I wouldn't go that far. Mayweather could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout. Reed and Sato were one-note characters, but not completely blank slates. They had their moments.
The ENT and Melakon
- Thread starter Melakon
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I wouldn't go that far. Mayweather could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout. Reed and Sato were one-note characters, but not completely blank slates. They had their moments.
1:03 - Strange New World
TV blurb: Trip trips out, T'Pol tests her improvisational skills, and Porthos takes one giant leak for all dogkind.
I watched this 5 times in 2 days trying to figure out who was crazy and who wasn't, and I'm still not entirely sure. Kellie Waymire makes her first appearance as Cutler. Travis' big scene is getting to tell a ghost story around a campfire.
There are some good stage effects during an intense storm, but for a planetside story it's very claustrophobic with tight closeups and few outdoor scenes, real or soundstage, after the landing party takes shelter in a cave.
When this originally aired, I was unimpressed. I still am.
TV blurb: Trip trips out, T'Pol tests her improvisational skills, and Porthos takes one giant leak for all dogkind.
I watched this 5 times in 2 days trying to figure out who was crazy and who wasn't, and I'm still not entirely sure. Kellie Waymire makes her first appearance as Cutler. Travis' big scene is getting to tell a ghost story around a campfire.
There are some good stage effects during an intense storm, but for a planetside story it's very claustrophobic with tight closeups and few outdoor scenes, real or soundstage, after the landing party takes shelter in a cave.
When this originally aired, I was unimpressed. I still am.
Enough with the campfires! Gah, what is it with them and endless marshmelon references.
I have the call sheets for "Enterprise" and this was filmed at the "Disney Ranch" and in "Bronson Canyon" at the Bronson Cave. The same place BTW that they film TOS "Bread and Circuses" at.
I agree; not a great episode.
Strange New World was one of my favorites from the first season. Showed the tremendous chemistry between Trinner and Blalock early on.
I do. She went from a scared young girl to one willing to give her life in order to save her people. She also was instrumental in stalling and eventually stopping the Reptilians plan to destroy Earth.
Along the way she proves herself to be adept at martial arts, she helps develope the universal translator. And even though it was an alternate universe, we all know what she did in the Mirror episodes.
On top of all that, Linda Park turned out to be possibly the third best actor in the cast behind John Billingley and Conner Trinneer.
They simply didn't write all that much for her, but what she did get, she worked. And I'm not one of the Hoshi/Linda-philes (but I am a T'Pol/Jolene-phile). Park was the only actor on the show whose character had great friendship, (or) romantic, and collegial chemistry with all of the other characters.
Disagree about Reed also. He really distinguished himself in several episodes especially the the Mirror episods. Now Mayweather, played by an actor hired strictly because of his looks, IMO, could easily have been replaced.
Disney Ranch may have been for those early scenes with Porthos running off and doing his thing.
Since I watched the entire series last month, I'll admit one of the first season's greatest strengths was developing characterizations and finding which actors worked best together. And each season's blooper reel is especially telling, not so much for the goofs, but in how the actors reacted to each other's mistakes. Lots of good-natured teasing on those blown lines and clumsy falls.
There's one take of T'Pol where she's supposedly talking to the rock people in Vulcan language, and Blalock fumbles the nonsense syllables where she's supposed to say the word "akasa", but it comes out "a caca", and she immediately cracks up. It's almost as good as Leonard Nimoy's famous "The plants act as a suppository..."
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[I really didn't want to post again after myself, but there haven't been any other comments in two days.]
I see my episode numbering sequence was off, as "Broken Bow" is officially counted as 2 episodes. So correcting for that with this entry.
1:05 - Unexpected
TV Blurb: Trip visits an alien ship, gets horizontal, and puts on a little weight.
The old gag of male pregnancy gets reworked here, frequently played for laughs, so this may qualify as Enterprise's first intentional comedy.
The early scenes on the Xyrillian ship do a good job with camera angles, lenses, sound distortion, and lighting to illustrate Trip's initial disorientation on the alien vessel. Intercutting of conversation with Enterprise suggests the distortion is all in Trip's head, as his communications voice on Enterprise sounds unaffected, with no struggling of speech. Technically, it's a pretty interesting sequence.
The concept of holodecks is introduced for the first time, chronologically speaking. A female Xyrillian takes a liking to Trip, shows him around the ship, and together they do some repair work. An unusual mindreading game is shared, though they make no physical contact.
Once back on Enterprise, Trip gradually becomes alarmed at unusual physiological changes he's experiencing, and then Phlox drops the bombshell. From here on, it's a series of situations with characters enjoying Trip's discomfort, with everyone making wisecracks (especially T'Pol, as snidely as Vulcans can muster).
With Klingons always being a laugh riot, a battlecruiser shows up (a D-7 variation, as they didn't have the money for a new ship yet). The Klingon captain threatens to destroy the Xyrillians until given a holodeck recreation of the homeworld ("I can see my house from here!").
In all, a pleasant little piece of fluff with no longlasting repercussions for the crew.
I see my episode numbering sequence was off, as "Broken Bow" is officially counted as 2 episodes. So correcting for that with this entry.
1:05 - Unexpected
TV Blurb: Trip visits an alien ship, gets horizontal, and puts on a little weight.
The old gag of male pregnancy gets reworked here, frequently played for laughs, so this may qualify as Enterprise's first intentional comedy.
The early scenes on the Xyrillian ship do a good job with camera angles, lenses, sound distortion, and lighting to illustrate Trip's initial disorientation on the alien vessel. Intercutting of conversation with Enterprise suggests the distortion is all in Trip's head, as his communications voice on Enterprise sounds unaffected, with no struggling of speech. Technically, it's a pretty interesting sequence.
The concept of holodecks is introduced for the first time, chronologically speaking. A female Xyrillian takes a liking to Trip, shows him around the ship, and together they do some repair work. An unusual mindreading game is shared, though they make no physical contact.
Once back on Enterprise, Trip gradually becomes alarmed at unusual physiological changes he's experiencing, and then Phlox drops the bombshell. From here on, it's a series of situations with characters enjoying Trip's discomfort, with everyone making wisecracks (especially T'Pol, as snidely as Vulcans can muster).
With Klingons always being a laugh riot, a battlecruiser shows up (a D-7 variation, as they didn't have the money for a new ship yet). The Klingon captain threatens to destroy the Xyrillians until given a holodeck recreation of the homeworld ("I can see my house from here!").
In all, a pleasant little piece of fluff with no longlasting repercussions for the crew.
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One thing I liked about Unexpected was how alien the aliens turned out to be. The male carries the fetus (almost like a seahorse), and sex happens via minerals. They don't know what water is. The ship has plants growing all over it. It's good an wacky in a lot of ways.
Randy Oglesby did several roles in Trek, starting as one of the Chorus in TNG's "Loud As a Whisper". He's also memorable as the Miradorn twins in DS9's "Vortex". Apparently no stranger to genre roles, his earliest IMDB credit was in a 1981 version of "A Christmas Carol" as the Ghost of Christmas Past.
1:06 - Terra Nova
TV Blurb: Malcolm gets leg-broke, and Archer hangs around.
Ugh. So dull, it took 30 minutes to think of a tv blurb. The vomit emoticon would be appropriate if I was rating this.
The episode starts well, with the crew hoping to learn why contact was lost with the first human colony outside Earth's solar system. There's even a nod to TOS' "Miri" when one of the landing party looks at an old bicycle. I half expected someone to scream "MINE!" and come charging at them.
But once we start to find out what happened to the colonists, it turns into a story that has nothing to do with our own people except the desire to get Malcolm back. It might have been more effective for Archer to be the prisoner in this case, but that happens enough times in later episodes.
There is an attempt to give the planet's inhabitants a distinct dialect, and there are nice performances by guests Erick Avari and Mary Carver (who was then 77). There are several action scenes with a foot chase, a fire fight, and a rock climbing (or rock descending) rescue, but little of it matters in terms of making us care about anything.
In some ways, it looks like the story was inspired by the real-life historical Roanoke Colony, with Carver's character standing in for Virginia Dare.
TV Blurb: Malcolm gets leg-broke, and Archer hangs around.
Ugh. So dull, it took 30 minutes to think of a tv blurb. The vomit emoticon would be appropriate if I was rating this.
The episode starts well, with the crew hoping to learn why contact was lost with the first human colony outside Earth's solar system. There's even a nod to TOS' "Miri" when one of the landing party looks at an old bicycle. I half expected someone to scream "MINE!" and come charging at them.
But once we start to find out what happened to the colonists, it turns into a story that has nothing to do with our own people except the desire to get Malcolm back. It might have been more effective for Archer to be the prisoner in this case, but that happens enough times in later episodes.
There is an attempt to give the planet's inhabitants a distinct dialect, and there are nice performances by guests Erick Avari and Mary Carver (who was then 77). There are several action scenes with a foot chase, a fire fight, and a rock climbing (or rock descending) rescue, but little of it matters in terms of making us care about anything.
In some ways, it looks like the story was inspired by the real-life historical Roanoke Colony, with Carver's character standing in for Virginia Dare.
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Unexpected? To be honest... I didn't like that episode at all. I find nothing "fluffy" about it. Trip was basically raped without his knowledge. It's like a sick old perv dropping his pants and asking a kid who doesn't know better if they want to play a "game" which is exactly how it was described to Trip in the episode.
The whole alien pregnancy thing aside, not only is Trip violated without his knowledge or consent but the whole crew pretty much seems to think it's a big joke and berates him for it. Nice to see victim blaming is alive and well in the 22nd century. To be honest this always struck me as a "what were they thinking" episode. To say nothing of even in Enterprise they can't avoid holodeck episodes. Though the Klingon "i can see my house from here" did make me laugh.
Terra Nova was overly cliche, but at least it didn't actively offend even if it was boring. It's just an unoriginal concept, there's no character development and this has zero consequences in the future. Couple that with it not being entertaining and you have.... a fairly typical season 1 Enterprise episode.
The whole alien pregnancy thing aside, not only is Trip violated without his knowledge or consent but the whole crew pretty much seems to think it's a big joke and berates him for it. Nice to see victim blaming is alive and well in the 22nd century. To be honest this always struck me as a "what were they thinking" episode. To say nothing of even in Enterprise they can't avoid holodeck episodes. Though the Klingon "i can see my house from here" did make me laugh.
Terra Nova was overly cliche, but at least it didn't actively offend even if it was boring. It's just an unoriginal concept, there's no character development and this has zero consequences in the future. Couple that with it not being entertaining and you have.... a fairly typical season 1 Enterprise episode.
Am I the only person that loved Terra Nova? I loved the language, the caves, the culture, the decay, the old woman realizing she was that little girl. It's one of my favorite season one eps.
It's the same thing as me being the only person who liked VOY's "Twisted".
I quite liked Terra Nova. If they'd gotten there just a few months or years later, they would never have been able to convince the colonists that they were human. It had the feel of a Ray Bradbury story.
Ooo that's a very lovely comparison! I quite agree!
I thought the episode was meh, but what really bothered me was the staff playing the male-crewmember-gets-pregnant card in the first half of the show's first season. Thought it was a bad sign that the writers were going to this story so soon. In addition, a whimsical story so soon? We had only just begun the ourney and already they're trying to make us laugh. Berman and Braga seemed to already be sucking wind in the first few episodes.
For me, this did not bode well for future episodes.
For me, this did not bode well for future episodes.
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