LizstarTrek - Enterprise Season 1 episodes 5 - 8

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

STARTING ENTERPRISE NOW! I know NOTHING about this, other than it takes place very early in the timeline, has a guy named ARcher and a guy named Phlox, people smother gel on each other naked a lot, and a lot of people get a lot of opinions.

Unexpected - ENT 2.5/10

This is it. One of the most important episodes. The person I watch Trek with, Neligahn, remembers this specifically. Why? You’ll find out.

The episode starts with some general malfunctions all over the ship. They determine that the problems are cause there’s an alien ship sitting within their warp field, squatting. They communicate with them, and they seem friendly enough, and are just using it cause their systems are malfunctioning. They offer to fix it up, and send Trip over. “Mind your manners”. Trip? Minding his manners? That’ll be the day. He immediately shows his ass by getting impatient with a 3 hour decompression, which he knew was coming. Trip is the worst character in this so far.

Hey look, it’s the BEST character in this show! :D Porthos is the best boy.

The Xyrillians, the aliens they’re helping, live in a very different pressure and atmosphere, and it’s causing some serious problems for Trip. This is conveyed with weird drug filters and flashing lights, which are VERY bad on the eyes. He’s helped by this hot lizard babe, who helps him adjust.

The two of them work on fixing the engine, and on the off time, hang out and relax. She shows him a kind of holodeck, and plays a game with him where they kinda share minds and thoughts for a minute. He finds out she finds him very attractive. So, I usually don’t like romance in Trek. I feel like it doesn’t work very well, usually? Feels stilted and off. But here it… WEIRDLY works? It helps that she’s instigating, but gently and not too far, and Trip’s wet blanket “Huh, what?” energy kinda works with that. Nothing ACTUALLY happens though.

But it doesn’t matter. He goes home, they all leave, and it’s fine. But then, Trip has a weird growth. What is it? Phlox looks into him, and we find out… he’s pregnant. Everyone assumes he just fucked around, but no, he actually didn’t.

This is handled very, shockingly bad. This is funny to someone who like badly written things. Like, if you’re really into “Take my wife, please” jokes, this is the episode for you. He’s PMSy and it’s awful. Very poorly written.

They find the Xyrillians, who are hiding in some Klingon’s wake now. The Klingons do not take happily to this, and are going to kill all of them. Archer and T’Pal manage to convince them to let them go, in exchange for holographic technology. The Klingons are… very unpleasant. The Klingons in this show are a little worse than Klingons in the 90s-era. Trip goes back on the ship, and they manage to get the alien out of him. T’Pal tells him that he’s the first Human Male to ever get pregnant. I guess trans men do not exist in the future.

Anyways this sucked, obviously. But it wasn’t as horrible as it could have been. THEY DIDN’T EVEN LET HIM COME TO TERM. Cowards.

Terra Nova - ENT 6.5/10

The Enterprise is heading towards Terra Nova. Years ago, trying to colonize the universe, some Humans left Earth to get to an earth-like planet 20 light years away. No one knows what happened to them, because Enterprise is the first ship that’s really gone out this far.

When they get to the colony, it appears abandoned. There’s some kind of background radiation, 70 years ago it would have been lethal and they wouldn’t have been able to head back into space cause the ship was designed to BECOME the colony. So where are they? They find a guy, who runs away and leads them to a network of tunnels. Some weird people capture Reed, and then run away back into the tunnels. Now they need to do a rescue mission.

Archer lets himself get captured and communicates with these people, who are Human, actually. Not even really majorly mutated, just… the culture has kinda fallen apart. They need to try and get these people to trust them. They think Humans hurt them, the Novans, some time in the past with poison rain. Archer tells them no, they ARE Human, and they can work together to learn what happened. They offer to take some of them up to the ship to cure diseases.

They keep trying to convince them they’re Human, but they’re not making much progress. And on top of that, the tunnels they live in aren’t totally safe from the radiation. Eventually they take them back, not much progress made, but begging them to just move to a safer location. Archer WANTED to take them back to Earth, but T’Pol was like “you’d be erasing their culture. That’s a Bad Thing, by the way.”

Back on the planet, the landing causes quakes that collapse some tunnels. Archer risks himself to save some Novan lives. This endears them to them, and they agree to move, which is done off screen, and the episode just ends.

This one was alright. Pacing was a bit off, but it wasn’t bad.

The Andorian Incident - ENT 8/10

This is one of the episodes I’ve been looking forward to. Andorians are a very, VERY important peoples. They are historically important but have barely been expanded upon. This is where that changes. Not only that, but He returns.

We see Andorians attack some Vulcans. Then we get the Enterprise going to go visit a Vulcan temple on a far away planet. They aren’t GREAT with outsiders, but the Humans wanna learn more, so we’ll learn more.

It’s him! They discover the temple is under attack by… someone! This is Jeffrey Combs. You may remember him as a bunch of different, very good DS9 characters. They are VERY unhappy to see them. Once they’re captured, T’Pol explaisn they are Andorians. They are very anxious and suspicious of the Vulcans. And now that the Humans are here, they’re even MORE suspicious. They think the Vulcans have some sensor arrays here, and demand to know where they are.

The Vulcans deny anything of the sort. But they also say they MIGHT have an old one in The Catacombs. There’s no way these Vulcans aren’t actually doing shady shit down here.

There’s also a cute scene between Archer and T’Pol. Is it just me, or do they have some actually good chemistry?

The Humans plan out a strategy. They use the old radio to contact Enterprise. Dunno how the Andorians don’t notice it. They sneak some Humans down using transporters for a surprise attack. Reed gets to do something! Holy shit! They also conscript one of the Vulcan monks, a younger one, to join them in the fight.

Wow what a fucking surprise, I was right. Called it. Now that Archer finds out about it, he is EXTREMELY unhappy about it. He’s like “Give them all the info about this, now. The Vulcans violated the treaty and the Andorians have a right to know about it.” The young Vulcan monk tries to hold them hostage, but Archer beats the shit out of him. The Andorian leader is actually appreciative of this, and does leave. And then it just ends.

Interesting, sets up future plot lines. Curious where this goes.

Breaking the Ice - ENT 6/10

If this episode doesn’t IMMEDIATELY follow the plot of the last one, I’ll be confounded. How did that NOT cause them to pause everything?

The Enterprise follows a comet and scans it, while T’Pol gets some kind of message. She does not look happy. They scan the comet some more, and a Vulcan ship shows up. They’re like “We’re here to watch you :

”. Everyone sees EXACTLY what’s going on. The Vulcans in this show have been pretty unpleasant and unmoral so far. I imagine they’re going “The Humans will be just as unpleasant and unmoral, we cannot trust them, time to watch them as they do bad stuff”. So the Humans, knowing this? What do they decide to do? Just… keep being normal.

There’s a scene where Archer and the crew answer questions sent to them from kids, knowing the Vulcans are listening in. That’s so fucking funny to me. This is, unironically, the best scene in the entire show so far. Archer forces Trip to answer a poop question. He is NOT happy. I am VERY happy.

On the Comet, while doign scans, Merriweather and Reed make a Snow Vulcan. It’s cute. The most character Reed’s got. They then blow it the fuck up while they’re drilling deeper into the comet.

At the same time, there’s that letter T’Pol got. It was encrypted. Trip is SURE it’s something suspicious, so he has it unencrypted and reads it. It’s VERY personal, very private, not at all suspicious mail. Well, shit. He feels genuinely awful about it, and goes to tell T’Pol, who continues to be VERY unhappy.

They have a dinner with the Vulcan captain. He is, like every single one of the Vulcans on this show, a fucking bitch. I hate it. I really don’t like it? I don’t like how Vulcans are shown and represented in this show, at all. Vulcans have always been standoffish, and a little bitchy, but this is like, INTENTIONALLY being kind of cruel and rude.

T’Pol talks to Trip about her problem, since he already knows. What’s the issue? Her arranged marriage is about to be called off because she decided to work on Enterprise instead. This is, IMO, stupid, but I have opinions on arranged marriage kinda shit. Trip doesn’t have very good advice, because he’s Trip.

Merriweather and Reed get in a snafu on the surface of the Comet, and nearly get killed. The Vulcans offer to assist, and Archer WANTS to resist, but T’pol is like “They think you’ll reject the offer, because they think of you as arrogant. You can prove them wrong.”

He accepts the help graceously, and wishes them a safe journey on their way. T’Pol decides to stay on the Enterprise, and it all ends. This one was alright. I liked a few parts of it a lot, but the rest was shitty, jerkish Vulcans.