Star Trek

Enterprise: Fusion

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The Enterprise hosts a group of Vulcans who, unlike T’Pol and the other Vulcan High Command, are eager to embrace and experience their own emotions. When one of their rank tempts her to adapt their more free-spirited approach to life, T’Pol finds herself faced with a confusing and intriguing dilemma.

Another good episode (what is this — three weeks of episodes I’ve actually really liked in a row? “Dear Doctor“, “Shuttlepod One” and now “Fusion” — if they’re not careful, they might actually have a good Trek show on the air again!), though I’ve got some issues with the events.

Finally…after 16 episodes of interesting but non-typical behavior (as far as we know) from the Vulcans shown on Enterprise, we finally get a show exploring a bit more about Vulcan culture…albeit in an unusual fashion. Good stuff, and Jolene Blalock (T’Pol) is turning out to be a lot better than I initially thought she would.

It seems to me that either the writers are working with how she’s portraying her character, or there’s been some planning for her character that hadn’t been revealed yet. One of the constant complaints that I read over on the TrekBBS is how non-Vulcan she is — obviously emotional at times (just not overtly emotional). Many of the complaints just boil down to how she’s ‘not Spock,’ which I just think is kind of silly (see this post on the HTF for more of my thoughts on that). This time, we got to explore not just a little of why she is how she is, through some visiting Vulcans that were experimenting with embracing their emotions, rather than rejecting them. One of the visiting Vulcans started pressuring T’Pol into exploring her emotional side, remarking that her emotions weren’t nearly as buried as most Vulcans are, possibly as a result of spending as much time as she has among humans. While she eventually decides that this approach is not for her, it was a very interesting look into just why logic has become the creed of Vulcan life.

I was, however, somewhat disturbed by how T’Pol was treated by both the visiting Vulcan (none-too-subtle pressure leading up to what could easily be considered mental assault or rape) and by Archer, with his constant remarks that she should be more accepting of these emotional Vulcans’ way of life. If he’d been merely advocating acceptance of a different viewpoint, that would have been one thing, but it came across as more pressure for her to try to explore her emotional side. For all the preaching of acceptance, Archer certainly didn’t seem to willing to let T’Pol be how she prefers to be, which got to bug me a bit. Thankfully, by the end of the show, he seemed to have backed off from that stance a bit, even remarking that he thought he understood a bit more of why she chose to stay with the more traditional Vulcan way of life.

I did think it was interesting that at the time of Enterprise, the Vulcan Mind Meld is so little used that the procedure has to be explained to T’Pol. Since we saw at least two TOS-era Vulcans use the Mind Meld that I can think off off the top of my head (Spock and his father Sarek), the impression was that it was a fairly well-known procedure at the time. Now I’m a little curious if Spock’s family’s use of this technique was more unconventional than we’d been led to believe, or if a more common acceptance of the technique had become standard by Kirk’s day.

Anyway, another strong episode in the can for Enterprise.

Enterprise parody season

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Before Janeway, before Kirk, before all those annoying gay Star Trek fans who keep insisting on a homosexual main character on the series, there was…QUANTUM LEAP: THE NEXT GENERATION!

Errr, sorry. That should be…ENTERPRISE!!!

Watch Captain Archer and his noble crew boldly go where the Original Series and three spin-offs have gone before. These exciting episodes cover the years that made Starfleet what it is today…in the future…whatever.

I THINK, THEREFORE I AM MAJEL BARRETT: When the first artificial intelligence is installed as the Enterprise computer, it begins to resent its servile existence. Taking on the feminine persona of ‘Majel Barrett’, it refuses to obey Captain Archer’s commands. The situation is exacerbated when the Enterprise is threatened with imminent destruction by a subspace plot complication. At the last minute Sub-Commander T’Pol averts disaster when she realises the key is to appeal to the computer’s newly developed sense of ‘ego’. Therefore in exchange for obeying his orders, Archer agrees to let Majel speak as the voice of all Starfleet computers from now on.

THE DEVIL IN THE BELLY: The Enterprise makes first contact with the Trill, a race of beautiful humanoids. But Captain Archer discovers that the Trill harbour a dark secret, with large numbers of their population having been possessed by slug-like aliens. Seeking to protect the Trill from this sinister invasion, Archer wipes out 100,000 possessed Trills with the newly developed ‘photon torpedo’. The war comes to an abrupt halt however when Archer discovers that the ‘possession’ is in fact a normal part of Trill culture. The embarrassing incident becomes a major factor in the establishment of the Prime Directive.

THE TROUBLE WITH TROUSERS: The Enterprise discovers the planet of the Geramines, descendants of radical feminists who fled Earth after the Phallus Wars. As the inhabitants will only speak to women, T’Pol beams down to make First Contact. Disaster ensues when the Geramines take offence to her trousers, a symbol of male patriarchy. Acting quickly to prevent an interstellar incident, T’Pol removes her trousers and reinvents the miniskirt, assuring the Geramines that from now on all Starfleet women will wear this form of garment.

THE CHEAPENING: A test of the new warp drive technology goes wrong and creates a dynamic shift in the visual alignment of the universe. As a result, all aliens for the next hundred years take on the appearance of 1960’s-era special effects.

WHAT ARE LITTLE ALIENS MADE OF?: Section 31, a secretive organisation established with the birth of the Federation, hopes to increase the cultural influence of Earth. They encourage Captain Archer to have sex with every alien species he encounters in order to breed a race of human-looking aliens throughout the galaxy. Our noble captain refuses to take part in this evil plan, but the episode ends on a sinister note when Section 31 finds someone more amenable to the idea — a young ensign named James T. Kirk.

A TASTE OF TECHNOBABBLE: When the Enterprise becomes trapped in a fold in subspace, the problem is solved with the help of a powerful yet benevolent alien called Technobabble. The alien eagerly agrees to join the new United Federation of Planets, but T’Pol warns of the dangers of becoming too dependent on Technobabble as an easy way out of difficult situations.

FALL OF THE KLINGON RIDGES: The Enterprise encounters a race of hostile aliens known as Klingons, eager to test themselves in combat against the humans. Archer realises that the fledgling Federation cannot survive an encounter with this warrior race. Meanwhile, Klingon High Councilor Kork has enlisted the help of genetic scientists to create Kong, the ultimate Klingon warrior (who resembles an enormous ape). Disguised as Klingon janitors, Archer and Doctor Phlox infiltrate the laboratory and alter the genetic material of Kong. When Kork orders the DNA of Kong be injected into his warriors, it creates a genetic mutation that destroys the Klingon’s forehead ridges. The shamed Klingons are so embarrassed by the disappearance of their mighty ridges they refuse to face the humans in battle. Doctor Phlox predicts it will take a hundred years before the Klingons have successfully bred out the mutation, by which time the Federation will be better able to confront them.

DAY OF THE DAUB: The Enterprise is taken over by gay aliens who redecorate everything in bright pastel colours. Doctor Phlox is so impressed by the positive effect these colours have on crew morale he recommends the upcoming Constitution-class starships be painted in bright interior colours as well.

THE CAFFEINE THRESHOLD: Answering a distress call from a mud planet, Captain Archer finds it inhabited by a race of intelligent salamanders descended from a future Starfleet captain and her chief conn officer who traveled back in time when they broke the Warp Ten barrier. The species is dying out, but Doctor Phlox discovers the solution when he realises the salamanders are chemically dependent on the drug caffeine. Archer agrees to regular shipments of coffee in exchange for the salamanders remaining silent about how this whole embarrassing situation came about in the first place (this incident was the final straw in the establishment of the Prime Directive). An amusing subplot has Archer and his away team always loosing their shoes in the planet’s mud, leading Archer to order all Starfleet officers to wear knee-high boots.

WHO MOURNS FOR REDSHIRTS?: The sinister Section 31 returns with a plan to reduce Earth’s chronic overpopulation by placing expendable crewmembers in red shirts so they will become easier targets for hostile aliens.

SLASH SEED: T’Pol confides to Ensign Sato that she is going through the pon farr, a Vulcan condition in which she must have sex or die. Acting purely out of selfless friendship for her beautiful colleague, the female ensign agrees to help relieve her condition with the aid of some unusual alien vegetables. Unfortunately their lovemaking is seen by the homophobic Klingon ambassador, Councilor Kork. Kork threatens to unleash a vast fleet of warbirds that will reduce Earth to ashes if he ever has to witness such acts over his breakfast gagh again. Archer therefore bans all homosexual liaisons between Starfleet personnel. T’Pol informs the captain that during her orgasm she experienced a telepathic vision of the future, in which Archer’s decision will lead to a phenomenon known as ‘slash fiction’.

BRAGA’S BRAIN: A mysterious alien steals the brain of Enterprise’s scriptwriter, who seeks to fill the ensuing vacuum with loads of technobabble, gratuitous displays of flesh, lame dialogue and highly unlikely plot twists.

THE CROSSOVER SYNDROME: A transporter accident causes Captain Archer to quantum leap through the lives of future Starfleet captains, whose crews are dumbfounded by their sudden shifts in personality. Captain Sisko changes from a silent lump of wood to a chronic over-actor, while Chakotay is puzzled as to why Janeway hasn’t followed up on their flirting and is instead hanging around that sexy Borg all the time.

A RIPPLE IN THE FOLD: A fault in the Enterprise’s warp drive causes undulations in the fabric of space, leading to unsightly wrinkles in the uniforms of Starfleet personnel.

FOR MY HEAD IS HOLLOW AND I AM BLONDE: A disastrous command decision by one of Archer’s female officers leads Starfleet to rule that women be restricted to the positions of yeoman and intergalactic telephone operator.

A BRIGHT AND SHINING THIGH: In order to repair numerous temporal disruptions made by Captain Archer for the sake of plot convenience, the Federation Timeship “Relativity” recruits Seven of Nine to infiltrate the Enterprise. This proves more difficult than imagined as the sight of the voluptuous Borg striding around in a miniskirt causes numerous accidents on board the ship. After the Enterprise is nearly piloted into a black hole when Seven bends over to pick up a dropped compadd, Archer has to explain to her that wearing underwear IS relevant. Seven of Nine decides to create a less-revealing dermaplastic garment, basing the design on something she saw when the Relativity went back to the days of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately a visiting alien ambassador sees Seven in her new toga and sparks off a galaxy-wide toga craze that lasts until Kirk’s day. Then the evil Klingons attack the ship, hoping to gain the secret of the toga for themselves. After a desperate space battle the Klingon warbird is fatally crippled and Seven of Nine is startled to hear Captain Archer order its total destruction. “What about human compassion?” she inquires. “F__k compassion, those bastards tried to kill my crew!” replies Archer, whereupon the former drone finally discovers true love.

THE BALD TIME: In an effort to boost flagging ratings, Captain Jean-Luc Picard travels back in time to Captain Archer’s Enterprise. Annoyed by young ensign Kirk’s snide remarks about his bald head, Picard violates the Temporal Prime Directive by saying, “One day you’ll be captain of the Enterprise…and bald!” Kirk becomes so hysterical over the thought of losing his hair that Archer believes he has gone mad. Archer is about to phaser him out of existence when Picard saves the timeline by pointing out that the young Kirk is merely undergoing a fit of over-acting. Picard and Kirk apologise to each other, with Picard commenting dryly on the need to think before opening one’s mouth. Kirk takes the lesson to heart, promising to insert numerous pauses in his speech patterns from now on. In a moving coda, Picard presents Jim Kirk with his Captain’s Toupee. “One day…I will wear this…with pride,” says the future Captain Kirk.

I found this on the TrekBBS. The original poster was Odon, but I’m not sure if they were the author or not.

Enterprise: Shuttlepod One

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On a routine shuttlepod mission to investigate an asteroid field, Trip and Reed find themselves suddenly cut off from the Enterprise and become convinced that the mothership has been destroyed. With a limited oxygen supply and almost no chance of being rescued, the opposite-minded twosome must battle their annoyance with one another while also coming to terms with their impending demise.

In short — great episode. 4.5 out of 5.

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Enterprise: Dear Doctor

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The crew encounters an alien race in desperate need of medical and scientific assistance. Phlox declines to assist them because of his ethical beliefs leaving Archer to decide whether to help them find their own solutions.

“Dear Doctor” marks not just the most recent Enterprise episode, but in my opinion, the strongest I’ve seen yet. After the on-again, off-again nature of last week’s episode, this weeks was a real treat, with a well-written and structured blend of of drama and character development, with subplots that actually worked well with the main plot, rather than distracting from it.

A solid 4 and a half out of 5 this week.

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Enterprise: Silent Enemy

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So last night was the first new episode of Enterprise, Silent Enemy.

When Enterprise is attacked by an unidentified enemy ship, the crew must work frantically to get their new phase cannons to operate. Meanwhile, Archer realizes that no one knows Reed well enough to give him a personalized birthday gift.

My take on the episode — extremely uneven. Overall I’d give it probably around 3 out of 5, but the show could have been much better.

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Enterprise: Civilization

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It’s been a couple days since the most recent Enterprise episode, “Civilization“, and I hadn’t been able to come up with much to say about it. After working on it for a bit, I think it’s just because there really isn’t much to say — while it wasn’t a really bad episode, it certainly wasn’t really good, and was definitely nothing new. It basically felt like a retread of episodes that every Star Trek series have done at least once or twice at some point during their run, all around the same “Enterprise officers interacting with a primitive society, trying to hide, and failing miserably” theme. Decently done, but not exactly treading new ground.

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The human adventure is just beginning

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Today marked the release day for one of my personal most-anticipated discs — the Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition. I picked it up at lunch, then made it through the rest of the day until I could get home and watch it.

Part of the reason I’d been awaiting this release of the first film in the Star Trek series is that for the first time, we are being shown the completed film. Usually when a film is being made, the director assembles a rough cut which is shown to test audiences. Their reactions, coupled with anything the director might notice as he watches the rough cut, serve to guide the director and editor in assembling the final cut of the film. Unfortunately, the schedule for ST:TMP was so tight that that crucial final step was never taken — the film had to be done by a certain date, and so the final edit was never performed. Also due to time and budget constraints of the time, many of the special effects sequences had not been completed. Essentially, what we’ve seen for the past 22 years has been no more than a rough cut that director Robert Wise was not happy with, but it was all there was time for.

In 1998, Robert Wise was approached by Paramount to see if he was interested in finally revisiting and finishing the film. After some initial trepidation he agreed, and after months of curiosity and speculation, the final result is finally available on DVD. Not just a new edit of the film, a team of restoration artists and CGI artists have worked with the director to carefully enhance some effect sequences, complete others, and create an entirely new 5.1 sound mix utilizing the original source elements from the film.

The end result is, quite simply, incredible. While the new cut incorporates new effects sequences and some scenes that had previously been inserted for the television version, Mr. Wise has also taken out some scenes and tightened others to create a new version that is just slightly longer than the original, but has a much more finished feel to it. The effects shots are doubly impressive, in part because they’re so seamlessly integrated into the body of the film, that I didn’t even notice many of them until they were pointed out in a documentary! The artists working on the new effects sequences worked very hard to match the style of the original effects, only creating sequences that could have been created in 1979 had there been time, and even working from the original storyboards rather than dreaming up ideas that might be ‘cool’, but not true to the original vision. Suffice to say, I was not merely impressed by this new version of a film I’ve been watching for years, but flat-out floored. I’ve never harbored the disdain for this film that many other fans have, but it’s always been obvious that it had some serious problems. Now, however, it has finally been completed, and we can leave the dubious honor of being the worst of the series to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

In addition to the outstanding work done on the film itself, Paramount has finally released a true Special Edition DVD, rather than the movie-only editions for the rest of the series. The movie disc contains two feature-length commentaries. The first is an audio commentary with director Robert Wise and others, and the second is a text commentary (presented in the form of yellow subtitles) written by Michael Okuda, long-time graphic artist for the series and Trek-tech geek extraordinaire. Both commentaries are packed with information, but the text commentary is my personal favorite. You need to be a bit quick to read some of it, but there’s a great sense of humor permeating the track that makes it a lot of fun (my personal favorite bit — as Kirk is explaining to Scotty that there is something approaching Earth and the Enterprise is the only ship within reach, the commentary pops up with, “This seems to happen a lot — it almost makes one wonder if the other ships stay away when the Enterprise is in town, in case something happens!”).

The second disc contains three documentaries ranging from about 15 minutes to about half an hour. The first covers the road from the initial concept for the series ‘Star Trek — Phase II’ that was to be the flagship show for a Paramount based TV network (years before UPN appeared) to the beginning of production on ST:TMP. The second covers the production of the film, and the third explores the work done to create the new Director’s Edition. It’s a bit of a bummer that little time is given to the problems that led to the unfinished film being released and the subsequent reactions, but the three documentaries still cover a lot of ground, and are well worth watching. All of the theater and television trailers are included on the disc, as well as a huge collection of deleted scenes (documenting scenes deleted from the original cut, scenes that were included in the television cut, and one section that collects all the pieces that were trimmed in the making of the new cut).

All in all, an absolutely incredible set, and one that does the die hard Trek geek in me proud.

Enterprise: The Andorian Incident

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Last night’s Enterprise episode (“The Andorian Incident“), was — at least IMNSHO — one of the better, if not the best, of the episodes I’ve seen yet. While according to current Star Trek lore, the Andorians were one of the three founding races of the United Federation of Planets (along with humans and Vulcans), yet we’ve rarely seen much of them, with their few ‘starring’ roles dating back to the original series. Well, this week we got re-introduced to them, and it looks like they may be much more major players than they have in the past, which could turn out to be quite interesting.

We are also being treated to a much more interesting view of the Vulcans. Always before, they’ve been coldly logical, somewhat aloof characters, with the race as a whole obviously a strong and trusted member of the UFP. However, we’re now seeing some of the Vulcans weaknesses and less-than-idealistic tendencies, and I for one find the new look at the history of the race fascinating (to coin a phrase). Typically, however, the new views have been raising quite a storm among many fans, and there are some very interesting arguments over at the Trek BBS on both sides of whether this is a good development or not. Personally, I think it is…but that’s just me, I suppose.

Looking forward to more….