{"id":252,"date":"2001-11-08T08:16:49","date_gmt":"2001-11-08T16:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=252"},"modified":"2019-11-26T07:53:30","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T15:53:30","slug":"enterprise-breaking-the-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2001\/11\/08\/enterprise-breaking-the-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Enterprise: Breaking the Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:16746,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.treknation.com\\\/episodes\\\/season1\\\/breaking_the_ice.shtml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20090106192926\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.treknation.com\\\/episodes\\\/season1\\\/breaking_the_ice.shtml&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 13:58:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-27 08:20:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 23:50:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 23:50:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16765,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.treknation.com\\\/episodes\\\/season1\\\/broken_bow.shtml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20090106140942\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.treknation.com\\\/episodes\\\/season1\\\/broken_bow.shtml&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 14:04:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 14:04:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16766,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.trektoday.com\\\/news\\\/071101_01.shtml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260314140733\\\/https:\\\/\\\/trektoday.com\\\/news\\\/071101_01.shtml&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/trektoday.com\\\/news\\\/071101_01.shtml&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got mixed feelings about last night&#8217;s episode of Enterprise, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.treknation.com\/episodes\/season1\/breaking_the_ice.shtml\" title=\"Trek Nation: Breaking the Ice\">&#8220;Breaking the Ice&#8221;<\/a>. It was definitely one of the strongest episodes yet in getting into the characters, but there were some definite bits that rubbed me the wrong way.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nTo start with the good bits&#8230;well, the shining moment of the show for me was probably the transmission to the schoolchildren. It lended a very nice, almost &#8220;homey&#8221; feel to the show, helping remind us that these are the first humans out in space like this, and there&#8217;s an entire planet back home curious about what they&#8217;re experiencing. The way each of the characters handled themselves was fun to watch too &#8212; Archer seemed to be a bit nervous, but was still enjoying himself; Trip had to cope with a bit of stage fright (and embarrassment at being handed a &#8216;poop question&#8217;); and Sato gave the best presentation of the bunch &#8211;not all that surprising, though, as when we first saw her in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.treknation.com\/episodes\/season1\/broken_bow.shtml\" title=\"Trek Nation: Broken Bow\">&#8220;Broken Bow&#8221;<\/a> she was teaching a class.<\/p>\n<p>T&#8217;Pol and Trip seem to be forming an interesting dynamic (the obvious parallel being the McCoy\/Spock duo to Archer&#8217;s Kirk, but we&#8217;ll see how it plays out over the coming weeks), and T&#8217;Pol&#8217;s dilemma here certainly added to it. It seemed clear to me that they&#8217;d end up talking about her problem (if nothing else, it was the logical choice &#8212; he already knew, so why involve anyone else?), but they both played it off very well. Jolene Blalock is impressing me more and more, too &#8212; while I&#8217;m not always sure if I like what the show is doing with T&#8217;Pol, Blalock is doing a wonderful job of under-emoting to perfection. It&#8217;s known that Vulcans are not emotionless, they merely suppress their emotions for the greater good, and she&#8217;s doing a wonderful job of very subtly conveying her mood while still maintaining the stoic Vulcan exterior.<\/p>\n<p>I did have a couple quibbles with the show, though. First off &#8212; just how much gravity does an 86km diameter snowball have? Apparently, it&#8217;s pretty Earth-normal, so that psyllium they were mining must be some pretty amazingly dense stuff. Considering Andre Bormanis, one of the staff writers, said in an online chat that &#8220;We went out of our way to get the science right in this week&#8217;s episode]<a href=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/news\/071101_01.shtml\" title=\"Trek Today: Bormanis Talks 'Enterprise' Story Arcs\">3<\/a>, and it really helped the story,&#8221; I was a bit surprised at that extremely-obvious gaffe.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also a bit concerned that once the content of T&#8217;Pol&#8217;s message was found, the matter of her receiving (and, presumably, having the opportunity to send) secret encrypted messages was dropped so suddenly. Whether or not this particular message was of a personal nature, the fact remains that after telling Archer that she would have no unauthorized contact with other Vulcans, she was surreptitiously doing just that. I don&#8217;t think that the matter should have been just swept under the rug quite as quickly as it was.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from those matters, though, it was a pretty decent episode. It&#8217;s becoming more and more obvious each week that this shows focus is going to be on the trio of Archer, Trip, and T&#8217;Pol, and I just hope that they can continue to explore their characters as well as they did this time. Enterprise is still a bit of a question mark, but it has definite promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just how much gravity does an 86km diameter snowball have? Apparently, it&#8217;s pretty Earth-normal, so that psyllium they were mining must be some pretty amazingly dense stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2047],"tags":[924,1661,4097,8],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-trek","tag-ent","tag-enterprise","tag-star-trek","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}