N64, Top Gear Rally (1997) game
This would have been the first 3D 'realistic' racing game I played on the N64, and in some ways, I ever played. I'd grown up with 'Lotus Turbo Challenge 2' and 'Lotus III' on the Amiga, and even 'Hard Drivin' on the humble Game Boy, which, incredibly was a 3D, first-person racer from the early '90s, but this was my first racing game that was in proper 3D, with solid backgrounds (sometimes too solid when it came to crunching into jungle creepers on the side of the road that were made of reinforced concrete despite their two-dimensional appearance!), and undulating terrain, and banks you could launch up and fly through the air thanks to the 'realistic' physics. It was one of a number of games I got with my secondhand N64 and I still remember the pure joy of riding around and not even racing, just bumping up those banks and swerving about, experiencing the Moon-like lack of gravity that exaggerated real world car physics. I genuinely did spend time purely haring about without even trying to race because it was just such fun and so different from the rigid, glued to the track style of the 'Lotus' games, and the graphics were gorgeous. Even now, though they are basic, I can see the detail that so impressed me at the time (and it helps that this is one of the few games with high enough native resolution that it doesn't need a VGA adaptor to work on my monitor). I might even say it looked better in terms of solidity and reality than its sequel, because, I suppose, it was the almost photographic textures that made it work so well from a visual standpoint.
Even the music wasn't bad, so if you've got graphics, sound and physics down pat what else could you want? Well, to some degree it was too easy, but only on certain tracks. The opposing cars gave some semblance of AI variety in that they could overtake each other, didn't just all rattle along on the same racing line, but they were really just trackside obstacles that were actually on the track rather than genuine racing opponents. To counteract this you're placed right at the back of every race, no matter how well you finished previous races, but it's not a problem because there's an exhilaration in passing each car, and I was soon pacing myself to try and get up to 14th position by the end of the first lap, 7th by the second, and obviously take first place before the race ended with the third lap. The quality of the racing enjoyment comes with the fact that there are wildly differing difficulty levels with each track. So the Beach track is by far the easiest: you could allow the walls and barriers to guide you and just slam accelerate for practically the whole race, and once you'd mastered the shortcuts (outside the tunnel right at the start; across the sand through the break in the barriers; and across the field with the lighthouse through a break in the wall), it was even easier to come first every time, no matter the weather. And there were various weather conditions, from rain, to fog, to snow, to clear sunshine or night, and these did have an effect on the road surface or visibility.
This is where the game eked out its longevity from a very small number of tracks. I don't know if it was tough to design and build tracks at this time in the gaming medium's life, but a lot of racing games had so few tracks. Weather effects and mirroring the same tracks, gave a bit more variety to the passing seasons. The format was between two and four tracks for each Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter Season with a points requirement to meet if you were to progress to the next section. This is where tactics came in as you didn't have to win every race, but you had to do well enough in the easier courses to make the tougher ones less important to progress. So Beach was easiest, then I'd say Desert, though it required intense concentration, and the slightest nudge by certain areas of the track could send you spinning all over the place and always facing the wrong way. Jungle was the next one up as, though it had wide tracks where it was easy to avoid other cars, it also took a lot of sliding round corners, which, if you miscalculated, would set back your time. It also had some good little shortcuts (the tunnel off to the side at a right angle to the track just along from the start; the launch ramp across the greenery of the trackside on one corner; and driving right across the frozen swampy area, though only in wintry conditions as the water would slow you down any other time), and was ideal for playing around if you just wanted to experience the physics.
The last and toughest track was a real toughie and I don't think I ever came first in that: Mountain. This was the complete opposite of both Beach and Jungle with tight roads and a need to try and keep away from the steep edges of the track in a lot of areas, otherwise you'd find your car tipping and sometimes even landing on its bonnet or boot and getting permanently stuck! Like Desert before it, it was full of trackside protrusions, and though it did feature shortcuts (driving down the muddy gully rather than the road), they didn't make a lot of difference. I found myself learning where to hug the barriers and where to stay on the road, but even then it was difficult to place, whatever the conditions. Adding to the mix were a variety of cars with different properties, such as front-, mid- or rear-engine placements, top speeds and acceleration. There were the options to choose from three different types of tyre, three different types of suspension, and the usual automatic or manual gears (I always go for automatic, can't be bothered with gears!). I never really found tyres and suspension to be that important, though in more extreme weather or track quality it did have some effect and tinkering around to find the best combination added a layer of depth.
What I really found most impressive about the racing experience itself, though, was how the roads ebbed and flowed just like the water in 'Wave Race' or the snow in '1080° Snowboarding' - you felt yourself being pushed and pulled this way and that, so that braking and handling were about wrestling your car's controls, not just hitting the accelerator and moving left or right. I'm not sure I've ever played another car racing game like that, and I don't know whether it's right to call it realistic, but it was certainly compelling and the kind of thing you'd expect to be doing in rallying as opposed to more street or road based car racing like 'Burnout' or 'Need For Speed' on 'Cube. Battling the drag and slide of the road, as well as your own car, avoiding the other cars and the sides of the track, it all added up to a ferociously gripping race experience. I like my games hard but fair for the skilled player, and this certainly fitted that bill. If I was going to criticise, and the reason I can only give it three stars, is because, for all its positives, it is still basic in terms of number of tracks and comprehensiveness. There were parts of the package I never even bothered with: the garage where you can paint your car and save to a memory card was never on my agenda because memory card space is just too valuable to waste on frivolity, so it's a shame such a thing couldn't have been saved to the cartridge, but these were the times of companies still getting to grips with the machine and its limitations.
Then there's the fact that you can only play two-player - back in the day 'TGR2' was used much more than this for multiplayer, and that wasn't the best game of its kind, but it did allow four players. That sequel was also far more comprehensive (though, unfortunately all needing to be saved to memory card), and a much longer single player, too, so I'll always favour it as one of, if not the, best serious racer on N64. 'TGR' was better in some ways and I do wish they'd kept the physics and 'road flow' as I would call the push and pull of the surface, intact for the sequel, and just used the original game engine to expand upon rather than seeming to redesign it all. I think the graphics were somehow beefier on this original. I also have to thank 'TGR' for helping me win my copy of 'Perfect Dark': I sent in a Top 5 to N64 Magazine, my subject matter being top 5 windmills in games. I believe 'TGR2' also helped with that! (I think it was 'TGR,' 'TGR2,' 'Ocarina of Time,' 'Diddy Kong Racing,' and 'Snowboard Kids'). So I'll always feel nostalgically attracted to this game, but where I've gone back to 'TGR2' over the years, this was the first time I had played 'TGR' since moving on from it to other games. Partly it's the lack of save files, so you can't compare previous attempts to a new file, but also without the motivation of going through the whole Championship there isn't anything to bring you back when you want a blast. There is the option for Time Trials (never something I was interested in on any game), practice on any of the tracks, and of course the two-player, but none of these are reasons to return.
One of the biggest disappointments of the game, and this was so even back at the time I first completed it, was that the special track you unlock can't be played in any other way than in two-player. You can't practice, time trial or race other cars in the single player on it, and I can see that's probably because it was a big track, too big for just two cars perhaps, and I'd much rather they'd included a less dramatic addition (it looks like something out of 'Star Wars Racer'!), and expanded the Championship a little more, than have this very specific bonus that isn't much of a bonus unless you have two dedicated players. Even then, because multiplayer is the only way to race it, no one really knew what they were doing on it, and so it was a bit of a waste. I like that there were bonus items to unlock, like this track and the novelty vehicles, but there isn't really anything to keep you coming back as a good racer should. Still, it was a lovely experience to revisit what is a good game, a formative experience for my journey into three-dimensional gaming. It took only a few sessions to beat because I'd already made headway over Christmas as my go-to game when not on 'Majora's Mask,' and it had taken me so long to get back to it because my gaming time had dropped off. But I was glad to come back and finish it. Simple on the outside, deeper on the inside, and a challenge, which is just what I like.
***
Tuesday, 3 November 2020
Unexpected (2)
DVD, Enterprise S1 (Unexpected) (2)
Life lesson-learning is the best thing you can say came out of this one. If there was an episode to demonstrate how high Archer scored on the weak-o-meter, it's this. I remembered it as being a knockabout comedy, and in comparison to the first two episodes after the pilot, it is, but it's not as funny as expected, and doesn't really get going until the Klingons show up, a complete surprise to me: maybe that was really where the title came from. The idea of Trip being the first human male in history to become pregnant is amusing in concept, much like that film about Arnold Schwarzenegger doing the same, but in practice it doesn't get milked (oops, sorry Trip), much beyond his Captain scoffing at the predicament, a realistic reaction, but not one you'd usually associate with Starfleet officers, particularly a Captain! Here's where I suspect a lot of the laxity in 'Discovery' comes from (didn't take long for me to get a jab in, did it!) - not this episode in particular, but using 'Enterprise' as the precedent for a lot of things, forgetting these are earlier humans that are barely out of the Solar System. Still, Archer shouldn't have taken it so lightly, for all he knew it might threaten the life of his Chief Engineer, and as we see at the start, Trip is rather essential in the smooth running of the NX-01. You might even say it's his baby…
If Archer was a little too free with his reactions, one of his biggest mistakes (but not the biggest, that was still to come in his polite accosting of the Klingons), was his overly trusting nature. They discover the sinister presence of a cloaked ship (yes, that's right, a cloaked ship!), hiding in their wake and upsetting the ship's systems no end. When they're discovered they sound quite reasonable and diplomatic so Archer trusts them enough to send over his Chief Engineer (yes, that's right, his Chief Engineer!), to have a look at their engines. Without even one member of Security to act as a guard. On this most valuable of crewmen. One lesson to learn about aliens is that even if they seem benevolent, no, even if they are benevolent, it doesn't mean they can't cause inadvertent harm to you and your crew. For all the Xyrillians' technological advancements they were shown up to be quite naive and flaky. They have the amazing ability to create a Holodeck two hundred years before such technology became standard on Federation starships (or a hundred years if you can swallow the one seen in 'DSC'), not to mention cloaking for their ship (long before cloaks were common), and yet they can't get their own engines to function consistently! Maybe there's a connection there. Perhaps they bit off more than they could chew technologically, and their propulsion problems are a result of the Defiant syndrome: overpowered and over-gunned (except for the gun part). Judging by how unreliable their tech is, maybe that's why it took two centuries to perfect!
The Xyrillians are an interesting species, the first to be welcoming to Enterprise (maybe the reason Archer was so eager to help them), with truly alien ship interiors and very different to many aliens we'd seen before on Trek. They have this scaly external appearance, and their ships contain a mixture of organic and mechanical parts so that they even grow their food on the walls. The atmosphere is so different to what humans are comfortable with that Trip has to go through a decompression chamber for hours before he's ready to go aboard, and even then it takes some time for him to adjust. This sequence was well done, with the slowed speech and affected sound, plus the disorienting vision experienced by Trip, so they were successful in presenting alienness to that extent, not to mention that once again we get to hear alien speech before Hoshi's able to clean it up and put it through the Translator matrix. What I wasn't as impressed with was some of the design decisions they took - the tubing and wiring look very human, and it was lacking in futuristic ideas when it came to simple things like the mechanic's rollers they use to slide under the equipment upon: you can see they run on castor wheels, which looks even more ridiculous than seeing modern office chairs on 'TNG,' for example!
The big deal with the episode is nothing to do with how things look, however, it's the ridiculously early introduction of a Holodeck into Trek history. I don't remember being particularly bothered when the episode first came out because, after all, it is alien tech, it's not like they were showing it running on a human ship (one reason among countless others I was so unhappy with 'DSC'!), and since this is the first time we'd ever heard of the Xyrillians they clearly weren't well known in the galaxy. But now, after 'DSC,' it's like another precedent that was taken from this series, that annoys me. What makes it worse is that it's clearly shown to be a proper Holodeck where you can touch the sand, feel it run through your fingers, the breeze ruffling your hair, it's not just a '3D simulator' as Trip must have been familiar with and assumes is what it is (though he knows about holography, it's like no hologram he's ever seen). If the Xyrillians were truly a xenophobic race that were suspicious of outsiders and shunned contact, that would be another point of logic for how this tech took so long to be common knowledge, but they're not - they're as trusting and naive as Archer is shown to be, and to make matters much worse they even give the Klingons this technology! There are still plenty of reasons why the tech fits better than on the USS Discovery: it's easy to come up with reasons why the Klingon Captain failed to report it to his superiors, enjoying the exclusivity of owning it, or maybe the Klingons were too rough and broke it, unable to keep it operating. And perhaps after their contact with the bullying Klingons the Xyrillians decided to concentrate on stealth tech instead and kept hidden from then on.
That's something else that didn't make sense: surely, if they're so gregarious they'd have heard of, or encountered, the Klingons and would make sure to steer clear of such a belligerent species? And you'd also think that if they were so happy to welcome other aliens (they say they've had plenty of experience with aliens coming aboard as Trip does), that they'd be a well known race themselves, but Phlox admits to having no knowledge of them, and T'Pol doesn't seem to know them either, and if the Vulcans are ignorant, well… So there are too many inconsistencies for comfort, but then again maybe that is the 'out' of the episode. That these technologically advanced people are so inept that they were destroyed by others. They were too trusting and open and in exchange were wiped out, their achievements forgotten. Or they went into hiding after this experience. Let's hope their attitude was something Archer was able to learn from, because he has a lot to learn from this episode. He wants to reach out and touch every species on the same wavelength, not understanding that not everyone responds the same way to overtures of friendship. The episode came alive for me when the Klingons showed up in their glorious Battle Cruiser. It's odd, because if there was one series that could have got away with designing a range of new ships for the most famous race in Trek history, it's 'Enterprise' - it didn't make any sense in 'DSC' when they gave us such alien-looking vessels for their Klingons a decade before 'TOS,' and yet 'Enterprise,' a century earlier has almost identical ships to 'TOS'! Even so, I loved seeing it here, swinging round majestically and threateningly at Archer's communication.
Captain Archer was reminiscent of a small boy in the playground going up to the biggest, meanest bully there was and asking politely for assistance! It's probably the funniest thing in the episode, but the trouble is we're laughing at the Captain's naivety because we know exactly how the Klingons are likely to react to such mealy-mouthed sentiments. I'll bury 'DSC' for just about everything it did, but the whole concept of the Vulcan hello, recalling how that race chose to respond to the Klingons after first contact failed so dismally, is exactly what was needed here. If 'Enterprise' messed up the idea that human and Klingon first contact was disastrous (by the fact that Archer actually helped them), then this true first contact out in space is more in line with that narrative (even if they part without violence, they still threaten that any approach in future will be met with destructive force!). The episode shows us the stark contrast between human and Klingon ways of operating and neatly distills how each race has developed a mighty empire, but in opposite extremes: while humans are open to new friends and alliances, being the best they can be, good neighbours and boldly striking out into space with these values of selflessness and nobility, the Klingons are ruthless and are out to conquer, quell and subdue - their way of warning a stranger off is to actively blast it! Archer wants dialogue, the Klingons plan to execute the Xyrillian crew!
Another reason Archer looks weak in this episode is because, in comparison to a Klingon Battle Cruiser, the best humanity had to offer was called puny. Not 'tough little ship,' just puny, and that's the impression you often get in the series that made it stand out from the others. Although, like the USS Voyager and Enterprise-D, the NX-01 is fresh off the production line, it is weak compared with many other races out in the space lanes, and so is at a disadvantage, and I like that in spite of this they still carry on optimistically, not scurrying home with tail between legs (as Trip wanted to do during his acclimatisation on the Xyrillian ship!). At the same time, having inferior weaponry and inexperience reflects on the Captain, which doesn't help his cause. I also wonder if it didn't help the cause of the series, too, as so many were used to seeing top Federation tech going toe to toe with the toughest enemies out there and succeeding by their advanced science as much as boldness and ingenuity, that to go backwards to a weak little vessel may have been a step too far for some. Maybe that's one reason Discovery is so all-powerful, audiences sadly needing to feel like they're rooting for the best ship and wanting the gimmickry of spore drives and Holodecks because just telling a good story within the constraints of a given era isn't good enough for them now, raised on comic book characters and mindless action?
At least the Klingons didn't just destroy the human ship, allowing them a chance to leave, but Archer's whiny attempts at reasoning with them didn't help. It took T'Pol to step in, even though logic was likely to be as useful in this situation as reason, praising the Captain as being a hero of the Empire for returning Klaang (nice continuity that helped give the series a little more of that 'DS9' semi-serialised feel). I was wondering if she was being truthful about how the High Council reacted since we never got a translation and Hoshi said at the time that Archer wouldn't want to know, but at the end of the episode T'Pol admits to acting in line with the Klingons, and exaggerating (a lie? An exaggeration - 'Star Trek VI'). One thing we do know is that Archer's name is beginning to be known thanks to 'Broken Bow' and now this, and that this Captain Vorok warns his people's debt to Archer is now repaid (thankfully it didn't become a recurring theme as the back and forth favours with the Andorians would!), since the Xyrillians weren't executed, nor their ship stolen, and Enterprise allowed to contact them and go on its way in relative peace. I don't know how he had permission to speak for all Klingons, but my guess is he didn't, he just took the position he wanted, so relations with the Empire are just as uncertain as if Archer had helped or not. Fun to hear T'Pol say that if not for Archer the Houses would have been fighting amongst themselves by now (exactly what was happening in 'DSC'!), and I wished we could have known what House Vorok was from with the interesting 'F'-shaped logo in the background.
If Archer doesn't know how to address a Klingon yet ("They're actually very kind," he responds pleasantly about the Xyrillians, as if their level of kindness would make any difference to the violent barbarians!), nor does Trip, who makes the mistake of suggesting the Klingon Captain might be frightened of going through the Xyrillians decompression in order to witness this marvellous holographic room. But he can be forgiven as he was a little more emotional than normal due to being with child (the first interspecies pregnancy, apparently - this seems like a subtle preparatory reference to Spock, which they'd be much more direct about in the fourth season when Trip and T'Pol's DNA is combined to form a human/Vulcan hybrid baby). It is different to the episode I thought it would be, as Trip's mood swings and strange observations (like the dangers of the lift in Engineering - I suppose that means there aren't any small people in Starfleet at this time, since he suggests small aliens or children would be at risk. Maybe there's a minimum height requirement for service on a starship in the early years of Starfleet's explorations, because Nog is accepted two hundred years later?), seem less funny and more serious, and it was good to hear him say that he wanted the foetus removed, assuming it was safe, so that sounds Pro Life to me! He was actually quite professional and a credit to the organisation, it was just the dozy Xyrillians that are overly sociable and fail to keep their guests' safety in mind, despite all appearances to the contrary!
But then, they were a haphazard lot. I felt I recognised the Ah'Len (alien?), woman's voice, and found she was played by a previous Trek guest star (Julianne Christie), but not someone I would have been likely to recognise as she was only in the one episode as Neelix' new friend Dexa in his last proper episode ('Homestead'). Trena'L's voice, on the other scaly hand, was easy to pin down as this was the first of many appearances on the series in the role of Degra, the eventual Xindi ally of Archer in Season 3. Oglesby had had a long Trek career already by then, appearing in both 'DS9' and 'Voyager' (my favourite role of his being Silarin Prin from 'The Darkness and The Light'). He was never one of my favourites, like Jeffery Combs or Marc Alaimo, but it was pleasantly reassuring in those long-gone days when familiar faces (or voices), showed up now and again. Even Vorok (Christopher Darga), was somewhat familiar, having been in the two preceding series', most memorable to me as the Musketeer-moustache-sporting Klingon Kaybok in 'The Way of The Warrior' for 'DS9,' so he was my favourite guest role on this occasion.
A few things were a little different in this episode, not that they were wrong as such, but just, well, unexpected! It comes from being so early in the series' run, but it amazes me that so much of the look, the characters and the feel of it was strong enough that they didn't need to change it, whereas you look at every other Trek series and the early episodes do look quite different to what they'd become, but then 'Enterprise' had the benefit of an unbroken fourteen year run behind it, so it shouldn't be such a surprise. I think of Phlox sharing a meal at the Captain's table with Archer and Trip as being unusual. It was more for Trip to complain about T'Pol behind her back, thinking she must have spread it around the ship he was pregnant, when in reality he was just being oversensitive. Then there's the buffet in the Mess Hall, which I don't remember ever seeing before or after (and they were certainly packed in there!). And what about the Xyrillians and their lack of water - Ah'Len produces some little gel blocks and says it was the closest she could get to water, but in that case what were the eels we see swimming around in, in a tank on their ship? That, and a few other things really made me tie this episode into the Xindi saga of Season 3: the eel tank on a starship reminded me of the Aquatics, Randy Oglesby was in the episode, and then at the beginning with things going wrong on the ship, like Archer floating out of his shower, it was like when the NX-01 first entered The Expanse! Funny what connections you make sometimes.
We get a reminder of what races smell like as Trip complains how bad the Klingons smelt when he had to go through decompression with them (surely there was barely space for one, I can't imagine two grumpy Klingons and a pregnant human surviving three hours in that little tube, and that must have been Trip's greatest achievement of the episode!). When I heard that, it made me think of T'Pol complaining about the smell of human food at the start of the episode, and it puts things in perspective: the smell of Klingons to humans is what humans are to Vulcans! (An earthy, peaty kind of smell. With a touch of lilac…). Aside from Trip's endurance with the Klingons he's very professional, something 'DSC' is sorely lacking, so it was lovely to see someone behave properly and even state that he considered himself a diplomat the minute he set foot on the vessel. This is exactly what we want from Trek, not loose morals, people taking things into their own hands whenever they feel like it, or acting as they see fit against orders - Archer has to order Trip to see the acclimatisation process through, and Trip obeys. It's this structured, obedient presentation that is so missing in 'DSC,' yet another aspect of it that alienates it from the rest of Trek. 'Enterprise' may not be perfect, far from it, but it still stands head and shoulders above the inferior attempts to make Trek more appealing to modern audiences. It isn't really a comedy at all, this episode, it's a reminder that neither benevolent nor aggressive aliens are to be taken on first impression and face value. At the same time, Archer represents humanity with hope, and that means sometimes putting your foot in it (or your hands in the granules), and it is the learning of lessons that make these first steps into space such a fascination.
***
Life lesson-learning is the best thing you can say came out of this one. If there was an episode to demonstrate how high Archer scored on the weak-o-meter, it's this. I remembered it as being a knockabout comedy, and in comparison to the first two episodes after the pilot, it is, but it's not as funny as expected, and doesn't really get going until the Klingons show up, a complete surprise to me: maybe that was really where the title came from. The idea of Trip being the first human male in history to become pregnant is amusing in concept, much like that film about Arnold Schwarzenegger doing the same, but in practice it doesn't get milked (oops, sorry Trip), much beyond his Captain scoffing at the predicament, a realistic reaction, but not one you'd usually associate with Starfleet officers, particularly a Captain! Here's where I suspect a lot of the laxity in 'Discovery' comes from (didn't take long for me to get a jab in, did it!) - not this episode in particular, but using 'Enterprise' as the precedent for a lot of things, forgetting these are earlier humans that are barely out of the Solar System. Still, Archer shouldn't have taken it so lightly, for all he knew it might threaten the life of his Chief Engineer, and as we see at the start, Trip is rather essential in the smooth running of the NX-01. You might even say it's his baby…
If Archer was a little too free with his reactions, one of his biggest mistakes (but not the biggest, that was still to come in his polite accosting of the Klingons), was his overly trusting nature. They discover the sinister presence of a cloaked ship (yes, that's right, a cloaked ship!), hiding in their wake and upsetting the ship's systems no end. When they're discovered they sound quite reasonable and diplomatic so Archer trusts them enough to send over his Chief Engineer (yes, that's right, his Chief Engineer!), to have a look at their engines. Without even one member of Security to act as a guard. On this most valuable of crewmen. One lesson to learn about aliens is that even if they seem benevolent, no, even if they are benevolent, it doesn't mean they can't cause inadvertent harm to you and your crew. For all the Xyrillians' technological advancements they were shown up to be quite naive and flaky. They have the amazing ability to create a Holodeck two hundred years before such technology became standard on Federation starships (or a hundred years if you can swallow the one seen in 'DSC'), not to mention cloaking for their ship (long before cloaks were common), and yet they can't get their own engines to function consistently! Maybe there's a connection there. Perhaps they bit off more than they could chew technologically, and their propulsion problems are a result of the Defiant syndrome: overpowered and over-gunned (except for the gun part). Judging by how unreliable their tech is, maybe that's why it took two centuries to perfect!
The Xyrillians are an interesting species, the first to be welcoming to Enterprise (maybe the reason Archer was so eager to help them), with truly alien ship interiors and very different to many aliens we'd seen before on Trek. They have this scaly external appearance, and their ships contain a mixture of organic and mechanical parts so that they even grow their food on the walls. The atmosphere is so different to what humans are comfortable with that Trip has to go through a decompression chamber for hours before he's ready to go aboard, and even then it takes some time for him to adjust. This sequence was well done, with the slowed speech and affected sound, plus the disorienting vision experienced by Trip, so they were successful in presenting alienness to that extent, not to mention that once again we get to hear alien speech before Hoshi's able to clean it up and put it through the Translator matrix. What I wasn't as impressed with was some of the design decisions they took - the tubing and wiring look very human, and it was lacking in futuristic ideas when it came to simple things like the mechanic's rollers they use to slide under the equipment upon: you can see they run on castor wheels, which looks even more ridiculous than seeing modern office chairs on 'TNG,' for example!
The big deal with the episode is nothing to do with how things look, however, it's the ridiculously early introduction of a Holodeck into Trek history. I don't remember being particularly bothered when the episode first came out because, after all, it is alien tech, it's not like they were showing it running on a human ship (one reason among countless others I was so unhappy with 'DSC'!), and since this is the first time we'd ever heard of the Xyrillians they clearly weren't well known in the galaxy. But now, after 'DSC,' it's like another precedent that was taken from this series, that annoys me. What makes it worse is that it's clearly shown to be a proper Holodeck where you can touch the sand, feel it run through your fingers, the breeze ruffling your hair, it's not just a '3D simulator' as Trip must have been familiar with and assumes is what it is (though he knows about holography, it's like no hologram he's ever seen). If the Xyrillians were truly a xenophobic race that were suspicious of outsiders and shunned contact, that would be another point of logic for how this tech took so long to be common knowledge, but they're not - they're as trusting and naive as Archer is shown to be, and to make matters much worse they even give the Klingons this technology! There are still plenty of reasons why the tech fits better than on the USS Discovery: it's easy to come up with reasons why the Klingon Captain failed to report it to his superiors, enjoying the exclusivity of owning it, or maybe the Klingons were too rough and broke it, unable to keep it operating. And perhaps after their contact with the bullying Klingons the Xyrillians decided to concentrate on stealth tech instead and kept hidden from then on.
That's something else that didn't make sense: surely, if they're so gregarious they'd have heard of, or encountered, the Klingons and would make sure to steer clear of such a belligerent species? And you'd also think that if they were so happy to welcome other aliens (they say they've had plenty of experience with aliens coming aboard as Trip does), that they'd be a well known race themselves, but Phlox admits to having no knowledge of them, and T'Pol doesn't seem to know them either, and if the Vulcans are ignorant, well… So there are too many inconsistencies for comfort, but then again maybe that is the 'out' of the episode. That these technologically advanced people are so inept that they were destroyed by others. They were too trusting and open and in exchange were wiped out, their achievements forgotten. Or they went into hiding after this experience. Let's hope their attitude was something Archer was able to learn from, because he has a lot to learn from this episode. He wants to reach out and touch every species on the same wavelength, not understanding that not everyone responds the same way to overtures of friendship. The episode came alive for me when the Klingons showed up in their glorious Battle Cruiser. It's odd, because if there was one series that could have got away with designing a range of new ships for the most famous race in Trek history, it's 'Enterprise' - it didn't make any sense in 'DSC' when they gave us such alien-looking vessels for their Klingons a decade before 'TOS,' and yet 'Enterprise,' a century earlier has almost identical ships to 'TOS'! Even so, I loved seeing it here, swinging round majestically and threateningly at Archer's communication.
Captain Archer was reminiscent of a small boy in the playground going up to the biggest, meanest bully there was and asking politely for assistance! It's probably the funniest thing in the episode, but the trouble is we're laughing at the Captain's naivety because we know exactly how the Klingons are likely to react to such mealy-mouthed sentiments. I'll bury 'DSC' for just about everything it did, but the whole concept of the Vulcan hello, recalling how that race chose to respond to the Klingons after first contact failed so dismally, is exactly what was needed here. If 'Enterprise' messed up the idea that human and Klingon first contact was disastrous (by the fact that Archer actually helped them), then this true first contact out in space is more in line with that narrative (even if they part without violence, they still threaten that any approach in future will be met with destructive force!). The episode shows us the stark contrast between human and Klingon ways of operating and neatly distills how each race has developed a mighty empire, but in opposite extremes: while humans are open to new friends and alliances, being the best they can be, good neighbours and boldly striking out into space with these values of selflessness and nobility, the Klingons are ruthless and are out to conquer, quell and subdue - their way of warning a stranger off is to actively blast it! Archer wants dialogue, the Klingons plan to execute the Xyrillian crew!
Another reason Archer looks weak in this episode is because, in comparison to a Klingon Battle Cruiser, the best humanity had to offer was called puny. Not 'tough little ship,' just puny, and that's the impression you often get in the series that made it stand out from the others. Although, like the USS Voyager and Enterprise-D, the NX-01 is fresh off the production line, it is weak compared with many other races out in the space lanes, and so is at a disadvantage, and I like that in spite of this they still carry on optimistically, not scurrying home with tail between legs (as Trip wanted to do during his acclimatisation on the Xyrillian ship!). At the same time, having inferior weaponry and inexperience reflects on the Captain, which doesn't help his cause. I also wonder if it didn't help the cause of the series, too, as so many were used to seeing top Federation tech going toe to toe with the toughest enemies out there and succeeding by their advanced science as much as boldness and ingenuity, that to go backwards to a weak little vessel may have been a step too far for some. Maybe that's one reason Discovery is so all-powerful, audiences sadly needing to feel like they're rooting for the best ship and wanting the gimmickry of spore drives and Holodecks because just telling a good story within the constraints of a given era isn't good enough for them now, raised on comic book characters and mindless action?
At least the Klingons didn't just destroy the human ship, allowing them a chance to leave, but Archer's whiny attempts at reasoning with them didn't help. It took T'Pol to step in, even though logic was likely to be as useful in this situation as reason, praising the Captain as being a hero of the Empire for returning Klaang (nice continuity that helped give the series a little more of that 'DS9' semi-serialised feel). I was wondering if she was being truthful about how the High Council reacted since we never got a translation and Hoshi said at the time that Archer wouldn't want to know, but at the end of the episode T'Pol admits to acting in line with the Klingons, and exaggerating (a lie? An exaggeration - 'Star Trek VI'). One thing we do know is that Archer's name is beginning to be known thanks to 'Broken Bow' and now this, and that this Captain Vorok warns his people's debt to Archer is now repaid (thankfully it didn't become a recurring theme as the back and forth favours with the Andorians would!), since the Xyrillians weren't executed, nor their ship stolen, and Enterprise allowed to contact them and go on its way in relative peace. I don't know how he had permission to speak for all Klingons, but my guess is he didn't, he just took the position he wanted, so relations with the Empire are just as uncertain as if Archer had helped or not. Fun to hear T'Pol say that if not for Archer the Houses would have been fighting amongst themselves by now (exactly what was happening in 'DSC'!), and I wished we could have known what House Vorok was from with the interesting 'F'-shaped logo in the background.
If Archer doesn't know how to address a Klingon yet ("They're actually very kind," he responds pleasantly about the Xyrillians, as if their level of kindness would make any difference to the violent barbarians!), nor does Trip, who makes the mistake of suggesting the Klingon Captain might be frightened of going through the Xyrillians decompression in order to witness this marvellous holographic room. But he can be forgiven as he was a little more emotional than normal due to being with child (the first interspecies pregnancy, apparently - this seems like a subtle preparatory reference to Spock, which they'd be much more direct about in the fourth season when Trip and T'Pol's DNA is combined to form a human/Vulcan hybrid baby). It is different to the episode I thought it would be, as Trip's mood swings and strange observations (like the dangers of the lift in Engineering - I suppose that means there aren't any small people in Starfleet at this time, since he suggests small aliens or children would be at risk. Maybe there's a minimum height requirement for service on a starship in the early years of Starfleet's explorations, because Nog is accepted two hundred years later?), seem less funny and more serious, and it was good to hear him say that he wanted the foetus removed, assuming it was safe, so that sounds Pro Life to me! He was actually quite professional and a credit to the organisation, it was just the dozy Xyrillians that are overly sociable and fail to keep their guests' safety in mind, despite all appearances to the contrary!
But then, they were a haphazard lot. I felt I recognised the Ah'Len (alien?), woman's voice, and found she was played by a previous Trek guest star (Julianne Christie), but not someone I would have been likely to recognise as she was only in the one episode as Neelix' new friend Dexa in his last proper episode ('Homestead'). Trena'L's voice, on the other scaly hand, was easy to pin down as this was the first of many appearances on the series in the role of Degra, the eventual Xindi ally of Archer in Season 3. Oglesby had had a long Trek career already by then, appearing in both 'DS9' and 'Voyager' (my favourite role of his being Silarin Prin from 'The Darkness and The Light'). He was never one of my favourites, like Jeffery Combs or Marc Alaimo, but it was pleasantly reassuring in those long-gone days when familiar faces (or voices), showed up now and again. Even Vorok (Christopher Darga), was somewhat familiar, having been in the two preceding series', most memorable to me as the Musketeer-moustache-sporting Klingon Kaybok in 'The Way of The Warrior' for 'DS9,' so he was my favourite guest role on this occasion.
A few things were a little different in this episode, not that they were wrong as such, but just, well, unexpected! It comes from being so early in the series' run, but it amazes me that so much of the look, the characters and the feel of it was strong enough that they didn't need to change it, whereas you look at every other Trek series and the early episodes do look quite different to what they'd become, but then 'Enterprise' had the benefit of an unbroken fourteen year run behind it, so it shouldn't be such a surprise. I think of Phlox sharing a meal at the Captain's table with Archer and Trip as being unusual. It was more for Trip to complain about T'Pol behind her back, thinking she must have spread it around the ship he was pregnant, when in reality he was just being oversensitive. Then there's the buffet in the Mess Hall, which I don't remember ever seeing before or after (and they were certainly packed in there!). And what about the Xyrillians and their lack of water - Ah'Len produces some little gel blocks and says it was the closest she could get to water, but in that case what were the eels we see swimming around in, in a tank on their ship? That, and a few other things really made me tie this episode into the Xindi saga of Season 3: the eel tank on a starship reminded me of the Aquatics, Randy Oglesby was in the episode, and then at the beginning with things going wrong on the ship, like Archer floating out of his shower, it was like when the NX-01 first entered The Expanse! Funny what connections you make sometimes.
We get a reminder of what races smell like as Trip complains how bad the Klingons smelt when he had to go through decompression with them (surely there was barely space for one, I can't imagine two grumpy Klingons and a pregnant human surviving three hours in that little tube, and that must have been Trip's greatest achievement of the episode!). When I heard that, it made me think of T'Pol complaining about the smell of human food at the start of the episode, and it puts things in perspective: the smell of Klingons to humans is what humans are to Vulcans! (An earthy, peaty kind of smell. With a touch of lilac…). Aside from Trip's endurance with the Klingons he's very professional, something 'DSC' is sorely lacking, so it was lovely to see someone behave properly and even state that he considered himself a diplomat the minute he set foot on the vessel. This is exactly what we want from Trek, not loose morals, people taking things into their own hands whenever they feel like it, or acting as they see fit against orders - Archer has to order Trip to see the acclimatisation process through, and Trip obeys. It's this structured, obedient presentation that is so missing in 'DSC,' yet another aspect of it that alienates it from the rest of Trek. 'Enterprise' may not be perfect, far from it, but it still stands head and shoulders above the inferior attempts to make Trek more appealing to modern audiences. It isn't really a comedy at all, this episode, it's a reminder that neither benevolent nor aggressive aliens are to be taken on first impression and face value. At the same time, Archer represents humanity with hope, and that means sometimes putting your foot in it (or your hands in the granules), and it is the learning of lessons that make these first steps into space such a fascination.
***
Obscura
DVD, Smallville S1 (Obscura)
Not having a clear memory of this episode other than it being about Lana developing some kind of vision through someone else's eyes, and that the villain was one of the cops, I was still able to accurately predict the demise of said villain. How else was Lana going to lose her newfound ability? And she was going to lose it because despite the series being semi-serialised, they were still largely keeping the reset button alive on things that would change the characters. Such ridiculous and permanent changes came later, and this was far from the last time Lana would gain special powers, but it was certainly the only time it seemed to make a semblance of sense. If the reset button prevented her being a freak-of-the-week for every episode to come, then there was a pleasant amount of continuity to reward regular viewers: we hear of Miss Castle again when Roger Nixon shows up to bleed money from Lex with his latest lead and is all upset about his patron's free and easy manner with the paper's opposition. Then there's the fact that Nixon is in it at all, helping to set things up for the finale coming next episode. And the breaking out of the shortest peace ever between Lex and Jonathan Kent, the revival of Lex' obsession with mysteries, meteors and men from other worlds. Oh, and the Clark, Chloe, Lana lovey-dovey stuff.
That last element was not so welcome, but at least it was more upbeat and positive this time, with Clark getting a pep talk from his Mother, accepting that it's Whitney and Lana forever, and working up the guts to request Chloe's hand for the upcoming Spring Formal Dance. What I love about Chloe is how her whole face lights up like a sunbeam, no, like the sun itself, and if the yellow sun of our solar system gives Clark his power, then her reaction to his invitation must have boosted his power levels immensely - she positively glowed in that scene! And while the teen romance side of things is not one of my favourite things about the series, to say the least, it's nice to see someone so happy. The episode on the whole is quite a happy one. For some of the time, anyway. We get the Chloe smile explosion at the end, but there's also the lovely moment when Jonathan finally accepts a handshake with Lex in friendship, even planning to deposit the cheque for damages he gave him for the LuthorCorp environmental disaster recently (even more continuity - I love it!). He chooses the wrong time to investigate the meteors, however, chewing up the very field where Clark's ship came down, and thanks to Dr. Hamilton (continuity!), and a team from what looked like Cadmus Labs on their livery (continuity overdrive!), he finds a special piece of otherworldly material: the 'key' to Season 2, the key to Clark's ship!
Things are suddenly moving again after a few episodes of concentrating on the weekly freaks. The spaceship coming into play, a new angle in which to investigate Clark, and the meddling Nixon who would do anything to anyone to get his Big Story, all set up the finale to be a rollicking good time for everyone but the Kent family! I must say it was strange for the crop duster who retold his story to Lex to call the ship a ship. You'd think he'd describe it more as a flying object than narrow it down to what anyone who heard would hear as an alien vessel. But maybe that's exactly what he guessed? This is really the B-story, but it's more dramatic and far-reaching than just another freak-of-the-week. Weirdly, this episode's freak is actually Lana, since she gets her clairvoyance, or whatever you want to call it (and they do try to explain it with some weird pseudoscience about the London Blitz that sounds completely made up!), by almost being blown up. I don't know why there was a gas main and all those pipes out in some field, and up until that moment it was quite nice to see that she and Whitney actually got a scene together just having fun, riding their horses (Whitney's also being set up for his grand finale, and I felt they did it quite touchingly with his finding the medals of his Father from Vietnam, putting him on a new path). It was also quite spectacular the way Lana gets blasted towards camera - it's an image that sticks with me because it's on the back of the Season 1 DVD box set, and for some reason I associated it with the finale, but that was a whirlwind, not an explosion!
The effects were rather good, with Clark performing a terrific save of Lana as the evil deputy shoots her and he rushes in to deflect the bullet, inadvertently redirecting it towards a large glass mirror whose shards bear down on the prone form of Lana like so many daggers, forcing Clark to launch himself over her to take the shattering impact. Dramatic and brilliant, as was seeing the deputy fire several shots into his chest to no effect. Of course, even if Lana's power left of its own accord he couldn't be allowed to live after that, and gets shot when he refuses to give himself up to Sheriff Ethan (whose whereabouts I was wondering about for most of the episode!). Oddly, this main story of an unstable cop who is crooked enough to want to further his career by solving a crime he's committed (first by Chloe's kidnapping and murder, then by Lana's), was the lesser part of the story. The effect of Lana seeing through his eyes was well done, without doubt, but the episode really needed to be all about that rather than bringing it into a story that had the more compelling story with Jonathan and Lex' troubled relations and the whys of it all. If it had been like a 'Hothead' where it was focused on this crazy cop it might have worked better for that story, because there's not a lot to that side of things. The main thing is giving Clark the need to save both his girls - I wonder how he explained tracking down Chloe's coffin in a field and punching the ground in to get her out! I'm guessing he said his first shovel strike fortunately struck home!
Clark has a lot of moments to show off his abilities in this one, whether it's little domestic asides like wrenching the pipe out from under the sink, or showing up his Dad who can only manage one sack of feed at a time while he absentmindedly carries three, there's a strong sense of his farming life amidst the drama, something that would be missing in later seasons. There are good scenes with Mr. Kent and you really feel the horror he feels at how close Lex and his minions are to finding something that could be tied to Clark, and out of the blue like that made it so much more palpable, just when things had become serene. The writing was very good, my favourite exchange coming right at the end between Hamilton and Lex as they discuss the Kryptonian key - the doctor spins his employer a riddle, he replies he doesn't like riddles, then he in turn says in that case this object will make him profoundly unhappy! Superb! It's so strange to go back to the series when it was in its prime, where most things seemed to make sense, they knocked out so many good lines (Lex especially was super well served this season), only for the quality of sense and drama to drop so much later on. We actually get a little link to 'later on,' too, as Chloe's cousin is mentioned a couple of times, and of course, later on we find out she's Lois Lane!
It's also fun to see the casting for the good cop: Aaron Douglas, who'd go on to be probably my favourite character on 'Battlestar Galactica,' Chief Tyrol! We also get Gabe Sullivan back as Chloe's Dad, so there's a lot of things tying the season together in a pleasing way. Even details like good deputy Birdego getting clonked on the head and being found at the Talon was like a reference back to 'Zero' - the last time that happened was the guy off 'SG-1' who pretends he was knocked out at the Talon, only this time it really was as it seemed, though they do their best to make him seem sinister (the main thing I was wondering about was whether he was going to pay for the coffee Lana offered him or if he was going to take it as a freebie!). I don't know why bad cop felt the need to wear that wacky black suit and helmet, other than to keep his identity a secret and he had to wear something, but I didn't get if there was some connection to his funfair job. And that funfair was more like the final showdown in a Batman story than Superman - maybe it was the big clown face that made me think of The Joker? I like that at this stage of the season and the series Lex can just show up at the homely domestic setting of the Kent kitchen, but if Pa Kent was trying to be more suspicious about hiding a secret he couldn't have been: he sees the field being dug up and hands back the money and gets all agitated about it, and Clark goes all sceptical about the crop duster's UFO story when Lex and he chat separately, so it wouldn't take someone half as cunning as Lex to see something's up! I could also say that Pete is poorly used and Martha's not much in evidence, but these are minor qualms in another solid story I enjoyed.
***
Not having a clear memory of this episode other than it being about Lana developing some kind of vision through someone else's eyes, and that the villain was one of the cops, I was still able to accurately predict the demise of said villain. How else was Lana going to lose her newfound ability? And she was going to lose it because despite the series being semi-serialised, they were still largely keeping the reset button alive on things that would change the characters. Such ridiculous and permanent changes came later, and this was far from the last time Lana would gain special powers, but it was certainly the only time it seemed to make a semblance of sense. If the reset button prevented her being a freak-of-the-week for every episode to come, then there was a pleasant amount of continuity to reward regular viewers: we hear of Miss Castle again when Roger Nixon shows up to bleed money from Lex with his latest lead and is all upset about his patron's free and easy manner with the paper's opposition. Then there's the fact that Nixon is in it at all, helping to set things up for the finale coming next episode. And the breaking out of the shortest peace ever between Lex and Jonathan Kent, the revival of Lex' obsession with mysteries, meteors and men from other worlds. Oh, and the Clark, Chloe, Lana lovey-dovey stuff.
That last element was not so welcome, but at least it was more upbeat and positive this time, with Clark getting a pep talk from his Mother, accepting that it's Whitney and Lana forever, and working up the guts to request Chloe's hand for the upcoming Spring Formal Dance. What I love about Chloe is how her whole face lights up like a sunbeam, no, like the sun itself, and if the yellow sun of our solar system gives Clark his power, then her reaction to his invitation must have boosted his power levels immensely - she positively glowed in that scene! And while the teen romance side of things is not one of my favourite things about the series, to say the least, it's nice to see someone so happy. The episode on the whole is quite a happy one. For some of the time, anyway. We get the Chloe smile explosion at the end, but there's also the lovely moment when Jonathan finally accepts a handshake with Lex in friendship, even planning to deposit the cheque for damages he gave him for the LuthorCorp environmental disaster recently (even more continuity - I love it!). He chooses the wrong time to investigate the meteors, however, chewing up the very field where Clark's ship came down, and thanks to Dr. Hamilton (continuity!), and a team from what looked like Cadmus Labs on their livery (continuity overdrive!), he finds a special piece of otherworldly material: the 'key' to Season 2, the key to Clark's ship!
Things are suddenly moving again after a few episodes of concentrating on the weekly freaks. The spaceship coming into play, a new angle in which to investigate Clark, and the meddling Nixon who would do anything to anyone to get his Big Story, all set up the finale to be a rollicking good time for everyone but the Kent family! I must say it was strange for the crop duster who retold his story to Lex to call the ship a ship. You'd think he'd describe it more as a flying object than narrow it down to what anyone who heard would hear as an alien vessel. But maybe that's exactly what he guessed? This is really the B-story, but it's more dramatic and far-reaching than just another freak-of-the-week. Weirdly, this episode's freak is actually Lana, since she gets her clairvoyance, or whatever you want to call it (and they do try to explain it with some weird pseudoscience about the London Blitz that sounds completely made up!), by almost being blown up. I don't know why there was a gas main and all those pipes out in some field, and up until that moment it was quite nice to see that she and Whitney actually got a scene together just having fun, riding their horses (Whitney's also being set up for his grand finale, and I felt they did it quite touchingly with his finding the medals of his Father from Vietnam, putting him on a new path). It was also quite spectacular the way Lana gets blasted towards camera - it's an image that sticks with me because it's on the back of the Season 1 DVD box set, and for some reason I associated it with the finale, but that was a whirlwind, not an explosion!
The effects were rather good, with Clark performing a terrific save of Lana as the evil deputy shoots her and he rushes in to deflect the bullet, inadvertently redirecting it towards a large glass mirror whose shards bear down on the prone form of Lana like so many daggers, forcing Clark to launch himself over her to take the shattering impact. Dramatic and brilliant, as was seeing the deputy fire several shots into his chest to no effect. Of course, even if Lana's power left of its own accord he couldn't be allowed to live after that, and gets shot when he refuses to give himself up to Sheriff Ethan (whose whereabouts I was wondering about for most of the episode!). Oddly, this main story of an unstable cop who is crooked enough to want to further his career by solving a crime he's committed (first by Chloe's kidnapping and murder, then by Lana's), was the lesser part of the story. The effect of Lana seeing through his eyes was well done, without doubt, but the episode really needed to be all about that rather than bringing it into a story that had the more compelling story with Jonathan and Lex' troubled relations and the whys of it all. If it had been like a 'Hothead' where it was focused on this crazy cop it might have worked better for that story, because there's not a lot to that side of things. The main thing is giving Clark the need to save both his girls - I wonder how he explained tracking down Chloe's coffin in a field and punching the ground in to get her out! I'm guessing he said his first shovel strike fortunately struck home!
Clark has a lot of moments to show off his abilities in this one, whether it's little domestic asides like wrenching the pipe out from under the sink, or showing up his Dad who can only manage one sack of feed at a time while he absentmindedly carries three, there's a strong sense of his farming life amidst the drama, something that would be missing in later seasons. There are good scenes with Mr. Kent and you really feel the horror he feels at how close Lex and his minions are to finding something that could be tied to Clark, and out of the blue like that made it so much more palpable, just when things had become serene. The writing was very good, my favourite exchange coming right at the end between Hamilton and Lex as they discuss the Kryptonian key - the doctor spins his employer a riddle, he replies he doesn't like riddles, then he in turn says in that case this object will make him profoundly unhappy! Superb! It's so strange to go back to the series when it was in its prime, where most things seemed to make sense, they knocked out so many good lines (Lex especially was super well served this season), only for the quality of sense and drama to drop so much later on. We actually get a little link to 'later on,' too, as Chloe's cousin is mentioned a couple of times, and of course, later on we find out she's Lois Lane!
It's also fun to see the casting for the good cop: Aaron Douglas, who'd go on to be probably my favourite character on 'Battlestar Galactica,' Chief Tyrol! We also get Gabe Sullivan back as Chloe's Dad, so there's a lot of things tying the season together in a pleasing way. Even details like good deputy Birdego getting clonked on the head and being found at the Talon was like a reference back to 'Zero' - the last time that happened was the guy off 'SG-1' who pretends he was knocked out at the Talon, only this time it really was as it seemed, though they do their best to make him seem sinister (the main thing I was wondering about was whether he was going to pay for the coffee Lana offered him or if he was going to take it as a freebie!). I don't know why bad cop felt the need to wear that wacky black suit and helmet, other than to keep his identity a secret and he had to wear something, but I didn't get if there was some connection to his funfair job. And that funfair was more like the final showdown in a Batman story than Superman - maybe it was the big clown face that made me think of The Joker? I like that at this stage of the season and the series Lex can just show up at the homely domestic setting of the Kent kitchen, but if Pa Kent was trying to be more suspicious about hiding a secret he couldn't have been: he sees the field being dug up and hands back the money and gets all agitated about it, and Clark goes all sceptical about the crop duster's UFO story when Lex and he chat separately, so it wouldn't take someone half as cunning as Lex to see something's up! I could also say that Pete is poorly used and Martha's not much in evidence, but these are minor qualms in another solid story I enjoyed.
***
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
N64, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000) game
Getting two 'Zelda' games out in the space of one system's lifespan was quite an achievement, even more so when you consider the N64 paid host to the first 3D instalment in the series which brought all the innovation and vast game-playing experience to the player that you'd expect from Nintendo, and one reason why this particular console will always be my favourite. The means they used to smash out a sequel to one of the best games ever made, 'Ocarina of Time,' was to repurpose its character models, environments and all those innovations that had made the first game so special. In the hands of another games company this would have meant a 'lazy' sequel featuring more of the same, but probably a little less intuitive and certainly less impressive (think 'Banjo-Tooie' compared to 'Banjo-Kazooie' - and Rare were masters themselves!), but while keeping the style of 'Ocarina,' Nintendo made sure to deliver a sizeable dose of invention, which every game in the series had achieved, from dinky Game Boy Adventure 'Link's Awakening' to a sprawling two-worlds concept of 'A Link To The Past.' Okay, so maybe 'Zelda II' didn't have that, being a side-scrolling platformer, but I've never played it so I can't comment. And the less said about the farmed-out 'Oracle' games they allowed Capcom to bang out, the better, being weaker ripoffs of 'Awakening.'
In 2000, when 'Majora's Mask' was released, Nintendo were still setting the bar high for the series, before 'Wind Waker' and 'Twilight Princess' succumbed to the 'more of the same' mentality. Those later examples still innovated, but it was more to do with graphics than gameplay. 'Majora' was possibly the last truly great 'Zelda' (though I have yet to play the Switch release, 'Breath of The Wild,' which by the sounds of it is a return to greatness), and I appreciate it for further pushing the limits of the N64. I've always been somewhat dismayed how fast and easy hardware manufacturers have been in ditching a technology which is only a few years old to take shortcuts to new games by developing a whole new system, because I feel a console should have plenty of time to be pushed to its extreme, to see how far it can go. It's also very true that though graphics bring in the customers, the connoisseurs of gaming are more impressed by the freedoms a game enables you to experience, the depth of gameplay, not how many pixels or polygons it displays, or whether it has 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound. That's why 'Awakening' will always be my number one 'Zelda' game because nothing will ever supplant the fresh, new impressions I had for my debut in the genre.
'Majora' didn't try to outdo 'Ocarina' or set a new standard for graphical prowess (though it did utilise the extra power of the Expansion Pak which games were drawing on for their added size and complexity by this time - see 'Perfect Dark' and 'Donkey Kong' for other good examples), nor did it redefine the 'Zelda' mythos or confuse as later iterations did. Like 'Awakening' it was a clever insert into the Hyrulean world, by being a side quest off the beaten track. Indeed, Hyrule isn't in evidence as in both cases Link is whisked off to some other place of unknowns where there are no Princess Zeldas or Ganons. It feels like it's part of an ongoing saga, that this Link is the one and only Link whom you play as, rather than later games muddying the waters by saying that a boy is chosen to represent the Hero of Time and Zelda is just the latest in a line of royal Zeldas. I prefer things being connected, myself, and so I like that they found a way to give us a completely different world without it being unrelated. There are many familiar musical themes throughout, there are many familiar faces, too, but it doesn't matter so much because if you were attached to 'Ocarina' it's fun to see the same people in different roles (a bit like Marin and Tarin versus Malon and Talon in 'Awakening' and 'Ocarina'), and the same races used in new ways.
The big deal with 'Majora' was multifold: for a start, and for the main meal, we have this unique time system where days play out in 'real' time (not literally, but there's actual progression, and a beginning and end), then there are the lives of the characters, who, for the first time are no longer set to specific points that only change as you progress through the game, as in traditional adventures, they follow a pattern of life over the three day period. And for dessert we have the ability to transform Link into other races that can use specific abilities and create new puzzles to be solved. These were the key advances, and though you can see the origins in 'Ocarina,' they took things to a new level here: for example, 'Ocarina' gave us the ability to travel through time from young Link to older, but it was a set change, like the light and dark worlds of 'Link To The Past.' Here, it's a gradual change that creates all new depth to the town at the centre of it all. Changing into other characters (or otherwise using different characters to achieve goals), was something common to other genres - Mario was always changing into some new form for a specific ability, and Banjo and Kazooie were also known for their unique skill-sets, but Link's changes had been restricted to a jump in age.
The hunt for masks was another side to the game that had been seen in 'Ocarina' to some extent, but became an essential side quest that paid off through the game, but was also necessary to fully complete it at the end, too. This is where I should admit a note of negativity into proceedings, for as much as I enjoyed this game, and like 'Jet Force Gemini' last year, had some thoughts of awarding it the full five stars, I felt that it didn't quite make it. 'Awakening' and 'Ocarina' would unquestionably be given full marks, but as much as I enjoyed 'Majora' I didn't have the drive to get every mask and achieve full completion. Partly that's my age - back in the early 2000s when I first played it I got everything, but in the last ten years or more I've become much less intent on one hundred percent completions. Then there's my work hours - I like to play games at specific times of the week, and due to having shifts that kept coming into conflict with my gaming schedule I didn't play for periods, and that loses the thread of a game. I did occasionally get stuck and eventually solve the problem, but without a regular flow of play I did find I was even less motivated to track down all the bits and bobs, explore all the mysteries and completely crack the game. Another reason is that I'm not as attached to this particular 'Zelda,' whereas I played 'Awakening' a few times, and with 'Ocarina' I was exposed many times as I either played it, watched family members play it, or played parts of it for family members. Due to 'Majora' only having two save files this meant I never went back to it after the first time, hence my lack of connection.
That result was good for this playing experience as I remembered so little of it, so it was great fun revisiting all these places that I'd not seen since 2003 when I completed it the first time. But as much as it was nice to hear so many of the tunes from 'Ocarina' I did feel I could have done with more new music in the game, one area that would have helped to make it even more distinctive. I'm not saying it was lazy to reuse so much, but that would have been one reason they managed to release it only two years after 'Ocarina' when 'Zelda' games tend to take a good four years or so. As I write I have finished the final boss, defeating the mask itself, but because I didn't search out all the masks I won't completely 'finish' the game, and I'm okay with that. But the final confrontation was pretty easy, something I remembered from my original completion, especially compared with the tough sequence of events you have to go through to beat Gannondorf at the end of 'Ocarina'! While I'm pointing out flaws or personal dislikes, I also feel that perhaps the simplistic nature of the four points of the compass giving you one of each location with Clock Town at the centre wasn't as 'realistic,' if that's the appropriate term, as a more free world map. It works, it fits, but in my personal taste I was just never as enamoured with that design as I was blown away by the sprawling layout of 'Ocarina.' Again, these are probably points that made it easier to release during the N64's lifetime, so I'm not complaining.
Something I did like was the connections to previous 'Zeldas' - obviously the major and obvious ones are linking to 'Ocarina,' but there were some nice touches that recalled 'Awakening,' too. Most clearly was the Zora band whose hit was 'The Ballad of The Wind Fish,' but I also felt there was some evocation of that Game Boy game's musical style in the dungeons. And talking of dungeons, they were as good as ever, with the usual innovation oozing from every pore. My favourite was the watery world of the Zora level with all its gears and complexity. It wasn't nearly as brain-frying as the Water Temple in 'Ocarina' (thankfully!), but there was a lot of intelligence in the design. Stone Tower was probably my least favourite for its sandy-coloured bare walls and confusion over flipping the entire level, but I grant that it was very innovative. None of them were so huge and complex that you'd get lost for hours, one reason being that you didn't have hours to complete them. This element of time ticking down (you could only play through three days in the game world), added both frustration and tension to proceedings that wasn't found in previous 'Zelda' games. Until you realise you can slow the speed of time you do feel under a lot of pressure, and the first time I completed the swamp level I was desperately trying to beat the boss before time ran out, and then it did, annoying me that I had to replay the whole level again!
Replaying was something that was a big part of the game as to achieve certain things in certain areas you had to beat the boss, and once time was reset and you returned to the First Day you would lose any of that that had been accomplished and have to fight the boss again if need be. It was certainly a different experience fighting the big bosses again in a 'Zelda' game. In some ways it makes the encounter less special because in other instalments once you'd beaten them that was it, never to be seen again unless you played the whole game from the start. One redeeming aspect of the game was that though there were only four dungeons there were other quests and areas that were almost as involved (and replaying comes into it again as you search out the fairies in each dungeon - the only one I was foiled on was the snow temple), so it never felt like a much smaller game, and in fact it felt much bigger than, say, 'Wind Waker' because there was so much packed in. The environments remained pretty large and the graphical splendour was still very much in evidence (in spite of me having to play through a VGA adaptor, which I've mentioned in other reviews - I'm surprised the game wasn't of a higher resolution considering it required the Expansion Pak, and so few N64 games are high enough for me to play without the deadening effect of the adaptor, more's the pity).
There were still the magical elements of storytelling, the beautiful and otherworldliness that 'Zelda' has done so well - I think specifically of whenever you interacted with the giants, or learned a new song, always the ever-present spirit of 'Zelda' lives on. Yet it was a game that required time and patience to learn the dynamics, it was different, but the same. I really like that games of this era, the latter part of the N64's generation, showed some development as if they were assuming the player had played the previous games. I think of the 'Banjo-Kazooie' games in particular, but these two 'Zelda' games had progression where you were already familiar with Z-targeting or auto-jumping and now you had further layers of nuance to learn. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have to learn everything in one go without the benefit of previous games to school you, but I still appreciate the greater complexity shown in games like this. And though there wasn't a lot of uniqueness beyond the vastly innovative game mechanics, there were some little touches that showed they'd put the effort in - the fact that Link cartwheels off of platforms more dramatically than previous more straightforward jumps is something that sticks in the mind, much like the development of smoother transition movements in 'WWF No Mercy' as opposed to 'WWF Wrestlemania.'
To sum up, this is one of the best games on the system, and one of the best in its series, but I will reiterate that I don't feel quite as fondly towards it as I do my previous 'Zelda' experiences. I don't feel the pull to return to this land and seek out every hole in the ground, and I never quite got a handle on what I was supposed to do for certain people, even when I knew when something was supposed to happen. In all, I only retrieved sixteen out of the twenty-four collectable masks, and so I don't feel I got all I should have out of the game, but neither do I want to go back and make it right. I would also say that there was a slightly nastier edge than most 'Zeldas,' with the mask changes into Deku Scrub, Goron or Zora a painful and nasty change - the malevolent yellow eyes staring down from the moon as it crashes towards the world is another example of grim horror. Obviously there's going to be creepiness and horrible creatures, but I felt there was an attempt to push things in a more unpleasant direction with this game. It's only an impression, I wouldn't mark it down for that, but nor do I feel as 'close' to the story or as connected to the world. It was a terrific game and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to play it again in my year of celebrating the twentieth anniversary of owning my N64, but it does bring home the fact that some games need to be given the space and regular time to keep in touch with the game world, and though all in the series can send a gloom your way when you do get stuck, this being no exception, the good outweighs the bad and this was a great follow-up to a game that couldn't be outclassed, and for being almost equal shows how amazing it was.
****
Getting two 'Zelda' games out in the space of one system's lifespan was quite an achievement, even more so when you consider the N64 paid host to the first 3D instalment in the series which brought all the innovation and vast game-playing experience to the player that you'd expect from Nintendo, and one reason why this particular console will always be my favourite. The means they used to smash out a sequel to one of the best games ever made, 'Ocarina of Time,' was to repurpose its character models, environments and all those innovations that had made the first game so special. In the hands of another games company this would have meant a 'lazy' sequel featuring more of the same, but probably a little less intuitive and certainly less impressive (think 'Banjo-Tooie' compared to 'Banjo-Kazooie' - and Rare were masters themselves!), but while keeping the style of 'Ocarina,' Nintendo made sure to deliver a sizeable dose of invention, which every game in the series had achieved, from dinky Game Boy Adventure 'Link's Awakening' to a sprawling two-worlds concept of 'A Link To The Past.' Okay, so maybe 'Zelda II' didn't have that, being a side-scrolling platformer, but I've never played it so I can't comment. And the less said about the farmed-out 'Oracle' games they allowed Capcom to bang out, the better, being weaker ripoffs of 'Awakening.'
In 2000, when 'Majora's Mask' was released, Nintendo were still setting the bar high for the series, before 'Wind Waker' and 'Twilight Princess' succumbed to the 'more of the same' mentality. Those later examples still innovated, but it was more to do with graphics than gameplay. 'Majora' was possibly the last truly great 'Zelda' (though I have yet to play the Switch release, 'Breath of The Wild,' which by the sounds of it is a return to greatness), and I appreciate it for further pushing the limits of the N64. I've always been somewhat dismayed how fast and easy hardware manufacturers have been in ditching a technology which is only a few years old to take shortcuts to new games by developing a whole new system, because I feel a console should have plenty of time to be pushed to its extreme, to see how far it can go. It's also very true that though graphics bring in the customers, the connoisseurs of gaming are more impressed by the freedoms a game enables you to experience, the depth of gameplay, not how many pixels or polygons it displays, or whether it has 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound. That's why 'Awakening' will always be my number one 'Zelda' game because nothing will ever supplant the fresh, new impressions I had for my debut in the genre.
'Majora' didn't try to outdo 'Ocarina' or set a new standard for graphical prowess (though it did utilise the extra power of the Expansion Pak which games were drawing on for their added size and complexity by this time - see 'Perfect Dark' and 'Donkey Kong' for other good examples), nor did it redefine the 'Zelda' mythos or confuse as later iterations did. Like 'Awakening' it was a clever insert into the Hyrulean world, by being a side quest off the beaten track. Indeed, Hyrule isn't in evidence as in both cases Link is whisked off to some other place of unknowns where there are no Princess Zeldas or Ganons. It feels like it's part of an ongoing saga, that this Link is the one and only Link whom you play as, rather than later games muddying the waters by saying that a boy is chosen to represent the Hero of Time and Zelda is just the latest in a line of royal Zeldas. I prefer things being connected, myself, and so I like that they found a way to give us a completely different world without it being unrelated. There are many familiar musical themes throughout, there are many familiar faces, too, but it doesn't matter so much because if you were attached to 'Ocarina' it's fun to see the same people in different roles (a bit like Marin and Tarin versus Malon and Talon in 'Awakening' and 'Ocarina'), and the same races used in new ways.
The big deal with 'Majora' was multifold: for a start, and for the main meal, we have this unique time system where days play out in 'real' time (not literally, but there's actual progression, and a beginning and end), then there are the lives of the characters, who, for the first time are no longer set to specific points that only change as you progress through the game, as in traditional adventures, they follow a pattern of life over the three day period. And for dessert we have the ability to transform Link into other races that can use specific abilities and create new puzzles to be solved. These were the key advances, and though you can see the origins in 'Ocarina,' they took things to a new level here: for example, 'Ocarina' gave us the ability to travel through time from young Link to older, but it was a set change, like the light and dark worlds of 'Link To The Past.' Here, it's a gradual change that creates all new depth to the town at the centre of it all. Changing into other characters (or otherwise using different characters to achieve goals), was something common to other genres - Mario was always changing into some new form for a specific ability, and Banjo and Kazooie were also known for their unique skill-sets, but Link's changes had been restricted to a jump in age.
The hunt for masks was another side to the game that had been seen in 'Ocarina' to some extent, but became an essential side quest that paid off through the game, but was also necessary to fully complete it at the end, too. This is where I should admit a note of negativity into proceedings, for as much as I enjoyed this game, and like 'Jet Force Gemini' last year, had some thoughts of awarding it the full five stars, I felt that it didn't quite make it. 'Awakening' and 'Ocarina' would unquestionably be given full marks, but as much as I enjoyed 'Majora' I didn't have the drive to get every mask and achieve full completion. Partly that's my age - back in the early 2000s when I first played it I got everything, but in the last ten years or more I've become much less intent on one hundred percent completions. Then there's my work hours - I like to play games at specific times of the week, and due to having shifts that kept coming into conflict with my gaming schedule I didn't play for periods, and that loses the thread of a game. I did occasionally get stuck and eventually solve the problem, but without a regular flow of play I did find I was even less motivated to track down all the bits and bobs, explore all the mysteries and completely crack the game. Another reason is that I'm not as attached to this particular 'Zelda,' whereas I played 'Awakening' a few times, and with 'Ocarina' I was exposed many times as I either played it, watched family members play it, or played parts of it for family members. Due to 'Majora' only having two save files this meant I never went back to it after the first time, hence my lack of connection.
That result was good for this playing experience as I remembered so little of it, so it was great fun revisiting all these places that I'd not seen since 2003 when I completed it the first time. But as much as it was nice to hear so many of the tunes from 'Ocarina' I did feel I could have done with more new music in the game, one area that would have helped to make it even more distinctive. I'm not saying it was lazy to reuse so much, but that would have been one reason they managed to release it only two years after 'Ocarina' when 'Zelda' games tend to take a good four years or so. As I write I have finished the final boss, defeating the mask itself, but because I didn't search out all the masks I won't completely 'finish' the game, and I'm okay with that. But the final confrontation was pretty easy, something I remembered from my original completion, especially compared with the tough sequence of events you have to go through to beat Gannondorf at the end of 'Ocarina'! While I'm pointing out flaws or personal dislikes, I also feel that perhaps the simplistic nature of the four points of the compass giving you one of each location with Clock Town at the centre wasn't as 'realistic,' if that's the appropriate term, as a more free world map. It works, it fits, but in my personal taste I was just never as enamoured with that design as I was blown away by the sprawling layout of 'Ocarina.' Again, these are probably points that made it easier to release during the N64's lifetime, so I'm not complaining.
Something I did like was the connections to previous 'Zeldas' - obviously the major and obvious ones are linking to 'Ocarina,' but there were some nice touches that recalled 'Awakening,' too. Most clearly was the Zora band whose hit was 'The Ballad of The Wind Fish,' but I also felt there was some evocation of that Game Boy game's musical style in the dungeons. And talking of dungeons, they were as good as ever, with the usual innovation oozing from every pore. My favourite was the watery world of the Zora level with all its gears and complexity. It wasn't nearly as brain-frying as the Water Temple in 'Ocarina' (thankfully!), but there was a lot of intelligence in the design. Stone Tower was probably my least favourite for its sandy-coloured bare walls and confusion over flipping the entire level, but I grant that it was very innovative. None of them were so huge and complex that you'd get lost for hours, one reason being that you didn't have hours to complete them. This element of time ticking down (you could only play through three days in the game world), added both frustration and tension to proceedings that wasn't found in previous 'Zelda' games. Until you realise you can slow the speed of time you do feel under a lot of pressure, and the first time I completed the swamp level I was desperately trying to beat the boss before time ran out, and then it did, annoying me that I had to replay the whole level again!
Replaying was something that was a big part of the game as to achieve certain things in certain areas you had to beat the boss, and once time was reset and you returned to the First Day you would lose any of that that had been accomplished and have to fight the boss again if need be. It was certainly a different experience fighting the big bosses again in a 'Zelda' game. In some ways it makes the encounter less special because in other instalments once you'd beaten them that was it, never to be seen again unless you played the whole game from the start. One redeeming aspect of the game was that though there were only four dungeons there were other quests and areas that were almost as involved (and replaying comes into it again as you search out the fairies in each dungeon - the only one I was foiled on was the snow temple), so it never felt like a much smaller game, and in fact it felt much bigger than, say, 'Wind Waker' because there was so much packed in. The environments remained pretty large and the graphical splendour was still very much in evidence (in spite of me having to play through a VGA adaptor, which I've mentioned in other reviews - I'm surprised the game wasn't of a higher resolution considering it required the Expansion Pak, and so few N64 games are high enough for me to play without the deadening effect of the adaptor, more's the pity).
There were still the magical elements of storytelling, the beautiful and otherworldliness that 'Zelda' has done so well - I think specifically of whenever you interacted with the giants, or learned a new song, always the ever-present spirit of 'Zelda' lives on. Yet it was a game that required time and patience to learn the dynamics, it was different, but the same. I really like that games of this era, the latter part of the N64's generation, showed some development as if they were assuming the player had played the previous games. I think of the 'Banjo-Kazooie' games in particular, but these two 'Zelda' games had progression where you were already familiar with Z-targeting or auto-jumping and now you had further layers of nuance to learn. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have to learn everything in one go without the benefit of previous games to school you, but I still appreciate the greater complexity shown in games like this. And though there wasn't a lot of uniqueness beyond the vastly innovative game mechanics, there were some little touches that showed they'd put the effort in - the fact that Link cartwheels off of platforms more dramatically than previous more straightforward jumps is something that sticks in the mind, much like the development of smoother transition movements in 'WWF No Mercy' as opposed to 'WWF Wrestlemania.'
To sum up, this is one of the best games on the system, and one of the best in its series, but I will reiterate that I don't feel quite as fondly towards it as I do my previous 'Zelda' experiences. I don't feel the pull to return to this land and seek out every hole in the ground, and I never quite got a handle on what I was supposed to do for certain people, even when I knew when something was supposed to happen. In all, I only retrieved sixteen out of the twenty-four collectable masks, and so I don't feel I got all I should have out of the game, but neither do I want to go back and make it right. I would also say that there was a slightly nastier edge than most 'Zeldas,' with the mask changes into Deku Scrub, Goron or Zora a painful and nasty change - the malevolent yellow eyes staring down from the moon as it crashes towards the world is another example of grim horror. Obviously there's going to be creepiness and horrible creatures, but I felt there was an attempt to push things in a more unpleasant direction with this game. It's only an impression, I wouldn't mark it down for that, but nor do I feel as 'close' to the story or as connected to the world. It was a terrific game and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to play it again in my year of celebrating the twentieth anniversary of owning my N64, but it does bring home the fact that some games need to be given the space and regular time to keep in touch with the game world, and though all in the series can send a gloom your way when you do get stuck, this being no exception, the good outweighs the bad and this was a great follow-up to a game that couldn't be outclassed, and for being almost equal shows how amazing it was.
****
Crush
DVD, Smallville S1 (Crush)
Another one of those few episodes from the first season that didn't stick in my head, I couldn't recall plot from title, and watching it explained why. And yet, though this is one of the weaker stories for a good chunk of its running time, it's definitely the best of the worst. All of the lesser episodes I've watched again on this run through have improved, probably because they're still so couched in, and tied to, what made the series work, and I've seen a lot worse 'Smallville' since then! 'Craving' remains the lowest point, 'Drone' I felt had improved, but this one is the biggest upward curve, and that's mainly down to the Lex storyline when his old nanny, or whatever term she was employed under, comes to see him. Right from the start there's something quite touching there, and in these troubled times it becomes a beautiful subplot to latch onto and enjoy. She left because Lionel forced her out, so Lex has always considered the only two women he ever loved to have died (his Mother), or betrayed him (Pamela), and that's because of his evil Father's influence. Inadvertently, Lionel does some good, informing his son that Pamela is actually dying of cancer which puts everything into perspective for the young entrepreneur, and she makes him see what kind of man he is by the fact that he came to see her in her hospital bed. I expected them to intercut Whitney's Dad's funeral with Pamela's, but they didn't do that. I doubt she'll reappear, but it was enough that he came to her and gave her what she needed: acceptance and forgiveness and to see he'd turned out pretty well.
It's funny, because although we've seen little spurts of badness in Lex over the course of this first season, his obsessiveness over the accident Clark saved his life from, lying to Clark, how he's treated some people, we've also seen just as much, if not more, of the good nature within him that exists despite his Father: the desire to help, to advise his friends, to contribute to the community. It's a shame they had to ruin the character (certainly from Season 3 onward), by making him go insane or doing various things to him to force him down this criminal path when really he could have been turned to the good, just like Darth Vader did at the end. It's a tragedy of the series that they gave in to the mythology and chose to make him evil because he's so much more interesting as this positive force, especially at this time when he has the capacity to go both ways and we're allowed to hope that he makes the right choices, because when he does it's rewarding. Right choices aren't something the rest of the episode has in spades as it sets the tone for Season 2 and beyond, all that 'love triangle' nonsense between Clark, Lana and Chloe which is exactly the kind of thing I was wary the series would be about when I heard of a teenaged pre-Superman series. This is what I imagined and it really does drag the episode down so that if it wasn't for Lex' story and the great end to Chloe's, I'd be slating the episode, for sure.
For much of the episode I was thinking negatively about it. From the nasty opening onwards when some conman doctor type who saved freak-of-the-week Justin's life, is murdered by him for not saving his hands and the drawing ability that defined him. It's dark and ugly, not just because of the lighting, and while sometimes there's a fascination with the horror they pull off on this series, in this case it was just unpleasant with nothing redeeming or likeable about this guy. He doesn't even have anything to be ungrateful for since though he lost the skilled use of his hands, somehow he gained telekinesis powers and is able to move anything from the tiniest touch of pencil lead on paper to a grown man, so what did he have to be angry about? He actually does far greater artwork with his powers than the Torch cartoons he'd been known for before, so I suppose he must be just another mentally unstable psycho. His power doesn't even appear to come from the meteors as there's no reference to any connection, which they usually do. And it's yet another bad guy for Chloe to fall for in her spiting of Clark's lack of finesse. It's interesting to see Clark actually talk back to her a bit instead of just taking whatever she throws at him, so he has become a little defensive of late, though that may be because he has some guilt at how much time he's been spending with Lana, who is Whitney's girl in practice, though in spirit things have flipped around.
All this high school lovey-doveyness isn't what I signed up for, and thankfully it becomes more about Clark having to protect Chloe from the latest maniac. Which is where it gets good on all fronts: Chloe realises Clark wasn't being overprotective, Justin realises she realises, and Clark realises Justin probably realises Chloe realises and guess what? She's in danger! Not sure why they chose to set the showdown in the Kent barn, surely it would make more sense for Chloe to go into the house - Mr. Kent would know what to do, but is sadly absent except for one scene at the funeral. In fact it's one shot, and that's all John Schneider gets to do in the episode because of all the teenage politics going on. The scene where Chloe gets whirled around the barn was very good and it really looks like she's in trouble. Even the CGI chainsaw was much better than the earlier use of Justin's levitating stationery which looked slightly fake. Clark gets to rush in and take the saw to the body (surprising it didn't cut his clothes to shreds even if his skin could withstand the impact so easily), and defeat Justin. Maybe the boy told people about how Clark stopped him but wasn't believed, but equally he wasn't held accountable for murder because the police didn't know what to charge him with. Did they not know he had these powers, and if they did, why not murder? A bit of a cop-out from the cops, I think!
One thing that did get my goat was the unceremonious offing of Principal Kwan. Not that he was some great character, but he was a familiar face that added continuity to school life and it simply wasn't necessary to kill him off. That's something they repeatedly did in the second season, and it played a large part in lessening the feeling of a town community of recognisable people and lowering the reality quotient that had served to make the more outlandish and weird happenings seem more grounded, or at least gave them contrast. He was killed in the same way the scarecrow freak died in the pilot, rammed by a car, so that was also a bit of repetition that made the episode look cheaper. So it was a surprise to me that I came to like the episode by the end. The Lex storyline helped, of course, but it was how they ended Lex and Chloe's differences, the fight, and the Whitney family funeral that was so well directed and shot. That Clark couldn't decide between Lana and Chloe wasn't one of the best ideas they had, but I suppose they were writing for a teen audience (yes, even I was still a teenager when it started!). One little touch I did like was how Pete's enjoyment of being Clark's campaign manager in 'Drone' has led to his interest continuing with a summer internship at the mayor's office helping with the reelection campaign. And there's also the mention of Sir Harry and Cadmus Labs that brings even more continuity into focus. It also sums up the season when Clark's friendships with Lana and Lex are mentioned as being the most important to him, since it's true that both Pete and Chloe have been too often sidelined - in fact the trio didn't do as much investigating together as I'd thought.
***
Another one of those few episodes from the first season that didn't stick in my head, I couldn't recall plot from title, and watching it explained why. And yet, though this is one of the weaker stories for a good chunk of its running time, it's definitely the best of the worst. All of the lesser episodes I've watched again on this run through have improved, probably because they're still so couched in, and tied to, what made the series work, and I've seen a lot worse 'Smallville' since then! 'Craving' remains the lowest point, 'Drone' I felt had improved, but this one is the biggest upward curve, and that's mainly down to the Lex storyline when his old nanny, or whatever term she was employed under, comes to see him. Right from the start there's something quite touching there, and in these troubled times it becomes a beautiful subplot to latch onto and enjoy. She left because Lionel forced her out, so Lex has always considered the only two women he ever loved to have died (his Mother), or betrayed him (Pamela), and that's because of his evil Father's influence. Inadvertently, Lionel does some good, informing his son that Pamela is actually dying of cancer which puts everything into perspective for the young entrepreneur, and she makes him see what kind of man he is by the fact that he came to see her in her hospital bed. I expected them to intercut Whitney's Dad's funeral with Pamela's, but they didn't do that. I doubt she'll reappear, but it was enough that he came to her and gave her what she needed: acceptance and forgiveness and to see he'd turned out pretty well.
It's funny, because although we've seen little spurts of badness in Lex over the course of this first season, his obsessiveness over the accident Clark saved his life from, lying to Clark, how he's treated some people, we've also seen just as much, if not more, of the good nature within him that exists despite his Father: the desire to help, to advise his friends, to contribute to the community. It's a shame they had to ruin the character (certainly from Season 3 onward), by making him go insane or doing various things to him to force him down this criminal path when really he could have been turned to the good, just like Darth Vader did at the end. It's a tragedy of the series that they gave in to the mythology and chose to make him evil because he's so much more interesting as this positive force, especially at this time when he has the capacity to go both ways and we're allowed to hope that he makes the right choices, because when he does it's rewarding. Right choices aren't something the rest of the episode has in spades as it sets the tone for Season 2 and beyond, all that 'love triangle' nonsense between Clark, Lana and Chloe which is exactly the kind of thing I was wary the series would be about when I heard of a teenaged pre-Superman series. This is what I imagined and it really does drag the episode down so that if it wasn't for Lex' story and the great end to Chloe's, I'd be slating the episode, for sure.
For much of the episode I was thinking negatively about it. From the nasty opening onwards when some conman doctor type who saved freak-of-the-week Justin's life, is murdered by him for not saving his hands and the drawing ability that defined him. It's dark and ugly, not just because of the lighting, and while sometimes there's a fascination with the horror they pull off on this series, in this case it was just unpleasant with nothing redeeming or likeable about this guy. He doesn't even have anything to be ungrateful for since though he lost the skilled use of his hands, somehow he gained telekinesis powers and is able to move anything from the tiniest touch of pencil lead on paper to a grown man, so what did he have to be angry about? He actually does far greater artwork with his powers than the Torch cartoons he'd been known for before, so I suppose he must be just another mentally unstable psycho. His power doesn't even appear to come from the meteors as there's no reference to any connection, which they usually do. And it's yet another bad guy for Chloe to fall for in her spiting of Clark's lack of finesse. It's interesting to see Clark actually talk back to her a bit instead of just taking whatever she throws at him, so he has become a little defensive of late, though that may be because he has some guilt at how much time he's been spending with Lana, who is Whitney's girl in practice, though in spirit things have flipped around.
All this high school lovey-doveyness isn't what I signed up for, and thankfully it becomes more about Clark having to protect Chloe from the latest maniac. Which is where it gets good on all fronts: Chloe realises Clark wasn't being overprotective, Justin realises she realises, and Clark realises Justin probably realises Chloe realises and guess what? She's in danger! Not sure why they chose to set the showdown in the Kent barn, surely it would make more sense for Chloe to go into the house - Mr. Kent would know what to do, but is sadly absent except for one scene at the funeral. In fact it's one shot, and that's all John Schneider gets to do in the episode because of all the teenage politics going on. The scene where Chloe gets whirled around the barn was very good and it really looks like she's in trouble. Even the CGI chainsaw was much better than the earlier use of Justin's levitating stationery which looked slightly fake. Clark gets to rush in and take the saw to the body (surprising it didn't cut his clothes to shreds even if his skin could withstand the impact so easily), and defeat Justin. Maybe the boy told people about how Clark stopped him but wasn't believed, but equally he wasn't held accountable for murder because the police didn't know what to charge him with. Did they not know he had these powers, and if they did, why not murder? A bit of a cop-out from the cops, I think!
One thing that did get my goat was the unceremonious offing of Principal Kwan. Not that he was some great character, but he was a familiar face that added continuity to school life and it simply wasn't necessary to kill him off. That's something they repeatedly did in the second season, and it played a large part in lessening the feeling of a town community of recognisable people and lowering the reality quotient that had served to make the more outlandish and weird happenings seem more grounded, or at least gave them contrast. He was killed in the same way the scarecrow freak died in the pilot, rammed by a car, so that was also a bit of repetition that made the episode look cheaper. So it was a surprise to me that I came to like the episode by the end. The Lex storyline helped, of course, but it was how they ended Lex and Chloe's differences, the fight, and the Whitney family funeral that was so well directed and shot. That Clark couldn't decide between Lana and Chloe wasn't one of the best ideas they had, but I suppose they were writing for a teen audience (yes, even I was still a teenager when it started!). One little touch I did like was how Pete's enjoyment of being Clark's campaign manager in 'Drone' has led to his interest continuing with a summer internship at the mayor's office helping with the reelection campaign. And there's also the mention of Sir Harry and Cadmus Labs that brings even more continuity into focus. It also sums up the season when Clark's friendships with Lana and Lex are mentioned as being the most important to him, since it's true that both Pete and Chloe have been too often sidelined - in fact the trio didn't do as much investigating together as I'd thought.
***
Strange New World (2)
DVD, Enterprise S1 (Strange New World) (2)
Apart from the pilot, this was the first episode that really made me wonder if 'Enterprise' could turn out to be the best Trek series ever made - going by the pattern of previous series' the first season tended to start off slow (usually apart from the pilot), with some high points along the way, and you didn't get consistency in writing the characters or the unique setting of each series until, traditionally, the third season when everything clicked. Of course that's a generalisation, but it was far truer than the mistaken belief in 'even-numbered films good, odd-numbered not so good,' that only held true for the first two Trek films (and in any case became weirdly inverted by the time of 'Nemesis' and the succeeding films made this century!). Since these first three (or four, if you count 'Broken Bow' as two 'instalments'), were so slickly produced, the characters popped off the screen immediately and the whole premise was ripe for a new style of Trek, if the rule held true then what we'd be getting by Season 3 would top even the best stuff of the great 'DS9,' or so went my thinking. But not everything happens in the same way, patterns aren't always adhered to, and so it was with 'Enterprise,' the drive and verve displayed here so early, soon to drop off into more typical Season 1 fare. But I'll never forget the excitement at seeing these first several episodes, and this one in particular (along with the pilot), remains one of my favourites of the whole series. That's quite sad in a way because it means they so rarely achieved the heights seen here in other seasons, but having seen 'Discovery' I'm more grateful for any episodes I enjoy now!
The signs of cracks in the overarching premise were visible even in this great story, but because everything worked so well, they aren't apparent unless you've seen what the series became. I'm always on the lookout for moments which serve to weaken Archer in comparison to other Captains, not because I'm trying to justify a point, just that my impression was formed somewhere, and so far he's come across very well. I'm also too aware of the lack of focus and intent in the general premise of going where no man has gone before if you don't have focus and intent in science fiction ideas to prop you up. Both of these flaws can be seen subtly woven through this story, but, for example, the fact that they're just wandering through space isn't a problem when we get to see them exploring their first M-Class planet. For a start it's a beautiful way to introduce it, seen literally through the eyes of the lower decks who aren't privy to what's going on, the first they know of it is to witness this glorious Earth-like planet appearing at the portholes in the Mess. We're introduced to a couple of guest characters, one of whom would be almost dead before the end of the episode, the other of whom would make a couple more appearances, becoming one of the very few recurring characters on the series, sadly cut short by the real world when she died young. Kellie Waymire (previously in 'Muse' on 'Voyager'), had she lived much longer into the span of 'Enterprise' would have made a wonderful addition, although I think she stepped back because she had a bigger role on another TV series, so even if her life hadn't been cut short she may not have returned to 'Enterprise' much.
I wish she had been made a proper recurring character in the vein of Garak, Rom or any number of 'minor' roles on 'DS9,' because she exudes the wonder of being among the first humans to explore deep space without going all gooey-eyed and stereotypical. She's a professional, she's there for a reason (bugs, basically!), and this is the reason she's selected for the mission (I still didn't catch them calling it a Landing Party), making it feel very Trekky, just as 'TOS' would often feature a specialist in a given field. I don't want to keep comparing it to 'DSC' and ripping into that, it's too easy a target, but this is a logical (as you'd expect when the mission is headed up by a Vulcan), procedure and protocol is being followed like a real military or scientific expedition, not a group of people forced together because they're the stars of the show. I very much like that aspect of the story, that it isn't the whole main cast down there together - you don't have Reed, who would've been the Eeyore, pouring caution like cold water on everyone else's ardour for exploration and fun. Nor do they have Phlox who would have had his medical kit with him and been more experienced in spotting the symptoms, nor Hoshi, who could easily have been placed in Cutler's position had there been any reason for it. That would have thrown up all kinds of problems in itself, though, as she'd have been able to understand T'Pol's Vulcan ramblings and wouldn't have been there to act as interpreter so Archer could instruct T'Pol privately on what to do.
Everyone is in the right place for drama - you have Mayweather The Underused (as he'd later become known), here to exert some experience of being out in space and giving them all a good ghost story round the campfire (he also gets the best line in the whole thing: "Are we allowed to squash alien lifeforms?" when a scorpion-like creature causes chaos in his and Trip's tent, hilariously!). Trip just wants to have a bit of fun, and although I would categorise the episode as being largely a T'Pol episode, revolves around Connor Trinneer's magnetic performance. If he hadn't been able to carry off a believable descent (or should that be ascent towards the heights of craziness), into paranoia, the episode wouldn't have worked nearly as well. But as in all the Trek casts you have some actors that are superior, and he was one of those on this series. He's a boisterous type anyway, despite being laid back in his manner, and it's really excellently done the way the tension rises until he's blasting Phase Pistol beams past T'Pol's ear, unhinged by fear and the hallucinatory effects of the pollen. Never sniff flowers on an alien world! To me, this episode is in the same area as 'This Side of Paradise' (for its mood-altering plants), and 'The Galileo Seven' (for its Vulcan in charge of a human team that take exception to unemotional reactions), both from 'TOS.' If you're going to borrow, borrow from the best, and these were both good episodes from the original's first season.
One thing I love about this episode is how Vulcan T'Pol is. Yes, she is still somewhat condescending and weary of human eccentricities, but she shows the curiosity she said her own people didn't share in the previous episode. Perhaps she even enjoyed the fact that Archer and crew waived all the rigorous preparation and cautious mapping out of all procedures that would have meant a wait of several days before even landing on the planet? She doesn't show it in the episode, but I have a sneaking suspicion she approved of the lack of delay so she was able to get to the heart of scientific observations, even though she ultimately discovers there's nothing of real value to be gained there - because it all happened so quickly, less time was wasted, so that's a good thing. Not when it comes at the price of a crewman, however, and that is the price they pay for their gung-ho attitude. Archer does show some care when approaching the planet that there's no obvious claim upon it. This makes him seem prudent, like Picard, but at the same time is one of the instances of maybe suggesting an overcautiousness that could be viewed as weak, or even timid. It makes sense, but at the same time you wonder if other Captains would have just made a cursory sweep and decided to risk it. That's it, Archer doesn't come across as much of a risk-taker, but equally he seems rather unconcerned over sticking to protocol and is much more relaxed about some things.
Another moment of potential weakness is when he pilots the Shuttlepod down during the storm. That in itself was typically heroic Starfleet behaviour, though maybe not so prudent considering his First Officer and Chief Engineer were both down there, and if the Captain was lost it could lead to losing the top three members of the crew! Obviously things in this time are supposed to be more slapdash, as Kirk was beaming down to every dangerous situation a century later, but in this case maybe Archer should have stayed managerial, delegating and relying on his crew. That he has to turn back is also a minus point against him: Reed says they can't land safely in that wind with a thruster out, after grazing a rocky outcrop, but I can't help thinking that other Captains (even the feisty Captain Hernandez of the NX-02 Columbia to come in the near future), would have somehow managed it, so it doesn't look good for Archer's hero credibility. Mind you, you can't be complaining that the heroes are too fallible in this series, while equally decrying the conversion into superheroes ordinary mortals go through in 'DSC'! I'd much rather see people fail and learn than use some fantastical technology or unknown inner ability to solve every problem, so it's not that I'm coming down hard on Archer, it's just that these traits were the early stages of a pattern that built up which didn't favour him very much overall.
T'Pol, on the other split-fingered hand, is at her most Vulcan, and for me that's a big positive mark. There's even a reason when she does respond heatedly to Trip's unreasonable behaviour, as she's being affected by the hallucinogenic, too. But again, she doesn't succumb as much because Vulcans are physically superior (unless they come up against something specifically that makes them more vulnerable, such as in 'Impulse,' the episode about the ship of zombie Vulcans), so she is their saviour, able to keep things together amidst the rising suspicions of her colleagues and subordinates. She doesn't know them well enough, nor do they know and trust her enough for this to seem strange, and that's why this episode needed to happen so early in the run while they (and we, the audience), don't know what her motives are. Is she actually a spy for Vulcan High Command? Does she really want to be on the ship with them? Or does she barely tolerate them? I'm not entirely sure why T'Pol did choose to stay aboard the NX-01. We know she has connections to humanity (her Great-Grandmother was one of the party who made actual first contact with humans in 1957, and she knows about it), and we know she develops a predilection for her human crew, and Archer in particular (and later Trip, even more in particular!), but at this stage she's an unknown quantity.
This is where I see parallels to 'The Galileo Seven' in which Spock had to deal with an unruly, insubordinate lot in a similar situation, stranded on an alien world in difficult circumstances. Throwing someone into challenging times is all part of our own curiosity to see how they'll react in that crucible, and T'Pol, despite her lack of experience with humans, uses her logic and restraint well. She acts quickly to take them to the caves when the storm becomes more violent and puts up with the human customs like the stories round the campfire, even if she does inject reality, further distancing them socially. She also notes that she can survive without water for several days, further evidence that the Vulcan body is more resilient than the human - any time they remind us why Vulcans are so cool it makes my day! Although she is affected she retains enough self control to be able to report accurately to her Captain when he calls, and here's where the episode really takes off. If this episode had been done on 'DS9' or 'Voyager' it could have been just as good with the superb characters on those series', even though it wouldn't have looked quite as spectacular as it did here with the hurricane effects of leaves and detritus whirling around in the storm or the atmospheric lighting of the cave, all done in widescreen vista. 'Enterprise' has all the bells and whistles of a higher budget, benefiting from the advances made and lessons learned through former Treks, and put to expert use here, but importantly, it also features some of the best character work of the series!
Forget Archer not looking like a strong Captain, he does the Kirk tactic of talking someone down, and he does it brilliantly! It's not a machine he has to convince of its imperfections, it's his own friend Trip. Again, he's still feeling out his command style at this stage, he doesn't have all the answers, but the key thing is he doesn't show hesitation or uncertainty (like Captain Harriman of the Enterprise-B), he uses his experience of the training for the mission and his personal history with Trip. I love his reference to a similar moment on Titan when Trip was affected and tried to remove his space helmet which would have killed him, I only wish we got to see that and other bumps along the road that would have given these characters the depth they eventually show to be lacking as the series progressed. That's the thing - in some ways the series did the opposite of what was expected, starting probably stronger than anything before (and certainly since!), but then becoming slightly apathetic, before improving in its final season when most Treks tended to drop in quality storytelling, to some degree or another, in their last seasons. But it was simply great to hear about this event that happened in their training and the imagination fills in the visuals for you so it wasn't like they needed to cut to a flashback. The way everything comes together with Hoshi's language expertise, T'Pol's compliance, and then finally her taking Trip out, was all superbly executed and really shows this crew in the best light as a team.
The music was also terrific, I don't know what it was, it's not a strong theme or anything, but it's just this ominous pumping in the background that upholds the tension so well. I'd like to listen to it separated from the episode just to get a sense of what it was doing, because during the episode it sucks you in and the story's tension swallows you up, and yet I can't remember the actual music! People have complained about the 'wallpaper' style of music on Berman-era Trek, but to me this just has that exact effect I just mentioned, swallowing you into the story, enveloping you, pulling you into moods and impressions. 'Enterprise' was capable of different styles, and they often had militaristic drumbeat action themes going on, but here the creepy atmosphere is perfectly enhanced. Things at the back of dark caves are always unsettling, and when we start to see actual rock monsters… they do hold up (William Shatner's gnashing his teeth, wishing he'd had this tech for 'Star Trek V'!). Maybe they could have been a little more subtle, like the worm creature Travis sees 'swimming' through the rock ceiling, or the face projecting from the crag (was it me or did it look a bit like Jaylah from 'Star Trek Beyond'?). I do approve the visions becoming more pronounced as the infection becomes more potent. So Cutler sees T'Pol talking to some aliens and Trip sees full-sized rock people materialise behind T'Pol. Maybe not seeing anything would have been a better way to go, but although the effects in the episode aren't perfect by today's standard (the shot of Novakovich standing on a flowery hillside was very obviously fake!), they work fine and enhance the story adequately.
If we hadn't got to see anything they saw, we wouldn't have been able to start the episode so effectively, as I love those people wandering in the bushes who appear to be in Starfleet uniform. Because they seem real, everything else is given the ring of truth and it's somehow more weird that Travis has seen humans out there that he doesn't know, than if it had been unknown aliens. The great thing about the episode is that it mixes wonder, humour and fear into an irresistible concoction that sells the inexperienced, yet optimistic excitement of this fresh-faced crew. In contrast, Dr. Phlox gets to display his first sign of gravity and deep regret when he has to watch a patient die because he didn't think to run a test that would have saved his life. In the first couple of episodes he comes across as this hopelessly happy chap, but here we see more of the serious later version, another side to his personality that shows he isn't just a gurning optimist that sees everything and everyone as a fascinating object of interest. That only the second man ever to beam up in the Transporter is infused with the leaves and twigs of the storm was a brilliant idea and probably why the device remained largely unused - so far, half the people who used it had died, and even though it wasn't the fault of the Transporter, human nature would overlook that fact. It was a terrific makeup design, the like of which they'd never attempted on the series before because the Transporter was always so reliable, except when it was going wrong, and even then it tended to go wrong nice and cleanly (tell that to Sonak in 'The Motion Picture'…).
The grim nature of death didn't preclude the episode from having some fun, and it really is fun - you get to see Porthos frolicking over the grass in the sun, just seeing a Shuttlepod fly down and land is beautiful, and there were a number of touches and references to other Trek. The most on the nose one was Archer making up the idea that the aliens on the planet were a silicon-based life form. Although he was just making it up on the spur of the moment we'd actually get to see one such being in 'TOS' ('The Devil in The Dark' - another creepy one set in dark caves, so a very fitting in-joke!). Travis speaks of a Y-500 freighter in his ghost story, which could be an offshoot of the old DY ships such as the one Khan was aboard. There's also T'Pol's first use of a Vulcan nerve pinch when she goes to inoculate the feverish Travis and he feebly tries to resist - amusingly he wakes up thinking he strained his neck! Again, I like the way they did this, they didn't make a big fuss about it, kept quiet and secret, the way Vulcans have always been portrayed, and while T'Pol would go on to do it a number of times across the series (although I can't recall any specific examples, so maybe they kept it to a wise minimum?), they introduced it subtly and without fanfare. The other big thing is mention of 'Minshara'-Class worlds (suitable for most humanoids), from which we get 'M-Class' - a lovely bit of retconning that this Vulcan word is where the famous classification originates. It would be interesting to know if all the alphabetical classes of planets are from Vulcan words - it makes sense, since they would have discovered all this long before Starfleet ventured out, but as we learn, the reason humans overtake them as the main founders of the Federation is because they are more reckless and want to get their hands dirty, and allying that with diplomatic skills to be all things to all races is what makes 'us' uniquely qualified to bring them together.
The fact that protocols are mentioned and observed, and sometimes ignored is much more realistic than how Trek portrays such things now, sadly (going by the first two seasons of 'DSC,' anyway), in an age where people are all about 'being themselves' and less about conforming to the rulebook. This is one reason why 'Enterprise' still felt like Trek to such a great degree, they were different, but not unrecognisably so. They had the potential to show the first alien encounter, the first planet, and many other firsts, but that wasn't the only thing it was about. I was curious, when Archer admits to a mildly concerned T'Pol that they'd lost track of time when the rendezvous isn't reached, how they do keep track - we don't see wristwatches, so presumably they either have a time readout on their Tricorders or Communicators, as I can't imagine they'd be checking in with the ship every few minutes to find out! I'd also forgotten they still wore the 'NX-01' baseball caps after the pilot. It makes things seem more informal, but I quite liked them. I've complained before about how 'DSC' has so many different uniforms and accoutrements, but 'Enterprise' also modelled quite a few uniform variations (cold, hot, EVA, caps, jackets, etc), the difference being that they all seemed functional and actually the costume design was among the series' best points because they were created by people fully versed in Trek history and knew what they were doing! Even the lens flares are good in this, created as they were from the beams of torches to great atmospheric effect!
It can sometimes be a bad idea to show people acting out of character so early in a series ('TNG' did it in 'The Naked Now,' and we didn't know them, 'DS9' did it towards the end of its first season in 'Dramatis Personae,' and we knew them quite well, but it was still a little strange), but the cast of this one were so well defined in the first couple of episodes, and it's really only Trip that is an extreme version of himself that it's not a problem. And the characters really are well observed, everyone having their essential job to do and fitting neatly into the whole. They're so well defined that we can almost chuckle at seeing Reed being overcautious again because he repeatedly demonstrated this attribute from the moment we first met him, while Travis is much more happy-go-lucky and takes everything in his positive stride. Trip would usually be that way, and is to begin with, which makes his turn into a Dr. Simon Van Gelder or Dr. Soran ("Let me go back!"), so much more pronounced and effective. What I love most is how T'Pol acts, most perfectly shown in her treatment of the team when the required vaccine is finally beamed down. I didn't know if she'd do this, but I was looking out for it, and she did: inoculated everyone first before she took care of herself. It could be argued that it made more sense for her to take care of herself first to ensure she could take care of the others, but it shows a much more responsible and heroic course to take by putting herself last, and it is these values that always stand out in Trek - thoughtfulness and care.
There was a message tacked on at the end with Trip remembering what his old Vulcan teacher once said about challenging your preconceptions, which seemed to be thrown in there like the end of a 1980s cartoon, not nearly as effective as what I took from the episode myself. And I thought I spotted a mistake when Archer says they've been out in space for three weeks (corresponding with the 'three' episodes we've watched), and later Trip says something about their bodies being found six weeks into the mission, but that could have meant they weren't discovered for another three weeks rather than being confused about the period they'd been out, and anyway he was irrational most of the time, so you can put it down to mental block otherwise. The important thing is they were able to cap off the episode beautifully, perfectly evoking the sunlight of a new day after a fitful dark night when the light pours into the cave mouth and Cutler walks out into the bright morning to see a Shuttlepod come gliding down through the sky, then we see from a high vantage point the degraggled (I meant to put bedraggled, but it made me smile so I'm leaving it in!), group walking towards it with the lovely music and it's just a high point of relief and satisfaction to end on. I wish there were more episodes that were as powerfully charged and brilliantly produced as this one and it's a shame so many high points came so early in the series, but that's why I'm still writing these reviews - the only ones I hadn't written for were the first two, but then they made me want to go back and do deeper examinations since my first run had been brief and simple, so that shows the quality for sure.
****
Apart from the pilot, this was the first episode that really made me wonder if 'Enterprise' could turn out to be the best Trek series ever made - going by the pattern of previous series' the first season tended to start off slow (usually apart from the pilot), with some high points along the way, and you didn't get consistency in writing the characters or the unique setting of each series until, traditionally, the third season when everything clicked. Of course that's a generalisation, but it was far truer than the mistaken belief in 'even-numbered films good, odd-numbered not so good,' that only held true for the first two Trek films (and in any case became weirdly inverted by the time of 'Nemesis' and the succeeding films made this century!). Since these first three (or four, if you count 'Broken Bow' as two 'instalments'), were so slickly produced, the characters popped off the screen immediately and the whole premise was ripe for a new style of Trek, if the rule held true then what we'd be getting by Season 3 would top even the best stuff of the great 'DS9,' or so went my thinking. But not everything happens in the same way, patterns aren't always adhered to, and so it was with 'Enterprise,' the drive and verve displayed here so early, soon to drop off into more typical Season 1 fare. But I'll never forget the excitement at seeing these first several episodes, and this one in particular (along with the pilot), remains one of my favourites of the whole series. That's quite sad in a way because it means they so rarely achieved the heights seen here in other seasons, but having seen 'Discovery' I'm more grateful for any episodes I enjoy now!
The signs of cracks in the overarching premise were visible even in this great story, but because everything worked so well, they aren't apparent unless you've seen what the series became. I'm always on the lookout for moments which serve to weaken Archer in comparison to other Captains, not because I'm trying to justify a point, just that my impression was formed somewhere, and so far he's come across very well. I'm also too aware of the lack of focus and intent in the general premise of going where no man has gone before if you don't have focus and intent in science fiction ideas to prop you up. Both of these flaws can be seen subtly woven through this story, but, for example, the fact that they're just wandering through space isn't a problem when we get to see them exploring their first M-Class planet. For a start it's a beautiful way to introduce it, seen literally through the eyes of the lower decks who aren't privy to what's going on, the first they know of it is to witness this glorious Earth-like planet appearing at the portholes in the Mess. We're introduced to a couple of guest characters, one of whom would be almost dead before the end of the episode, the other of whom would make a couple more appearances, becoming one of the very few recurring characters on the series, sadly cut short by the real world when she died young. Kellie Waymire (previously in 'Muse' on 'Voyager'), had she lived much longer into the span of 'Enterprise' would have made a wonderful addition, although I think she stepped back because she had a bigger role on another TV series, so even if her life hadn't been cut short she may not have returned to 'Enterprise' much.
I wish she had been made a proper recurring character in the vein of Garak, Rom or any number of 'minor' roles on 'DS9,' because she exudes the wonder of being among the first humans to explore deep space without going all gooey-eyed and stereotypical. She's a professional, she's there for a reason (bugs, basically!), and this is the reason she's selected for the mission (I still didn't catch them calling it a Landing Party), making it feel very Trekky, just as 'TOS' would often feature a specialist in a given field. I don't want to keep comparing it to 'DSC' and ripping into that, it's too easy a target, but this is a logical (as you'd expect when the mission is headed up by a Vulcan), procedure and protocol is being followed like a real military or scientific expedition, not a group of people forced together because they're the stars of the show. I very much like that aspect of the story, that it isn't the whole main cast down there together - you don't have Reed, who would've been the Eeyore, pouring caution like cold water on everyone else's ardour for exploration and fun. Nor do they have Phlox who would have had his medical kit with him and been more experienced in spotting the symptoms, nor Hoshi, who could easily have been placed in Cutler's position had there been any reason for it. That would have thrown up all kinds of problems in itself, though, as she'd have been able to understand T'Pol's Vulcan ramblings and wouldn't have been there to act as interpreter so Archer could instruct T'Pol privately on what to do.
Everyone is in the right place for drama - you have Mayweather The Underused (as he'd later become known), here to exert some experience of being out in space and giving them all a good ghost story round the campfire (he also gets the best line in the whole thing: "Are we allowed to squash alien lifeforms?" when a scorpion-like creature causes chaos in his and Trip's tent, hilariously!). Trip just wants to have a bit of fun, and although I would categorise the episode as being largely a T'Pol episode, revolves around Connor Trinneer's magnetic performance. If he hadn't been able to carry off a believable descent (or should that be ascent towards the heights of craziness), into paranoia, the episode wouldn't have worked nearly as well. But as in all the Trek casts you have some actors that are superior, and he was one of those on this series. He's a boisterous type anyway, despite being laid back in his manner, and it's really excellently done the way the tension rises until he's blasting Phase Pistol beams past T'Pol's ear, unhinged by fear and the hallucinatory effects of the pollen. Never sniff flowers on an alien world! To me, this episode is in the same area as 'This Side of Paradise' (for its mood-altering plants), and 'The Galileo Seven' (for its Vulcan in charge of a human team that take exception to unemotional reactions), both from 'TOS.' If you're going to borrow, borrow from the best, and these were both good episodes from the original's first season.
One thing I love about this episode is how Vulcan T'Pol is. Yes, she is still somewhat condescending and weary of human eccentricities, but she shows the curiosity she said her own people didn't share in the previous episode. Perhaps she even enjoyed the fact that Archer and crew waived all the rigorous preparation and cautious mapping out of all procedures that would have meant a wait of several days before even landing on the planet? She doesn't show it in the episode, but I have a sneaking suspicion she approved of the lack of delay so she was able to get to the heart of scientific observations, even though she ultimately discovers there's nothing of real value to be gained there - because it all happened so quickly, less time was wasted, so that's a good thing. Not when it comes at the price of a crewman, however, and that is the price they pay for their gung-ho attitude. Archer does show some care when approaching the planet that there's no obvious claim upon it. This makes him seem prudent, like Picard, but at the same time is one of the instances of maybe suggesting an overcautiousness that could be viewed as weak, or even timid. It makes sense, but at the same time you wonder if other Captains would have just made a cursory sweep and decided to risk it. That's it, Archer doesn't come across as much of a risk-taker, but equally he seems rather unconcerned over sticking to protocol and is much more relaxed about some things.
Another moment of potential weakness is when he pilots the Shuttlepod down during the storm. That in itself was typically heroic Starfleet behaviour, though maybe not so prudent considering his First Officer and Chief Engineer were both down there, and if the Captain was lost it could lead to losing the top three members of the crew! Obviously things in this time are supposed to be more slapdash, as Kirk was beaming down to every dangerous situation a century later, but in this case maybe Archer should have stayed managerial, delegating and relying on his crew. That he has to turn back is also a minus point against him: Reed says they can't land safely in that wind with a thruster out, after grazing a rocky outcrop, but I can't help thinking that other Captains (even the feisty Captain Hernandez of the NX-02 Columbia to come in the near future), would have somehow managed it, so it doesn't look good for Archer's hero credibility. Mind you, you can't be complaining that the heroes are too fallible in this series, while equally decrying the conversion into superheroes ordinary mortals go through in 'DSC'! I'd much rather see people fail and learn than use some fantastical technology or unknown inner ability to solve every problem, so it's not that I'm coming down hard on Archer, it's just that these traits were the early stages of a pattern that built up which didn't favour him very much overall.
T'Pol, on the other split-fingered hand, is at her most Vulcan, and for me that's a big positive mark. There's even a reason when she does respond heatedly to Trip's unreasonable behaviour, as she's being affected by the hallucinogenic, too. But again, she doesn't succumb as much because Vulcans are physically superior (unless they come up against something specifically that makes them more vulnerable, such as in 'Impulse,' the episode about the ship of zombie Vulcans), so she is their saviour, able to keep things together amidst the rising suspicions of her colleagues and subordinates. She doesn't know them well enough, nor do they know and trust her enough for this to seem strange, and that's why this episode needed to happen so early in the run while they (and we, the audience), don't know what her motives are. Is she actually a spy for Vulcan High Command? Does she really want to be on the ship with them? Or does she barely tolerate them? I'm not entirely sure why T'Pol did choose to stay aboard the NX-01. We know she has connections to humanity (her Great-Grandmother was one of the party who made actual first contact with humans in 1957, and she knows about it), and we know she develops a predilection for her human crew, and Archer in particular (and later Trip, even more in particular!), but at this stage she's an unknown quantity.
This is where I see parallels to 'The Galileo Seven' in which Spock had to deal with an unruly, insubordinate lot in a similar situation, stranded on an alien world in difficult circumstances. Throwing someone into challenging times is all part of our own curiosity to see how they'll react in that crucible, and T'Pol, despite her lack of experience with humans, uses her logic and restraint well. She acts quickly to take them to the caves when the storm becomes more violent and puts up with the human customs like the stories round the campfire, even if she does inject reality, further distancing them socially. She also notes that she can survive without water for several days, further evidence that the Vulcan body is more resilient than the human - any time they remind us why Vulcans are so cool it makes my day! Although she is affected she retains enough self control to be able to report accurately to her Captain when he calls, and here's where the episode really takes off. If this episode had been done on 'DS9' or 'Voyager' it could have been just as good with the superb characters on those series', even though it wouldn't have looked quite as spectacular as it did here with the hurricane effects of leaves and detritus whirling around in the storm or the atmospheric lighting of the cave, all done in widescreen vista. 'Enterprise' has all the bells and whistles of a higher budget, benefiting from the advances made and lessons learned through former Treks, and put to expert use here, but importantly, it also features some of the best character work of the series!
Forget Archer not looking like a strong Captain, he does the Kirk tactic of talking someone down, and he does it brilliantly! It's not a machine he has to convince of its imperfections, it's his own friend Trip. Again, he's still feeling out his command style at this stage, he doesn't have all the answers, but the key thing is he doesn't show hesitation or uncertainty (like Captain Harriman of the Enterprise-B), he uses his experience of the training for the mission and his personal history with Trip. I love his reference to a similar moment on Titan when Trip was affected and tried to remove his space helmet which would have killed him, I only wish we got to see that and other bumps along the road that would have given these characters the depth they eventually show to be lacking as the series progressed. That's the thing - in some ways the series did the opposite of what was expected, starting probably stronger than anything before (and certainly since!), but then becoming slightly apathetic, before improving in its final season when most Treks tended to drop in quality storytelling, to some degree or another, in their last seasons. But it was simply great to hear about this event that happened in their training and the imagination fills in the visuals for you so it wasn't like they needed to cut to a flashback. The way everything comes together with Hoshi's language expertise, T'Pol's compliance, and then finally her taking Trip out, was all superbly executed and really shows this crew in the best light as a team.
The music was also terrific, I don't know what it was, it's not a strong theme or anything, but it's just this ominous pumping in the background that upholds the tension so well. I'd like to listen to it separated from the episode just to get a sense of what it was doing, because during the episode it sucks you in and the story's tension swallows you up, and yet I can't remember the actual music! People have complained about the 'wallpaper' style of music on Berman-era Trek, but to me this just has that exact effect I just mentioned, swallowing you into the story, enveloping you, pulling you into moods and impressions. 'Enterprise' was capable of different styles, and they often had militaristic drumbeat action themes going on, but here the creepy atmosphere is perfectly enhanced. Things at the back of dark caves are always unsettling, and when we start to see actual rock monsters… they do hold up (William Shatner's gnashing his teeth, wishing he'd had this tech for 'Star Trek V'!). Maybe they could have been a little more subtle, like the worm creature Travis sees 'swimming' through the rock ceiling, or the face projecting from the crag (was it me or did it look a bit like Jaylah from 'Star Trek Beyond'?). I do approve the visions becoming more pronounced as the infection becomes more potent. So Cutler sees T'Pol talking to some aliens and Trip sees full-sized rock people materialise behind T'Pol. Maybe not seeing anything would have been a better way to go, but although the effects in the episode aren't perfect by today's standard (the shot of Novakovich standing on a flowery hillside was very obviously fake!), they work fine and enhance the story adequately.
If we hadn't got to see anything they saw, we wouldn't have been able to start the episode so effectively, as I love those people wandering in the bushes who appear to be in Starfleet uniform. Because they seem real, everything else is given the ring of truth and it's somehow more weird that Travis has seen humans out there that he doesn't know, than if it had been unknown aliens. The great thing about the episode is that it mixes wonder, humour and fear into an irresistible concoction that sells the inexperienced, yet optimistic excitement of this fresh-faced crew. In contrast, Dr. Phlox gets to display his first sign of gravity and deep regret when he has to watch a patient die because he didn't think to run a test that would have saved his life. In the first couple of episodes he comes across as this hopelessly happy chap, but here we see more of the serious later version, another side to his personality that shows he isn't just a gurning optimist that sees everything and everyone as a fascinating object of interest. That only the second man ever to beam up in the Transporter is infused with the leaves and twigs of the storm was a brilliant idea and probably why the device remained largely unused - so far, half the people who used it had died, and even though it wasn't the fault of the Transporter, human nature would overlook that fact. It was a terrific makeup design, the like of which they'd never attempted on the series before because the Transporter was always so reliable, except when it was going wrong, and even then it tended to go wrong nice and cleanly (tell that to Sonak in 'The Motion Picture'…).
The grim nature of death didn't preclude the episode from having some fun, and it really is fun - you get to see Porthos frolicking over the grass in the sun, just seeing a Shuttlepod fly down and land is beautiful, and there were a number of touches and references to other Trek. The most on the nose one was Archer making up the idea that the aliens on the planet were a silicon-based life form. Although he was just making it up on the spur of the moment we'd actually get to see one such being in 'TOS' ('The Devil in The Dark' - another creepy one set in dark caves, so a very fitting in-joke!). Travis speaks of a Y-500 freighter in his ghost story, which could be an offshoot of the old DY ships such as the one Khan was aboard. There's also T'Pol's first use of a Vulcan nerve pinch when she goes to inoculate the feverish Travis and he feebly tries to resist - amusingly he wakes up thinking he strained his neck! Again, I like the way they did this, they didn't make a big fuss about it, kept quiet and secret, the way Vulcans have always been portrayed, and while T'Pol would go on to do it a number of times across the series (although I can't recall any specific examples, so maybe they kept it to a wise minimum?), they introduced it subtly and without fanfare. The other big thing is mention of 'Minshara'-Class worlds (suitable for most humanoids), from which we get 'M-Class' - a lovely bit of retconning that this Vulcan word is where the famous classification originates. It would be interesting to know if all the alphabetical classes of planets are from Vulcan words - it makes sense, since they would have discovered all this long before Starfleet ventured out, but as we learn, the reason humans overtake them as the main founders of the Federation is because they are more reckless and want to get their hands dirty, and allying that with diplomatic skills to be all things to all races is what makes 'us' uniquely qualified to bring them together.
The fact that protocols are mentioned and observed, and sometimes ignored is much more realistic than how Trek portrays such things now, sadly (going by the first two seasons of 'DSC,' anyway), in an age where people are all about 'being themselves' and less about conforming to the rulebook. This is one reason why 'Enterprise' still felt like Trek to such a great degree, they were different, but not unrecognisably so. They had the potential to show the first alien encounter, the first planet, and many other firsts, but that wasn't the only thing it was about. I was curious, when Archer admits to a mildly concerned T'Pol that they'd lost track of time when the rendezvous isn't reached, how they do keep track - we don't see wristwatches, so presumably they either have a time readout on their Tricorders or Communicators, as I can't imagine they'd be checking in with the ship every few minutes to find out! I'd also forgotten they still wore the 'NX-01' baseball caps after the pilot. It makes things seem more informal, but I quite liked them. I've complained before about how 'DSC' has so many different uniforms and accoutrements, but 'Enterprise' also modelled quite a few uniform variations (cold, hot, EVA, caps, jackets, etc), the difference being that they all seemed functional and actually the costume design was among the series' best points because they were created by people fully versed in Trek history and knew what they were doing! Even the lens flares are good in this, created as they were from the beams of torches to great atmospheric effect!
It can sometimes be a bad idea to show people acting out of character so early in a series ('TNG' did it in 'The Naked Now,' and we didn't know them, 'DS9' did it towards the end of its first season in 'Dramatis Personae,' and we knew them quite well, but it was still a little strange), but the cast of this one were so well defined in the first couple of episodes, and it's really only Trip that is an extreme version of himself that it's not a problem. And the characters really are well observed, everyone having their essential job to do and fitting neatly into the whole. They're so well defined that we can almost chuckle at seeing Reed being overcautious again because he repeatedly demonstrated this attribute from the moment we first met him, while Travis is much more happy-go-lucky and takes everything in his positive stride. Trip would usually be that way, and is to begin with, which makes his turn into a Dr. Simon Van Gelder or Dr. Soran ("Let me go back!"), so much more pronounced and effective. What I love most is how T'Pol acts, most perfectly shown in her treatment of the team when the required vaccine is finally beamed down. I didn't know if she'd do this, but I was looking out for it, and she did: inoculated everyone first before she took care of herself. It could be argued that it made more sense for her to take care of herself first to ensure she could take care of the others, but it shows a much more responsible and heroic course to take by putting herself last, and it is these values that always stand out in Trek - thoughtfulness and care.
There was a message tacked on at the end with Trip remembering what his old Vulcan teacher once said about challenging your preconceptions, which seemed to be thrown in there like the end of a 1980s cartoon, not nearly as effective as what I took from the episode myself. And I thought I spotted a mistake when Archer says they've been out in space for three weeks (corresponding with the 'three' episodes we've watched), and later Trip says something about their bodies being found six weeks into the mission, but that could have meant they weren't discovered for another three weeks rather than being confused about the period they'd been out, and anyway he was irrational most of the time, so you can put it down to mental block otherwise. The important thing is they were able to cap off the episode beautifully, perfectly evoking the sunlight of a new day after a fitful dark night when the light pours into the cave mouth and Cutler walks out into the bright morning to see a Shuttlepod come gliding down through the sky, then we see from a high vantage point the degraggled (I meant to put bedraggled, but it made me smile so I'm leaving it in!), group walking towards it with the lovely music and it's just a high point of relief and satisfaction to end on. I wish there were more episodes that were as powerfully charged and brilliantly produced as this one and it's a shame so many high points came so early in the series, but that's why I'm still writing these reviews - the only ones I hadn't written for were the first two, but then they made me want to go back and do deeper examinations since my first run had been brief and simple, so that shows the quality for sure.
****
Fight Or Flight
DVD, Enterprise S1 (Fight Or Flight)
The first episode, proper, of a Trek series tends to vary in quality - they've just spent a ton of the season's budget on a slap-up pilot that introduces all the characters and main sets of the series, so with episode two they usually fall back on a bottle episode, utilising the standing sets to the full and not doing anything too large in scope - on 'TNG' we got 'The Naked Now,' a sequel to 'TOS' (so much for avoiding old continuity!), where the crew acts drunk from some alien virus; on 'DS9' it's 'Past Prologue' in which a terrorist comes aboard the station and is mixed up in the familiar faces of 'TNG' villains the Duras sisters; 'Voyager' had 'Parallax,' a scientific story in which another ship turns out to be the Voyager herself; and now this, in which Hoshi worries about a slug she picked up somewhere, called Sluggo… This story perfectly highlights both the series' flaws and its potential, as well as its strong connection to the past (its future, our viewing past - prequels get confusing!), in that it's very much a wander in space, aimlessly travelling in the hope that they'll bump into something of interest or value. Here lies the biggest flaw in the series' approach (aside from the problematic depiction of Vulcans which I went into in plenty of detail in the previous episode's review): they didn't have focus or a drive, a plan for the kind of stories they wanted to tell, it was just the same as 'Voyager' (i.e: being out in unfamiliar space), but without the history and well thought-out characters they set up in that pilot, and it shows.
They're bumbling along in space and it's all rather lackadaisical and whimsical, as if they don't have a specific plan or structure in place, either in the writing or in Starfleet's orders. The first episode didn't have that problem because they had a specific mission to return a Klingon to his people, getting mixed up in temporal events much greater than themselves. Here, they're stripped of all galactic importance, which is much more realistic, but you'd think that Archer would have been given a distant star or planet to aim for, at least. Instead, some of the crew are beginning to get restless, having mainly concentrated on ironing out the kinks in their new ship, and thus focused inward rather than out to the stars. And we get Hoshi concerned over an alien slug, Archer irritated over a squeak in his Ready Room floor, and Reed almost blowing up the ship itself when a torpedo targeting test sends it wobbling back around towards the NX-01! This is the sort of stuff you can imagine took place between episodes, not necessarily what we need to see - a reference to these events would have worked fine, but Berman and Braga were still very much in the mindset of 90s Trek: we've got twenty-six episodes (the longest first season since 'TOS,' and almost the last long season we'll ever see, since Season 3 was cut down to twenty-four, Season 4 to twenty-two, and 'DSC' et al are fifteen or less, forevermore), and plenty of time to play with. Perhaps if they'd been considering how best to keep the audience they hooked with the pilot they'd have developed something a little more palatable to those who found that so riveting?
Not that I'm criticising 'Enterprise' - I personally like the first several episodes of this season and remember thinking that if they were this strong out of the gate it could be the best first season ever. The production values are high, the sets look good, and it's more free-flowing than Trek had been used to, yet they hadn't lost the character focus (that would happen along the way). Who would have thought Hoshi would be the one to get an episode effectively devoted to her, right after the pilot? In one sense it's ideal since she's the closest to the average viewer, not someone that likes space or is accustomed to it, but feeling discomfort, rising to outright panic, in every little thing. She's seriously considering turning tail and scurrying back to Earth as fast as she can get the Captain to agree to take her, and so she has an arc. That is the good thing about this first episode, for while it may seem aimless, it actually has an important message to tell, it's just that it does have a gradual rise in velocity that takes its time to come to fruition and so feels much like a 24th Century series in terms of its style. I doubt we'll ever see episodes like this again on Trek because the money is spread less thinly and every episode 'has' to be an event, which to far too many in modern audiences equates to big action and big effects. Trek isn't about that, or at least not in the main: it's about people, and though 'Enterprise' often failed on that count (how many Hoshi episodes can you name from the entire series?), it started off in the right direction on that count, if not in ship destination.
Hoshi is the ideal character to explore because everyone else is straining at the leash to get their hands dirty, visit a new planet, meet new races: EXPLORE! Trip even vocalises this attitude, desperate to be on the Landing Party (I wasn't paying attention, but I don't remember them ever referring to it as that specifically), when they finally do locate an alien craft holding position in space. If there's one thing that always works in Trek, whether it's 'TNG' ('Heart of Glory'), 'DS9' ('Empok Nor'), or 'DSC' ('Context is For Kings'), it's creeping around on an alien vessel in the dark. They were always good at creating atmosphere with torches and dark corridors, and this upholds the fine tradition of a Starfleet crew manually docking and clambering about inside. This one's more creepy than most as we find from the moment you hear the rhythmical clunking of the pump. It gets louder as they approach and then Hoshi's the one to discover bodies strung up from the ceiling, their fluids being pumped out. Just as 'Broken Bow' tried to reintroduce more of the innuendo of 'TOS' into Trek again (presumably to 'spice up' the content in an effort to get strong ratings), this one adds in that dose of horror that was another big part of space in the original, and is much more welcome than the former. Space is supposed to be dangerous and you can't help feel that Archer and his excited crew are hideously underprepared for the challenges that await them out here away from the known space-lanes.
That's the point, though. Although I would categorise this as a Hoshi story, it also prominently shows Archer's mettle and what he believes in. He doesn't want to leave these bodies behind, but acts on the guidance of T'Pol, who believes it would be dangerous to hang around as the species that performed this butchery are likely to return at any moment (reminds me of 'Goldilocks and The Three Bears' - I expect if it'd been a 'DSC' episode we'd have got a whole flashback to old Mother Amanda reading it to Burnham…). Gradually, conscience gets the better of him and he turns the ship around, remembering that they're not out here to play it safe, but to engage with other species, whether that means making enemies, or hopefully, friends. Humanity's need is to get involved, not stand back and let things play out, even when they're outgunned by the bullies. And that's a very strong Trekky flavour to begin a series with, and shows where this desire to form the Federation came from. We wanted pioneer spirit, and it feels good to see it demonstrated. T'Pol is no longer the villain, a spy for the Vulcans so they can keep an eye on this loose-cannon Captain and his little ship, but she's still more often at odds with Archer by preaching the wisdom of caution, not interfering with things they don't understand (a small taste of which was Trip showing anger at an alien Mother weaning her child in 'Broken Bow'), and not indulging curiosity, except that's the reason they're out there. She still is annoyingly spiky and occasionally sharp in her speech, much more than I'd have liked to see in a Vulcan, and I can only imagine what a great character she could have been if they'd kept to the passive delivery of old. But they wanted more antagonism and you can't have that unless both sides are showing emotion, a fatal flaw.
It's nicely inclusive of the other characters, especially Dr. Phlox who relishes every little nuance of life with humans, enjoys food and conversation, yet retains his alien outlook. In short, he's great fun, being simultaneously reassuring, but also warning of the need to accept new things, such as a casual display of callousness in discussing Sluggo, Hoshi's slug, when he thinks the best thing to do is feed it to his Pyrithian bat, much to Hoshi's displeasure! Trip is eager to get involved, not one of these Engineers that wants to stay pottering about his engine, or reading tech manuals in his Quarters like Scotty - he wants to be out there on the edge, nothing held back. Mayweather's much the same. Reed is much more cautious, and he is the Scotty of the piece, content to tinker with the weapons, more concerned about maintaining the safety of the ship than anything else - he'll go on the mission but he wants to pack a rifle and offers to blow things up at every opportunity. He's right to worry, because, as we see in this episode, the NX-01 is woefully underpowered compared to the predators out there, and their desire to be friends isn't going to cut it with other races that are simply out to take advantage of the weak. Crucially, though, the ship's weaknesses are not the characters', and Archer once again shows he's a strong Captain, playing against type in my head that he didn't have that about him. Once he's decided to help these aliens he'll do all he can and they almost suffer the same fate, except that, like I said, it's not technology that is the most important thing about Starfleet, it's the people.
After her experience finding the dead bodies, Hoshi's deeply ashamed at her reaction and feels completely useless, and you really feel for her. Even when she finally gets to do her job, an area she should be comfortable in, her confidence is so battered that she can't do what needs to be done - in the midst of this nasty-looking alien ship easily holding the NX-01 captive in space, she needs to communicate with the Captain of another ship that has responded to the distress call she sent out from his brethren's vessel, and everything rides on what she does. The Universal Translator isn't working well enough, she doesn't think he understands so Archer asks her to do it herself and talk directly to him. For much of the episode I was wondering what had made this episode stand out for me on previous viewings, because it wasn't particularly special, introduces the characters a little more, quite competently, looks good and all, but it wasn't until near the end where Hoshi, under pressure, comes through for the crew, using her linguistic skills to get them out of that tight spot as the confused Axanar (Axanaran? Axanarian?), gets increasingly annoyed, until understanding dawns as she's able to carry a conversation with him and he helps them out - that's when it all came together as a worthwhile adventure, much more than people doing things on ships. A person overcomes fear and cowardice, personal lack of confidence, discomfort and professional paralysis to find out what she's made of, and it's an exhilarating moment where you feel incredibly proud of her, vindicated in front of everyone, but most importantly, herself.
That's the missing Trek difference I haven't seen in 'DSC' where everyone acts like their comic book heroes, we don't get to see them face failure with dignity, clamber up by their fingernails and act like ordinary human beings with training that can make them fly when they dig deep. This is real, and this is something 'Enterprise' did miss in a lot of episodes. Unlike Ensign Tilly I really like Hoshi, she's not brash and silly, not rude or 'hilariously' inappropriate, she's a shining example of what Starfleet should consist of, regardless of her fears. That's inspiration, and that's what Trek needs much more than 'geniuses' and technological solutions. Yes, she does betray emotion, but she swallows it and comes through, she's professional. Even with Archer's relatively relaxed attitude you see that chain of command there and that what he says goes. He's there to support his crew, just as they're there to do their duty, and that's why I really like this episode - it's a proper Trek story. As time went on, 'Enterprise' lost the strong sense of an ensemble that is so ably demonstrated here, and you can see the seeds of the 'dumbing down' of returning to 'TOS' for too much of its inspiration rather than the more sophisticated later series' in things like Archer, Trip and T'Pol being set up as the Kirk, Spock and McCoy - here there appears to be an attempt to do an inverted version of the famous trio. Rather than asking Trip and T'Pol's opinion, Archer fights against them as T'Pol reassures they did the right thing in leaving the danger zone, and Trip shows passive interest in what they were like. It gets Archer to verbalise his growing sense of responsibility and decides him to go back, but it's not quite the Kirk/Spock/McCoy decision-making think tank.
I can't criticise this episode for the lack of Hoshi and Mayweather (and Phlox and Reed!), in too many later episodes, rather I enjoy the fact that we do get them all working together. And the episode has many great points about it that have become lost because of familiarity with the series - for example, this is the first we see of the excellent EVA suits, brilliantly designed, just as the standard uniform was. The Shuttlepod looks terrific and it's fun to see them travelling by it to dock with the alien ship. The fact that the NX-01 is so weak and inexperienced gave them somewhere to go, much like 'DS9' and how it started with a smashed-up alien station and characters that either didn't want to be there or didn't like each other. You need to start from a place of potential without putting the audience off, and like 'DS9' before it, 'Enterprise' succeeds in that respect. It might not be as satisfying to see the hero ship get beaten up on a regular basis, or for their weapons and sensors to be inferior in every other encounter, but what it does is give them more opportunity to show their mettle and prove (as we saw numerous times on the earlier Treks), that even without tech, Starfleet officers are a formidable force to be reckoned with because it's their code of conduct, their personal morals and conscience that is their strength, not the tools they've built to carry them further into space. So yes, it is embarrassing for Reed, not to mention Archer, that their targeting scanners aren't accurate enough, or their attack on the enemy looks pitiful, but they have so much room for growth, something that was a key component of suggesting to me the series had a long and fascinating future, far from everything being neat and tidy.
There are the occasional references to other Treks that we'd expect, but this being a personal story (or 'stories' if you count Archer's realisation he needs to stick to his principles), they aren't in your face. Phlox namechecks Nausicaans, a famous C- (or even D-) list race from 'TNG,' the thugs of the galaxy (which we'd see later in the season, and at least once more in Season 2), which is interesting since they were only familiar from the 24th Century (most famed for stabbing Picard through the heart in his younger years). You'd think they'd have tried to make reference to more 'TOS' races like the Andorians (oh, they were coming, don't you worry!), but it suggests they knew they were playing to the 'TNG'-era crowd who knew later races better than the old ones. In fact we do get a race from 'TOS,' the Axanar, best known for a couple of mentions in 'Court Martial' and 'Whom Gods Destroy' as the site of an important battle (and nowadays most associated with the 'fan film debacle' of the same name, sadly). This is just the sort of thing it would have been fun for 'DSC' to explore since we know it took place during the 2250s, but perhaps they didn't want to stir up a hornet's nest with the controversy around it. At least 'Enterprise' gave us the look of the species, almost Cardassian in their lizard-like appearance (I got this episode confused with another one in which aliens are strung up and was looking out for the Cardassian among them - maybe that was 'Shockwave' or 'Dead Stop'? I don't know the series well enough, obviously!), and it is wonderful to hear an alien language for Hoshi to decipher, something that firmly places this series in its 22nd Century setting.
I can't say the Axanar stood out particularly, but it probably doesn't help that we never saw them again as they were ripe for exploration. It's not explained how the first Axanar ship was so easily subdued by these fluid-sucking baddies, yet one more Axanar ship blasts them out of the sky. I hesitate to say Enterprise weakened them with its one paltry torpedo blast (akin to straining to unscrew the lid on a jam jar, then someone else coming along and popping it off easily!), but this tough-looking spiky ship (reminiscent of the Romulans with those splayed out wings), did go up rather easily. This is an example of something they could have set up for the future: perhaps the enemy isn't destroyed, but limps away filing away its info on the human ship and bumping into them again, or even visiting Earth with a belligerent attitude where the Vulcans have to send them packing and it's a black mark against Archer for stirring them up? The Axanar could have become an ally they met again later, but these potential pieces that were laid down early on were far too often left forgotten and unused in the desire to deal with simplistic aliens of the week too often. There's also a question about Vulcan behaviour, too, as T'Pol states that her people don't share human enthusiasm for exploration, but how did they come to make first contact with species such as humans in the first place if they didn't have curiosity? It must have been more than simply a pragmatic approach to keep an eye on potentially hostile aliens, and curiosity does seem to be a trait in their race otherwise they'd never join Starfleet. They may be excellent at keeping curiosity in hand over personal matters (and behaving likewise about their own culture), but when it comes to the universe, they've always seemed as 'fascinated' as anyone!
Of course T'Pol could have been stringing them along, or towing the party line (like the myth 'Vulcans never lie,' for example). There is one problem with her that is nothing to do with the character: her name. I think this marks the first episode where the Captain says, "Archer to T'Pol," which always comes out a bit clunky, but what can you do with the Vulcan naming convention as it is, though I can't help thinking they should have avoided that line wherever possible, such as saying 'T'Pol, do you read?' or something along those lines. And I was interested to hear a little of the pre-Phaser weapons - Hoshi says she was cleared on 'EM sidearms' and 'Class-3 Pulse Rifles.' It made me wonder if 'EM' stands for electromagnetic and is something I could have done with a lot more history on. It would also have been good if they'd been using Laser Pistols in keeping with what we saw later in 'The Cage,' but so much of that great episode has been overwritten by both 'Enterprise' and 'DSC' that it's a real shame more inspiration wasn't taken from it. What I would praise is both the direction and music of what I consider the best post-pilot episode of any series, before or (especially!), since (though I've yet to see 'Picard'). I loved hearing a rendition of the main theme within the episode, at the end, but also the triumphal music when Hoshi is battling herself and winning through reminded me of 'The Untouchables' film. Allan Kroeker usually directed big episodes like series finales, but he does a great job with everything from the claustrophobic confines of the darkened alien vessel, to the action of the crew climbing out of the Shuttlepod and running along the gantry, shot from beneath (poor Dr. Phlox trying to keep up!). It may not be an episode full of goodness from start to finish, but what there is puts it firmly in the strong category of this opening salvo - and I didn't think I'd have much to write about!
***
The first episode, proper, of a Trek series tends to vary in quality - they've just spent a ton of the season's budget on a slap-up pilot that introduces all the characters and main sets of the series, so with episode two they usually fall back on a bottle episode, utilising the standing sets to the full and not doing anything too large in scope - on 'TNG' we got 'The Naked Now,' a sequel to 'TOS' (so much for avoiding old continuity!), where the crew acts drunk from some alien virus; on 'DS9' it's 'Past Prologue' in which a terrorist comes aboard the station and is mixed up in the familiar faces of 'TNG' villains the Duras sisters; 'Voyager' had 'Parallax,' a scientific story in which another ship turns out to be the Voyager herself; and now this, in which Hoshi worries about a slug she picked up somewhere, called Sluggo… This story perfectly highlights both the series' flaws and its potential, as well as its strong connection to the past (its future, our viewing past - prequels get confusing!), in that it's very much a wander in space, aimlessly travelling in the hope that they'll bump into something of interest or value. Here lies the biggest flaw in the series' approach (aside from the problematic depiction of Vulcans which I went into in plenty of detail in the previous episode's review): they didn't have focus or a drive, a plan for the kind of stories they wanted to tell, it was just the same as 'Voyager' (i.e: being out in unfamiliar space), but without the history and well thought-out characters they set up in that pilot, and it shows.
They're bumbling along in space and it's all rather lackadaisical and whimsical, as if they don't have a specific plan or structure in place, either in the writing or in Starfleet's orders. The first episode didn't have that problem because they had a specific mission to return a Klingon to his people, getting mixed up in temporal events much greater than themselves. Here, they're stripped of all galactic importance, which is much more realistic, but you'd think that Archer would have been given a distant star or planet to aim for, at least. Instead, some of the crew are beginning to get restless, having mainly concentrated on ironing out the kinks in their new ship, and thus focused inward rather than out to the stars. And we get Hoshi concerned over an alien slug, Archer irritated over a squeak in his Ready Room floor, and Reed almost blowing up the ship itself when a torpedo targeting test sends it wobbling back around towards the NX-01! This is the sort of stuff you can imagine took place between episodes, not necessarily what we need to see - a reference to these events would have worked fine, but Berman and Braga were still very much in the mindset of 90s Trek: we've got twenty-six episodes (the longest first season since 'TOS,' and almost the last long season we'll ever see, since Season 3 was cut down to twenty-four, Season 4 to twenty-two, and 'DSC' et al are fifteen or less, forevermore), and plenty of time to play with. Perhaps if they'd been considering how best to keep the audience they hooked with the pilot they'd have developed something a little more palatable to those who found that so riveting?
Not that I'm criticising 'Enterprise' - I personally like the first several episodes of this season and remember thinking that if they were this strong out of the gate it could be the best first season ever. The production values are high, the sets look good, and it's more free-flowing than Trek had been used to, yet they hadn't lost the character focus (that would happen along the way). Who would have thought Hoshi would be the one to get an episode effectively devoted to her, right after the pilot? In one sense it's ideal since she's the closest to the average viewer, not someone that likes space or is accustomed to it, but feeling discomfort, rising to outright panic, in every little thing. She's seriously considering turning tail and scurrying back to Earth as fast as she can get the Captain to agree to take her, and so she has an arc. That is the good thing about this first episode, for while it may seem aimless, it actually has an important message to tell, it's just that it does have a gradual rise in velocity that takes its time to come to fruition and so feels much like a 24th Century series in terms of its style. I doubt we'll ever see episodes like this again on Trek because the money is spread less thinly and every episode 'has' to be an event, which to far too many in modern audiences equates to big action and big effects. Trek isn't about that, or at least not in the main: it's about people, and though 'Enterprise' often failed on that count (how many Hoshi episodes can you name from the entire series?), it started off in the right direction on that count, if not in ship destination.
Hoshi is the ideal character to explore because everyone else is straining at the leash to get their hands dirty, visit a new planet, meet new races: EXPLORE! Trip even vocalises this attitude, desperate to be on the Landing Party (I wasn't paying attention, but I don't remember them ever referring to it as that specifically), when they finally do locate an alien craft holding position in space. If there's one thing that always works in Trek, whether it's 'TNG' ('Heart of Glory'), 'DS9' ('Empok Nor'), or 'DSC' ('Context is For Kings'), it's creeping around on an alien vessel in the dark. They were always good at creating atmosphere with torches and dark corridors, and this upholds the fine tradition of a Starfleet crew manually docking and clambering about inside. This one's more creepy than most as we find from the moment you hear the rhythmical clunking of the pump. It gets louder as they approach and then Hoshi's the one to discover bodies strung up from the ceiling, their fluids being pumped out. Just as 'Broken Bow' tried to reintroduce more of the innuendo of 'TOS' into Trek again (presumably to 'spice up' the content in an effort to get strong ratings), this one adds in that dose of horror that was another big part of space in the original, and is much more welcome than the former. Space is supposed to be dangerous and you can't help feel that Archer and his excited crew are hideously underprepared for the challenges that await them out here away from the known space-lanes.
That's the point, though. Although I would categorise this as a Hoshi story, it also prominently shows Archer's mettle and what he believes in. He doesn't want to leave these bodies behind, but acts on the guidance of T'Pol, who believes it would be dangerous to hang around as the species that performed this butchery are likely to return at any moment (reminds me of 'Goldilocks and The Three Bears' - I expect if it'd been a 'DSC' episode we'd have got a whole flashback to old Mother Amanda reading it to Burnham…). Gradually, conscience gets the better of him and he turns the ship around, remembering that they're not out here to play it safe, but to engage with other species, whether that means making enemies, or hopefully, friends. Humanity's need is to get involved, not stand back and let things play out, even when they're outgunned by the bullies. And that's a very strong Trekky flavour to begin a series with, and shows where this desire to form the Federation came from. We wanted pioneer spirit, and it feels good to see it demonstrated. T'Pol is no longer the villain, a spy for the Vulcans so they can keep an eye on this loose-cannon Captain and his little ship, but she's still more often at odds with Archer by preaching the wisdom of caution, not interfering with things they don't understand (a small taste of which was Trip showing anger at an alien Mother weaning her child in 'Broken Bow'), and not indulging curiosity, except that's the reason they're out there. She still is annoyingly spiky and occasionally sharp in her speech, much more than I'd have liked to see in a Vulcan, and I can only imagine what a great character she could have been if they'd kept to the passive delivery of old. But they wanted more antagonism and you can't have that unless both sides are showing emotion, a fatal flaw.
It's nicely inclusive of the other characters, especially Dr. Phlox who relishes every little nuance of life with humans, enjoys food and conversation, yet retains his alien outlook. In short, he's great fun, being simultaneously reassuring, but also warning of the need to accept new things, such as a casual display of callousness in discussing Sluggo, Hoshi's slug, when he thinks the best thing to do is feed it to his Pyrithian bat, much to Hoshi's displeasure! Trip is eager to get involved, not one of these Engineers that wants to stay pottering about his engine, or reading tech manuals in his Quarters like Scotty - he wants to be out there on the edge, nothing held back. Mayweather's much the same. Reed is much more cautious, and he is the Scotty of the piece, content to tinker with the weapons, more concerned about maintaining the safety of the ship than anything else - he'll go on the mission but he wants to pack a rifle and offers to blow things up at every opportunity. He's right to worry, because, as we see in this episode, the NX-01 is woefully underpowered compared to the predators out there, and their desire to be friends isn't going to cut it with other races that are simply out to take advantage of the weak. Crucially, though, the ship's weaknesses are not the characters', and Archer once again shows he's a strong Captain, playing against type in my head that he didn't have that about him. Once he's decided to help these aliens he'll do all he can and they almost suffer the same fate, except that, like I said, it's not technology that is the most important thing about Starfleet, it's the people.
After her experience finding the dead bodies, Hoshi's deeply ashamed at her reaction and feels completely useless, and you really feel for her. Even when she finally gets to do her job, an area she should be comfortable in, her confidence is so battered that she can't do what needs to be done - in the midst of this nasty-looking alien ship easily holding the NX-01 captive in space, she needs to communicate with the Captain of another ship that has responded to the distress call she sent out from his brethren's vessel, and everything rides on what she does. The Universal Translator isn't working well enough, she doesn't think he understands so Archer asks her to do it herself and talk directly to him. For much of the episode I was wondering what had made this episode stand out for me on previous viewings, because it wasn't particularly special, introduces the characters a little more, quite competently, looks good and all, but it wasn't until near the end where Hoshi, under pressure, comes through for the crew, using her linguistic skills to get them out of that tight spot as the confused Axanar (Axanaran? Axanarian?), gets increasingly annoyed, until understanding dawns as she's able to carry a conversation with him and he helps them out - that's when it all came together as a worthwhile adventure, much more than people doing things on ships. A person overcomes fear and cowardice, personal lack of confidence, discomfort and professional paralysis to find out what she's made of, and it's an exhilarating moment where you feel incredibly proud of her, vindicated in front of everyone, but most importantly, herself.
That's the missing Trek difference I haven't seen in 'DSC' where everyone acts like their comic book heroes, we don't get to see them face failure with dignity, clamber up by their fingernails and act like ordinary human beings with training that can make them fly when they dig deep. This is real, and this is something 'Enterprise' did miss in a lot of episodes. Unlike Ensign Tilly I really like Hoshi, she's not brash and silly, not rude or 'hilariously' inappropriate, she's a shining example of what Starfleet should consist of, regardless of her fears. That's inspiration, and that's what Trek needs much more than 'geniuses' and technological solutions. Yes, she does betray emotion, but she swallows it and comes through, she's professional. Even with Archer's relatively relaxed attitude you see that chain of command there and that what he says goes. He's there to support his crew, just as they're there to do their duty, and that's why I really like this episode - it's a proper Trek story. As time went on, 'Enterprise' lost the strong sense of an ensemble that is so ably demonstrated here, and you can see the seeds of the 'dumbing down' of returning to 'TOS' for too much of its inspiration rather than the more sophisticated later series' in things like Archer, Trip and T'Pol being set up as the Kirk, Spock and McCoy - here there appears to be an attempt to do an inverted version of the famous trio. Rather than asking Trip and T'Pol's opinion, Archer fights against them as T'Pol reassures they did the right thing in leaving the danger zone, and Trip shows passive interest in what they were like. It gets Archer to verbalise his growing sense of responsibility and decides him to go back, but it's not quite the Kirk/Spock/McCoy decision-making think tank.
I can't criticise this episode for the lack of Hoshi and Mayweather (and Phlox and Reed!), in too many later episodes, rather I enjoy the fact that we do get them all working together. And the episode has many great points about it that have become lost because of familiarity with the series - for example, this is the first we see of the excellent EVA suits, brilliantly designed, just as the standard uniform was. The Shuttlepod looks terrific and it's fun to see them travelling by it to dock with the alien ship. The fact that the NX-01 is so weak and inexperienced gave them somewhere to go, much like 'DS9' and how it started with a smashed-up alien station and characters that either didn't want to be there or didn't like each other. You need to start from a place of potential without putting the audience off, and like 'DS9' before it, 'Enterprise' succeeds in that respect. It might not be as satisfying to see the hero ship get beaten up on a regular basis, or for their weapons and sensors to be inferior in every other encounter, but what it does is give them more opportunity to show their mettle and prove (as we saw numerous times on the earlier Treks), that even without tech, Starfleet officers are a formidable force to be reckoned with because it's their code of conduct, their personal morals and conscience that is their strength, not the tools they've built to carry them further into space. So yes, it is embarrassing for Reed, not to mention Archer, that their targeting scanners aren't accurate enough, or their attack on the enemy looks pitiful, but they have so much room for growth, something that was a key component of suggesting to me the series had a long and fascinating future, far from everything being neat and tidy.
There are the occasional references to other Treks that we'd expect, but this being a personal story (or 'stories' if you count Archer's realisation he needs to stick to his principles), they aren't in your face. Phlox namechecks Nausicaans, a famous C- (or even D-) list race from 'TNG,' the thugs of the galaxy (which we'd see later in the season, and at least once more in Season 2), which is interesting since they were only familiar from the 24th Century (most famed for stabbing Picard through the heart in his younger years). You'd think they'd have tried to make reference to more 'TOS' races like the Andorians (oh, they were coming, don't you worry!), but it suggests they knew they were playing to the 'TNG'-era crowd who knew later races better than the old ones. In fact we do get a race from 'TOS,' the Axanar, best known for a couple of mentions in 'Court Martial' and 'Whom Gods Destroy' as the site of an important battle (and nowadays most associated with the 'fan film debacle' of the same name, sadly). This is just the sort of thing it would have been fun for 'DSC' to explore since we know it took place during the 2250s, but perhaps they didn't want to stir up a hornet's nest with the controversy around it. At least 'Enterprise' gave us the look of the species, almost Cardassian in their lizard-like appearance (I got this episode confused with another one in which aliens are strung up and was looking out for the Cardassian among them - maybe that was 'Shockwave' or 'Dead Stop'? I don't know the series well enough, obviously!), and it is wonderful to hear an alien language for Hoshi to decipher, something that firmly places this series in its 22nd Century setting.
I can't say the Axanar stood out particularly, but it probably doesn't help that we never saw them again as they were ripe for exploration. It's not explained how the first Axanar ship was so easily subdued by these fluid-sucking baddies, yet one more Axanar ship blasts them out of the sky. I hesitate to say Enterprise weakened them with its one paltry torpedo blast (akin to straining to unscrew the lid on a jam jar, then someone else coming along and popping it off easily!), but this tough-looking spiky ship (reminiscent of the Romulans with those splayed out wings), did go up rather easily. This is an example of something they could have set up for the future: perhaps the enemy isn't destroyed, but limps away filing away its info on the human ship and bumping into them again, or even visiting Earth with a belligerent attitude where the Vulcans have to send them packing and it's a black mark against Archer for stirring them up? The Axanar could have become an ally they met again later, but these potential pieces that were laid down early on were far too often left forgotten and unused in the desire to deal with simplistic aliens of the week too often. There's also a question about Vulcan behaviour, too, as T'Pol states that her people don't share human enthusiasm for exploration, but how did they come to make first contact with species such as humans in the first place if they didn't have curiosity? It must have been more than simply a pragmatic approach to keep an eye on potentially hostile aliens, and curiosity does seem to be a trait in their race otherwise they'd never join Starfleet. They may be excellent at keeping curiosity in hand over personal matters (and behaving likewise about their own culture), but when it comes to the universe, they've always seemed as 'fascinated' as anyone!
Of course T'Pol could have been stringing them along, or towing the party line (like the myth 'Vulcans never lie,' for example). There is one problem with her that is nothing to do with the character: her name. I think this marks the first episode where the Captain says, "Archer to T'Pol," which always comes out a bit clunky, but what can you do with the Vulcan naming convention as it is, though I can't help thinking they should have avoided that line wherever possible, such as saying 'T'Pol, do you read?' or something along those lines. And I was interested to hear a little of the pre-Phaser weapons - Hoshi says she was cleared on 'EM sidearms' and 'Class-3 Pulse Rifles.' It made me wonder if 'EM' stands for electromagnetic and is something I could have done with a lot more history on. It would also have been good if they'd been using Laser Pistols in keeping with what we saw later in 'The Cage,' but so much of that great episode has been overwritten by both 'Enterprise' and 'DSC' that it's a real shame more inspiration wasn't taken from it. What I would praise is both the direction and music of what I consider the best post-pilot episode of any series, before or (especially!), since (though I've yet to see 'Picard'). I loved hearing a rendition of the main theme within the episode, at the end, but also the triumphal music when Hoshi is battling herself and winning through reminded me of 'The Untouchables' film. Allan Kroeker usually directed big episodes like series finales, but he does a great job with everything from the claustrophobic confines of the darkened alien vessel, to the action of the crew climbing out of the Shuttlepod and running along the gantry, shot from beneath (poor Dr. Phlox trying to keep up!). It may not be an episode full of goodness from start to finish, but what there is puts it firmly in the strong category of this opening salvo - and I didn't think I'd have much to write about!
***
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