TheGodBen Revisits Enterprise

I happen to like Jolene Blalock, but I won't give you too much crap if you don't, TheGodBen. After all, you are allowed to have your own opinion.

Mmmmm.... Jolene Blalock....

Sorry, my mind started to wander.

 

I had better not start that Jolene Blalock vs Linda Park debate again, I got told off last time.


A Night in Sickbay (*)

Ah, now I see what people mean about character assassination.

As I said, when I saw this episode before I liked it; I liked that it was an episode about nothing which contained some surreal imagery. But now that I've watched it with more adult eyes I can see just how stupid and petulant Archer is here; he acts almost exactly like a spoiled child, he has a hard time taking responsibility for his actions, and his horny shenanigans involving T'Pol are cringe-worthy.

Nipples Ahoy!: 8

However, if you take Archer out of the show then you have a pretty good episode about Phlox. There's Phlox clipping his toenails, Phlox scraping his tongue, Phlox chasing a bat, and Phlox telling an emotional story about his family. But, unfortunately, you have Archer and his wet dreams messing up a good story about Phlox. Basically, I want more Phlox.

 

A Night in Sickbay was very funny, but they really should've had Archer act a bit less like a spoiled idiot.

 

No man, you're just not a Klingon... get it? Your allegories never make sense. Klingons may be dumber in ENT but they are an intellegent, warp capable, space faring race, big ol' brains and such. But in the conext of the show they will kill you with little provocation, in ENT, in TOS, TNG, DS9... no matter when. Even Archer's Klingon lawyer would have killed all them jerks, one by one, tearing off limbs, spilling their blood... THEY ARE KLINGONS!!!
That's what they do. <--- even their smiley is mean.

Ugh

 

I really enjoyed Season 1 when it aired as yes, it did a good job of bridging the gap between real world space travel and Star Trek (although, I think First Flight did more to establish that, despite being in S2).

Season 2 just felt like a waste. It seemed to drag and I just wanted the show to get on with it. It would've been better if they'd gone straight into the Xindi arc, or even better, straight into season 4 and then onto the Romulan War.

S2 felt like the show was losing direction, had no point to it and I was always waiting for that direction to occur.

 

You're not reviewing those other things, this episode falls into the construct of your thread. If you're truly going to "revisit" these episodes, maybe give them a bit more of a chance. Of course you can be bored, but that wasn't spoken of anywhere in your review.

Like this:

Now see... if you had including these factors in your revisit, then I'd have a better understanding of your problems with the episode. These remarks make for a better rounded examination.

While it wasn't a direct quote (it was an ironic statement, quotations take the comment out of my voice to make the implication) BUT, you do continually insult the intellegence of Mike Sussman and the others on the writing staff all throughout this thread.

The point was to be scary... nothing more.

 

A Night in Sickbay could have been drastically improved with but three simple changes:

1: Remove the ticking clock revolving around needing a critical piece of tech for the ship's safety. If it was some tedious Vulcan diplomatic mission dumped upon the crew that forced Archer to put up with these annoying Kretassians, then his petulance would have been more sympathetic.

2: Porthos' illness shouldn't have been Archer's fault. It was. Completely. It made him come across as a real jerk to be blaming these innocent aliens, no matter how much they dislike one another.

3: Remove the whole sexual tension subplot. It adds nothing except some horribly cliche Freudian 'slips'.

 

But they're still dumber. I'm not debating whether or not they should be dumber during this time period, all I'm saying is that I'm not as interested in watching a dumb villain as I am in watching a reasonably intelligent villain. That's why I prefer the Romulan episodes to the Klingon ones, the Romulans had some sort of plan to keep the minor races down while the Klingons were just there acting like bullies.

That's how I felt too, it was a show fluttering in the breeze at a time when it desperately needed to be about something. I started watching Trek regularly from DS9's 3rd season (and Voyager's 1st) and Enterprise's 2nd season was the first time when I seriously found myself considering giving up. Luckily the end of the season was solid and the direction they found in season 3 managed to retain my interest.

Ah, but that's why I post these things in a forum and not as a web-page, because the best insights come from the discussion of the episode and not the two or three short paragraphs which I write. If somebody is interested in learning more about what I thought of an episode then they can ask me, as you did, and if I have time I will go into further depth. There's no point in me wasting my time spending 2 hours writing an in-depth review if people are going to skip most of it, and I don't have the time for that sort of thing anyway.

The Mike Sussman thing is just a recurring joke I'm doing, there's no malice behind it. The truth is that I'm a little intimidated by the fact that he might be reading the thread, so the best way I can think to handle that is to constantly reference that point and then be as honest as I can about his episodes. I don't think I've ever called him dumb, but I did single out the stupid Vulcan motorboating incident.

 

Very good points Mr Ghoul. I'm beginning to enjoy you. But I would like to hear more about your take on these episodes beyond the surface from the onset, just a touch more in-depth... I promise not to skip over a single word.
But I do understand time constraints.

Cheers!

 

Okay, I disagree with all three of these improvements, and here's why.

1. There really was no ticking time frame except the idea that the longer it takes to apologize, the less likely it would be accepted. It's not like very-bad-things-technobabble was going to happen in 24 hours (sorry, I've been on a 24 binge lately, so I'm all about the digital clock-induced tension). But the idea was that the combo of (1) the second-contact gone wrong, (2) the sick dog, and (3) extreme fatigue all blew the problem out of proportion. It should have been an easy decision: Get something to eat, get some sleep, then call the Kretassians and tell them, really sorry, won't happen again, thanks for the spark plugs.

2. Porthos' illness was Archer's fault and the Kretassians' fault. They missed something critical that had nothing at all to do with the sacred trees. The dog would have gotten sick anyway. Archer's mistake was assuming that the aliens had it covered, and not double checking. He was mad at them for that, and that gave him an excuse not to acknowledge his own contribution to the overarching problem (that he didn't realize the stand of trees was meaningful).

You know, there are times when danahubby and I fight, and it's a cold war. He'll do something stupid and avoidable, and I'll call him on it in some snotty way, and suddenly neither of us wants to apologize because the other's bad behaviour becomes our focus. (You shouldn't have snapped at me! Yeah, well, you messed up my schedule!) Both of us are wrong and owe each other an apology, but neither one of us is ready to cough one up, dammit. Eventually, yes we will, but not just this minute. I really don't think Archer was meant to come across as being right - he was meant to come across as being unprepared for the situation and overwhelmed (see point 1). T'Pol pretty much tells him this. The exercise room scene boils down to: You're being a child, apologize. And Archer's whole demeanor is: I know that, but not right now. Go away.

3. The sexual tension plot is just another element added to the ones I mentioned above. Phlox is a busy body with a captive audience. It's like when your friend tells you not to notice the big zit in the middle of her forehead, and suddenly, she becomes Cyclops. I did think it played very nicely into the idea that Archer is irritated with T'Pol because she is right, and now on top of that he's confronted with an attraction that he's trying really, really hard not even to think about. So now he's aggravated, guilty, tired, worried, in the wrong, and sexually frustrated. Hi, Cyclops!

I've got no love for the bat chasing scene, though.

 

Linda Park, definitely.

I'm just sayin'.

Thank you for making me feel old. I was the sort of livid fellow who ran up to his computer during the ad breaks to complain about it online. Those were the days!

I think even his ANiS stuff is weak, but honestly? The show in general could have used more Phlox. The way he was sidelined with a lot of the rest of the cast was unfair considering how good Billingsley was in the role.

 

See, under my harsh and grumpy exterior there's the heart of a delicious marshmallow. Or something. I don't have time to think up a smart thing to say, I'm rushing in order to watch The Plan.

I really can't do it right now because of college, I might do a little more in-depth stuff when I get some free time after Christmas. And if you don't like me being short and snarky then it's best to skip Marauders.

I completely agree.


Marauders (*)

Archer, T'Pol and Tucker fly down to a space-petrol station where there's a small colony of 73 people who survive by eating deuterium, or something. It turns out that they're under threat from some very smart Klingons who come by every few months to steal all the space-petrol, and Archer decides if he is ever to get into the history books he has to start doing some heroic stuff, so he convinces the colonists to fight a battle that Archer thinks only has a small chance of succeeding. T'Pol agrees for some reason. Trip also gets to know a local kid, which isn't clichéd and annoying at all.

It is at this point that the episode becomes an ensemble pieces with the inclusion of Travis; he does some manual labour and tries to beat an old white woman with a bat. It's good to know that racial profiling will be eradicated by the 22nd century.

Then some Klingons show up and the local miners go all Ewok by tripping the ingenious Klingons with ropes and throwing rocks at them. T'Pol shows up in a sweat-stained tank-top and does some mad Sayid style moves, but she fails to break one of the Klingon's necks with her feet, which is disapointing. This makes the Klingon captain angry, so he decides to kill the boy that Trip is friends with, because subtlety doesn't exist in the 22nd century. Then all the Klingons walk into a ring of fire, at which point one of them says "Damn! I really wish we had a matter-to-energy teleportation device, because that would be really handy in getting us out of the ring of fire". Instead the Klingon captain decides to use his matter-to-energy teleportation device to leave the planet and never return. He also fails to nuke the town from orbit with a torpedo, because he's a very nice man once you get to know him.

So the townspeople build a statue in Archer's honour, and he flies off into the sunset. The ship was destroyed on impact with the star. There were no survivors.

 

Marauders and ANIS form a one-two combination of awfulness. It was the combination of these two that caused my wife (and friends, and dogs) to abandon the show, never to return.

 

And next up, "The Seventh" destroys T'Pol's character the same way "A Night in Sickbay" destroyed Captain Archer's. I guess the main difference is that rather than a petulant child, it makes her look like she's mentally unstable and a weakling.

 

Amen.

 

Regularly yes, Linda > Jolene.

However Jolene did steal the sexy show in "In a Mirror, Darkly" and she did have my complete attention - especially once she got on to the Defiant.

 

Negative.

Though I do think she looked better in IaMD; and not because of the skimpy outfit. The long hair works much better for Jolene than that stupid Vulcan bowl cut. Whose idea was it that every damn Vulcan has to wear their hair like that, anyway?