TheGodBen Revisits Enterprise

[TheGodBen]

Honestly?

Yes. Because what I see in this episode is humans being put on a pedestal by god-like beings because they were impressed by our sense of morality. Picard making a speech about how humans are evolved and other species need to be like us is irritating but ironically self-defeating, because Picard is displaying arrogance when he does that. But in this episode we have advanced beings telling us that we are the most morally impressive species they have seen in 800 years. That brings to mind the phrase "morally superior", and I don't like that phrase.

I have a hard time believing that in 800 years and hundreds of observations not one races displayed self-sacrifice. The "older" Organian even mentions that sometimes all of the crew dies, so surely at least one of those occasions was because the alien captain sacrificed everyone because they refused to let the infected crewmembers die. The Klingons and Cardassians are going to let their crewmembers die, they're normally depicted as that sort of people, but what about the Bajorans? Or the Bolians? Or the Trill? Or the Betazoids? I can see one of those species willing to sacrifice themselves in the futile attempt to save others. I even heard a story recently that a pet snake saw that there was a fire in the house, but rather than try to escape it woke up the family to alert them so that they didn't die. If snakes, hardly the friendliest of animals, are capable of acting this way then why should I believe that humans are the only race in 800 years to display self-sacrifice?

If the episode said that humans were one of a long line of species which acted this way and that the Organians always revive the victims after observing the events then I would have little problem with this episode. As is I find it very worrying that humanity is being placed above all other species like this.

 

[Kegg]

Honestly?

Yes. Because what I see in this episode is humans being put on a pedestal by god-like beings because they were impressed by our sense of morality.

I know. That annoyed me to no end.

That's a Metron reaction, not an Organian one.


...

what?

 

[SRFX]

How is this any different to how the Q see humans? It's noted at several points that humanity is seen by the Q as a little bit different and more progressive than any other species they have encountered.

I just figured this episode is yet another in Star Trek's library of "humans beings are special" series and didn't see it as particularly noteworthy in any respect.

 

[Glacial]

Yeah -- "human beings are special" is one of the big themes of Star Trek, and it runs through all of the series. You getting enough sleep there, Ben? You've seemed pretty cranky these last few reviews

And +1 on Archer sacrificing himself personally being the impressive thing -- that was the impression I took away from it, at any rate.

 

[TheGodBen]

Yeah -- "human beings are special" is one of the big themes of Star Trek, and it runs through all of the series. You getting enough sleep there, Ben? You've seemed pretty cranky these last few reviews

No, I'm not getting enough sleep, I'm sick so I get dehydrated at night due to breathing through my mouth and perspiring due to fever, and I have horrible muscle pain and headaches which invade my dreams. It's horrible.

Doesn't change the fact that I've been cranky for two years though.

And +1 on Archer sacrificing himself personally being the impressive thing -- that was the impression I took away from it, at any rate.

In 800 years of observation nobody else was willing to sacrifice themselves in order to try to save the others? I don't buy that. This is like the common complaint about the TOS movies; all the other captains were made to be idiots so that Kirk looked better.


Journey to Babel 2: EPS Grid Boogaloo (****)

Half way through Enterprise's intended 7-year run we finally get to what the pilot should have been. Since claiming tht the Tellartes are going to be a founding member of the UFP it makes sense for the show to finally get around to introducing them and their relations to the other species, and this story is a clever way to do that and to help make Earth look like a bigger player in galactic affairs. Bringing back Shran and the Andorians is also welcome.

But what makes this episode really interesting is the Romulans, this episode was the perfect way to utilise them as a villain working behind the scenes to disrupt galactic unity. I'm a little worried that their holographic ship is too advanced compared to what we are used to in the 24th century but since the story is good enough I'm willing to allow it. Besides, the Romulans using drone ships is the only way that the Romulan war could make any sense without anybody getting a look at them. I remember when I first saw this episode and watched Reed and Tucker marching towards the Romulan bridge I got worried thinking "Oh noes, the continuity is about to be broken real bad" (I used to be a big Catface fan) so the fakeout that the ship was empty and the Romulans are still on Romulus was clever and welcome.

Transporter: 23
Nipples Ahoy!: 18

 

[apenpaap]

Babel One is one of my favourite Enterprise episodes. Especially the bit at the beginning.

 

[startrekwatcher]

I give Babel One 3 solid stars out of 4.

I enjoyed Babel One a lot. It handled the material as well as you would expect but it isn’t quite as ambitious as "The Forge" and it doesn’t feel as fresh. Really my enjoyment of the episode would have diminished somewhat had it not been for the fact that instead of generic aliens the story centered on races like the Andorans, Tellarites and Romulans who longtime Trek fans have an investment and connection with.

I liked that it functioned as a story that not only sets up the burgeoning relationships among the founding species of the Federation but that it also lays the foundations for the Romulan War--and how both events are interconnected. It also does a good job showing how Earth ended up being drawn into galactic affairs in pivotal ways. I also appreciated the fact like is done often this season that Archer didn't singlehandedly do everything himself--there were Earth representatives who were to assist in the negotiations on Babel. It would have been a bit much were he to oversee the talks between the Tellarites and Andorians.

While we don't make it to Tellar and therefore we didn't get the same sort of world-building as Vulcan, Earth and Andor this season, I enjoyed some of the little details revealed about them such as insulting is a form of communication. It is those kinds of quirks that add some dimension. It also allowed Archer to get a few nice insults in and I thought the lead in at the beginning of the first act was clever with Hoshi/Archer engaging in a war of words. The Tellarites visually were impressive building nicely on the TOS design. The socializing in the mess hall was nicely reminiscent of TNG or TOS that held similar diplomatic functions.

I'm not as big a fan as most of Talas but it was nice seeing her return. I think we didn't necessarily need another routine combat sequence at the end but at least it was competently done with some interesting camera angles. But this was another example of how the story couldn’t transcend some of its more formulaic elements.

I also enjoyed the way the story eased us into the Romulan reveal of being the masterminds. The steps taken in the investigation into the mysterious ship were interesting and logical. I thought the presentation of the NX encountering the drone ship was effectively ominous and unsettling. The atmosphere onboard was appropriately spooky as well with the darkened corridors and the mystery surrounding what or more importantly who Trip/Reed would discover. The episode picked up a lot in the final minutes as it nicely ramped up the build-up to the moment when Reed/Trip gained access to the bridge.

The reveal was appropriately disorienting as they discover an empty bridge while we switched to the control room and the camera panning further and further out to reveal they had been on Romulus the whole time was fantastic. I also appreciated that T’Pol linked the encounter in “Minefield” with the ship. A minor but nice use of previous elements. Archer came through nicely as did T’Pol and Shran.

I liked how the writers plausibly got Shran onto the NX as well which leads to the confrontation among the parties. While the Kumari’s destruction doesn’t rival the 1701-D’s or the Defiant’s, it still caused a bit of pang. Another touch I liked was the fact that they didn’t dwell on the person controlling the ship to the point where you take him for granted.

Another consistently entertaining season 4 episode.

 

[TheGodBen]

United (****)

This is what I like to see, humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites all working together to take on a Romulan threat, with humans leading the charge because we're the only race that the others wont object to. It's a clever way to put it all together, and I've just realised that Archer knows these four races form the Federation because he was at the signing ceremony, so I suppose that explains why he is so excited about this alliance and references this as a first step to an alliance of planets. It also explains why he is so willing to sacrifice himself in a fight to the death, maybe he knows he survives because he saw himself at the ceremony.

Ah, the fight to the death, the one flaw in this episode which holds it back. Some good scenes come of it, but I find it far too unlikely that Archer would win in a fight using rules and methods he learned the night before, and the way he resolves the fight by cutting off Shran's antenna is too easy. Shran should have won the fight, and he should have been the one to win by jabbing out Archer's eye, then Scott Bakula could wear an eye-patch for the remainder of the series while drinking too much and bitterly ranting about the Romulans.

The plot involving Trip and Reed on the Romulan ship is entertaining and includes this display of intelligence on Reed's part:

REED: According to the bridge schematic, this is an access panel.
TRIP: Where's it lead?
REED: Away from the Bridge.
TRIP: What does that give us?
REED: We should assume that we're being monitored.

Smart guy. Hang on, he's still talking...

REED: Did you ever read the manual that came with that thing? (Reed indicates towards Trip's phase pistol, then Malcolm shows him his empty holster) The warning about inadvertent overload?
TRIP: How long does it take?
REED: By now, less than a minute.

So now if the Romulans are monitoring you they know that something is going to overload on the bridge in less than a minute. Clever code-work there.

Then there's a fight between Enterprise and the drone ship which is fairly standard. But easily the best part of this scene is watching Reed and Trip fly into space while a small fleet of alliance ships flies past, it captures the majesty of this universe in a single shot. Well, two, because seeing Enterprise's saucer loom over them is also cool.

Archer Abuse: 34
Captain Redshirt: 36
Transporter: 24

 

[startrekwatcher]

3 stars out of 4--good but not great.

Now with United I'm going to echo my sentiments from last week. I really enjoyed it, the writers surprisingly make an old tale seem amazingly fresh mostly due to the roles of the participants being filled by recognizable Trek races/faces and there are moments that are larger than the show itself-namely the closing moments of the fleets working together was particularly poignant as well as the handshake at the end with the zoom out. That really resonates and was beautiful. We see the moment where the seed is planted for the Federation and the entire Trek saga.

And this isn't an indictment against the episode but those moments were not plentiful enough to make it a great hour. It's solid but some elements, while engaging, just can't transcend being ordinary. The Reed/Trip jeopardy subplot is one, the fight to the death is another and some of the drone/NX skirmish. I did enjoy seeing Shran lose an antenna though.

Talas' death served its purpose in setting off Shran and the ensuing conflict showed how difficult a task uniting these races would be. Archer and T'Pol had a nice scene discussing his decision to take Gral's place. Mayweather and Sato got some screentime even though it wasn't much. The references to Andor nicely set up the visit in the next episode. The little details like it being a frozen world or navigating it with ice cutters and the Ushaan ritual added some depth to the Andorians. I also loved for the second week in a row the cliffhanger ending with the Aenar reveal. I also appreciated the inclusion of the Remans even though it was nothing more than a visual nod to NEM.

That leaves the Romulans. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get more from their side of the story. I liked the explanation that the Romulans want to unite with the Vulcans but they didn't want to reveal their identities yet so they developed the drones. But I was hoping the writers might have interspersed flashbacks in the past showing various key moments/events in their history from the Sundering to locating what would become their new homeworld and what exactly the Remans are(were they an indigineous species they enslaved) etc.

Granted that may have been a bit too much material to cram into this trilogy. That also brings up something else. I think it might have been better to have done a two parter or trilogy designed like the Vulcan one where we see more of Andorian society and their conflict with the Aenar perhaps driven by a crisis involving perhaps the Tellarites and Andorians without a direct Romulan component although it could be revealed that they are instigating things. Then they could have done the Romulan trilogy giving the whole situation a bit more set up and allowing the Romulans a bit more world building.

The episode also feels like the middle part of a trilogy and more of a conclusion with the intriguing Aenar reveal being more a point that would be addressed down the road. "The Aenar" ultimately feels like a standalone.

Nevertheless it is still a solid hour.

 

[Seven of Five]

Babel One and United are among my favourite episodes of season 4. I particularly loved the way the races had to work together, even though I felt the portrayal of the Romulans was a bit iffy. Great stuff anyway!

The Aenar, however, was a very flat ending to the trilogy, and had very little point to it. I just pretend very hard that Babel One and United is simply a two-part episode.

 

[Guardian Bob]

United is my favourite Enterprise episode. This is what Star Trek was about; diverse people putting aside their differences and uniting together. Finally, we get to see how it happened.

 

[You_Guyz]

That Daedelus review was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
I thought your review of "Remember" was bad.....

I just think you have terrible taste GodBen.

 

[TheGodBen]

That Daedelus review was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

I agree, it was not my finest hour. While writing it I had an atrocious head cold and all I wanted to do was to turn off the computer and stick my head in a freezer to cool down. But I didn't do that because a very special episode of Punky Brewester I saw as a kid warned me of the dangers of getting stuck in a refrigerator.

I thought your review of "Remember" was bad.....

I stand by my review of Remember. It could have been a great episode but they threw in a dumb sci-fi gimmick stolen from an episode of TNG and that wasted half the episode. Then they saw fit to judge an entire civilisation based the possibly flawed transmitted memories of an old woman rather than any cold hard evidence. That episode represented a lot of what I think is wrong human societies, the desire to believe a good story rather than looking for evidence.

That's what I liked about Retrospect, Seven's memories were incorrect but Dr Shmully believed her without evidence and he was the one that had to live with the guilt when an innocent man died thanks in part to his actions. That was a much better episode.

I just think you have terrible taste GodBen.

Fair enough.


The Aenar (*½)

Working off the principle that every good mystery need an albino, the writers of Enterprise came up with the concept of the Aenar, a tiny civilisation of albino Andorians who are telepathic, blind, and fill their buildings with light-bulbs because... maybe they're wasting electricity to enact global warming due to how cold Andoria is. Yes, this wasn't thought through very well, it's lucky that nobody green-lit the script and put it on air for millions of bitchy science fiction fans to lampoon, because that could have been embarrassing.

The Aenar takes almost everything which is good about Babel One and United and gets rid of it in favour of albino Andorians. The alliance stuff is gone, the Tellarites are gone and we don't get any cool shots of the combined fleets. Instead we have Archer and Shran going into some caves to meet the Aenar, not much happens, they leave with a teenage girl (which is worrying), Trip and T'Pol build some sort of magic telepathic thing, Shran has a conversation with the Aenar girl which put images of Gary Glitter in my mind, and then there's a boring space battle. The scale of this battle is truly upsetting, after two weeks of building up a fleet of ships I was hoping for something more than just Enterprise taking on two drones, but the budget was sadly wasted on Andorian ice-boars.

By the way, I'd like to point out that the Romulans already have a supply of powerful telepaths, they're called the Remans and they are capable of mind-raping someone through space, so why have the Romulans gone to the trouble of abducting an Aenar? As the creepy old guy might say, nothing about this plot makes any sense at all.

What's good about this episode? Well, it has Shran. And Andoria. It's nice seeing Andoria on screen, though it is a pity that we only see a small group of people we've never heard of before rather than the actual Andorian civilisation. There's a sub-plot involving Trip and his feelings which is okay even though it comes from nowhere, but it suggests that big changes are on the way, so that's welcome.

Disappearing Aliens: 30
Transporter: 25

 

[apenpaap]

I don't think it's fair to count the Aenar as Disappearing aliens. They're a subspecies of Andorians.

 

[Jimmy Bob]

I guess I must be the only who doesn't see what's so great about Babel One and United. I mean the romulans were just so comic-bookishly evil... granted it's a rather common trait in the entire season. Only Klingon Jesus and Mirror Darkly had more nuanced characters. Personally I couldn't care less of Tellarites and by then was so sick of comic-bookish villains that were evil for the sake of evil that I was just like ... bored now.

Romulans really suck in Enterprise. Actually I think romulans have been on a descending scale of suckitude ever since TNG season 3, which was the only time they were interesting.

Actually United was really awesome, I just included it for some weird need for bitching, but the only thing I liked about Babel One was the twist ending.

I actually prefered Aenar in parts to Babel One. I'd rather would have had a trilogy about albino andorians than this mishandled mess we got. The only bad parts about Aenar were the parts that tried to finish this sad excuse for a three-parter (I guess most of it actually then).

Also I think you must have had a very heavy hangover and gone through a very humiliating rejection by the female sex when reviewing the vulcan saga ... the scores just don't make sense considering what high scores a lot of bad Voyager eps got.

 

[Kegg]

I don't think it's fair to count the Aenar as Disappearing aliens. They're a subspecies of Andorians.

I've heard the Aenar were a fanon species also, but I'll admit that is a secondhand account and I don't recall hearing of them prior to ENT.

Eh. While that takes the fanwankery up another notch, honestly, if I was canonizing a species, it'd be the Hydrans from Star Fleet Battles. I wasted altogether too much time as them in their videogame form on Starfleet Command; probably my favourite species to play in that game for reasons I no longer remember. Forget the Romulan War, I want the Hydran/Lyran conflict!

... hey, if ENT got to a sixth season I would not be surprised if that happened.

 

[Gepard]

By the way, I'd like to point out that the Romulans already have a supply of powerful telepaths, they're called the Remans and they are capable of mind-raping someone through space, so why have the Romulans gone to the trouble of abducting an Aenar?

Really? Do we really want the writers on ENT to remind us that NEM ever existed?

Bad juju, my friend. Bad juju.

 

[TheGodBen]

I finally overtook the THUGS thread in views (currently 33,116 to 33,113) in order to take the number 2 spot for active threads in this forum, now all I need to do it overtake the 5 word story and T'Bonz will have to give me that medal I'm owed. So if you guys could refresh your page 20,000 times I'll be golden.

Also I think you must have had a very heavy hangover and gone through a very humiliating rejection by the female sex when reviewing the vulcan saga

The humiliating rejection is what fuelled the week of hangovers. And I've been huffing paint, or so I've claimed in another thread.

Bah, you've just upset that I'm standing by my position on Remember after all these months.


In closing: Go Interstellar Concordium, go!

 

[Jimmy Bob]

I... actually don't remember Remember anymore . I guess it was meh after all.

 

[Praetor]

Why is it that stories with titles pertaining to remembering always get forgotten?