Star Trek: ENT Reviews - From Start to ... well, you know

Yeah but then he died of Yellow Fever.............

Decades ago one of my friends said we'd lost two wars and I asked which ones. He said the War of 1812 and Vietnam. I said we couldn't have lost both. He asked why. I asked why he thinks we lost Vietnam. He said "Because we went over there, and despite winning a bunch battles we just milled around and then left." I said "That's what the British did in the War of 1812, too, so we won at least one of them."

And look at upper Canada now. A genuine place on a map. Such progress in 200 years.

Strange New World

Hey look, it's Ensign Cutler, played by the ever-lovely Kellie Waymire. She'd be one of Enterprise's reoccurring characters until she passed away (and sadly, I don't think the character even got an in-passing mention as a goodbye). Anyway, Enterprise has showed up to a "Minshara Class" (you mean...like...M-Class) planet that appears to be totally devoid of sentient life. Archer's excited to get to stretch his legs, T'Pol advises caution, Archer and Trip treat her like a wet blanket, blah blah blah. Basically, T'Pol is the one character who says, "No, let's not go in the abandoned cabin full of chainsaws and suspicious red stains."

Anyway, T'Pol assembles an away team consisting of herself, Cutler (an entomologist, but writers will forget this later on in the same fucking season and have her essentially be a nurse), a couple greenshirts, Archer, Trip, and Mayweather. And Porthos. Captain Archer is a relatable human being with a dog and a baseball cap, please believe us. The planet looks just like Earth, and Trip immediately makes a joke about Porthos peeing. Pee jokes? In my science fiction?

Anyway, T'Pol asks Cutler and a greenshirt to stay behind to conduct an overnight study of nocturnal marsupials (fucking yawn), and Trip and Mayweather convince Archer to browbeat her into letting them stay as well. They start telling ghost stories, and Mayweather describes a story far more exciting than the entire first season of this fucking show. It's cheesy, but it's certainly a better ghost story than The Haunting of Deck Twelve.

Of course, who are we kidding, if Enterprise did it as an actual episode, it'd be just as bad.

Anyway, the greenshirt bows out due to headache just in time for a storm to send them all to bed in their tents. The storm rapidly gets bad enough to send them all to a cave (and, uh, Trip gets stung by a scorpion thing or something? Fuck, sometimes shit happens on this show for no damn reason.). They discover that they left all their damn food at the campsite, and rather than going the fuck back to sleep like they were doing before, they apparently need a fucking Taco Bell FourthMeal™, so they send Mayweather out. As he gets the food, he thinks he sees someone in the forest. Upon return, nobody believes him except for the greenshirt, who immediately starts yelling about people deeper in the cave system. He runs out into the storm, so the other men-folk chase after him. Trip thinks he sees some creature appearing out of a rock, then they promptly almost wander off of a cliff. Starfleet's finest, ladies and gentlemen.

Back in the cave, Cutler sees T'Pol speaking in Vulcan to an alien, but when she confronts her, T'Pol denies talking to anyone. Trip and Mayweather return to the cave and call up Archer for an emergency pickup, while Cutler tells them about what she saw. Archer flies a shuttlepod down, and he rightly tells Archer to "go to hell" via communicator. It doesn't really matter though, because Archer can't land the damn shuttle in the wind (it's almost like, maybe, there should be more than one damn pilot on Enterprise, and if not, maybe they shouldn't leave him behind on a planet), so they head back up to the ship. The away team heads back to the cave.

Everyone looks like they're having night sweats, and Trip starts yelling about the alien Cutler saw. When T'Pol offers to go with Trip to fetch some water, Cutler yells that it might be a trap. T'Pol snips back that she can go many days without water, which inspires Trip to pull a phase pistol on her. Meanwhile, the greenshirt is screaming over the comm, so Enterprise beams him up.

Except they fuck it up and he shows up full of fucking plants.

So - beaming a running person away from a phase pistol blast and a temporal anomaly in a gas giant atmosphere at high speed? A-OK. But if there are some plants around, fuck it, hand the whole thing over to David Cronenberg.

In the cave, Trip starts accusing T'Pol of a conspiracy, and T'Pol starts yelling at him. Yes, the third episode in, and we already have a Vulcan losing control of their emotions. Eventually, Trip starts shooting at what he perceives are the rock monsters. And on Enterprise, Phlox reveals that not only was he able to remove all of the plants from the guy (because apparently, they only beamed the plants into his skin or some fucked up nonsense like that), but that the crewman was under the influence of, basically, spores. Shame he didn't end up running around the ship topless with a sword.

Anyway, Archer calls down to explain to Trip, who's busy holding the gun on T'Pol. Also, we learn that Starfleet fucks you up on drugs as part of training. He convinces them to go deeper in the cave, but Trip won't rest - he keeps ranting and shooting at the ceiling. Meanwhile, nobody on Enterprise can land a fucking shuttle in the storm, and Phlox realizes that the greenshirt's condition may be worse due to medibabble, which means that the longer that the away team is exposed to the spores, the more likely it is that they'll be dead.

Archer calls up and tells them that they're going to beam down some medicine. Trip's paranoid as fuck, and starts seeing rock people, so Archer makes up a story about how Starfleet had been sent to make contact with the rock people to buy Phlox and Malcolm time to beam down the drugs. They trick Trip into dropping his weapon long enough for T'Pol to stun him into unconsciousness, and she inoculates the away team, neck pinching Mayweather for no goddamn reason other than he's a little bit fussy, before passing out herself.

Next morning, they all wake up and everything's great, including the greenshirt. Oh happy days.

The odd thing about this episode is that, for better or worse, if you swapped out characters, I think it would have been a surprisingly decent TOS episode had it been tidied up a bit. And yeah, that might have been because it cribbed the spores from TOS in the first place, but I could easily picture, say, Spock and McCoy trapped in a cave, rapidly deteriorating mentally, with Kirk trapped on the other end of a communicator trying to keep his friends from killing each other. I don't do half-stars, so I'm going to give it three just for a successful TOS pastiche, but it's not, say, something you'd show off as an example of the finest Trek has to offer.

Rating: ***

Ensign Culter was a character I really hoped would develop into a great character, it's unfortunate the actress died.

I think the issue with the plant guy was with two forms of living organic matter being so close together during transport. That was still giving them trouble in TMP, not to mention the whole Tuvix debacle.

Unexpected

Hey ladies, have we got a treat for you. That sexy hunk from TV's hottest show Quantum Leap, wet in a steamy shower. And there's room for two!

Actually not, because it's not the eighties anymore. Archer is taking a shower, but the gravity plating goes out and thousands of dollars in VFX budget is blown on CG water floating around.

And that's just one of the malfunctions around the ship. T'Pol is interrupted in her best efforts to complain about human food when her request from a drink dispenser for water results in, fuck, motor oil or something. Trip has his hands full with failures all over the ship.

T'Pol actually uses the damn sensors and discovers an odd pattern in their exhaust wake. Archer lights that shit on fire, which reveals a cloaked ship. T'Pol says it's magical "stealth technology" like she's unfamiliar with it, despite Enterprise going on to discover shit-tons of aliens with cloaks. Who knows - maybe the Romulans bought theirs off of a Ferengi garbage scow before Balance of Terror (never mind that Enterprise encounters Romulans with cloaks in Season fucking Two).

Archer hails the ship and generously offers to help them after they reveal that their shit's all busted. Trip is assigned to head over, and after an hours-long recompression sequence, he discovers that the ship's made out of wood and plants and water and shit and filled with goddamn space hippies. He starts working, but the recompression sequence has made him feel shitty. The aliens insist he sleep it off, and Archer gives absolutely no fucks, telling him to do what they say without even thinking about it.

After Trip wakes up, the alien who has been assigned to help him starts feeding him ice cubes and zapping his lips with her fingers. He quickly gets the ship's warp drive up to spec, so while the system gets ready to start, his companion takes him to a room that looks like the cover of a Lisa Frank notebook. With a few taps of a button, the room adjusts to show her world. Yes, they're in a fucking holodeck in the fourth fucking episode. And they work just like TNG era holodecks, replete with replicators and photons. Trip quips that "If we had one of these on Enterprise, I'd never ask for shore leave." No, you'd just get yourself locked into one, inadvertently create a sentient, murderous hologram, disable the safety protocols, and somehow only see in black and white.

Soon, the alien activates a basin of mushed up jello and jams her fingers in. She invites Trip to join her, quipping that "it takes four hands to work". As soon as he does, they establish a psychic connection, and naturally, Trip immediately uses it to learn that she's got the hots for him. They're interrupted by another alien telling them the core is ready to boot, so Trip heads back to Enterprise.

The aliens zip off, and Enterprise gets back on the road. Trip heads down to eat, and Malcolm joins him. The conversation quickly turns to the holodeck, and Malcolm quips "If we had one of those onboard, I could only imagine what it'd be used for."

It's sex. Holosex. And judging by your reactions throughout this damn series, you'd keep at least one jizz-mopper fully employed.

These two bros then talk about how hot the alien was that Trip worked with, before Trip notices a bump on his wrist. He heads off to Sickbay, where Phlox examines him. He immediately asks if Trip fucked anyone while he was there, and informs him that the bump is a nipple, and that Trip done got himself in the family way.

I fucking swear.

Phlox goes on to say that the aliens only reproduce with the DNA of the mother (which makes their apparent genetic diversity somewhat questionable). T'Pol and Archer joins him in Sickbay, and T'Pol has no time for this bullshit, saying, "Three days. You were only there three days and you couldn't restrain yourself." She then goes on to say that she obviously took him back home in the holodeck, and that the next step would have been to have him meet her holographic parents. And incredibly, Jolene Blalock pulls off these lines with remarkable restraint - finally, an inkling of the dry Vulcan wit that we actually like. "One of the first things a diplomat learns is to not stick his fingers where they don't belong." Fucking ice cold.

Anyway, Phlox won't put it in a maturation chamber like it's a fucking Borg drone, so Archer resolves to track down the aliens. Phlox warns him of other possible reactions, so in the next damn scene, Trip starts bitching about how unsafe the elevator in Engineering is. The scene after that, he's paranoid that everyone knows he's pregnant, and immediately starts eating everything in sight. Archer then orders him to start seeing Phlox, and to start working on how much paternity leave he's going to take.

T'Pol rings them to tell them that they've found the aliens, and as everyone rolls up to the bridge, they discover that they're hiding in the wake of a Klingon battle cruiser (looking, admittedly, badass as fuck). It turns out that Trip fucked up the repairs on their ship. Archer hails the Klingons, only to have the Klingons immediately shoot a torpedo or two at them. They finally answer though, and Archer lets the Klingons know about the aliens, and begs the Klingons to give them to them alive.

The Klingons don't give a shit about that, and prepare to just kill the lot of them. T'Pol throws out that Archer was the one who returned the Klingon to Qo'noS, and Trip immediately offers up their damn holodeck technology like he owns that shit. The Klingons agree to go look at the holodeck, but Archer insists that Trip join them. Embarassed, Trip reveals his bonus nipples and baby bump to the Klingons, who bust up laughing.

Anyway, the Klingons let him tag along, and he goes to the alien woman and shows that she knocked him up, and she agrees to transfer the baby to a new father. The Klingons "acquire" the holographic technology, meaning that the Klingon fucking Empire just got transporters, replicators, and forcefields in one fucking transaction. Oh, and Trip now gets to be famous due to being the first male pregnancy in Starfleet's records. I'm sure his mother would be proud.

The sad thing about this episode is that it could have been fucking amazing. It could have dealt with serious shit. Trip gets pregnant - what if he wants to abort the baby? He didn't want it, and who knows what it will do to him - it might burst forth from him Alien-style. What if they returned to the aliens, and she didn't want it? What if Trip wanted to keep the baby - difficult to share weekends when sprinting across the galaxy at Warp 5. Hell, what if her society gave the mother abortion rights, and she wanted to abort, and Trip didn't - diplomatic crisis indeed. Instead, it's all vaguely sexist jokes about pregnancy, tons of exposition to build up the episode (in TOS, they'd have just had Kirk go over there, finger-fuck the jello, and get out in like five minutes), and goddamn fucking holodeck misadventure.

Rating: *

Yeah, this is the episode I pointed out to Trip/T'Pol'ers that Trip actually got raped, but they didn't want to hear it. They thought it was cute that T'Pol almost seemed like she was jealous or something.

Anyway, it was obvious what the reset button was when it was revealed that the fetus was entirely the mother's, even though that doesn't make any more sense than growing nipples on the wrist when you already have nipples, or the fact that the alien females had breasts if it's the males that nurse the young (apparently from their wrists). I had the same feeling as far as how this could have been a much more serious episode, and a good one if handled well, but it seems like this was just an excuse to do their own version of Junior. I doubt they even thought of any of the implications beyond what little was touched on by Trip wondering how this might affect his career plans (gee, really? ). And that's just the move obvious abortion angle. It seems the alien aspect never occurred to B&B either, beyond being a way to explain the reset button and a means to make Trip the butt of the joke.

The Klingon saying "I can see my house from here" completely destroyed the end of that episode for me. Which was sucking already.

At least when the Colonel said it in StarGate SG:1 it made real sense in the dramatic context of the episode.

Man, I'm loving these reviews even more than the ones @Kyle did for VOY because, unlike that series, I actually watched all of ENT. I gave up on VOY about halfway through S2.

Mind you, this episode aired fifteen years ago, when most people couldn't even conceive of the idea of man being raped. Nowadays some shows still play it for lulz, but not nearly as much as when I was growing up.

All of this.

IIRC there was a Law & Order: SVU episode prior to this where three women at a bachelorette party raped a male stripper at knife point. Then two of the women killed the third to keep her from revealing it.

I don't watch as much these days so I'll have to take your word on it. And while some of the people I'm talking about may have changed, I still see the attitude make itself known from time to time, and I have to say that it really disappoints me.

Terra Nova

Starfleet has sent Enterprise to go see what happened to one of the first Earth colonies, Terra Nova. Apparently, no one has bothered to go looking, even though the Boomers are supposedly even further out than where Enterprise is now.

Upon arrival, they find a ghost town and an atmosphere with a touch of radioactivity for good measure. Upon landing a shuttlepod, Archer, T'Pol, Reed, and Mayweather start exploring. Archer explains to T'Pol that the colony is actually built out of the colonists' ship (despite Archer talking about "nine years there, nine years back" earlier in the episode). Reed quickly finds something in the forest to chase after like a puppy, and he's quickly lured to an entrance to a cave that looks suspiciously like the entrance to the cave in Brave New World.

After entering the cave, Reed squeezes himself through a hole, just in time to see an alien armadillo scamper off. Archer joins him, and they soon discover a camp site, filled with armadillo pelts, tools, and rough cookware. Oh, and some kids. Soon, an adult jumps out, and Reed takes him out with a phase pistol - another shows up with a semiautomatic rifle with good ol' fashioned bullets and starts shooting back. Malcolm is shot in the leg, but Archer barely manages to escape. He nobly leaves him behind as he, T'Pol, and Mayweather take off in the shuttlepod. And T'Pol has a revelation - they were attacked by humans, descendants of the colonists.

While Archer is busy being a whiny baby about being unable to make first contact with fucking humans, he recruits Phlox to come down to the planet with him and get captured. The colonists start talking, saying that humans "gutted" them with "poison rain" from their "sky ships," their only escape was the "underside" - the tunnels running through the hills.

Phlox gets Reed patched up enough to walk, and the colonists are willing to let them go. Archer won't leave it the fuck alone, and tries to convince them of their heritage. In the process, Phlox reveals that the elderly mother of the leader of the colonists has lung cancer - Archer convinces the leader to come up to Enterprise with her for a cure. The leader insists that Reed stay behind as insurance, and again, Archer is cool with abandoning him.

While Phlox helps treat her in Sickbay, Archer tries to show them photos of the colonists to help them remember their past, but they insist they aren't related. Meanwhile, T'Pol discovers a crater from an asteroid that released all the radiation into the atmosphere. Oh, and back on the planet, Malcolm asks to use the restroom, and is refused. Thanks, Archer.

Hoshi and Mayweather track down a message in the recording equipment in the colony - the adults spent their last days thinking that they had been attacked by Earth to get control of the colony. Phlox also discovers that the colonists have been drinking water filled with radiation - even their caves are no longer a home they can live in.

The leader insists that it's all lies, but Archer picks out a single picture with a little girl - he's pretty sure it's the leader's mother. And she realizes that it's true. He's unconvinced, though, and insists that they be returned to the colony.

Archer heads off to his ready room with T'Pol and starts ranting about the situation. He doesn't want to force them to leave, but he wants to take them back to Earth. T'Pol points out that it'd effectively wipe their culture clean - he might save them, but he wouldn't save what they had become. Instead, they realize that they could relocate them to the other side of the planet, which was free of radiation.

Archer tries to sell the leader on the idea, but he's hesitant. Upon landing, though, the shuttlepod promptly falls through the ground into the cave systems. The leader takes Archer through the caves, and they discover one of the colonists at the bottom of a well. Together, they rescue him, and the leader realizes that Archer can be trusted after he risks injury to help (also, he makes a phase pistol shoot a solid, consistent beam just like a goddamn phaser to cut up a log).

After getting Reed, the leader's mother insists that he talk with the colonists about relocation to the other side of the planet. And they do. Hooray. Back on the ship, somehow, Mayweather gets invited to dinner with Archer, Trip, and T'Pol, but Reed is left out. The one Archer left twice. Poor bastard. And every damn line out of Anthony Montgomery's mouth sounds like Freshman-level high school theater. I don't want to blame the guy - I think he's got stuck with a shitty character with no real depth beyond "be excited about shit." - but I think a more seasoned actor probably could have moved the performance beyond "aw shucks".

The episode isn't necessarily bad, but it's not really new ground either - variations on every aspect of the plot have popped up in one form or fashion in pretty much every other series of Star Trek. It's formulaic, and there's no drama whatsoever. In fact, it reminds me a hell of a lot of Friendship One on Voyager in many ways. Except there, Voyager managed to somehow have conflict because Carey bit it. The episode's high point is a lecture from T'Pol on the negatives of forcing cultural integration, and the 42 other minutes in this episode aren't a fantastic wrapper for that.

Rating: *

I think Terra Nova was the ep where I simply stopped going out of my way to watch it, and when I did my attention was split.

When it gets like that, I tend to stop watching these days (Bones went that way in season 9), there's plenty of shit I want to see, so why waste time watching something I'm only half-bothered about?

True story:

Another Montgomery was a reoccurring star on "Popular," a show that I followed religiously in its two year run, that ended the season before Enterprise aired (when he was written out of the former show according).

I had no idea he was the same guy until years after ENT ended, because the guy was such a non entity on both shows.

I'm pretty sure even TIIC knew what a dud they had in this guy that the plot of "Shuttlepod One " which originally was to feature Trip and Travis bonding (because HEY A WHITE SOUTHERN BOY AND A BLACK DUDE ARE FRIENDS, HOW SUBTLE U GUYZ) was changed to Reed. A far better choice, which has inspired many a Trip/Reed slash fanfic.

But it begs the question of:why was this actor hired to begin with? This guy makes Season Seven Robert Beltran look like Sir Lawrence Olivier in comparison and I'm fairly sure Montgomery was making more effort than half the Voyager cast.

Now, the next episode was actually one of the show's early hits. The Andorians were one of the few things TIIC managed not to fuck up, being the rare Star Trek alien species that doesn't personify one single human trait.

Come to think ofit, we also get non glory-obsessed Klingons in season two. That's two marks I'd give it over Voyager.

That's so hot.

Now that it is an episode I can fap to.

Well... thanks to @Kyle I can't watch Voyager or Enterprise without thinking "They're fucking around, fucking with, fucking up, fucking etc..." whenever they are doing something, like exploring, repairing, or just anything that they can do on the shows that usually ends up setting the plot.

The Andorian Incident

A Vulcan monastary - candles. Pipes. Robes. Etc. And then the Andorians, replete with moving antennae, burst the fuck in the door. Fuck spores and humans covered in mud, it's time for shit to get real.

On Enterprise, Archer is busy fucking around in the Vulcan star charts when he finds a planet called P'Jem with some boring-ass Vulcan monastery where they prepare for kohlinar. T'Pol tries to persuade him and Trip to just leave it alone, but because they're insufferable assholes, they insist on paying a visit.

She tries to give Archer and Trip a crash course in not being dicks in the monastery - it includes helpful hints like "shut the fuck up" and "if they're busy, we have to leave." Real difficult shit, so naturally, Trip comments that he "thought Starfleet training was tough."

They arrive on P'Jem, and a cleric informs them that they're currently undergoing kohlinar. T'Pol's a little suspicious though, because she was expecting more clerics and there's a statue that's been knocked over. Archer takes this as his cue to start harassing the cleric, and they spot someone hiding behind a wall. And apparently Archer is feeling especially like Kirk today, because he and Trip dive through the wall and tackle the guy.

Of course, they're instantly surrounded by Andorians because they're not Kirk, and tossed in another room with the rest of the Vulcan clerics, who are being held prisoner. The leader, an Andorian named Shran, doesn't believe Archer and company actually showed up for a visit - because let's be honest, this would be a boring-ass field trip - and demands to know what they're up to, deciding they're in league with the Vulcans.

Shran believes that the Vulcans - next door neighbors to the Andorians - are hiding an intelligence outpost at the sanctuary. His second in command believes that it's appropriate to sound as much like a rapist as possible when speaking to T'Pol. Delightful group of folk. And while the Andorians have previously shown up, now it looks like they're going to stick around, seeing Enterprise's presence as an escalation.

Back on Enterprise, Malcolm has the genius idea of scanning the planet they're fucking visiting, and quickly discovers the Andorian ship. But since Malcolm's first instinct is to blow up anything he hasn't seen before, Hoshi and Mayweather try to persuade him that nothing's the matter.

Archer, in the meantime, is busy being interrogated via stage punches. Enterprise calls down, and Shran answers, telling them to fuck off before destroying their communicators. Malcolm immediately starts planning a rescue mission. And while Archer gets the shit kicked out of him, T'Pol is gossiping with a cleric about how bad everything smells on the ship, because let's keep beating that drum.

Once Archer is brought back to the rest of the hostages, they start brainstorming options, since Reed will inevitably come down rifles-blazing and get everyone killed. One of the Vulcans notes that they have a transmitter in the secret catacombs beneath the monastery. They also note that the catacombs are filled with relics and dead bodies. They do not note that the catacombs look like the same fucking caves as in Brave New World and Terra Nova.

Anyway, Trip sneaks it up and works on repairing it. T'Pol and Archer are forced to share a blanket and spoon, which T'Pol doesn't want to do because of the fucking smell. God fucking dammit, do they think they're being fucking cute with this shit? Anyway, Archer pisses her off enough to steal the blanket from him.

Trip gets the radio working, and warns Malcolm to not fucking mount a rescue op, then joins Archer, T'Pol, and the Vulcans in planning an escape. While the Andorians get increasingly frustrated at not finding the spy equipment they're looking for. So when Archer gets their attention and just BSes, they're pretty unhappy. Of course, that's just a ruse to let Archer toss a token down a hole in some ugly wall art to confirm that it's actually another passage fro the catacombs that they can use to mount their escape.

Reed and a couple of redshirts beam down to the room with the hostages, then run off to the catacombs. While the creepy Andorian continues to hit on T'Pol, the security staff blow their way through the wall art and get in a firefight with the Andorians. With the new hole in the wall, the fight heads into the catacombs, destroying plenty of relics that are ostensibly important, but apparently not to be viewed by anyone.

One errant disruptor blast from a Vulcan cleric who elected to help the Enterprise crew reveals a very new looking, vault-like door deep in the catacombs. And once Archer opens it, he's shocked to find what it contains.

Exactly what Shran and the Andorians were after - an extensive complex devoted to spying on Andoria (and, incidentally, it looks a lot more like TOS than anything aboard Enterprise). Archer has T'Pol take pictures of everything, and hands over her scanner to Shran, letting him go now that he had proof of what he came for. Archer and company leave P'Jem, deeply disappointed in the Vulcans.

After the slate of terrible episodes starting out the season, this is the first that actually feels like it's really connected with the idea of being a prequel - it brings back the Andorians, it fleshes out Vulcans, it's our first hint of the Federation, given that all species in attendance were founding members. It also confirms what, deep down, everyone knows - the claim that Vulcans don't lie is a lie. I think there were a few parts that probably could have been streamlined a bit, but overall, it was refreshing.

Rating: ****

This was the point where I started liking the show for myself and not just to have convoy fodder for my crush

Too bad the rest of the show couldn't be as good.

I'd also consider adding a counter for the number of times Archer gets his ass beat. It's kinda a running thing,and it's never not satisfying to watch.

And maybe a Team Archer vs Team Tucker counter for "romantic" scene involving either of them with T'Pol, just for lulz

If the aliens from Unexpected are the original source of modern holodeck technology, that at least explains the "separate power grid" that allowed them to run endlessly on Voyager, not to mention their tendency to malfunction and almost kill everyone now and again.

Breaking the Ice

Trip's showing off drawings his nephew's class made of Enterprise. Curiously, despite being ages away from Earth, the copies he has appear to be crayon-on-paper, not printouts. So, either he's been holding onto these things since he left, or...he's had a lot of arts and crafts time. Archer has the ship drop out of warp, as they've discovered a heretofore undiscovered comet. So naturally, it's "Archer's Comet." Not "Ensign McRandom Assigned To The Scanner's Comet." Archer's ego is as big as the damn thing. It appears to be no different than any other comet, so naturally, Archer decides to follow it around like Porthos after cheese.

Later that evening, T'Pol receives an email that she appears upset about, then goes off to get tea from the mess hall. Trip is there, shoving pecan pie in his face, because he is an awful fucking stereotype. It's frankly fucking amazing that they don't put him in a white suit and bolo tie and have him talking about how his warp engine is finger-lickin' good. Much to the delight and arousal of shippers, Trip picks up that something's off, but T'Pol insists everything is fine.

The next day, on closer inspection, T'Pol discovers that, I shit you not, the comet is filled with iceillium. And maybe that's not how it's fucking spelled, but that's how it fucking sounds. That's like making a sword of swordium, or a car out of automobilium. This shit is rare and can't be beamed, so they decide to land a shuttlepod and the goddamn drills they brought along just in case and get some.

Just then, the Vulcans show up - they've got a ring-shaped vessel that was an intentional homage to the pre-TOS Enterprise design depicted in ST:TMP. It might as well be a giant fucking middle finger. Anyway, they appear to be present solely to supervise - apparently, building on a pattern. Archer makes a bizarre comment about how the Vulcan captain "is the kind of guy who likes to watch," as if they're going to fuck the comet, then commences with the mission.

Malcolm and Mayweather land the shuttlepod on the surface of the comet, and climb on out. Despite the comet being about 80 kilometers wide, it has Earth-normal gravity. Iceillium must be fucking dense, like the writers of this fucking show.

Back on Enterprise, Trip finds an encrypted transmission, and enlists Hoshi's help in tracking it down. She discovers its come from the Vulcan ship. Archer tells Trip to have her decrypt it. Yes, not only can she speak Vulcan, she can break Vulcan encryption. Like, if anyone's going to have badass, unbreakable encryption, wouldn't it be the Vulcans? Fuck, we have effectively unbreakable encryption since the year Enterprise first aired.

Anyway, since everyone on the ship has nothing to fucking do while Malcolm and Mayweather fuck around on the comet, Archer starts recording a message for an elementary school class back on Earth. This could have been cute, but it goes on for fucking ever. Archer talks about how they have a greenhouse onboard for fruits and vegetables (which should take up a fuckton of space, especially for fruit, but apparently it goes right next to wherever they store the goddamn drills when they're not being used, like 99.9999999% of the time), and specifically says "replicate" when referring to the protein resequencers, because being lazy seems to be the order du jour for the writers in this episode. Another kid asks if folks can date. So naturally Archer immediately makes it about sex and stumbles over how people share bunks. Finally, one kid asks what everyone has always wanted to know about Star Trek - what happens when you flush the toilet. Archer forces Trip to answer the question, apparently just to be a dick, and apparently Trip is so unprofessional that he can't answer the question without a bunch of hemming and hawing. "A poop question, sir?" I'm so glad that the word "poop" is in the Star Trek lexicon. He then goes on to say that they use a molecular resequencer to make their piss and shit into cargo containers and boots. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how Voyager was able to replicate the shuttles - the crew was full of shit. Phlox jumps in on a question about germs living in space. And he talks. And talks. And talks. Mercifully, Archer cuts him off, and closes out the call. This scene that does nothing to advance the plot takes over six minutes. A.K.A. a full seventh of the entire episode.

And speaking of worthless, Malcolm and Mayweather are building a snowman on the comet. Archer calls them out on that shit since the Vulcans are probably using footage from the mission in "HUMAN FOLLIES VOLUME SEVEN: HOMO SAPIENS GONE WILD." Meanwhile, Hoshi has finished the decryption, and makes Trip translate it himself. He's pretty unhappy about having read it, as it's a personal letter. He goes out to tell her, and she bites his head off, asking if he'd like to read the rest of her correspondence as well. The exchange is cut off by Archer demanding she help him wine and dine the Vulcan captain. She then goes off to sickbay and gets some space Advil for a headache.

Despite having been ordered to knock off the snowman shit, they've added Vulcan ears. Malcolm has also set up his explosives, including one right on the snowman, so the Vulcans are literally watching them blow up a snowman rendition of them. Are these people fucking five?

Back on Enterprise, Archer, Trip, and T'Pol are hosting a dinner with the Vulcan captain, who is an asshole like all other Vulcans on this fucking show. And naturally it riles Archer up enough to make a fool of himself and accuse them of spying. And that's obviously not accurate, because were they spying, they'd do so from the basement of a monastery.

Anyway, Hoshi, who was inexplicably manning the science station, discovers that Reed's explosives fucked up the comet's rotation, and they're at risk of being exposed to the sunny side. And on Enterprise, T'Pol invites Trip to her quarters to talk. He tries to pass her off on women because apparently this is GIRL TALK time. It turns out that T'Pol is expected to leave Enterprise to fulfill her arranged marriage. Trip immediately compares it to slavery (a winning comparison from the Southern stereotype). He tells her to just do what she wants to do, and reminds her that she's free to make her own own decisions. However, she just keeps going on about culture and tradition, which, and his is a fault of all of Star Trek, seem like odd things for a culture devoted to logic to latch onto. If their tradition was to cut off the tips of their ears, despite it serving no logical function, would they do it?

Back on the comet, Mayweather is busy falling back into the hole they made. So they grab the sample and run off to the shuttle before sunrise. They're not fast enough, though, and the ice starts cracking beneath their feet. Just after getting back in the shuttlepod, the ice finally breaks (HURR THE TITLE OF THE EPISODE), and the shuttlepod falls into a pit that they can't fly out of. Archer manually flies the ship down towards the comet's surface with a goddamn joystick (because it's always good to remind the audience of one of the most cringeworthy scenes of Insurrection), and they fire the grapplers to try to pull the shuttle up. Apparently, they're shit at crane games though, and the iceillium somehow prevents the magnets from working.

T'Pol tries to convince Archer to take the Vulcans up on an offer for help, since they have a tractor beam. She convinces Archer that he's actually rebelling against the Vulcans by accepting their help, as it's something they don't expect of him. He calls them up and the shuttlepod is easily tractored out of the comet. T'Pol sends a message to the Vulcan ship - the wedding is indefinitely postponed. And then she takes some pecan pie to her quarters, so let the shipping begin.

The three following things happened in this episode: T'Pol puts her arranged marriage on hold, the crew got a core sample of an incredibly stupidly named element, and we learned where shit goes on a starship. Somehow, this took 44 goddamn minutes. And the worst thing is, with all the VFX in this episode, it couldn't have been cheap. Every ounce of time, money, and effort that went into this episode could have better gone to something, almost anything, else.

Rating: *

Not gonna lie - the 'shipper in me totally did dig this episode, even if it is pretty lame.

One star? I think I was more generous than you were.

But, your review sorta highlighted a very missed opportunity to do an allegory of women's place at home versus the workplace. I have a feeling there will be a lot of that coming up.

So far, this series sounds even worse than Voyager. Or Kyle is being extremely sarcastic?

Kind of feel like I dodged a bullet by not watching.

You ain't seen nuthin' yet!

He hasn't even gotten to season two!

I summarized the Trip/T'Pol scene where they actually talk about her arranged marriage pretty hard, but there was a bit of it there.

I think it would have been far more interesting for the Vulcan ship to have arrived specifically to spirit her away, using the comet observation as a ruse, and have her confront the Vulcan captain about the logic of tradition and personal choice before refusing to go, after getting advice from Trip.

With that alone, we could have cut the excruciating letter to the school kids.

I think that would've sucked too. Are we to believe that no Vulcan has ever pointed out the logic of personal choice and that observing tradition for the sake of tradition is illogical?

T'Pol: "I assert argument #237, first made over 7 centuries ago and repeated 183,478,299,304,302 times since then."
Vulcan Captain: "I respond with argument #245B, first made over 7 centuries ago and repeated 162,526,508,625 times since then."