Enterprise 09-10-03 (Season Premiere!)

[Aeolius]

My prediction for this season:

The introduction of an aquatic race is simply a plot device to get Jolene Blalock in a wet t-shirt.

 

[Mark]

Overall? Liked it. Good start to the new season and the rest of the series. I have hope it will continue to shake up the status quo of ST in general and excel. IMO ENT is like a prize fighter who was counted out soon after the match was announced. Half of the detractors want it to be like the old shows (often varying which one) and the other half of the detractors want it to be totally new while respecting the old shows and canon (a difficult dicotomy to foist on a creative team, but one I think they knew they were going to have to tackle). I think they've done both remarkably well and am often surprised by the reactions as they oscillate from camp to camp depending on which group of detractors they've attempted to please more readily from episode to episode.

BTW, I get the feeling that the supposedly gratuitous scene is meant to be a metaphor. Let's face it, it isn't Archer to whom she is closest, it is Trip. Of all the humans she has been known (by us) to know over the course of her rather long stay away from her home planet, she is closest to him. He even talked her out of her traditions and engagement to be married, IIRC. Sometimes when you see someone hurting deeply over something personal to them, like the loss of his sister, and you know that the subject is not safe to discuss openly, the best thing to do is just be as close to that person as you can. Given that the censors would have had a field day if she had just shagged him, I think they did the next best thing that they could do to show how that situation might have played out. In the larger picture of the things they wish to accomplish with this series, it also shows us the beginnings of how vulcans and humans might one day become more intertwined genetically, thus laying the groundwork for the canon many of us want respected. For myself, I am glad they are willing to explore the personal relationships between the crew members and fully understand that to treat them in a realisitic way they must address the sexual nature of beings in close-quarters for long periods of time. I think it is far better to have these brief vignettes within episodes, perhaps setting up future episodes that revolve around these types of relationships, than to have them drop them on us whole cloth later in the series with no forewarning.

More thoughts later...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Wish I could have seen it to make a call on it. Arrrrrrr, not carried in my area.

 

[Wolf72]

oooh I loved the first starfleet command, sadly I don't think my 'puter is up to the later versions (oh right ... no money and no time don't help either).

anyway, I'm not quite sure that the debris field was the Xindi homeworld ... I think it may have been the base of operations for the construction of the Probe. Or might have been the first victim, maybe a Xindi world that was anti-Probe.

T'pol: I'm cheap and easy sometimes ... and I like short hair

 

[KenM]

I only watched the season premire last season, and last nights. From what I saw, when they did the recap at the start, Archer or someone was talking to that same shilloette from season 2 premire, that had some time travel involved with it. So, in last nights show, they get to the planet, find it blown away, and best guess it happened 120 years ago. But the xindi(SP?) said we would destroy they're planet in another 400 years. Why did'nt anyone think that time travel was involved? Or did the entire crew just forget about the time travel stuff all of a sudden?

 

[Atridis]

just to throw in my 2 cents:

I think they made the theme song worse (I actually didn't hate the old one, but I guess I'm in the minority). a lot of tv shows seem unfocused their first season, so I was never too worried. I like the Xindi so far, especially the non-humanoid races (finally!), and I thought the mine foreman/slaver villain was great. I'm undecided about the commandos. overall, I was pleased, BUT...

I'm offended/annoyed that their idea about how to make a woman more interesting is apparently to make her more sexual. yes, T'Pol is a babe. we know it, she knows it, everybody knows it, time to move on. and while I love the idea of T'Pol and Tripp developing a friendship (a real Id-SuperEgo pair, if ever there was one), I don't believe for a second that she would be that naive about human men. nor do I think she would be so devious as to do that intentionally. c'mon people, raise the bar a little (I direct that at the writers, not at the viewers - I applaud the effort Ms. Blalock puts in at the gym as much as any other guy). if I were writing it, I would steer their relationship towards that of siblings, rather than romance (i.e. T'Pol becomes Tripp's surrogate older sister, in the wake of his loss). his reaction when he thought she was hitting on him suggests the writers could be thinking along these lines.

okay, maybe that was more than 2 cents

 

[Mouseferatu]

I really really really want to like ENTERPRISE. But the writing just puts me off again and again.

I decided to start fresh this season and give it another go. Then, like three minutes in to the episode, when they're in the new control room, Archer says something along the lines of, "What did this space used to be used for?" I lost it. Are you teling me that the captain of this spaceship, Earth's great hope, doesn't know his own ship inside & out? It's like me going away for the weekend, my wife having WHILE YOU WERE OUT come in and redo the basement into a rec room, and me coming home and saying, "Gee, honey, this is great! What did this room use to be?"

Yes, yes, I know that they're trying to cover exposition with that line. But why not make Archer seem less like an idiot by saying something along the lines of, "Where did (gadgetXYZ) go, that used to be in this storage compartment?"

Sigh. So I went downstairs and tried to install Startfleet Command III on my computer - which didn't work either. Maybe someone's trying to tell me something.

If you'd continued watching the scene, you'd have discovered that Archer was speaking rhetorically, to make a point. He knew full well what the space was for; he was leading Malcolm down a train of logic regarding their future behavior.

Surely you've done that, and have known people who do? Ask rhetorical questions as the beginning of an argument or making a point?

 

[Umbran]

Of course, the Xindi homeworld to be destroyed in 400 years may simply be the world to which they moved after their first homeworld was destroyed.

Or, perhaps it's more like this - Four hundred years from now, someone goes back 525 years, and destroys the Xindi homeworld. If right now they stop the Earthmen, that person will not exist, and 125 years ago the planet will not have been destroyed.

English does not have the proper verb tenses for this nonsense.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

My first thought as well when they reached the right coordinates but no Alderon was Time displacement as well. Both with the Temporal Cold War and with the Expanse where physics isn't supposed to work right anyways this was my first thought. What was the Xindi's reason for lying? If he is lying why these coordinates? Why do the scans match the alloys of the probe if he is lying? Wouldn't the scans indicate that this was at least a Xindi base? Are there any other systems nearby to investigate these questions? Instead we get that this is not the planet we are looking for, move along. Just how stupid is this crew? I still mostly liked the episode but it is things like this that make me want to pound my head into a wall.

Plus just why would ship security be better trained than the Marines that were selected specificaly for this mission? If ship security personel are such great special forces why are the marines on board at all? I suppose that the Marines might not be so good at millitary things since they do seem to be relegated to painting the ship.

 

[Umbran]

Wouldn't the scans indicate that this was at least a Xindi base? Are there any other systems nearby to investigate these questions? Instead we get that this is not the planet we are looking for, move along. Just how stupid is this crew?

Scans revealed that there were materials in the debris similar to those in the Xindi probe. They didn't see signs of a base otherwise. Whether or not they would have depends on if there was a base there, and how good Xindi are at concealing compared to the Enterprise's sensors.

Are there any systems nearby? Well, if there are, the Enterprise would have to "move along" to get to them. If there aren't any nearby, or if they aren't sure what is nearby, they'd have to "move along". How then is it stupidity on the crew's part to go about doing the thing they'd have to do to answer your question?