'The Crossing'....WTF?!?

[TrickyDickie]

My wife and I just watched this episode for the first time last night.

First, Archer acts short, snippy, and assholish throughout the whole episode....and he did not even experience a crossing.

But then....that ending. What in the name of shit was that?!?

That was not only completely out of character for Archer and everyone else, but it was the kind of action that you might expect from the mirror universe!

Those beings were not all hostile and Archer and crew would have come up with another solution. The story, in my opinion, had a lot of parallels to the TOS episode 'Return to Tomorrow,' with Sargon and company. But then....

To just destroy a ship that contains what may very well be the last of a dying race, without even trying to come up with a different solution....that is the worst thing that I have seen in Star Trek thus far.

Sickening. Why was this done? Why no protest from those who worked on the show?

I just don't get it. At all.

 

[BlobVanDam]

I had no problem with how Archer acted throughout the episode.

I put it down to the fact this was pre-Prime Directive. The aliens were acting deceptively and forcefully taking over the crew's bodies. And we saw that the aliens were not giving up, even after being forced out of the bodies. It seemed like the entire alien crew was in on this plan, despite the fact that only 80 or so people were going to be saved from this particular encounter, and I didn't get the impression that it was a few isolated aliens acting on their own. Enterprise had every right to retaliate at the aggressive act, and I didn't give it a second thought that it was out of line.

In any other series, I'd expect the crew to try until the very end to find a peaceful diplomatic solution, which they no doubt would have, but Archer's actions were consistent with the way this crew from this time has acted the entire time, and justified.

I don't recall that they went into a lot of detail about why the beings needed their ship to survive, or what was wrong with the ship, but it didn't seem feasible to save them within the time they had left, and we knew they would have pursued other races, so it wasn't just to save the crew's own ass.

(coincidentally, I only saw this episode for the first time myself last night too)

 

[TrickyDickie]

Archer's actions were consistent with the way this crew from this time has acted the entire time

You've got to be kidding....have we even been watching the same series?

Why didn't The Allies march through Germany at the end of World War II and exterminate the entire population. Just to be sure.

What the hell, Japan and Italy too.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Really, I didn't for a second consider that they made the wrong decision given the circumstances. They did act differently to a 24th century crew would have, but it was hardly a mindless slaughter.

T'Pol knows from directly reading their minds that all of them were planning to take over other lifeforms. It was not a few bad eggs ruining it for the entire alien crew. The entire alien crew was known to be hostile and willing to kill anyone for their own survival. How that at all compares to your baseless analogy, I do not know.

 

[TrickyDickie]

Really, I didn't for a second consider that they made the wrong decision given the circumstances. They did act differently to a 24th century crew would have, but it was hardly a mindless slaughter.

T'Pol knows from directly reading their minds that all of them were planning to take over other lifeforms. It was not a few bad eggs ruining it for the entire alien crew. The entire alien crew was known to be hostile and willing to kill anyone for their own survival. How that at all compares to your baseless analogy, I do not know.

She had a crossing with one, not all of them. The one may have been able to portray that all were like-minded. That does not mean it was so. Don't assume that all life forms can be perfectly read and the complete truth come out to Vulcans through a mind meld.

There has been talk elsewhere about the Creation Museum and the upcoming Noah's Ark Theme Park giving bad messages to children, and I agree.

I believe that the ending of this episode gives a bad message also.

 

[BlobVanDam]

She had a crossing with one, not all of them. The one may have been able to portray that all were like-minded. That does not mean it was so. Don't assume that all life forms can be perfectly read and the complete truth come out to Vulcans through a mind meld.

There has been talk elsewhere about the Creation Museum and the upcoming Noah's Ark Theme Park giving bad messages to children, and I agree.

I believe that the ending of this episode gives a bad message also.

T'Pol's words were "82 of them are. One for every crewman on Enterprise............the rest will try to find another vessel of corporeal beings".
I don't believe a Vulcan would jump to conclusions based on lack of evidence. In other cases T'Pol would say something like "I believe....." or something to that effect to indicate room for error. To me it looks a matter of fact that she knows the rest intend to do the same. There didn't seem to be any uncertainty to me in her reading of the alien's mind. Indicating specific numbers like that suggests to me that she read something very specific from their minds, not some vague concept of taking over bodies.

While the words are open to some interpretation, to me it seems certain that all of them (or at least an overwhelming majority of them) intended to take over other lifeforms. You may interpret it differently.

 

[TrickyDickie]

She had a crossing with one, not all of them. The one may have been able to portray that all were like-minded. That does not mean it was so. Don't assume that all life forms can be perfectly read and the complete truth come out to Vulcans through a mind meld.

There has been talk elsewhere about the Creation Museum and the upcoming Noah's Ark Theme Park giving bad messages to children, and I agree.

I believe that the ending of this episode gives a bad message also.

T'Pol's words were "82 of them are. One for every crewman on Enterprise............the rest will try to find another vessel of corporeal beings".
I don't believe a Vulcan would jump to conclusions based on lack of evidence. In other cases T'Pol would say something like "I believe....." or something to that effect to indicate room for error. To me it looks a matter of fact that she knows the rest intend to do the same. There didn't seem to be any uncertainty to me in her reading of the alien's mind. Indicating specific numbers like that suggests to me that she read something very specific from their minds, not some vague concept of taking over bodies.

While the words are open to some interpretation, to me it seems certain that all of them (or at least an overwhelming majority of them) intended to take over other lifeforms. You may interpret it differently.

You can not join with one mind, especially of a race that you have never encountered before, and reach a conclusion based upon that single melding.

If a member of an alien race were to mind meld with one human....let's just take Charles Manson as an example....should that alien assume, just because the 'truth' that Manson believes in his mind is so strong, that all humans are as Manson portrays them to be?

 

[BlobVanDam]

I think it makes more sense to believe that the alien knows the truth, rather than believe that the alien is mistaken in the alien race's intentions, especially when the actions of the aliens definitely support the idea. They'd already taken over a fair chunk of the crew, and whoever was running the ship was in with the plan, as proven by the fact they pursued Enterprise twice.

Taking into account that many of the aliens had already taken over the crew without consent, it's a safe bet to me that the alien's thoughts were trustworthy. I see no reason to assume otherwise.

 

[TrickyDickie]

I think it makes more sense to believe that the alien knows the truth, rather than believe that the alien is mistaken in the alien race's intentions, especially when the actions of the aliens definitely support the idea. They'd already taken over a fair chunk of the crew, and whoever was running the ship was in with the plan, as proven by the fact they pursued Enterprise twice.

Taking into account that many of the aliens had already taken over the crew without consent, it's a safe bet to me that the alien's thoughts were trustworthy. I see no reason to assume otherwise.

What about the whole beginning with Trip???

I don't see how we can just assume that was simply a ruse or something and that all of these beings are just negative through and through.

That is a rush to judgment that, when you give a thorough look at the circumstances, I do not believe was justified.

 

[BlobVanDam]

They've been essentially trapped floating in space for who knows how long, and they need to get off the ship. So it's a matter of survival rather than pure malice. Needing to take over other beings forcefully is not a sign of an angry being, but just of a desperate one.

It seems as if floating around in space as an evolved being is a pretty cool experience, so they first tried letting the crew make the decision willingly to hand over their bodies for the experience without having all of the information. I think you're right that they're not inherently evil beings, or they would have taken over the entire crew the second they realized that the human mind was compatible with them, instead of enticing Trip twice with the experience first. But when they realized that the Captain wasn't receptive to the idea and suspicious of them, they got desperate as they started to run out of time.
So you're right that it proves that they weren't evil beings, and probably would have accepted an alternate solution if the crew was able to devise one (at the very least Trip could have taken a look at their ship). But obviously the writers ignored that possibility. But I still personally feel the crew were justified in taking action, considering that they weren't smart enough to help them.

 

[JiNX-01]

Those beings were not all hostile and Archer and crew would have come up with another solution. The story, in my opinion, had a lot of parallels to the TOS episode 'Return to Tomorrow,' with Sargon and company. But then....

Those non-corporeal aliens were hijacking the bodies of the NX-01 crew. It doesn't get much more hostile than that. The only reason the inhabitants of the alien ship weren't "all hostile" is because there weren't enough bodies on Enterprise for the entire population to inhabit.

As for Return to Tomorrow, the entity inhabiting Spock's body was "killed" and I don't recall any wailing and gnashing of teeth over it.

To just destroy a ship that contains what may very well be the last of a dying race, without even trying to come up with a different solution....that is the worst thing that I have seen in Star Trek thus far.

What different solution would you suggest? The humans had no way of stopping the aliens from entering the ship and taking over their bodies at will (Mayweather discovered by accident that the catwalk was a safe place to go, but they couldn't live there forever). T'Pol melded with an "inhabited" crewman and learned that the aliens intended to take over the humans' bodies permanently in order to survive.
I don't recall a single episode of Trek in which people surrendered to such a proposition.

Sickening. Why was this done? Why no protest from those who worked on the show?

I just don't get it. At all.

Why are you asking us?

 

[Jack Bauer]

I haven't seen it for years but wasn't the ship more fragile then the crew thought? I don't think they intended to destroy the ship just render it nonthreatening. Since i've not seen it for awhile I'm fuzzy on the details.

 

[I am Surak]

I just watched "The Crossing" and using the photon torpedoes to destroy the alien ship was the only logical choice. They were closing in on the enterprise and the whole affair would have begun anew.
Sometimes others have to die in one's quest for self preservation. I do not see anything negative in that.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The "wisps" had shown themselves to be a threat, not just to the crew of the Enterprise, but any other poor shmuck who happened along. Archer wasn't really left with a lot of options.