien race standing at the point of moral superiority, whereas Enterprise is a pack of barely literate savages first setting out in a lone sailboat, or just the difference in crew chemistry, they just don't work. Another stunning example of this is season 2's "Cogenitor". Whereas Enterprise works extremely well when they take on a more societal and diplomatic examination. Much like DS9 often did. The Enterprise episodes dealing with known races and politics are often fantastic. (Just accept that some minor changes from TOS and TNG continuity may occur.) You are about to hit one of the best of these, "Shadows of P'jem" immediately followed by another of the series best "Shuttlepod One". Two episodes that well showcased what Enterprise could be if it was allowed to step out from TNG's shadow.

 

Yeah Kellie Waymire had great chemistry with John Billingsley in the few episodes she was in. I wish we could have seen more of her. Very sad.

 

Unfortunately, the problem is how TNG and DS9 established that Klingons were "always" like the 24th century versions, with how they set up the whole culture of honor as going back to the original days of Kahless and all. Even when they brought back Kang, Kor, and Koloth in DS9, they were still essentially modern Klingons in terms of culture, outlook, attitude, etc. It was something that they definitely could have done better, but they were kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.

(Avoiding details so as to not spoil you: They do end up addressing the cultural difference in both a subtle way and a blatant way, but people are very split opinion-wise on the latter. )

 

T'Pol does eventually break out of the Seven of Nine mold. Jolene Blalock actually surprises in the role. T'Pol turns out to be one of the few Star Trek characters with development and a character arc.

 

I'm going to remind you that the Janeway Lizard sex came out of the disturbed and depraved mind of Brendon Braga. As did almost every other bit of fetishistic sexualized weirdness since Roddenberry passed away. At least in the later seasons they get a bit more creative and inventive with wardrobing. (You might want to set aside some "private time" when you get to "Through a Mirror Darkly". It's got something for everybody!)

 

Nice to see someone new to the show come to the same conclusion. Not that it's a difficult conclusion to come to .

 

I totally agree - T'Pol was just a re-warmed Seven and it showed a lot of the time. It took me ages to warm to her, somewhere in season three I think.

Shadows of P'Jem was a decent followup to The Andorian Incident, mostly for Shran. The Archer/T'Pol scenes were groan-worthy though.

I love Shuttlepod One though. Some really nice character work there, and it shows you don't need a big budget to tell a good story.

 

Jolene eventually made T'Pol interesting with some good performances, but my first reaction, upon seeing the first cast-in-character photo, was, "What is WRONG with these guys??"

 

Ohhh.
That final episode...

 

You were not alone. And then that decon rubdown scene in Broken Bow... Aiiiggghhhh!!!!! It still astonishes me that Jolene turned out to be one of the better performers on the show, and had great chemistry with Connor Trinneer. Whereas poor Scott Bakula and Archer. Somehow the character comes off as the timelost love child of James T Kirk and Janeway. He's like the creepy output of every half baked fanfiction on the internet.