LizstarTrek - Enterprise Season 2 episodes 4 - 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!

IT’S BEEN A LOOOOONG ROOOOOAAAD

Dead Stop - ENT 7/10

This show REALLY likes continuity! I’m not used to that with Star Trek. Our last episode had the Enterprise almost blow the fuck up, an entire chunk taken out of the poor thing. They’re safe, but dead in the water. They can go maybe warp 2 if they push the thing, but that’s still 10 years before they reach Earth. Luckily a Tellerite freighter catches them and goes “We’re not close enough, but there’s a repair station at these coordinates”, 3 days away. First ever Tellerites since they showed up ONCE in TOS! We don’t really see them though, they just speak, and even then their voice is fuzzy cause they’re so far away.

They reach the repair station, which appears to be automated. Not very friendly or well explained, but surely this will turn out well and not be too good to be true! Everything inside is in English, the station having scanned them. A pleasant robot voice is like “please choose payment type” and “the recreation area is now available, please enjoy your visit”. The inside of this station reminds me of kids toys for some reason.

This ship has some very advanced technology, including replicators. This is before replicators were common place, though some species seem to have them at the very least. And whoever owns this repair station is VERY advanced. I know that the other foot is gonna drop and things are gonna be Bad here, but I’d kinda like if this was just watching them get excited about advanced technology.

Holy shit, it’s a fucking exocomp on its side. AN EXOCOMP, AS SEEN FROM ABOVE!! Making good use of old props they had lying around. Nanmo lives on EVEN NOW, like 12 years after anyone stopped caring about Dirty Pair.

Anyways, it all seems too good to be true, and Archer is the one really feeling this. Though tbf Reed and Trip are also sus and go sneaking around in the station’s cracks and crannies, and it teleports them off it. Mayweather is called by Archer somewhere and theeeen is suddenly killed. Rest in peace, Mayweather. No one knows why the fuck Mayweather went to a cordoned off area, it makes no sense. This is actually their first ever death. I can’t BELIEVE they’ve dodged so many deaths. They are really, REALLY hammering this in. This is like 10 minutes of them being sad about Mayweather’s death.

Obviously no, Mayweather’s not dead. It kidnapped him, replicated a fake dead body, and hoped they wouldn’t notice they just took one of their people and put them into slavery. So now they need to save him. While Trip distracts the program by huckstering it, the others sneak inside and try not to step off the alarm this time.

Turns out it kidnaps aliens and then hooks them into the computer to use their body as processing power. I feel there’s easier ways to have a functioning computer like this… but whatever you say, random super powerful aliens we’ll never see or find out about. Maybe the writer had just seen The Matrix, it was pretty recent. They set off explosions in the warp plasma they were giving to the station. The station claims down on them but they manage to escape as it explodes. All those other aliens in there? They are VERY dead. But as they fly off… the station starts repairing itself. Oops we created the Borg. Too bad we’ll never see anything about this ever again.

This one was alright.

A Night in Sickbay - ENT 1/10

You know, I didn’t know very much about Enterprise before watching this show. But the one thing I DID know is that it had a lot of decon scenes with half naked actors rubbing gel on each other. There’s been a lot less of it then I thought there’d be. But this is the one I’ve been waiting for.

Archer rubbing gel all over Porthos.

You rememebr the Kreetassans? Prolly not. They were the aliens who got super offended cause Humans eat in public. Archer needed something from them so he groveled for 5 days, got another chance at an embassy, and immediately got kicked off the planet agian. Why? Cause he took Porthos and Porthos pissed on some of their sacred trees. Why the fuck did Archer bring Porthos to this diplomatic meeting? I guess he just assumed that the cute little Dog would make things go better.

Anyways they Kreetassans didn’t really try hard enough to make sure whether their planet was safe for Dogs, so it’s not. After Archer finds out that they might have killed his dog, he goes “They better HOPE they didn’t kill my dog, because if they did, I’ll be the one pissing on their trees”

Captain Archer, the first Captain in Starfleet history, one of the most historically important Humans ever, threatens to piss on some sacred trees out of anger.

Archer decides to spend the night in Medbay. Turns out Phlox is a very bad roommate. He’s cutting his nails and scraping his tongue in the middle of the night.

Archer’s being a little brat this episode. Yes I know his dog might die, and that’s very exhausting and emotionally a lot, but he really is being a fucking whiny bitch about the whole thing. I’ve often said that Enterprise is the most American Star Trek. It was mostly post 9/11 and has a lot of American jingoism and ideals baked into its writing and nature as American bullshittery reached a height. It is VERY America centric. But I think NOTHING shows how America centric this show is more than how Archer is acting in this episode. He’s being a fucking whiny bitch about needing to bend over backwards to fit in with some other aliens’ culture, when they SHOULD just bend over to HIS culture. And the Kreetassans are shown as extremely rude, self centered, and awful. So this episode 100% thinks Archer is in the right about this. I don’t care if it ends with him actually sucking up and doing the thing, the vibes are just off. Just compare how Archer is whining about needing to do some rituals to apologize for pissing them off to how Picard would act in TNG. I’m PRETTY sure I remember an episode where Picard learned an aliens’ language and did like a 2 hour long ritual just to make them feel welcome and they went “you really didn’t need to do all that”. THAT is how a captain acts. Not THIS. This alone is knocking Archer down several knocks on my tier list.

I’m kind of hating this episode but Phlox is fun in it at least. He has a lot of good moments. Him scraping his tongue. Him messing with a bat that sprays liquid all over him, and when Archer goes “is that dangerous?” he licks it and goes “Eh, probably not”.

Anyways Archer APPEARS to be really low on sleep and is having a lot of weird dreams about being sexually attracted to T’Pol, and it’s so awkward and uncomfortable. I think I hate this episode. It promised to be about ARcher’s love for his dog but then it’s filled with weird slapstick that has nothing to do with anything, Archer being VERY annoying, and then this. Star Trek often does romance awkwardly, and I KNEW they’d push a T’Pol x Archer pairing as like, the main canon pairing for this series, but for fucks sake, I was REALLY hoping they’d get it started with something BETTER THAN THIS. He even goes “I’m doing the breast I can- I mean the best”. This was written by a fucking hack. OH, WRITTEN BY RICK BERMAN? I’M FUCKING STUNNED. This has the energy of a really awkwardly horny, bad anime you watch 2 episodes of and then stop watching. This episode reminds me of DNA Squared. And that is a REALLY bad thing.

Even Phlox being cool and doing good lore doesn’t help with this. I’m learning a LOT about Dunobulans, and they’re all cool. I like Dunobulans, and I like Phlox. But I really can’t get over Archer in this episode, who frankly has been racist, and he does actually apologize for being racist and not understanding other cultures, but to me it’s a bit too little too late.

At least T’Pol straight up goes “you are my superior officer so we will never be a thing, have a nice day”. IT is as awkward as you can imagine it is. Anyways they get their thing and Porthos is fine. Fuck this episode.

Marauders - ENT 5/10

Enterprise lands at a Deuterium mining facility and offers to buy some The people at the mining facility are ragged and anxious and extremely unhappy about anyone wanting to buy their deuterium being here, but they agree to sell some for a pretty harsh deal, and if they give some med supplies, AND if they fix some broken pumps. They’re evasive about everything. Trip meets a kid while working on stuff and makes friends with him.

We find what the problem is pretty fast. Some Klingons are on their way, and they get VERY grumpy because they think they have… a “mutual arrangement”. The Klingons don’t notice the Humans but beat the shit out of the settlers anyway, cause why the fuck not? They don’t have the Deuterium they want, even though they’re there early, so they beat them up for the “disrepect”. You know, bad Klingon stuff.

The leader of the colony just wants the Humans to leave, it’s not their fault, but everyone wants to help. They need to do SOMETHING, so they decide to teach them how to defend themselves. They eventually agree to help once Archer gives ‘em the old “teach a man to fish” line, which I have NO idea why that worked. They have 3 days. Time to montage.

We get them planning out traps, teaching guns, and martial arts. There’s a scene where T’Pol is like “I will teach you an ancient Vulcan technique”. That technique is getting the fuck out of the way.

We then Bugs Life these grasshoppers. T’Pol even gets a scene where she beats the shit out of a Klingon in hand to hand combat. Berman must have been asleep. They successfully get the Klingons into the trap, and they go “HMPH, WELL WE DIDN’T WANT YOUR STUPID DEUTERIUM ANYWAY, YOU DOO DOO FACE!” and leave. It goes almost comically, sappily well. Even the kid lives. Trip gives him some schematics for the Enterprise, and all’s well that ends well. Frankly I’m stunned the Klingons didn’t bombard the colony from space out of spite.

This is, I believe, the first time we really fight Klingons. This kind of story is a little boring, and this is a very standard retelling of that idea.

The Seventh - ENT 3/10

T’Pol is contacted the be High Command who say they’ve found someone named Menos. T’Pol then goes to Archer and is VERY out of character. She’s talking kinda stilted and awkwardly, and looks VERY unhappy, and tells him that she needs to do a mission and cannot tell him more. Archer is very bratty about this, as he usually is. When she comes to him and goes “I need your help” he’s EXTRA bratty. Archer, please.

She explains that she used to be a part of Vulcan security. There was a team of Vulcan spies who went rogue basically, years ago, and T’Pol could not apprehend one of them. They found him now, and she wants Archer to help her. He’s still bratty like “Pff, why ME?” and she’s like “Because I want to be with someone I can trust”, cutting it right to the bone. Get his ass, T’Pol.

Trip is really excited to be acting captain while Archer is off the ship… at first. He uses Archer’s room to relax, eats nice food prepared specially for him. But then he has to make DECISIONS. AND the Admiral is currently asking for Archer, who was NOT supposed to go on the mission but did anyway. So Trip just…. freezes. And refuses to make any decisions. He is NOT made for captaining. He just pushes it down the way. I regretably relate to it, but I hate that I relate to Trip, cause he has big Rick Berman Self Insert character energy. Also, Trip is uh, a high ranking officer? He was 2nd in command until T’Pol came in. He trained for this. And here he is being a baby.

They capture their guy, who’s a Vulcan but has been surgically changed to look like a not Vulcan. He claims he’s not a villain, they just want to take him back because he decided he liked the life he’s living here. He doesn’t smuggle weapons like the reports say, he just didn’t want to go back home… which is technically against the law for an agent to do, so they’re trying to bring him back, and he’ll be tried guilty. “But the government wouldn’t do that!” Archer says, as if he didn’t find the Vulcans breaking a fucking treaty like a couple months ago and cause a diplomatic incident.

T’Pol is acting very weird. She’s remembering some things, their guy thinks she’s gonna kill him, and she’s acting very emotional.

Turns out she killed this guy’s partner years ago, then they did a Vulcan ritual on her that made her forget her memories and the emotions of the act, since killing others fucked her up a looot. Especially if he’s innocent, which he sure does claim he is. I mean, the guy she killed LOOKED like he was reaching for his gun. But also who knows. We can’t trust him, but we also can’t trust the high command, though Archer keeps saying we should. Dude.

This is very sloppily handled PTSD. Anyways he’s even more hard to trust when he sets the fucking bar they’re in on fire and runs away. He manages to get the drop on them, but Archer almost kills T’Pol to get into a fire fight.

He tries to play to her guilty again, and Archer is like “You were here to apprehend him, not judge him”. Anyways it turns out he IS smuggling illegal biotoxins! We were justified! Never question orders :D

Rick Berman is a shitty writer, more news at 11. Brannon Braga is not much better.

The Communicator - ENT 3.5/10

Reed, Hoshi, and Archer were exploring a pre-warp civilization. I want to note, Neli went “Oh good, he took competent people with him this time”. We then find out Reed just fucking forgot his communicator and left it down on the planet. Well so much for that!

They’re acting like this is a big deal. It is, of course, leaving technology behind in a prewar civilization is very bad. But can’t you like, call it to find out where it is and then teleport it back? You have teleporters. Fucking use them.

THey go back to the bar, get their communicator, and are immediately captured by some fascist-coded secret police. Welp, so much contamination of this prewarp civilization. This is why we probably shouldn’t just go down to them willy nilly, and when we do, WE SHOULDN’T MISPLACE OUR BELONGINGS.

I’m starting to agree with the Vulcans. They shouldn’t be out here. And frankly, that’s insulting to me, because the Vulcans in this show are fucking pretentious smug fuckheads and I hate them. But they’re right, and its the worst.

Half this show is Archer getting stuck in a chair and getting the shit beat out of him. It happens a lot. Anyways the secret police believe that Archer and Reed are here to assassinate Hitler, I mean Chancellor Kultarey. But when they beat the shit out of them, it becomes clear that the things on their foreheads are fake, and their blood is red. Oops, we made it worse.

Trip plans to use the Suleban cloak ship that they have from when they rescued Klaang… what? You still have that? It’s been A YEAR, dude. That’s just been sitting there?? Anyways he tries to get it working and then gets hit with a wave of energy which makes his arm cloaked. Trip sucks the fun out of everything, this should be a goofy fun scene. But I hate it.

The fascists are like “There’s no other option. These are space aliens.” Archer is like “That’s nuts. Come on, we’re just super soldier prototypes. Y’all are nuts.” Well, he helped hold back the cultural corruption, at least.

Archer and Reed are about to be executed and dissected, and they had a long talk about “It’s good that the Enterprise is leaving us to die so we don’t make things worse down here”. And then their execution is interrupted by them showing up, cloaked, blasting, and then fleeing. Archer even goes to grab the weapons. There’s even a little “Ha ha, looking for this?” moment with Reed like “ha ha, you almost forgot your communicator”. Ha ha, we escalated a war that will kill millions.

T’Pol makes it clear, they fucked up, really, really bad. But she’s at least proud that Archer was going to sacrifice his life to protect them from more contamination… which is something.

Eh, no. Mostly annoying. Use the fucking transporter, or at least tell me there’s Fucktonium in the way. It’s good to show why the Prime Directive is important, Rick Berman is not that good of a writer.