Just starting season 1

[Vykan12]

You might want to watch more than two episodes before passing judgement on the whole show. If you were to judge TNG by just Farpoint and Naked Now you might have an even worse opinion of that show than ENT.

I do intend on watching all of season 1, and hopefully my opinion will change by then.

Strange New World was okay. The highlight for me was the camp scene, as it gave us the proper atmosphere that these are among the first human space travelers to go on so far an expedition. The cave scene also allowed Trip to assert a personality, and develop a decent theme about skepticism vs trust.

Still, I have a number of complaints. For one, we are exposed to 2 minor characters, but like everyone else, they're very under-developped. Right now I identify the female as "I like vulcan soup", there's not much else we've learned about her so far. Then I don't understand how Archer can beam supplies to his crew in the cave, but cannot just beam them directly on board. And finally, they have Travis and the minor female character practically unconscious in the cave, which is tossing away an opportunity for their character development. Sure, I can understand the focus between Trip and T'Pol's tensions through their delirium, but with some clever writing, it could've gotten very tense with all of them delirious and paranoid about each other, and their hallucinations.

 

[Count Zero]

Somehow I missed "Unexpected" the first time I watched Enterprise through. When I did watch it I liked it a lot. I wonder if I would have felt that way if I watched it early, before building an attachment to the characters. I did feel that Trip was"whiny" to the point of irritating in the scenes going through the atmosphere acclimation while transferring to the other ship.

Unexpected gets a bad rep. I liked it, even in first run. They depicted the strangeness of the aliens and the problem of adjusting to alien environments really well in the first part. I wish we had seen similiar things more often on ENT. The pregnancy part was silly, but I was amused enough by it and I don't mind a little bit of silly in my Sci-Fi.

 

[Wyse]

Vykan12, I look forward to reading more of your thoughts as you go through the season. You're much more eloquent than I when it comes to addressing certain aspects of the plot.


Okay, here I go...

Civilization. A plot that seems to have been done alot on TNG. They disguise themselves as the aliens on an undeveloped planet as to observe, and it all goes horribly wrong!!! Dun dun dun. A story that I've seen before, but it was interesting and acted well enough to keep my attention.

Liked: Rhion. A smart, strong character portrayed by a capable actress. Many times women guests are reduced to 'in distress' or 'romance with *insert male character here*' so it was great that she had input and was a valuable aid to the captain. The communicator breaking down was a nice scene, especially the way Rhion handled the kiss/es. Not swooning, but maturely and a little bemused.

Disliked: seen it before. Plot was kind of used many, many times and this didn't bring anything new to the table. And the captain sure is involved in alot of dangerous away missions and situations, shouldn't he be more, I dunno, protected?
3 out out 5. I'd watch it again.


Fortunate Son. I dug this one. I wanted to SMACK the cargo hauler's acting captain a time or two, so I guess the actor did his job okay. But maybe too unlikable, as I almost wished for his death before the end where he backed down for his crew.

Liked: the Nausicans (sp?). Travis got dialogue. Pretty significant ones, too. The acting during the final speech by Travis was a little wooden though, he did a bit better during the dinner scene earlier on. I'm noticing that so far the guest cast are the notably better actors. The admiral from the pilot, the vulcan captain guy, the Andorian leader. Rhion. The star cast still seems to be struggling to get a feel for their characters. We see some bright spots, but then we get bookends of flat readings or over/under played scenes. It seems that all the other Vulcans say their lines smoothly, while T'pol monotones most of her dialogue, for example. Malcolm is the only steady actor so far. He comes across as by the book, but we see a smile here, a quip there, letting us know that deep down he's an alright guy. Along with Phlox, he's the most rounded and 'deep' character so far.

Disliked: Some of the acting was a tad off. When you notice ACTING! over being caught in the scene, its disjointing and pulls you out of the episode
3.5 out of 5.


Cold Front. Ah, our hologram guy and suluban get another go! I'm guessing they factor in to the season finale, the Big Bad shall we say.

Liked: The suluban got more interesting.

Disliked: The Time Police? Why are they forcing a link with the TNG era? Why not build upon the premise of the first starship in deep space and build its own mythos? I see a bunch of Klingon encounters, a Romulan reference; why not create new aliens for this series, or enhance as lessor used species into a more interesting one? I have the same problem with the new Doctor Who, they use too many classic villains for the easy out instead of the harder route of creating interesting villians of their own

3 out of 5. Reading my comments, it sounds like I'm bashing on the episodes sometimes, but I'm really enjoying them. I guess its easier to pick up on things you didn't like than things you did sometimes.


Silent Enemy. The Enterprise is attacked and probed by Greys.

Liked: The Malcom subplot was nice, Hoshi trying to find out his favorite food and the misunderstanding by Malcolm that she was coming on to him, and the ackward parting after. The Greys were creepy villians, the illumination by flashlights harkened back to old horror movies.

Disliked: hm, nothing readily springs to mind. If I listed any it would be nitpicking. Maybe how the Greys went to kicking all kinds of ass to being solidly defeated by end time. Oh, and Malcolm's birthday party was uber small.
3 out of 5.


Dear Doctor. LOVE! A flip where the previous episodes have shown humans' perspective on aliens, we have an alien giving his perspective on humans.

Likes: Movie night! Trip crying and Phlox totally enjoying observing the reactions of those around him vs. the movie. Cutler is back. And she has a thing for Phlox!? I loved the solution to the epidemic. God, that was just so brutal. Love it! Good storytelling invokes reaction from the viewer, and invoke it did.

Disliked: Absolutely nothing.
5 out of 5. Brilliant!!


Dear Doctor indeed ranks up there as one of the best trek episodes I've ever seen. It was just... wow. Vykan12, when you get to this one, please post your thoughts on it?

Tonight is Sleeping Dogs, Shadow of P'Jem, and Shuttlepod One. The Shuttlepod One sounds familiar, so maybe I caught some of it a long time ago. I can't remember much, except Malcolm and Trip boozing it up?

 

[Penguin]

One thing that always annoyed me about Unexpected is that Archer did not ask for a little TIT for TAT. i.e. Trip repairs their Warp drive the aliens give Enterprise some of their technoology hopefully their Stealth technology or thier Hologram technology.

Just a nitpick

 

[Jaespol]

Yeah the problem I had with the beginning of Enterprise were just how darned unreasonable many of the characters were. Archer and Trip just seem to have a huge vendetta against Vulcans and they also appeared to be pretty stupid.
Sometimes T'Pol was the only one that made sense, had Archer listened to her in "Strange New World", whats his face would not have died,

 

[Count Zero]

No one died in Strange New World. The guy who was beamed up from the planet survived. The first death of a crew member occurred in season 3. (And then the dead started piling up...)
He was originally supposed to die but Bakula argued that it wouldn't be right to have him die without dealing with the death and so, Novakovich didn't die in that episode.

 

[commodore64]

Vykan, there were some dumb things in the pilot, but you might like the rest of the series. I'd hang in there. I really liked the pilot except for a few scenes. I thought it had originality, good pacing and nice characters. On Hoshi, you know, I have to agree. I really liked the idea of her character, but I'm not sure it ever really comes together.

African-American

I know someone covered this above, but he could be just off-world. Which may make him not African (whatsoever). You know, I'm not sure I like the African-American label. It seems outdated. Most people with black or darker skin are five generations away from Africa (if not more). When can they just be Americans with darker skin? Just like I'm an American with alabaster (more like Casper the Ghost) skin? Sorry, that wasn't a slight, more of a rhetorical comment.

He was originally supposed to die but Bakula argued that it wouldn't be right to have him die without dealing with the death and so, Novakovich didn't die in that episode.

I thought Berman was the one who gave him a last minute reprieve.

 

[Vykan12]

Unexpected.

The alien ship was lame

I'd tend to disagree. The flashing lights in the engine room was a bit silly, but then the holodeck had a unique design, and I like the notion of food growing on the wall of a ship. The aliens themselves were also reasonably unique, especially in how their skin appeared to be saturated in a thin layer of some kind of liquid.

and the second half with the realization that Trip is (ugh) pregnant was difficult to watch.

I don't see what makes this so hard to swallow. Trip becoming pregnant thanks to a telepathic experience involving putting his hand in a bucket of alien sand is rather hard to believe, but casting that doubt aside, the male pregnancy was decently dealt with. Trip had some believable emotional outbursts in the engine room due to hormonal imbalance. He felt humiliation in assuming a caretaking role, as well as with his own physiological changes (ie the nipples on the wrist). He had to defend himself concerning whether he was being a true gentleman or a promiscuous playboy on the alien ship. Finally, the Klingons had a good laugh when he revealed to them what happened to him.

Terra Nova.

A lost colony where the descendants (human) have to be convinced that Archer and crew aren't enemies and that they share a past. Good acting by the cast, a fast-paced plot, DRAMA! It was very good Trek.

I found this episode to be long, drawn out and predictable. This is probably most prevalent when Archer's shuttle sinks into the ground, and to the plot's convenience, one of the descendants gets stuck under a log. Of course, Archer unquestionably goes and saves this guy because he's so desperate to gain some trust with the descendants, and the scene carries out for a good 3-5 minutes. The only thing I really enjoyed in this episode was the terminology of the descendants, as it's always nice to hear some fresh jargons concerning everyday descriptions.

It seems we are of opposite opinions concerning these 2 episodes :P

 

[Mach5]

African-American

I know someone covered this above, but he could be just off-world. Which may make him not African (whatsoever).

He is 100% human, right? Both his parents were dark skinned which clearly indicated African descent (your president Obama is constantly being referred to as African-American, even though his mother is Caucasian).
In my opinion, the African part is not in question, but American, I admit, makes little sense. I already corrected myself (see above) and jokingly classified him as African-Extraterrestrial.
I don't know, categorizing Travis as a "black helmsman" kinda sound wrong. Not necessarily derogatory, but... Whatever.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Why can't he just be "the helmsman"?

What do dark skinned people with an African background who are Canadians call themselves? Or in the UK?

Not a troll, always wanted to know. The only Africans in my country actually came directly from that continent.

 

[Vykan12]

I didn't mean to create such a fuss over Travis Mayweather. If I call someone a black (insert descriptor here), it's meant as a physiological descriptor only, with no negative stigma intended.

 

[Count Zero]

He was originally supposed to die but Bakula argued that it wouldn't be right to have him die without dealing with the death and so, Novakovich didn't die in that episode.

I thought Berman was the one who gave him a last minute reprieve.

Well, since Bakula wasn't in charge of the series, I'm sure someone else made the ultimate decision not to kill off Novakovich. But Bakula persuaded whoever it was. At least that's how the story's being told (on Memory Alpha, too).

 

[Jaespol]

No one died in Strange New World. The guy who was beamed up from the planet survived. The first death of a crew member occurred in season 3. (And then the dead started piling up...)
He was originally supposed to die but Bakula argued that it wouldn't be right to have him die without dealing with the death and so, Novakovich didn't die in that episode.

Well he died in the episode I watched...
And even if he hadn't, the fact is Archer was damned stupid for pretty much the first entire season, this was the first ever season of any Star Trek I'd ever watched (so I was totally uncynical and really liked it) and I could see that.

 

[Jaespol]

Why can't he just be "the helmsman"?

Exactly

 

[Count Zero]

No one died in Strange New World. The guy who was beamed up from the planet survived. The first death of a crew member occurred in season 3. (And then the dead started piling up...)
He was originally supposed to die but Bakula argued that it wouldn't be right to have him die without dealing with the death and so, Novakovich didn't die in that episode.

Well he died in the episode I watched...

You're from the alternate reality of death!

See Memory Alpha for details, it's mentioned under background. But yeah, Novakovich's behaviour screamed 'redshirt death' from a mile away but then it just didn't happen.

 

[Vykan12]

Fortunate Son- What a ridiculous episode. First off, what kind of maniac separates 1/3 of his own ship, attempting to kill a bunch of people just to retain a single prisoner? The Nosikan's information can't have possibly been that valuable. Then Archer has to piss me off by imposing his Star Fleet beliefs onto others, to the point where he threatens to destroy Nosikan ships just to get his way. The freighter guy made it perfectly clear that Star Fleet had no jurisdiction over him in the section of space they were located in, the conflict should've ended there.

Isn't Enterprise supposed to be about exploring the actions of early human space explorers, particularly before the prime directive was written? Considering that, I'd expect a Star Fleet captain to do what incurs the greatest probability of survival in this type of circumstance, not risk their life over a matter of principle. After all, some "mistakes" had to have been made for a spacial code of conduct to have ever been invented.

I'm probably ranting too much, I just found this episode too safe and thus rather unmemorable.

Cold Front- The temporal cold war just strikes me as something ridiculously stupid. For instance, why would a time policeman so openly show off future technology to people on the Enterprise? If you show humans technology they haven't discovered yet, then they might come to terms with that technology sooner than they would've naturally progressed, which causes all sorts of consequences to the timeline. There's about a million other problems I could name, but the same can be said of warp travel, so I try not to think of it too much. As for the B-plot, why the hell is Malcolm so reserved about what his favorite food is? That's just silly, and he never gave any decent reason for this bizarre reservation.

Despite my constant criticisms, the show is starting to grow on me. T'Pol is starting to seem more like a natural Vulcan instead of a conceited jerk, and I'm more comfortable with the show's cast now that I've become more familiar with them. Trip's excessively southern accent still bothers me, but I can live with it.

 

[Jaespol]

Temporal Cold War = dumbest effing story arc ever, I never even got what was going on.
A simple problem with many of the episodes is that the stuff just doesn't actually make any sense.

 

[JoeD80]

Temporal Cold War = dumbest effing story arc ever, I never even got what was going on.

That's OK, the writers didn't know what was going on either. I recall Braga saying at some point that they hadn't really worked out the details of it.

 

[Jaespol]

No one died in Strange New World. The guy who was beamed up from the planet survived. The first death of a crew member occurred in season 3. (And then the dead started piling up...)
He was originally supposed to die but Bakula argued that it wouldn't be right to have him die without dealing with the death and so, Novakovich didn't die in that episode.

Well he died in the episode I watched...

You're from the alternate reality of death!

See Memory Alpha for details, it's mentioned under background. But yeah, Novakovich's behaviour screamed 'redshirt death' from a mile away but then it just didn't happen.

I think he died, let's agree to disagree.

 

[mythme]

No he didn't die because he appears in at least one other episode.