| Review : |
This right here is a perfect example of how Berman and Braga are both horrible writers/producers and how they managed to kill Trek on the small screen, likely for a generation. There is nothing redeeming about this episode, nothing. Archer shows an incredible lack of judgment by bringing his dog along on a first contact scenario. Second, he shows even more horrible judgment by pitching a hissy fit over Porthos getting sick when he can't even be sure it's the Kreetassin's fault. Sure, you sent them his genetic profile and they compared that to every single organism on their planet ever. The final bit of bad judgment is that he values his ability to self-righteously pout about the situation more than getting necessary spare parts for his ship. Why is this guy captain again? In a stunning bit of character assassination Archer spends the entire episode whining, moaning, and blaming every one for something that was ultimately his own damn fault. At least on Voyager they killed characters slowly, spending entire seasons ripping them down until you couldn't stand them. Here Enterprise manages to destroy the main character's credibility in a single episode. He's not a captain in the Kirk/Picard/Sisko vein, he's a whiny spoiled child pitching a tantrum. The rest of the episode was just as uninspired. The sexual tension angle between Archer and T'Pol came out of no where. Unless I missed something major he's hated her and proven to be a pretty impressive racists. So now that was all just a juvenie attempt to gain her attention and get her legs up in the air? Sorry, not buying it. Besides, Enterprise's resident hottie is Hoshi "The Ho" Sato. Additionally we get a couple of fart and boobie jokes. Yeah, humanity's finest going out into the wider galaxy for the first time ever, exploring strange new worlds and meeting new cultures and the captain can't stop staring at T'Pol's jugs and Tucker asks if he ate cabbage before going down to talk to these people. Admittedly it's Trip "Catfish" Tucker in that last gaffe but still. Finally, they try to drag Pholx down with Archer. Rather than having Phlox's wildernesses be understood and mentioned in conversations they decided to have him do his thing on camera. It doesn't work. It's an old adage that its often best to let people's imaginations fill in things in horror or suspense as they can create images vastly more bizzare and horrible than your SFX crew can. Phlox's weirdness was always better off left up to the viewer's imaginations rather than shown. When it is shown it just bleh. Ultimately this episode could have been saved if at the end Archer had realized what a colossal dick he'd been and appologized to the crew and ultimately the Kreetassin's. Instead at the end Archer just sits around looking like a smug prick. He went through the motions of the apology but didn't mean so he got one over on them, Haha. He acted like a dick to his crew but since he did it his way and things worked out they obviously had it coming. This is just an awful awful episode, another one in the bottom five for Enterprise. |
