LizstarTrek - Enterprise Season 1 episodes 17 - 20
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!
IT’S BEEN A LOOOOONG ROOOOOAAAD
Fusion - ENT 4/10
Enterprise is exploringa far nebula when they’re contacted by a Vulcan ship. The captain is all smiles, which is IMMEDIATELY weird. They ask for some assistance, explain they’re civilians, and when the captain meets for dinner, he happily eats meat and is all smiles. The Captain is nice, but his 2nd in command is a smarmy asshole. They explain they’re V’tosh ka’tur, Vulcans without Logic. That name MIGHT be familiar… that’s Sybok. These guys are Pre-Syboks. T’Pol is not amused.
This guy has the most punchable face in space, and every second he’s on screen I’m afraid he’s about to sexually assault someone and then say it’s “just a joke bro”. He tries to chat up T’Pol and I’m expecting him to force a mind meld with her by the end of the episode. He explains that they’re not REJECTING Surak’s teachings, quite the opposite. It’s more that they’re a heresy that believes the teachings are misinterpreted, and he wanted Vulcans to “MASTER” their emotions. Whatever that means.
We basically have two stories here. T’Pol with the smarmy guy, Tolaris, and this guy, Tor, the engineer. He’s a friendly guy who likes making pals on the ship. Tor’s dad asks Archer to try and convince Tor to contact him, since he’s dying, and Tor refuses to talk to him. Emotional manipulation time?
SPEAKING OF EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION, HEY, I CALLED IT. T’Pol has a sex dream about Tolaris. Creeps Invading Psychics With Sex Dreams is not a new phenomena in Star Trek, but I hate it every time it happens.
This dude’s body language is rancid, just HANGING over her with that fucking smirk. I dunno why she’s humoring him.
Hey look, I called it. I hate being psychic.
Archer finds out what happens, basically tricks Tolaris into throwing him across the fucking room, and kicks him out of the ship. Good, fuck that guy. Trip helps Tor talk to his dad, and it goes better than expected. So while sometimes the emotional vulcan experiment doesn’t work, it can. Tor seems like a good guy.
Rogue Planet - ENT 8/10
While flying through space, Enterprise finds a rogue planet. Wow, title drop. This is a real phoenomenon where planets are just… floating in space. It’s not COMMON but it’s a thing. They find a ship on it, but it ignores their hails.
The planet is actually habitable, due to thermal vents, which is kinda nuts. The crew quickly finds the aliens here, the Eska, who are hunters hunting some dangerous game that lives on this planet. Reed offers to join them for a hunt, but the others are kinda disturbed by the idea of hunting. As Archer says, hunting went out of favor on Earth a century ago, but they do still appreciate the hunters’ hospitality.
That night, Archer senses something out in the forest, and goes after it. A bit wild to do that after hearing the hunters explain all the dangerous animals that lurk in the dark. He finds a young human woman with long blond hair, wearing a night gown. She calls Archer by name, and then disappears into the foliage. Interesting :o
The others are like “Sir, there’s no Humans on this planet but us, don’t be nuts, you’re hallucinating”. Everyone thinks he’s being a fool, which is really funny and shows this really IS Early Trek, since after being in space for 200 years, Starfleet goes “You saw something weird? Got it, time to do all the tests we can”, while here they’re like “Silly Captain, weird things don’t happen in Trek”.
She appears again and is like “Hey, I’m contacting you SPECIFICALLY because I need help. And I’m taking this form because you’d be reticent to it”. This is pretty obvious, I think, where this story is going. But that doesn’t make it BAD. It looks like its a Devil in the Dark situation, a non-humanoid is being hurt and wants to reach out for help. Also this girl is played by the super sexy Trill from Insurrection. Yay!
After some more shenanigans, Archer gets to talk to her again, and she explains that the Eska are hunting THEM. The Eska, for what its worth, seems to not realize there’s anything sapient on the planet. Archer finds out more by talking to the hunters, learning about beings called the Wraiths, animals that are able to psychically read minds. Ah, I see.
The Eska sense them by reading a pheremone they give off when scared. Phlox develops something to help mask it, and all’s well. The Eska are pissed and suspicious, but can’t prove anything.
SLUG MOMMY!
Pretty good episode for Enterprise, honestly.
Acquisition - ENT 9/10
THE FERENGI ARE HERE! We know Starfleet had SOME interractions with the Ferengi before TNG, none good, but it’s fascinating to see them. They do something to gas Enterprise and then make their way in to rob the place, not without weirdly sexually harassing T’Pol. Ohhh, Ferengi. Never change (?)
One of these Ferengi is played by the same actor as Neelix. It’s nice to see him! Is this the first time a main actor character has come back in a cameo role? I can’t remember any others happening. I know a few in reverse.
Everyone is knocked out… except for one. Of COURSE it’s Trip. OF FUCKING COURSE IT’S TRIP. I swear to God, he gets more love than Archer does. He was stuck in decon, so he gets spared. Now he’s gotta Die Hard around the ship. All the while the Ferengi are going about their business, taking the things they personally like. One has big colorful socks and are stealing shoes. Another is gathering all the women. Oooof course. I miss DS9, when their weird sexism was mocked more openly.
They wake Archer up, and he tries to play them pretty well after a little bit. Tries haggling, talks up the weakest one, kinda befriends him. He doesn’t have the lobes. He sees Trip is awake, and sneaks a message to him about how to wake up the others like he got wake up. We get T’Pol up, but none of the others for some reason.
T’Pol plays the other three Ferengi against each other, doing things with some remote control scanners that makes them stop trusting each other. Very smart.
T’Pol AND Archer are actually both very good at this. I guess Trip’s job is to run around half naked. Though honestly when he’s put on the line, he does a VERY good job faking a fight with Archer. “THEY’RE GONNA TAKE MY WIFE, YOU GREEDY SON OF A BITCH”, then promises to show them where the Gold Vault is.
They’re all so shockingly good at this. T’Pol seduces the weaker one and then knocks him the fuck out. This episode is filled with a lot of great character moments, holy hell. Trip lures them into a trap and T’Pol shoots them, knocking them out. They then force them to put EVERYTHING back.
Archer lets Krem, the weaker one, take control of his ship while the others are tied up, and they fly off, while Archer puts the Ferengi in the database as dangerous. Anyways this is absolutely fantastic, the best episode of Enterprise so far prolly. Grading on the Enterprise scale, it’s like a 10/10. Grading on the NORMAL scale, prolly a 9 lol
Oasis - ENT 6.5/10
The Enterprise meets a trader who tells them of a planet not far from here that has a crashed ship that he couldn’t scrap for parts, because “the crew objected”, even though nothing is alive there. Ooh, scary, interesting~
They go down to explore the ship, even though there’s a MILLION red flags. It’s weird for them to like, try to scavenge a ship. The only time I can think of that ever happening was Terok Nor, and that was a special case.
Obviously no, they are not alone. There ARE people living there. These are people on a supply vessel that was shot down by raiders. They’ve been hiding here now for three years, unable to get the ship flying. And yes, that IS Odo! I know I literally JUST last episode went “I can’t remember a main actor coming back for a cameo” and here he is. Hi Rene, it’s so good to see you. Archer agrees to try and help them get their ship flying again.
These aliens, the Kantare, are not UNFRIENDLY, but are a little standoffish. And they don’t want the younger Kantare to really interract with the crew. There’s a girl called Liana who’s a little standoffish too at first, but is friendly to Trip after he tries to open up with her. T’Pol is like “of COURSE you’re trying to sleep with her too”. Trip claims he’s not. Oh please.
Some things the Kantare are saying aren’t really making sense. Scans show their ship has been there for a VERY long time. Over 20 years. Meanwhile, they also find a corpse of one of the Kantare that they saw on the ship, alive, an hour ago. When Trip confronts Liana about this, she’s like “OKAY I GOTTA GO BYYYEEE” and dips. Sussy.
The Kantare capture Trip and T’Pol and force them to fix the ship. Trip goes “You’ve got a LOT to learn about making friends” and Odo says “I’ve made all the friends I need”, which I think gives the game away.
Yeah, so only Odo and his daughter survived the original crash. Odo blames himself for killing the rest of the crew and made holograms of them to try and deal with the trauma and guilt. He left his station during the crash to save his daughter, which is why he blames himself. Poor guy. After learning exactly what happened, they agree to help fix the holographic systems, if that’s what they REALLY want. But they need to be sure of that.
They convince Odo to fix the ship and head back home. He’s happy there, but his daughter isn’t. Trip and Liana kiss, and that was about it. This was okay, but it feels like a retread of previous Trek ideas