So Enterprise
and crew are in desperate search of the people that plan to
destroy Earth. They're zooming around, blindly, in a giant
expanse known for its hostile aliens and bizarre anomalies.
What they don't know is that most of these anomalies were
spawned from The Matrix.
Right
off the bat, some crazy morphing energy field rips through
different decks of the ship, up ending crew members and making
the warp core go nuts. It ripples through the captain's ready
room and flips his coffee mug into the air, spilling its contents
in super slow motion. The only thing missing from the scene
was Captain Archer bending over backwards to dodge the Colombian
roast.
This area
of the expanse, plagued by so many anomalies, seems to breed
piracy. After the Enterprise finds one ship stripped down
and scuttled in space, they themselves are attacked by an
alien ship that looks like Voyager before a much needed car
wash. In a very cool fighting scene, complete with 1970's
cop show percussion, the space pirates clean out the humans
in a matter of minutes. They took the plasma coils, the cargo
boxes, the data ribbons and weapons tags. The took the woozamawatizits,
the garacoochoosits, the vealatroniages and the realatilloginigz.
They even took the Roast Beast! They stuffed it all up the
chimney and were gone in a flash!
But unlike
the Grinch, they left behind one pirate. His face has been
distorted by the anomalies (in truth by some very well done
make up) and he explains the cutthroat nature of the expanse.
Resisting Captain Archer's threats he refuses to reveal his
former ship's location.
Fortunately,
the crew tracks down an ion trail which leads to a gigantic
ancient cloaked sphere (or GACS). They load up a heavily armed
shuttle pod, filled with leading characters, and explore the
few pockets of the sphere with breathable atmospheres.
IT'S
NITPICKING TIME!
1. Why
would you board an unknown, possibly hostile, cargo bay without
wearing space suits? If the room had any defense at all the
logical thing to do would be to depressurize the bay, and
kill anything inside. Oh, it's more important to see the actor's
faces.
2. Speaking
of faces and space suits… When the crew do bother to
put on the space suits there is this blue glow shining them
in the face. Why? Wouldn't that light get in their eyes? Oh,
it's more important to the see the actor's faces.
3. Then
that probably explains this question. But we'll ask it anyway.
Why would the shuttle pod pilot, Travis, be on the away mission?
Wouldn't you want him to keep the engine running in case they
need a quick get away? Oh, it's more important to give him
more than one line an episode.
4. Speaking
of actor's lines… What's the deal with T'Pol?!?
Every line she mouths sounds like she's whimpering before
Archer. The captain's mood has become more rigid since he's
been on a mission to search and destroy (his character change
is probably too much too fast), but T'Pol is acting almost
unVulcan.
Yin
and Yang. Sure, on a Star Trek show there will always be things
to point out that are wrong or weird. But for the first time
in a long time, there may be MORE right things. The writing
on this show just seems to get better and better. With little
or no dialog the writers are trusting the images to move the
story along. And when the characters do speak it's in natural
dialog revealing volumes about their unique personalities.
The editing,
an art is that is almost ALWAYS overlooked, is so expertly
done that it's no wonder the stories move along so fluidly.
And when the editors aren't cutting and pasting it's so easy
to miss the excellent camera work and performances as entire
scenes are done in one take.
If you're
not watching this show then you don't know what TV is supposed
to be like.
In the
end, the crew of the Enterprise recovers their lost items
and is able to do a little pirating of their own. Instead
of lifting cargo or weapons they are guilty of the kind of
theft that every Silicon Valley guy still with a job worries
about: information piracy.
Flying
just close enough to the battered Voyager, Hoshi is able to
log onto their servers and download all the info they have
on the evil Xindi. Just before the alien FTP boots them off,
Enterprise fires and their whole drive crashes (as well as
the ship).
With new
information on the Xindi, and a message from the lone pirate
that "mercy will get you nowhere," Archer starts
to soak in more about his enemy as we fade to black. Undoubtedly,
Archer will become more and more ruthless as his newly fired
need for vengeance burns inside his quickly chilling heart…
oh, so dramatic.
Next week
the hunt for the Xindi continue on a planet that hosts a plot
every Star Trek show must have at least once. A magical
parasite will devolve an away team. Some shows have Christmas
specials - Star Treks have devolving. Are we not men?
On my
new species ratings scale this week's episode scores a …
Human
- more specifically the crew of the Equinox on Star Trek:
Voyager. They too were trapped and forced to mutilate their
morality to survive - just like these pirates… and maybe
ENTERPRISE… dum dum dum dum!!!!
Yin
and Yang. Sure, on a Star Trek show there will always be things
to point out that are wrong or weird. But for the first time
in a long time, there may be MORE right things. The writing
on this show just seems to get better and better. With little
or no dialog the writers are trusting the images to move the
story along. And when the characters do speak it's in natural
dialog revealing volumes about their unique personalities.
