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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Crichton" data-source="post: 1129405" data-attributes="member: 4779">AliensJust the one this week.  Twisted face, twisted race, twisted by The Expanse.  This ep felt like it was channelling just a little, tiny bit of Farscape.  Praise God.The Crew & StoryWe meet a few more of the marines, but learn nothing about them except that most of them haven't worked in anti-grav before.Pissed off Archer equals entertaining and driven Archer.  Building on last week's recklessness Archer rolls the dice and gets a big, fat circular one.  One giant sphere that is.  Sure, I thought "Death Star" the first time I saw it and then immediately thought of the TNG and the Dyson's Sphere but that quickly went away when they showed the general purpose of the thing, which is still somewhat of a mystery.I like the feel of slow desperation starting to slip in to characters like Trip shown by his lack of sleep.  I think the focus on Archer and Trip is a smart move especially for action-driven episodes like this.  Allows the pace to flow along and not get caught up in exposition that takes away from the story.I had a few issues with the relatively clean way they recovered their items and retreived the Xindi database but I enjoyed watching it so that is a wash.  What I am interested in is how far Archer is truly willing to go to get what he wants.  The writers are hopefully building towards that and will address it as the season progresses.  It will be interesting to see how the rest of the crew, especially T'pol, reacts to his continued gambles.  I know this show won't put its characters through the wringer like Farscape (there I go again, sorry) but it would be nice to see some damaging things happen to Archers as a result of all this.OverallThe direction, especially at the beginning with the odd camera angles was a welcome change from the usually straight-forward  and starch storytelling visuals.  The special effects weren't mind-blowing but they got the job done in showing the danger to the ship and crew later explained by the captured alien.  The final battle was fun and I especially liked how they didn't just blow the other ship away but crippled it instead.  Shows us that Archer is trying to play by his own rules and not become something he doesn't want to be.  And finally, this ep was a slight improvement over the premiere which is encouraging for the rest of the season as Trek seasons usually start off slow and progressively get better with small bumps along the way.  This is a solid start.Final Grade: 3 out of 4 stars - Solid direction, good action and a quick pace make for one entertaining hour of TV.  The Xindi continue to be far more interesting than "Future Fuzzy Man."4 = Classic. Blew me away from start to finish.3 = Very good. Entertaining and a worthwhile experience.2 = Average. Watchable but flawed.1 = Terrible. Unwatchable dreck.0 = I wish I had that time back. So bad that I may never watch the show again.</blockquote>

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